Walters, LeoneChisadza, CarolynClance, Matthew W.2025-02-042025-02-042024-08Walters, L., Chisadza, C., & Clance, M. (2024). Slave trades, kinship structures and women's political participation in Africa. Kyklos, 77(3), 734–758. https://DOI.org/10.1111/kykl.12384.0023-5962 (print)1467-6435 (online)10.1111/kykl.12384http://hdl.handle.net/2263/100494DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.We study whether present-day women's political participation in sub-Saharan Africa is associated to the temporary gender ratio imbalances caused by the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades, taking into account pre-existing gender norms influenced by kinship structures. To study the interrelatedness between historical exposure to the slave trades, patrilineality and their association to contemporary women's political participation, we use individual-level data for 35,595 women from 28 sub-Saharan African countries from three rounds of Afrobaro-meter surveys, georeferenced to historical ethnic region kinship and slave trade data. Our findings suggest that a woman's ethnic region historical exposure to the transatlantic slave trade is associated with an increase in her likelihood to vote today, however, only in non-patrilineal ethnic regions. This effect is mitigated in patrilineal ethnic regions, where women have less decision-making power. This paper contributes to the literature on the contemporary sub-national effects of the slave trades and the historical causes of gender gaps in political participation.en© 2024 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.GenderIndian Ocean slave tradesWomenSub-Saharan Africa (SSA)Political participationSDG-05: Gender equalityArticle