A host of recent scholarship on gender empowerment in developing countries finds that women’s representation at the local level generates more tangible benefits for female constituents than does representation at the national level. The logic underlying this claim posits that female municipal level officials are more responsive and sympathetic to their female citizens. Women are also thought to trust local female representatives more due to their one-on-one interactions with respective officials. There are further claims that women’s representation at the local level translates into enhanced safety for female constituents. Studies conducted in India (Iyer , Mani, Mishra, and Topalova 2011) found that after the adoption of a municipal level gender quota, crimes against women rose 44 percent. Their research discovered this was due to an increase in the reporting of said crimes and an increased awareness that violence against women actually constituted a crime. The authors found municipalities with women at the helm had more responsive and sympathetic police and local administration, oftentimes eager to report and prosecute gender-related crimes. In fact, the number of criminal acts against women was not actually increasing, rather the political empowerment of women at the local level lead to better and more accurate reporting of those crimes. Insuring personal security and combating violence against women is certainly one of the most significant issues affecting women in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the globe more broadly. Has increased gender representation at the local vs. national level yielded differing results for Arab women’s personal security as in the case of India? This paper aims to statistically test whether women’s representation at diverse institutional levels has an effect on reported crimes against women. It further considers what those results reveal in terms of gender quotas' substantive contribution toward enhancing women’s personal security and status overall.