Abstract
Underrepresentation of women in politics is a matter of great concern to social scientists, citizens, and policymakers alike. Despite effort over the past decade to ameliorate it with gender quotas of different types, scientific research provides a mixed picture on the extent to which quotas can close these gender gaps under different conditions. We approach this puzzle by focusing on the orientation of electoral systems—candidate-centered vs. platform-centered—as a context that conditions the effect of quotas on representation. Our analyses of 76 countries’ electoral rules and legislatures show that contrary to expectations, it is in candidate-oriented systems that quotas facilitate stronger effect on women’s representation. Even after considering proportional representation, district magnitude, human development, or labor-force participation as alternative explanations, we show that quotas foster greater increases in gender representation in candidate-oriented systems. The broader implications are that in electoral systems that tend to have larger gender gaps, quotas have a substantial contribution to equal representation.
Highlights
Though women make up half the population, on average around the world women hold only 25% of legislative seats
Do quotas have a differential effect on women’s representation, depending on systemic features? In this study, we tested an expectation derived from the scholarly literature, that programmatic systems will show a stronger correlation between
Empirical findings we presented show that, contrary to expectations, gender quotas have a larger impact on women’s representation in candidate-oriented systems
Summary
Though women make up half the population, on average around the world women hold only 25% of legislative seats. Only one in four seats are held by a woman in national legislatures. To ameliorate this underrepresentation of women, electoral gender quotas have been proposed over the years. Is it in electoral systems that produce greater platform-oriented commitment of voters? In candidate-oriented systems, on the other hand, the emphasis is on the individual candidate’s identity, and voters tend to focus on candidate personality to greater extent than party platform. In such systems, there is more importance given to seniority, uninterrupted careers, and experience [1]
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