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With Mehri Best Thesis Prize, Awino Pauller Musyoka Explores Gender Quotas

Awino Pauller Musyoka '23 was getting ready to cross the commencement stage when she got the news that her thesis, “Will Women Save The Planet? The Effects of Gender Quotas on Women’s Representation and Environmental Legislation” had won the Mehri Best Senior Thesis Award.

“I thought someone else had won,” she said. “No one said anything about it, and then on the morning of graduation, I got the email! I was so excited that I was able to share the announcement with my family.”

The award, named for civil rights attorney Cyrus Mehri Esq. ’83, is given annually to a senior who demonstrates their understanding of a critical issue facing society.

“Awino’s thesis captures the urgency of the need to address critical environmental issues such as a changing climate and water stress and recognizes their impacts on women in particular,” said Amy Forster Rothbart, associate professor of political science and Musyoka’s thesis advisor.

“It asks about the role women play in addressing these needs as their numbers in elected office increase due, in part, due to gender quota policies in more than 120 countries around the globe.”

Amy Forster Rothbart

Associate Professor of Political Science

Awino Pauller Musyoka '23, Hartwick College graduate

Awino, a political science and psychology double major, paired down several ideas before honing in on her focus. “I knew I wanted to write about women, gender quotas and the environment,” she said. “There’s a lot of literature about getting women into politics, but I wanted to know how it affected environmental legislation.”

As Awino delved into her research – which focused on Kenya, the United Kingdom and Brazil – she discovered that while male politicians tout their environmental credentials, when women are in positions in governance – through enforced or voluntary gender quotas – they are more likely to vote for environmental legislation.

“In Somalia, for example, it is women who first suffer the brunt of increased desertification,*” she wrote. “As a pastoral community, Somali women will take out the cattle and notice that they have to travel further and further for water. Girls and women internationally, whose job it is to get water for the household for cooking and cleaning, will leave school, or not attend in the first place, precisely because of these conditions.”

While her paper found a small positive correlation between women in government and increased environmental legislation, she admitted that the evidence “was not robust enough to be replicated in all the case studies,” and that additional research was needed to fully confirm her thesis.

But she’s out to live that thesis and make those changes as an intern working with the Governance team of UNAIDS in Geneva, Switzerland.

“I want to go to graduate school and work in international development. And I’d love to find a way to work in Kenya with a not-for-profit that works with women and the environment.”

Awino Pauller Musyoka '23

Political Science and Psychology Double Major

July 13, 2023
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