Women quotas

Total number of countries with constitutional, electoral or political party quotas : 92

Average level of representation for women countries with quotas :17,7%

1. Different Quota Systems[1]

There are several different types of quotas systems. The most common are the following

1.1. Constitutional Quota for National Parliament

These are quota provisions that are mandated in the constitution of the country. Examples are Burkina Faso, Nepal, the Philippines and Uganda.

1.2. Election Law Quota or Regulation for National Parliament

These are quotas that are provided for in the national legislation or regulations of the country. Legislative quotas are widely used in Latin America as well as for instance in Belgium, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Sudan.

1.3. Political Party Quota for Electoral Candidates

These are rules or targets set by political parties to include a certain percentage of women as election candidates. There might also be quotas for internal party structures, but these are not included in this document. In some countries there are many political parties that have adopted some type of quota provisions, e.g. Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Germany, Norway, Italy and Sweden. But in many other countries, only one or two parties have adopted quotas. However, if the majority party in a country uses quotas, like African National Congress in South Africa, this may have a substantial effect on the overall representation of women. Yet, most political parties in the world do not apply any quota system at all.

In addition to this tri-partite division, one might add a further quota type:

1.4.Constitutional or Legislative Quota for Sub-National Government

These are quotas that are provided for in the constitution or legislation that require or set targets for women to constitute a certain percentage of candidates at sub-national government level (including local, district or state/provincial levels). Examples are India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, France and South Africa.

Quotas work differently under different electoral systems. Quotas are most easily introduced in proportional representation (PR) systems. However, quotas have also been implemented in some majority systems. But even in PR-systems, some political parties and parties in some constituencies may have difficulties in implementing quotas because the quota may be viewed as interference in the usual prerogatives of the local party organization to select their own candidates.

2. Quotas: Pros and Cons

Quotas are a controversial measure. Various arguments have been set forth for and against the introduction of quotas as a means to increase the political presence of women. Some of the pros and cons include

2.1. Cons

- Quotas are against the principle of equal opportunity for all, since women are given preference over men.

- Quotas are undemocratic, because voters should be able to decide who is elected.

- Quotas imply that politicians are elected because of their gender, not because of their qualifications and that more qualified candidates are pushed aside.

- Many women do not want to get elected just because they are women.

- Introducing quotas creates significant conflicts within the party organization.

2.2.Pros

- Quotas for women do not discriminate, but compensate for actual barriers that prevent women from their fair share of the political seats.

- Quotas imply that there are several women together in a committee or assembly, thus minimizing the stress often experienced by the token women.

- Women have the right as citizens to equal representation.

- Women's experiences are needed in political life.

- Election is about representation, not educational qualifications.

- Women are just as qualified as men, but women's qualifications are downgraded and minimized in a male-dominated political system.

- It is in fact the political parties that control the nominations, not primarily the voters who decide who gets elected, therefore quotas are not violations of voters' rights.

- Introducing quotas may cause conflicts, but may be only temporarily.

3. Advantage of Proportional Representation System[2]

Different electoral systems lead to different outcomes. Throughout the developed world in the 1960s and 1970s we saw a wave of what was called "second generation feminism" ­ women demanding equal rights on a whole array of issues, among them greater representation in political bodies. In countries with PR systems, women were able to translate those demands into greater representation. In majoritarian systems, on the other hand, the same demands were made but they were largely unsuccessful or only very modestly successful.

Proportional representation systems have consistently higher district magnitudes, which lead to higher party magnitudes. Party and district magnitudes are important because they affect party strategy when choosing candidates. The party gatekeepers, who must consider which aspirants to choose as candidates, will have a different set of concerns and incentives depending upon the electoral system.

When district magnitude is one, as it is in almost all majoritarian systems, the party can win, at most, one seat in a district. By definition, the party has no chance to balance the party ticket. Because of the strictly zero sum nature of nominating decisions in single-member districts, female candidates must compete directly against men; and often when nominating a woman a party must explicitly deny the aspirations of a man in the same district. When a party expects to win several seats, parties are much more conscious of trying to balance their tickets. Gatekeepers will divide winning slots on the party list among various internal party interests.

Proportional representation systems help women because a process of contagion is more likely to occur in these systems than in majoritarian systems. Contagion is a process by which parties adopt policies initiated by other political parties. To study this question, we looked for contagion effects in Norway and Canada. Looking for contagion effects in elections prior to the dominant Labour Party adopting quotas, we found that contagion occurred within local districts in Norway. The Norwegian Labour Party increased the number of women in winnable positions in exactly those districts where they faced a serious challenge by the Socialist Left, the first party to adopt quotas in Norway. When we tested for a similar effect in Canada ­ that is whether the Liberal Party was more likely to nominate women in those districts where the New Democratic Party had nominated women, we found no evidence of such an effect. In other words contagion occurred in the country with a PR electoral system and did not in the country with a majoritarian electoral system.

