Electoral gender quotas systems and their implementation in Europe

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and organisation of women are crucial preconditions for capacity building, political empowermentand the enlargement of the pool of eligible aspirant women.Recommendation 3With or without gender quotas, multiple measures should be applied, such as capacity-buildingprogrammes, support to women’s organisations, recommendations and targets with specific goalsaccording to the choice of the party in order to redress the problem of women’s underrepresentationin politics.Gender quotasA third conclusion is that gender quotas are an effective policy tool for increasing women’srepresentation in political bodies, if adequately constructed. Both legislated quotas and voluntaryparty quotas may lead to permanent increases in women’s political representation at all levels. Butquotas do not automatically result in equal representation of women and men in political decisionmaking. This study suggests that the introduction of quotas may fall short if they are notcompatible with the electoral system in use and do not include rules about rank order and sanctionsfor non-compliance.Rank-ordering rules are critical to the successful implementation of legislated quotas and partyquotas in List PR electoral systems. If 40 per cent of a party’s candidates on the electoral list in aPR system are women but they are placed at the bottom of the list, this may result in no womenbeing elected at all. In plurality/majority electoral systems, rules are needed with regard to thegender distribution of ‘winnable’ or ‘safe’ seats.Furthermore, gender quotas must be specific and stipulate details of implementation. When there isa lack of clear criteria or when quota provisions are vague, considerable discretion is left to the localpolitical parties to apply quotas as they see fit.Finally, for quota provisions to be effective, there must be sanctions for non-compliance. On thispoint, legislated quotas and party quotas differ. In countries with legislated quotas, effectivesanctions take the form of strong financial penalties on parties that do not comply with the law orthe right of electoral management bodies to declare a party’s list of candidates invalid. Thesuccessful implementation of legislated quotas therefore requires institutional bodies thatadminister, supervise and control the application of quotas. In parties that have party quotas, on theother hand, there are no legal sanctions for non-compliance. The sanction available is pressurefrom central party organisations, women’s groups and the electorate.Recommendation 4If gender quotas are applied, they must be compatible with the electoral system in use in order tobe effective.Recommendation 5If gender quotas are applied, clear criteria for quota implementation, such as placement mandatesor rank-ordering rules, should be stipulated. In systems with legislated quotas, legal sanctions fornon-compliance, such as strong financial penalties and withdrawal of lists, must be allowed for.When voluntary party quotas are adopted, the central party organisation must make a ‘contract’with local party organisations about the practical implementation of the quota regulations.Recommendation 6If legislated quotas are applied, institutional bodies should be mandated to administer, superviseand control the implementation of the gender quota laws. Money should be made available forresearch on the implementation and effect of gender quotas.38
List of referencesAntíc Gaber, Milica, ‘Women in Political Decision-Making: Monitoring Report by the SlovenianPresidency’, Slovenian Presidency of the EU, 2008Araújo, Clara and Garciá, Ana Isabel, ‘The Experience and the Impact of Quotas in Latin America’,in Drude Dahlerup (ed.), Women, Quotas and Politics (New York and London: Routledge, 2006),pp. 83–111Bacchi, Carol, ‘Arguing for and against Quotas: Theoretical Issues’, in Drude Dahlerup (ed.),Women, Quotas and Politics (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 32–51Ballington, Julie and Binda, Francesca, The Implementation of Quotas: European Experiences, QuotaReport Series (Stockholm: International IDEA, 2005)Caul, Miki, ‘Women’s Representation in Parliament: The Role of Political Parties’, Party Politics, 5/1(1999), pp. 79–98Caul, Miki, ‘Political Parties and the Adoption of Candidate Gender Quotas: A Cross-nationalAnalysis’, Journal of Politics, 63/4 (2001), pp. 1214–29Dahlerup, Drude, ‘From a Small to a Large Minority: Women in Scandinavian Politics’, ScandinavianPolitical Studies, 11/4 (1988), pp. 275–97Dahlerup, Drude, ‘Increasing Women’s Political Representation: New Trends in Gender Quotas’,in International IDEA, Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers. A Revised Edition (Stockholm:International IDEA, 2005)Dahlerup, Drude (ed.), Women, Quotas and Politics (New York and London: Routledge, 2006)Dahlerup, Drude, ‘Electoral Gender Quotas: Between Equality of Opportunity and Equality ofResults’, Representation, 43/2 (July 2007), pp. 73–92Dahlerup, Drude and Freidenvall, Lenita, ‘Quotas as a “Fast Track” to