How can dictatorships signal democratic progress to international audiences? Cross-national research has documented a correlation between democracy, foreign aid, and other international benefits, but we have as yet little understanding of how different policies are received by the international professionals tasked with actually making decisions about development programs. We theorize women's rights as a policy area in which autocrats can signal democracy without risking their political survival, in contrast to other more costly reforms to the electoral sphere. To test our hypotheses, we implement a conjoint survey experiment on an international ``elite" sample of 108 professionals in the development field. Our design allows us to assess how policies related to (a) electoral competition, (b) women's economic rights, and (c) women's political representation influence perceptions of democracy and willingness to provide foreign aid. We find that reforms related to opposition parties have a large impact on perceptions of democracy and on foreign aid provision, but, strikingly, that increasing women's economic rights is also a highly effective signal. Legislative gender quotas exhibit a significant (though smaller) effect on perceived democracy, but do not increase the likelihood of receiving a foreign aid package. Taken together, our findings support the idea that autocrats enjoy considerable leeway in how they may choose to signal democratic progress to international audiences, but that the signaling `power' of gender quotas may be weakening in light of their prevalence in both democracies and dictatorships around the world.