Personalism or party platform? Gender quotas and women’s representation under different electoral system orientations

Aliza Forman-Rabinovici and Lilach Nir

PLOS ONE, 2021, vol. 16, issue 9, 1-14

Abstract: Underrepresentation of women in politics is a matter of great concern to social scientists, citizens, and policymakers alike. Despite effort over the past decade to ameliorate it with gender quotas of different types, scientific research provides a mixed picture on the extent to which quotas can close these gender gaps under different conditions. We approach this puzzle by focusing on the orientation of electoral systems—candidate-centered vs. platform-centered—as a context that conditions the effect of quotas on representation. Our analyses of 76 countries’ electoral rules and legislatures show that contrary to expectations, it is in candidate-oriented systems that quotas facilitate stronger effect on women’s representation. Even after considering proportional representation, district magnitude, human development, or labor-force participation as alternative explanations, we show that quotas foster greater increases in gender representation in candidate-oriented systems. The broader implications are that in electoral systems that tend to have larger gender gaps, quotas have a substantial contribution to equal representation.

Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0257665

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257665

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