Electoral gender quotas systems and their implementation in Europe

that any new policy had to target the seats that Labour was likely to win. They concluded that thebest policy was to group constituencies regionally and to require that, within each group, AWS beused to select candidates in half of all vacant seats that the party was likely to win, including seatswhere a Labour MP was retiring. This policy was viewed as a compromise solution that wouldincrease the number of women in safe seats at the same time as preserving some discretion for thelocal parties, as well as opportunities for men to contest these seats. The proposal was presented tothe 1993 party conference as part of a package of proposed changes to the party constitution. Themain subject of debate, however, revolved around whether or not to do away with collective votingat party conferences that would transform relations between the trade unions and the party at large,and the proposal to adopt AWS thus did not receive very much public attention, although bothreforms were instituted when the package passed.Once approved, AWS attracted strong criticism within the party (Lovenduski 1997). Noting theseobjections, party leaders asked constituencies to organise consensus meetings to decide which seatswould be subject to AWS. Most managed to comply, although the central leadership did force oneconstituency to adopt an AWS when the regional meeting failed to agree (Russell 2003). In early1996, however, the party was forced to abandon the policy following a successful court challengeby Peter Jepson and Roger Dyas-Elliott, two male party members who had sought nomination indistricts designated for AWS. Although earlier complaints had been dismissed by the EqualOpportunities Commission, Jepson and Dyas-Elliott brought their case to the Industrial Tribunal inLeeds and argued that their exclusion from candidate selection violated the Sex Discrimination Act(SDA). The Tribunal ruled that the policy of AWS did violate the employment provisions of theSDA because it did not allow men to be considered as candidates in districts designated for AWS.The party leadership decided not to appeal to a higher court (Russell 2000).3. The adoption and forms of gender quotasAlthough AWS were declared illegal in 1996, these controversies had an important effect on thedebates and proposals for gender quotas that took place in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Whenthe Labour Party came to power in May 1997, one of the first items on its agenda was theestablishment of a Scottish Parliament and a National Assembly for Wales. In the light of the rulingon AWS, which no longer allowed parties to apply positive action in candidate selection, femaleLabour MPs voiced concerns that women might be excluded unless guarantees for women’srepresentation were explicitly incorporated into the bills on the devolved assemblies. Proposals tothis effect were strongly opposed by the government, which pointed to the European Court ofJustice and the EU Equal Treatment Directive to argue that it could not guarantee that partieswould be free from legal challenge. Like the SDA, the Equal Treatment Directive mandated equaltreatment in access to employment and promotion (Russell 2003). Despite these setbacks, womenpersevered with their demands for representation, leading several parties to consider quotas incandidate selection.In Scotland, an additional-member electoral system was introduced, with 73 members elected fromsingle-member constituencies and 56 members elected from party lists. All parties but theConservatives considered positive action, but the only one to adopt a policy was Scottish Labour.Realising that it would win most of its seats in constituency elections, members focused on devisinga mechanism to promote the election of women in single-member seats. They proposed ‘twinning’districts according to geography and ‘winnability’ and then selecting a woman as the candidate forone of the constituencies and a man as the candidate for the other. Advocates argued that thissystem would produce the same results as AWS, but would be more difficult to challenge on thebasis of the SDA, as men would not be excluded (Brown et al. 2002; Russell, Mackay andMcAllister 2002). The party agreed to adopt this policy on a one-time basis, recognising thatincumbency in subsequent elections would make twinning virtually impossible to apply.111