Wu,  Jingwen, and Tiffany Barnes. (2025). Digital divide and gender. In The Sage International Encyclopedia of Politics and Gender (Vol. 4, pp. 278-285). SAGE Publications, Inc., https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071918494.n72  [PDF] 

The world is more interconnected than ever, with billions of people relying on mobile devices. In low and middle-income countries, mobile devices are the primary means of accessing the internet. Mobile devices provide significant economic benefits and facilitate access to essential information and government services. Increases in mobile device ownership boost household consumption and reduce poverty, improve individual health, provide access to timely information during emergencies, and help people feel more secure. However, there is a significant gender-based digital divide, wherein men have greater access to, use of, and benefits from digital technologies, including mobile devices and the internet, than do women. In this entry, data on the gender digital divide and the political implications of this divide are discussed.

Wu, Jingwen, Emily Beaulieu Bacchus, Tiffany D. Barnes, and Nathan Batto. 2024. "Mixed Member Systems, Corruption, and Accountability: Evidence from Taiwan." In Gender and Corruption in Democracies: A Handbook, Edward Elgar Publishing. [PDF]  

Are citizens more likely to punish women politicians for corruption than men? Previous studies have shown that women politicians are held to higher standards than men. Gender stereotypes hold that women should exhibit traits such as honesty, compassion, and moral purity, and thus less likely than men to engage in corruption. When women violate these gendered expectations and are implicated in corruption scandals, it could lead to harsher backlash at the polls—above and beyond the response elicited by male politicians who were initially held to lower or different standards. Such studies are consistent with the outcomes of high-profile scandals such as the impeachments of presidents Park Guen-hye in South Korea, and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. However, this argument assumes that expectations and stereotypes of women are relatively constant across cultures and that institutional differences will not affect voters’ propensity to punish women any more than men. We investigate this question in the unique cultural and historical context of Taiwan, arguing that cultural and institutional differences may condition voters’ desire to punish corruption at the polls, providing important insights into the impact of gender on voter accountability.

Wu, Jingwen and  James R. Masterson. 2023. "Cleaning Up Its Act: The Ecological Environmental Protection Plan and China Urban Air Pollution." Asian Survey. University of California Press. [PDF]

The urgent and global concern of environmental problems transcends local and regional boundaries, posing significant challenges for policymakers in developing countries. Amid conflicting economic and environmental goals, evaluating the efficacy of regulatory policies becomes increasingly critical. This study investigates the effectiveness of public policy in incentivizing developing nations to prioritize environmental regulation, with a specific focus on China's most recent environmental policy, the Ecological Environmental Protection Plan (the EEP Plan). Using multilevel modeling and difference-in-differences estimation with data from six of China’s most populous cities between 2014 and 2019, we see evidence of air quality improvements following the implementation of the policy. Furthermore, we observe greater enhancements in air quality in the cities most affected by the institutional details of the policy. This shows that well-crafted public policy can improve air quality, providing crucial insights for policymakers and scholars alike.