Gender quotas,candidate background and the election of women: A paradox of gender quotas in open-list proportional representation systems

We study the effects of mandatory (legislated) gender quotas in Poland, a country utilising an open-list proportional representation electoral system. We use a unique data set comprising multiple characteristics of all candidates running in two consecutive elections to the lower chamber of the Polish parliament (the Sejm). The first of them (held in 2007) was the last pre-quota election and the second (held in 2011) the first post-quota one. We show that quotas have an inherently paradoxical nature: they cause a substantial increase in the number of female candidates but the increase is accompanied by a sharp decline in women's electoral performance. This regularity holds even if we account for multiple indicators of candidate background, including previous political experience.     

Growth in women's political representation: A longitudinal exploration of democracy, electoral system and gender quotas

The expansion of women's formal political representation ranks among the most significant trends in international politics of the last 100 years. Though women made steady political progress, substantial country-level variation exists in patterns of growth and change. In this article, longitudinal theories are developed to examine how political factors affect women's political representation over time. Latent growth curve models are used to assess the growth of women in politics in 110 countries from 1975 to 2000. The article investigates how electoral systems, national-level gender quotas and growth of democracy – both political rights and civil liberties – impact country-level trajectories of women's legislative representation. It is found: first, national quotas do affect women's political presence, but at a lower level than legislated by law; second, the impact of a proportional representation system on women's political representation is steady over time; and third, democracy, especially civil liberties, does not affect the level of women's political representation in the earliest period, but does influence the growth of women's political representation over time. These findings both reinforce and challenge prior cross-sectional models of women's political representation.     

How legislative gender quotas affect the gender gap in campaign spending: an analysis of the federal and regional elections in Belgium

Research on the link between gender and campaign finance in proportional electoral systems suggests that the campaign expenses of female parliamentary candidates are significantly lower than those of male candidates. On the basis of data on 10,436 candidates for nine consecutive elections in Belgium (1991–2014), this article examines whether there is indeed a gender gap in campaign expenses, and in particular whether this coincides with the introduction of legislative quota laws in the Belgian flexible-list system. We distinguish between realistic candidates that run for election from winnable list positions and unrealistic candidates running from lower ranked positions. The results show that, among unrealistic candidates, the gender gap in campaign spending arose again after the introduction of more severe gender quotas. With regard to realistic list positions, however, the significant difference between male and female candidates in the most strict quota phase disappeared, indicating that female realistic candidates were able to catch up financially with their male counterparts. The Belgian experience could provide useful insights for other countries with flexible-list systems regarding the implementation of legislative gender quotas.     

Candidate gender quotas: A framework for analysis

Abstract.  Quotas for women in politics have diffused rapidly around the globe in recent years, with political parties and national legislatures in more than a hundred countries adopting – or debating the adoption of – reserved seats, party quotas or legislative quotas to increase the selection of female candidates to political office. These developments have sparked an explosion of research on candidate gender quotas. However most of this work focuses on single cases and reflects little awareness of developments in other countries around the world. As a result, the findings in one case are often contradicted in other studies, revealing few clear patterns with regard to the origins and outcomes of gender quota policies. To foster a more cumulative research agenda, this article approaches quotas as a global phenomenon and elaborates a framework for analyzing and comparing the actors, motivations and contexts at work in specific quota reforms.     

Interdependence Effects in Mixed-Superposition Electoral Systems: An Empirical Test on Women's Participation in Sub-national Elections

Mixed-superposition electoral systems, while devoid of compensatory mechanisms interconnecting their proportional and non-proportional sections, may create effective linkages that exert some impact upon the behaviour of political parties. This article examines the resulting interdependence effects with respect to women's electoral participation and legislative representation. It is hypothesized that if political parties embrace the logic of ticket-balancing when forming their candidate lists in the proportional representation sections of elections, they become more willing to nominate female candidates in majoritarian districts, which creates an important interdependence effect that ultimately contributes to the increased levels of women's representation. This hypothesis is empirically tested on a sample of 139 sub-national elections held in Russia in 2003–2011, with some additional information derived from the results of 81 previously held elections. The statistical analysis confirms the presence of interdependence effects with respect to women's political participation. The principal contextual factor that intermediates the observed effects is political regime. It is shown that electoral authoritarianism mitigates the interdependence effects of mixed-superposition electoral systems.     

