Authoritarian regimes around the world have increasingly implemented policies and reforms to strengthen women’s rights, ranging from adopting gender quotas to penalizing gender-based violence. Recent literature highlights that authoritarian leaders are at the forefront of these initiatives, often aiming to strengthen their rule rather than advance women’s rights (e.g., Bjarnegård and Zetterberg 2016; Bush and Zetterberg 2021; Donno, Fox, and Kaasik 2021). While we cannot ignore the contributions of grassroots activism in advancing gender equality (e.g., Kang and Tripp 2018; Krook 2009), authoritarian regimes, by nature, have less incentive to pay attention to popular demands. Thus, women’s rights reforms in autocracies tend to be top-down: initiated by the leadership, with a lack of citizen involvement in the design process. This essay considers how top-down gender reforms may be viewed by the public, and as a consequence, how the public’s perceptions of them may affect women’s status in the broader society.

中文翻译：

---

专制制度下的舆论与妇女权利

世界各地的威权政权越来越多地实施政策和改革以加强妇女的权利，从采用性别配额到惩罚基于性别的暴力。最近的文献强调，威权领导人处于这些举措的最前沿，通常旨在加强他们的统治而不是促进妇女权利（例如，Bjarnegård 和 Zetterberg 2016 年；Bush 和 Zetterberg 2021 年；Donno、Fox 和 Kaasik 2021 年）。虽然我们不能忽视草根激进主义在促进性别平等方面的贡献（例如，Kang 和 Tripp 2018 年；Krook 2009 年），但威权政权本质上不太愿意关注民众的需求。因此，专制国家的妇女权利改革往往是自上而下的：由领导层发起，在设计过程中缺乏公民参与。