Gender Quotas for Politics

When I first started studying political gender quotas in my masters program, I was wholeheartedly against them. I thought it was a copout - women should be able to be elected based on merit alone. Besides, I didn't think it would look good - people could easily discount the great work of a female politician by remarking that she's just a "quota" politician. Finally, I'd watched gender quotas for college admissions fail in my own country, and didn't think applying them elsewhere would be much better.

But as we discussed this topic, I began to see why people favor quotas. Women comprise only 19.8% of the population of elected bodies around the world. Since they make up just over half the entire population, this is a gross misrepresentation. You might think that this statistic is being brought down by less developed countries, and you'd be right, sort of. Countries like the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Nigeria, at 0%, 0.9% and 3.7% respectively, bring down that number. But countries like Japan, at 11%, Italy, at 21% and France, at 18.9%, contribute to it, too. Even countries where women's rights are fundamental, like the UK, are still only at 21%. Or where a woman is president, like Slovakia or Mali, doesn't help much, as they are only at 16% and 10% respectively. Even the US, where women have been voting for almost 100 years, women only make up 16.8% of the house and senate.

Think about that for a second.

Women have been voting in this country for almost 100 years. And yet we're still not equally represented in our federal legislature. Why?

(Let me pause here a second to mention that I'm not going to write about why it's important that women are equally represented in their elected bodies. Questions about whether men can justly represent the needs of women is an entire post of its own. For the purposes of this post, I'm assuming everyone would like to have a proportional representation in their elected body that is equal to their representation in the population at large.)

There are two theories on this I tend to agree with. The first is that, since we're all used to seeing male politicians, we tend to vote for them. People vote for what they know (because no one likes change!) and what they know is male politicians. The second theory holds that politics is still a man's game, and the way we evaluate and elect our politicians hasn't made room for women yet. Remember the hubub about Hilary's pantsuits and Palin's red jackets? Or when Clinton showed a smidge of cleavage? I don't remember seeing anything about Romney's suits, or whether Bush's pants were too tight. Even the fact that women make up 50% of the workforce has not change attitudes about their ability to be political leaders.

This is where I begin to see quotas as effective. If we need to all shift our collective minds to see politicians as both male and female, quotas can help. A study by Beaman, quoted by Pande and Ford, proves that gender quotas can reduce discriminatory attitudes towards female leaders. Furthermore, as more female leaders are elected, the less likely it is that the media will focus on their outfits rather than their politics. Furthermore, as young women see more women as political leaders, they will be able to see themselves in those positions, as well. There are many more positive impacts observed from political gender quotas listed in this article: Pande and Ford.

I don't see gender quotas as a universal solution to the gender gap in politics, nor do I support them being in place forever. I think they are a temporary solution that can help boost our political systems in the right direction. Once parliaments have reached an equal representation (this % would have to be agreed on ahead of time), the quotas can be removed.

Then maybe we won't have to deal with the embarrassing problem of convening congressional panels about women's health with no women.

By the way, do you know who is leading the world in the percentage of women in parliament? Find out here.

There are tons of resources about political gender quotas. Here are a few websites to help you get started:
Quota Project
Country Statistics on Gender Representations in Parliament
Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2003
Holding Half the Seats article