Gender Parity and Quotas in Italy: A Convoluted Reform Process

In 1995, two years after the adoption of gender quota laws, the Italian Constitutional Court declared these laws to be unconstitutional. The Constitution was subsequently reformed in order to make way for new quota legislation. Such reforms came in late and in a contradictory way. The Constitution was first modified in 2001 to allow regions to adopt quota measures to enhance women's political representation at the regional level and then in 2003 to allow similar measures to enhance women's political representation at the national and European levels. Thus far, quotas have been introduced only in some regions and for European elections. Consequently, the 2001 and 2003 constitutional reforms have had a limited impact on legislative implementation measures and thus on the percentage of women in elected assemblies.     

Institutionalising Gender Equality in Spain: From Party Quotas to Electoral Gender Quotas

This article accounts for the particular steps Spain took to institutionalise gender equality in political representation. While some West European countries, where the ‘incremental track’ was considered too slow or too ineffective, recently shifted to the ‘fast track’ (notably, Belgium, France, Italy and Portugal), Spain adopted a legislative quota in 2007, when women's representation had already reached very high levels. Indeed, 10 years earlier, the quotas adopted by left-wing Spanish parties in the late 1980s had already reached parity and triggered a contagion effect within the party system. Comparatively speaking, Spain has followed the incremental track in a narrow time frame since democracy was restored in 1978. Finally, although the legal quota reform encountered political and juridical opposition, Spain managed to introduce it without the need for constitutional reform.     

The alternative incumbency effect: Electing women legislators in Indonesia

Between the 1999 and 2009 elections the proportion of national female legislators in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim majority democracy, more than doubled. While this substantial increase may partly be explained by the recent imposition of a gender quota and placement mandate that have forced parties to increase the number of female candidates, quotas cannot fully explain the strong performance of women in the 2009 elections. First, many parties placed women higher on their lists than the laws required; second, voters appeared to over vote for women in some districts. Although incumbency's typical effect is to inhibit female electoral success by advantaging traditional (male) competitors, I argue that women benefited largely from an alternative effect: female incumbency can improve female candidate placement and electability by demonstrating female capacity and capability. Female newcomers benefited strongly from the presence of female incumbents in their own and bordering districts, thus suggesting a positive diffusion effect of female incumbency.     

ELECTORAL GENDER QUOTAS AND ATTITUDES TOWARD TRADITIONAL LEADERS: A POLICY EXPERIMENT IN LESOTHO

The adoption of electoral gender quotas has increased dramatically in the last 20 years, receiving praise for transforming the composition of political bodies worldwide. Gender quotas, however, have also been criticized as an unsuccessful tool in challenging the de facto power of traditional patriarchal elites. The case of Lesotho provides a randomized policy experiment to test for changes in the influence of traditional leaders after quota adoption at the subnational level. Between 2005 and 2011, Lesotho reserved at random 30 percent of all newly formed single‐member local electoral divisions for only female candidates. Using a unique data set by merging the 2008 Afro‐barometer survey with the reservation status of respondents’ villages, I find that having a quota‐mandated female leader significantly reduces the perceived influence of traditional leaders. Further, I find that this treatment effect holds across different demographic groups, suggesting a widespread policy impact.     

Multilevel governance and women's legislative representation

Research shows that electoral systems, gender quotas and a country's socio-economic development affect women's legislative representation (WLR). Less attention is paid to the effects of the rise of regional political arenas and multilevel politics on WLR. Due to less costly and competitive electoral campaigns, women can have easier access to regional legislatures. We argue that this relationship is mitigated by the distribution of competences between the different levels of the political system and that decentralization's effect on WLR at the regional level is dependent on the regions’ political power. To test this, we use an original dataset on WLR in 383 regional parliaments in 19 European countries from 1970 to 2018. Results of the three-level models show that more political authority vested into regions leads to a lower level of WLR in the legislatures of the more politically powerful regions in comparison with not only the regions possessing less authority but also with the national parliament. Possible explanations for this effect, such as the attractiveness of these positions to the mostly male political elite and, consequently, increased costs and competitiveness of electoral campaigns, are suggested.     

Incumbents' Interests and Gender Quotas

The introduction of mandatory gender quotas in party lists is a reform that many countries have recently adopted or have been considering. The electoral system affects the incumbents' incentives to make such reforms, their details, and their effectiveness. We show that male incumbents can actually expect an increased incumbency advantage when gender quotas are introduced, if they are elected through single‐member district majority rule. On the other hand, no expectation of male advantage can reduce the incumbents' fear of being replaced if they are elected through closed‐list proportional representation. As France has both electoral systems, we validate the above argument using a formal model of constitutional design as well as an empirical analysis of the legislative elections in France, displaying the existence of male bias in the last three elections. We also show that parity may have Assembly composition effects and policy effects that vary with the electoral system.     

