Gender Quotas in Politics

Abstract

Gender quotas in politics, also named “electoral gender quotas,” represent one of the major electoral reforms in world politics since the 1990s. It is an affirmative action measure, which requires a certain number or proportion of women—or of both men and women—among those nominated or elected. Previously, rather unpopular quotas for women existed in various forms in most communist countries, and in Pakistan since 1956, Bangladesh since 1972 with some interruptions, and in Egypt from 1979 to 1984. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, Greens, Left Socialist, and Social-Democratic parties in the Nordic countries started using minimum quotas for women for their internal organization and their lists for elections, so-called party quotas. The recent trend in quota adoption by law, i.e., legislated quotas, binding for all parties, started with Argentina’s quota law of 1991, which requires a minimum of 30 percent of candidates of each gender on the electoral lists. India was also among the first, although with a different, third type, named reserved seats quotas: Through a constitutional amendment, 1993–1994, one-third of the seats in the local councils, the Panchayats, was reserved for women in advance of the election. By the end of the 2010s, more than half the world’s countries had adopted some type of electoral gender quotas. It remains a controversial policy, even among feminist researchers, yet has proven to be an efficient affirmative action measure (a fast track policy), depending, however, on how quota rules fit the electoral system in place, additional rank order rules, and sanctions for non-compliance. The legitimacy of electoral gender quotas depends on the quota design and on the prevailing discourses on why women are under-represented—or why men are over-represented—seen in relation to their share of the population. Research on gender quotas in politics emerged with the rapid expansion of quotas, and this research, which is predominantly, but not exclusively, conducted by political scientists, has in itself contributed to the effectiveness of quotas, including through international consultancy. The CEDAW convention from 1979 paved the way for gender quotas by stating that the adoption of “temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women shall not be considered discrimination” (Art.4.1). Later, the UN Platform for Action, adopted in Beijing in 1995, linked equal participation of women and men in decision-making to the development of democracy. Transnational women’s movements have been instrumental to the adoption of this new global discourse, and national women’s movements to the implementation.