scholarly journals The Irish legislative gender quota: The first election

2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-35
Author(s):  
Mary Brennan ◽  
Fiona Buckley
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
General Election ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Descriptive Representation ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Do So

Abstract In 2012 legislative gender quotas were introduced as part of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition government’s political reform agenda. The legislation specifies that payments to political parties ‘shall be reduced by 50 per cent, unless at least 30 per cent of the candidates whose candidatures were authenticated by the qualified party at the preceding general election were women and at least 30 per cent were men’. The 30 per cent gender threshold came into effect at the 2016 general election. Research demonstrates that gender quotas work to increase women’s political descriptive representation, but to do so, political parties must engage with them in ‘goodwill’, be ‘wellintentioned’ or place women in ‘winnable seats’. This article examines if this was the case at the 2016 general election. Using statistics, as well as drawing from interviews with party strategists, the article assesses the impact of gender quotas on women’s candidate selection and election. We conclude that parties did embrace the spirit of the gender quota law but resistance remains.

Gender Quotas in Ireland

2021 ◽  
pp. 576-594
Author(s):  
Fiona Buckley ◽  
Mary Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
General Election ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Single Transferable Vote ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
The Law ◽  
Gender Quota

This chapter considers the implementation and effect of legislative gender quotas in the 2016 general election, a first for Ireland and a first for the proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote electoral system (PR-STV). It focuses on political parties and examines how they integrated the formal gender quota law into their candidate selection processes. Particular attention is paid to whether the law changed existing candidate selection practices, many of which are guided by informal candidate selection norms, such as a preference for incumbents and those exhibiting localist traits. The chapter concludes that the gender quota law did engender change in the candidate recruitment, selection, and election of women, but, as scholars of feminist institutionalism would describe, the change was ‘nested’ and ‘bounded’ within existing practices surrounding candidate selection, thereby denting but not dismantling the gendered norms of this process.

Quotas and qualifications: the impact of gender quota laws on the qualifications of legislators in the Italian parliament

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Catalano Weeks ◽  
Lisa Baldez
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Government Experience ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Mixed Electoral System ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
The Impact

This article addresses concerns that candidates nominated because of gender quota laws will be less qualified for office. While questions of candidate quality have long been relevant to legislative behavior, quota laws requiring a certain percentage of candidates for national office to be women have generated renewed interest. Gender quotas are often perceived to reduce the scope of political competition. By putting gender identity center stage, they preclude the possibility that elections will be based on ‘ideas’ or ‘merit’ alone. Other electoral rules that restrict candidate selection, such as the centralization of candidate selection common in closed list PR systems, have been found to reduce the quality of candidates. Rules that open selection, such as primaries, result in higher quality candidates. We exploit the institutional design of Italy’s mixed electoral system in 1994, where quotas were applied only to the PR portion of the list, to compare the qualifications of men, women, and ‘quota women’. We estimate regressions on several measures of deputies’ qualifications for office and performance in office. We find that unlike other rules limiting candidate selection, quotas are not associated with lower quality on most measures of qualifications. In fact, quota women have more local government experience than other legislators and lower rates of absenteeism than their male counterparts. Contrary to critics, quota laws may have apositiveimpact on legislator quality. Once the quota law was rescinded, quota women were less likely to be re-elected than non-quota women or men, which suggests that discrimination – not qualification – limits women’s status as candidates.

scholarly journals Electoral Institutions and Women’s Representation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael FitzGerald ◽  
Melody E. Valdini
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Descriptive Representation ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
The Impact

While there are many factors that drive women’s descriptive representation (i.e., the percentage of women in the legislature) the electoral institutions generate some of the most powerful and consistent effects. In the first breaths of this literature, the focus was firmly on the impact of majoritarian electoral systems versus proportional representation (PR) systems on women’s descriptive representation. Since then, the literature has grown to engage broader ideas regarding the complicated nature of analyzing institutions in different cultural contexts and under different social conditions. Particularly in the later decades of the 20th century, scholars found that structural factors, such as economic disparities between men and women and the balance of women in careers that are typical paths to political office, were important to consider in concert with electoral rules. More recently, as more women gain access to the economic elite, the literature has focused more on cultural factors such as the historical legacies of Communism and the general societal reactions to women’s leadership. These non-institutional factors are now widely engaged as an important component of understanding why and to what extent we can expect an electoral system to generate a certain outcome. Beyond the impact of the electoral system itself, there is also relevant literature that engages how electoral institutions such as gender quotas and candidate selection processes affect women’s descriptive representation. There is wide variation in the design of gender quotas as well as candidate selection processes, just as there is in the design of electoral systems, and therefore a fuller understanding of the relationship between electoral institutions and women’s representation requires consideration of the interaction of candidate selection procedures, gender quotas, and electoral systems. For example, the presence of a placement mandate (i.e., a requirement stipulating where on the list women candidates must be positioned) or a decentralized candidate selection process each has a different effect on women’s representation in an electoral system that includes a preference vote. The sections below highlight some of the existing literature on electoral institutions and their impact on women’s descriptive representation. This is by no means an exhaustive list but does offer insight into the general themes and research areas that are common in this field of study.