Portugal's Quota-Parity Law: An Analysis of its Adoption

In August 2006, Portugal approved a new quota law, called the parity law. According to this, all candidate lists presented for local, parliamentary, and European elections must guarantee a minimum representation of 33 per cent for each sex. This article analyses the proximate causes that led to the adoption of gender quotas by the Portuguese Parliament. The simple answer is that the law's passage was a direct consequence of a draft piece of legislation presented by the Socialist Party (PS), which enjoyed a majority. However, the reasons that led the PS to push through a quota law remain unclear. Using open-ended interviews with key women deputies from all the main Portuguese political parties, and national public opinion data, among other sources, the role of four actors/factors that were involved in the law's adoption are critically examined: notably, civil society actors, state actors, international and transnational actors, and the Portuguese political context.     

How do gender quotas affect public support for women as political leaders?

Gender quotas have shown themselves to be an effective means of getting more women into political office. Less clear is the broader effect of gender quotas on egalitarian attitudes. This article uses a cross-national dataset of 48 countries worldwide to examine the role of gender quotas in the generation of individual-level attitudes to women as political leaders. Firstly, gender quotas appear to improve perceptions of women’s ability as political leaders in countries where they are present, having controlled for a range of individual-level and contextual influences. Second, this effect differs by sex. For women, the presence of gender quotas alone increases their support for women’s political leadership, something theorised as a ‘vote of confidence’ effect. Thirdly, this effect is not dependent on the type of quota implemented and holds for quotas adopted voluntarily by political parties and those that are brought about via a broader legal change.     

Territorial representation

Abstract This paper examines the opinion congruence of voters and representatives in European Parliament elections taking nation as the constituency of interest, an implied model of representation similar to that in a classic Miller and Stokes analysis. Congruence is greater for some countries than others. MEPs are even less representative of their voters than are candidates in general, and all are more pro–integrationist than the electorate. Differences between countries are explained by variations in electoral systems and in national party systems. A genuine European party system and a common and PR electoral system would make MEPs more representative, but almost certainly less integrationist.     

Territorial representation

This paper examines the opinion congruence of voters and representatives in European Parliament elections taking nation as the constituency of interest, an implied model of representation similar to that in a classic Miller and Stokes analysis. Congruence is greater for some countries than others. MEPs are even less representative of their voters than are candidates in general, and all are more pro–integrationist than the electorate. Differences between countries are explained by variations in electoral systems and in national party systems. A genuine European party system and a common and PR electoral system would make MEPs more representative, but almost certainly less integrationist.     

Introduction: Gender Parity and Quotas in European Politics

Since the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which clearly endorsed measures to ensure the equal participation of women in decision-making, many nations across the globe have adopted and implemented laws requiring political parties to nominate gender-balanced slates of candidates. This symposium brings together new research on the fairly recent gender quota and parity reforms in Portugal, France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain and the efforts of the European Union to promote them. In keeping with the single-case, comparative, and international gender quota literature, the articles stress the role of domestic and international actors/factors (political parties and elites, women's groups active inside and/or outside political parties, and international and European organizations) in the adoption of reforms as well as the reforms' specific provisions (placement rules and sanctions for non-compliance) and how well they fit in with the electoral system when assessing their impact. At the same time, the articles also offer intriguing insights related to the labelling of reforms as either ‘parity’ or ‘quota’ or both in different contexts, the involvement of different political parties in their adoption, and, finally, their qualitative upshots and, more specifically, their impact on citizens and elites' attitudes towards women in politics and measures to enhance it.     

No (Parliamentary) Gender Gap Please, We're British

Although the number of women MPs has increased in recent years, there continues to be a pronounced gender gap in the British House of Commons. Most attempts to close this gap have involved political parties selecting candidates on the basis of some form of electoral gender quota, but quotas are problematic, and more radical steps need to be taken if we are serious about women being equally represented in the Mother of Parliaments. This article proposes a possible solution that accords as far as possible with Britain's governing and representative traditions: the modification of current electoral arrangements so that voters in each constituency vote for and are represented by both a male and a female MP.