When Socialist Legacy Meets International Norms: Gender Quota Adoption and Institutional Change in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT Gender quotas have a long history in China, with the earliest gender quota introduced in 1933 in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) border regions. Yet, research on China’s gender quotas has been scarce. This study addresses the gap by examining the process of gender quota adoption in China’s subnational Party-States and the People’s Congresses. Using an institutional approach, we argue that quota adoption in China was a process of ‘institutional layering’ that lasted from the late 1980s to the 2010s. During this process, domestic actors contested the CCP’s existing personnel rules and strategically exploited the CCP’s ideological commitment to gender equity and its need for an improved international image during the second wave of global gender quota adoption. Two changes have happened during the ‘layering’ process: the slow diversification of domestic actors, including both state and non-state ones, and the shifting of the actors’ working strategy from an informal and network-based approach to an institutionalized one that operated through formal channels. In so doing, this article expands the comparative literature on gender quotas, which has been preoccupied with quotas in elected parliaments, and enriches our understanding of Chinese politics.