4. Why Some PR Systems are Better than Others NOTEREF _Ref121834216 \f \h 2

While proportional representation systems are superior for women, not all PR systems are equally preferred. There are a number of particulars that can help or hinder women's representation within the broader umbrella of PR systems. There are three specific issues that deserve mention: district magnitude, electoral thresholds, and the choice between "open list" and "closed list" forms of proportional representation.

As noted, the driving force behind women doing better in PR systems is the ticket balancing process which occurs when the party sets up their election list in each electoral district. What is crucial, if women are to win seats in parliament is that parties have to win several seats so that they go deep into the party list when selecting MPs. Previously party magnitude was defined as the number of seats a party wins in an electoral district. In designing electoral rules, women will be helped both by having high district magnitudes and by electoral thresholds, because of their effects on average party magnitude. Not surprisingly there is generally a strong positive correlation between average district magnitude and average party magnitude. As the number of seats per district increases, parties will go further down their lists (that is, win more seats) and more parties will have multi-member delegations. Both should increase women's representation. The limiting case, and the one that may be the most advantageous for women, is if the whole country is simply one electoral district. There are other considerations that may render this proposal unattractive. In many countries it is often seen as important to guarantee regional representation, in which case some geographic form of districting may be preferred.

This is a system similar to the one used in the Netherlands, which has a very high level of women's representation (31.3 per cent) and in Israel, which has a low level of women's representation (7.5 per cent). As the results for the Netherlands and Israel indicate, electoral systems cannot guarantee high representation levels. One lesson that can be learned from looking at Israel is that having a high electoral threshold, which is the minimum percent of the vote that a party must have before being eligible to win a seat, is important to help women's chances. In Israel the level of support needed to win a seat has been extremely low; it was recently raised to 1.5 per cent which continues to be quite low. The low threshold has encouraged the creation of many mini-parties, which often let in only one or two representatives. Overwhelmingly parties tend to have male leaders, and party leaders inevitably take the first few slots on the list. Women first tend to show up a little farther down the list when the party concerns turn to ensuring ticket balance. If the party only elects one or two representatives, however, even though many of their candidates in mid-list positions are women, women will not win any representation.

When designing electoral systems there is in effect a trade-off between representing the voters who choose small parties and increasing the descriptive representation of the legislature by having more women from the larger parties. To test this hypothesis, data from both Costa Rica and Sweden was evaluated. Both of these countries use electoral thresholds. Simulations show that electoral thresholds had precisely the predicted effect of increasing women's representation. Women may look favourably upon proposals to establish the whole country as one electoral district, but it would be an important strategic addendum to make sure that electoral thresholds are included in the proposal.

Another characteristic that distinguishes proportional representation systems from each other is whether they use closed party lists, where the party determines the rank ordering of candidates, or open party lists, where the voters are able to influence which of the party's candidates are elected via personal voting. There is relatively little empirical work as to whether these different forms of ballot structure help or hinder women gaining access to parliament.

The crucial question is whether it is easier to convince voters to actively vote for women candidates, or easier to convince party gatekeepers that including more women on the party lists in prominent positions is both fair, and more importantly, strategically wise. It would not be too surprising if the answer actually varied from country to country. It is possible, nevertheless, to make some cautious suggestions. While there is a temptation to recommend open party lists, because this would allow women voters to move women up through preferential voting, closed lists are likely to be superior for women.

First, the experience from preferential voting, that is, open lists, in local elections in Norway for the last 25 years has been unambiguous: it has hurt women. In every local election after 1971 there have been fewer women elected than would have been elected without a preferential vote. One must realize that while preferential voting provides the opportunity for some voters to promote women, this can easily be outweighed by the opportunity for other voters to demote women. In Norway, the negative effect has consistently outweighed the positive effect. It is perhaps important to note that if this effect has shown up in Norway, which has a deserved reputation for being highly progressive on issues of gender equality, it would hardly be surprising to find similar effects in countries with more traditional views on the proper role for women. It may be that in countries with more traditional views, or even within specific districts within a country, voters with traditional views of women's roles would go out of their way to strike or lower the women's names on the party list. So the first objection is that strategically the use of preferential voting may backfire for women.

The second objection to open lists is that it lets the parties "off the hook". That is, they are not responsible for the final outcome. The final outcome then rests with thousands of individual voters making individual decisions. If the sum of all those individual decisions is that women are voted down and out of parliament, the parties cannot be held responsible, as they cannot control how their supporters vote. With closed party lists, however, it is clear it is the party's responsibility to ensure there is balance in the party delegation. If women do poorly under these conditions it cannot be explained away as the responsibility of voters. By using closed lists, the party has the opportunity to look at the composition of the complete delegation rather than having the final outcome be the summation of number of individual decisions. Under these conditions parties could be held responsible for women's representation. If representation failed to grow, women could search out parties that were more willing to consider their demands for representation.

5. Electoral systems and quotas[3]