Equal Representation ofWomen: Why Scandinavia is No Longer the Model’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 7/1(2005), pp. 26–48Dahlerup, Drude and Freidenvall, Lenita, ‘Gender Quotas in Politics: A Constitutional Challenge’,in Susan Williams (ed.), (forthcoming 2008)European Commission, ‘Women in Decision-making 2007: Analysis of the Situation and Trends’,January 2008Freidenvall, Lenita, Dahlerup, Drude and Skjeie, Hege, ‘The Nordic Countries: An IncrementalModel’, in Drude Dahlerup (ed.), Women, Quotas and Politics (New York and London: Routledge,2006), pp. 55–82Htun, Mala and Jones, M. T., ‘Engendering the Right to Participate in Decision-making: ElectoralQuotas and Women’s Leadership in Latin America’, in N. Craske and M. Molyneux (eds), Genderand the Politics of Rights and Democracy in Latin America (London: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 32–56Krook, Mona Lena et al., ‘Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand: GenderQuotas in the Context of Citizenship Models’, in Drude Dahlerup (ed.), Women, Quotas andPolitics (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 194–221Larserud, Stina and Taphorn, Rita, Designing for Equality: Best-fit, Medium-fit and Non-favourableCombinations of Electoral Systems and Gender Quotas (Stockholm: International IDEA, 2006)Leyenaar, Monique, Political Empowerment of Women: The Netherlands and Other Countries (Leiden andBoston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2004)Lovenduski, Joni, Feminizing Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005) (2005a)Lovenduski, Joni (ed.), State Feminism and Political Representation (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2005) (2005b)39
Page 3 and 4: Directorate-General Internal Polici
Page 5 and 6: Electoral Gender Quota Systems andT
Page 8 and 9: AppendicesThe methodology of the qu
Page 10 and 11: Table 41. Women’s representation
Page 12 and 13: 1. Mapping of electoral gender quot
Page 14 and 15: Committee of Ministers’ Recommend
Page 16 and 17: have occurred after election day -
Page 18 and 19: parties and take the form of intern
Page 20 and 21: Knowledge of different electoral qu
Page 22 and 23: support for female candidates has s
Page 24 and 25: of more women in politics. Many opp
Page 26 and 27: Figure 3. The incremental track mod
Page 28 and 29: is probably that gender quotas rema
Page 30 and 31: to gender quotas. Likewise, the dat
Page 32 and 33: ‘Special organisation for women w
Page 34 and 35: individual parties that adopt them,
Page 36 and 37: political party in the Swedish Parl
Page 38 and 39: then the requirement of 50 per cent
Page 40 and 41: proportion of women elected in the
Page 44 and 45: Matland, Richard E., ‘Enhancing W
Page 46 and 47: Case studyBelgium: a best practice
Page 48 and 49: While the 1994 act applied to all e
Page 50 and 51: need to include at least one woman,
Page 52 and 53: introduced, individual parties adop
Page 54 and 55: Marissal, Claudie and Hansen, Ingri
Page 56 and 57: In order to correct the discriminat
Page 58 and 59: The legal vacuum pertaining to the
Page 60 and 61: y women in terms of number of seats
Page 62 and 63: 5. ‘Virtuous dynamic’: the symb
Page 64 and 65: Case studyGermany: successful quota
Page 66 and 67: party positions (Gruppenwahlen zu P
Page 68 and 69: districts, quota rules are often no
Page 70 and 71: Table 14. Success rates of female a
Page 72 and 73: Figure 5. Development of the percen
Page 74 and 75: so far no formal rules have been ad
Page 76 and 77: Case studyPoland: one step forward,
Page 78 and 79: 16 in Poland)Rady powiatów(second
Page 80 and 81: 3. Evaluation3.1. Candidate lists i
Page 82 and 83: List, in Ozorków Women of Tomorrow
Page 84 and 85: 3.4. Representation of women in oth
Page 86 and 87: Case studySlovenia: from voluntary
Page 88 and 89: council. The positions of candidate
Page 90 and 91: 3.2.2. The introduction of legislat
Page 92 and 93:
Table 25 shows that only one of the
Page 94 and 95:
Source: Author’s own calculation
Page 96 and 97:
Zakon o volitvah v Evropski parlame
Page 98 and 99:
Advocates for quotas for women lobb
Page 100 and 101:
Table 31. The percentage and number
Page 102 and 103:
Table 33. Municipality elections in
Page 104 and 105:
Case studySweden: small steps, big
Page 106 and 107:
40 per cent of either sex on the pa
Page 108 and 109:
voluntary party quotas than in part
Page 110 and 111:
The zipper system (50 per cent) int
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While quotas for minority groups ha
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Case studyThe United Kingdom: polit
Page 116 and 117:
In contrast to Labour, the Scottish
Page 118 and 119:
The twinning and zipping policies a
Page 120 and 121:
differences across the political pa
Page 122 and 123:
Appendix IThe methodology of the qu
Page 124 and 125:
Brigitte Geissel is a political sci
Page 126:
ZLSDZZPUnited List of Social Democr
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Electoral gender quotas systems and their implementation in Europe

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