Women in Political Parties

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Morgan ◽  
Magda Hinojosa
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
State Funding ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Descriptive Representation ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Selection Procedures ◽  
Female Candidates ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Organizational Ties

Jana Morgan and Magda Hinojosa examine women’s representation within parties as leaders, candidates, and officeholders and find that these positions are increasingly accessible to women. They argue that candidate selection procedures are important for women’s presence within parties, while gender quotas and ideology matter less than we might expect. They also evaluate whether parties advocate for women’s issues or employ strategies to articulate women’s concerns. They find that even as descriptive representation has advanced, parties rarely offer substantive linkages for women. As a result, women are less likely to identify with parties than men. To improve women’s descriptive representation in parties, they argue for better candidate selection processes, candidate training programs, and increased state funding for female candidates. To advance substantive representation, they advocate for parties to craft policy and organizational ties with women and to align gender issues with existing partisan divides, thereby integrating rather than isolating gender issues.

Mandated Representation: Exploring the Consequences of Gender Quota Design on Parliamentary Activity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva-Maria Euchner ◽  
Elena Frech
Keyword(s):  
Negative Binomial ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Negative Binomial Regression ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Binomial Regression ◽  
Interdisciplinary Framework ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Although the scholarship on legislative behaviour widely agrees that electoral rules determine parliamentary activities, surprisingly little is known on the impact of gender quotas. We contribute to this research gap by developing an innovative interdisciplinary framework and by exploring it based on a unique dataset on varying gender quota designs throughout EU countries and parties running for the 7th term of the European Parliament (2009–2014). Based on the scholarship on gender diversity in management teams and the research on gendered processes in political parties, we argue that especially mandated gender quotas stimulate processes of social categorisation, intergroup biasing and competition due to a normative mis-fit between conceptions of gender equality and gender quotas, which in turn influences coordination and communication and hence, parliamentary activity more generally. Combining negative-binomial regression models and expert interviews, we indeed find that mandated gender quotas promote ‘individual’ parliamentary activities (e.g. speeches) and tend to impede ‘collaborative’ parliamentary activities (e.g. reports).

Not much happened: The impact of gender quotas in Poland

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Millard
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Relative Size ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Women Candidates ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
Electoral Laws ◽  
The Impact

Poland maintained its open-list PR system but introduced gender quotas in the 2011 parliamentary elections in order to increase the number of women deputies. Yet this change had only a limited impact on women’s representation. The 2011 election confirms that ‘favorable’ electoral laws provide opportunities for women, but they cannot guarantee that women will be elected. In particular, the use of quotas alone is not sufficient to ensure high levels of women’s representation. The most important factors in explaining the Polish result were 1) the absence of a ‘zipper’, a list ordering that alternates men and women candidates, thus ensuring high list-places for women 2) the parties’ favoring of men in their list placement 3) the relative size of the political parties and 4) voters’ support for list leaders and incumbent deputies. Despite a disappointing outcome, quotas may be seen as beneficial in increasing women’s presence and the potential for further evolution of the electoral system.

Ineffective and Counterproductive? The Impact of Gender Quotas in Open-List Proportional Representation Systems

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Jankowski ◽  
Kamil Marcinkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Positive Impact ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Female Candidates ◽  
Representation Systems ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
The Impact

Research on the impact of gender quotas in open-list proportional representation systems has described quotas as ineffective or even paradoxical. While some authors argue that gender quotas without a placement mandate will be essentially ineffective since most women will be nominated to unpromising positions, others suppose that women will be disadvantaged by gender quotas because the increase in the number of female candidates will decrease the average number of preferential votes cast for women. We reexamine the evidence for these claims by analyzing the case of Poland. We demonstrate that the gender quota introduced there in 2011 increased the number of women placed at promising ballot positions and had very little impact on the number of preferential votes cast for women. Additionally, using simulations, we show that the quota had a positive impact on the number of elected women.

scholarly journals Gender Equality Reforms on an Uneven Playing Field: Candidate Selection and Quota Implementation in Electoral Authoritarian Tanzania

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 464-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elin Bjarnegård ◽  
Pär Zetterberg
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
The Government ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
The Empirical Analysis ◽  
Party State ◽  
Opposition Parties

This article investigates the dynamics that gender quota reforms create within and between government and opposition parties in electoral authoritarian dominant-party states. A dominant-party state regularly holds relatively competitive elections, but the political playing field is skewed in favour of the government party. We investigate the circumstances under which gender quotas’ goal of furthering political gender equality within political parties can be reconciled with parties’ electoral concerns. We address these issues by analysing the implementation of reserved seats by the three largest parties in the dominant-party state of Tanzania. The empirical analysis suggests that the uneven playing field leaves an imprint on the specific priorities parties make when implementing candidate selection reforms. Because of large resource gaps between parties, the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi – (CCM), is able to reconcile gender equality concerns with power-maximizing partisan strategies to a greater extent than the opposition parties.

scholarly journals Introduction

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 746-748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meryl Kenny ◽  
Tània Verge
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Social Bias ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Recruitment ◽  
The Secret Garden

Twenty years ago, Pippa Norris and Joni Lovenduski published the classic workPolitical Recruitment: Gender, Race and Class in the British Parliament(1995), one of the most comprehensive accounts of legislative recruitment thus far. Seeking to explain the social bias evident in legislatures worldwide, Norris and Lovenduski focused on the central role of political parties, arguing that the outcome of parties’ selection processes could be understood in terms of the interaction between thesupplyof candidates wishing to stand for office and thedemandsof party gatekeepers who select the candidates. Indeed, in most countries, political parties control not only which candidates are recruited and selected, but also are the central actors involved in adopting and implementing candidate selection reforms such as gender quotas. Yet, two decades later, systematic studies of the “secret garden” of candidate selection and recruitment have been few and far between in the gender and politics literature. It therefore seems a particularly appropriate time to revisit the core preoccupations, puzzles, and challenges that remain in the field of gender and political recruitment.

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