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What factors account for variation in the effectiveness of gender quota laws? Under what
conditions will gender quotas increasing women’s descriptive representation? This
article offers some new perspectives on these questions.
Explaining the Impact of Electoral Gender Quotas
Existing studies of gender quotas suggest several hypotheses about the conditions
under which quotas will increase the percentage of women elected to political office.
Most concur that the impact of quotas on women’s descriptive representation depends on
the quota legislation itself and the electoral system (Gray 2003; Htun and Jones 2002;
Jaquette 1997; Jones 1996, 1998). Successful quota laws contain a placement mandate
that forces parties to put at least some female candidates in electable positions at the top
of PR lists. Placement mandates “prevent parties from clustering women at the bottom of
the party list where they have no chance of getting elected” (Htun and Jones 2002). They
are most effective in a closed-list proportional representation system, in which
candidates have rank-ordered positions on party lists and voters select from among
competing party lists with no opportunity to choose among particular candidates (but see
Schmidt and Saunders 2004). In closed-list PR systems, quota laws can bind the choices
made by parties or party leaders. In open-list systems, voters can select among individual
candidates and placement mandates have no effect. Quotas also tend to be more
effective in electoral systems with large district magnitudes. In multi-member districts,
the seats can be divided among male and female candidates. The more legislators that
represent a district, the greater the chance for more women to be elected. Single-
member districts (SMDs) cannot be so divided—although quotas can be applied to the
total number of candidates across all districts.
Convention