CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER AND POLITICS
Gender Quotas I
Increasing the number of women in positions of political power is top priority
for women’s movements and for governments around the world. Activists,
international institutions, and national governments have come to
see gender quota laws as the best way to achieve this goal. In the past 15
years, more than 40 countries have adopted measures that require a certain
number of those running for or holding legislative office to be women.
Political science research on this topic has hewn closely to empirical questions
about this phenomenon: Under what conditions do countries adopt
gender quota laws? What impact do they have on the percentage of women
elected to office? What difference do “quota women” make once elected?
This debate, by contrast, focuses on normative questions about gender quota
laws. Are quotas a good idea? Should more countries adopt them? Should
the United States consider them? We have invited leading scholars to step
back from the more cautious findings of their research to tell us what they
really think.
Quota Problems: Combating the Dangers of Essentialism
Jane Mansbridge, Harvard University
In Support of Gender Quotas: Setting New Standards, Bringing
Visible Gains
Miki Caul Kittilson, Arizona State University
The Desirability of Gender Quotas: Considering Context and Design
Mark P. Jones, Rice University
Published by Cambridge University Press 1743-923X/05 $12.00 for The Women and Politics Research
Section of the American Political Science Association. © The Women and Politics Research Section of
the American Political Science Association. Printed in the United States of America.
DOI: 10.1017/S1743923X05050191
621
Quota Problems: Combating the Dangers of
Essentialism
Jane Mansbridge, Harvard University
As I write, descriptive representation by gender improves substantive
outcomes for women in every polity for which we have a measure. And
as I write, significant representation by gender cannot be achieved in
any existing polity without some form of quota. At this historical moment,
therefore, quotas play an important democratic role in increasing
gender equality. Yet because quotas potentially produce institutional rigidity
and their need should decrease as structural and cultural conditions
improve, it is best to institute them in their most flexible form.
Because quotas also encourage essentialism, it is best to institute them
in conjunction with major efforts to define in nonessentialist ways the
reasons for their institution. Although quotas will inevitably increase essentialist
beliefs, a conscious, concerted campaign could mitigate the
most destructive effects of this tendency.
The general principle, for collectivities as well as individuals, is that
the existence of major dangers should not prevent our taking steps that
increase our autonomy and well-being, if at the same time we can take
parallel steps that reduce those dangers. A process fraught with danger
needs two tracks: one to move forward and one to establish safeguards
against the danger. Stasis often proves a poor response to threat.
The case for quotas, which cannot fully be made here, rests on three
separate arguments: 1) an argument that descriptive representation is
substantively and symbolically important, even necessary, for the descriptively
represented group and for the polity as a whole; 2) an argument
that a group’s lower than proportional representation in a representative
assembly has been caused by some form of inappropriate discrimination
against that group; and 3) an argument that quotas are the most effective
way in practice to achieve descriptive representation. The first two claims
are normative. In the case of women, in all countries of the world the
evidence supporting both claims is strong. The third claim is prudential.
It depends on several factors, including the likelihood of women achieving
appropriate representation by other means and the institutional plausibility
of achieving a satisfactory quota system in a given country in a
given historical moment.
Many thanks to Lisa Baldez for help in editing these thoughts. Comments welcome:
jane_mansbridge@harvard.edu.
622 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
The case against quotas can be both institutional and cultural. Some
specific institutional forms for producing quotas have highly problematic
side effects. Here I focus not on the institutional problems but on
the tendency of quotas to promote cultural beliefs in “essentialism”—
the conviction that the individuals represented through quotas have
some essential traits that help define them and that render them unable
to be represented adequately by those without such traits. Essentialist
beliefs reinforce stereotypes, trap the individuals in the group in the
images traditionally held of the group, make it hard for those individuals
to treat their identities flexibly and performatively, de-emphasize lines
of division within groups to the advantage of dominant groups within
the group, and harden lines of division between groups. The argument
that men cannot represent women, for example, suggests that women
cannot represent men. The argument that only women can represent
women suggests that any woman can represent all women. The probability,
amounting currently to close to certainty, that quotas will
strengthen these essentialist beliefs provides a strong argument against
them. It is not an argument that outweighs positive arguments in all
specific historical situations. But if a polity institutes quotas, proponents
of the quotas should strive to frame them in nonessentialist ways
and mount an independent struggle against essentialist tendencies more
broadly.
I. The Case for Quotas
Democratic theory does not mandate that every group, no matter how
defined, should be represented in proportion to its numbers in the population.
In 1969, when President Richard Nixon tried to appoint Harrold
Carswell to the Supreme Court and opponents argued that Carswell
was “mediocre” in his legal skills, Senator Roman Hruska (R-NE) rejoined,
“Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and
people and lawyers. They’re entitled to a little representation, aren’t they?”
The comment provoked immediate ridicule because of the almost universal
assumption that democratic norms allow, and the public wants, to
choose representatives with greater than average skills.1
Along the same lines, the political theorist Roland Pennock proclaimed
a decade later, “no one would argue that morons should be represented
1. In a Google search for “Harrold Carswell” in June 2005, the first two hits referenced this line,
suggesting that Carswell will live in history primarily as an example of mediocrity.
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 623
by morons” (Pennock 1979, 314, based on Griffiths and Wollheim 1960,
190). James Morone and Theodore Marmor also scoffed that “[c]ommon
sense rebels against representing redheads or left-handers” (Morone
and Marmor 1981, 437). More recently, Will Kymlicka concluded
summarily, “the general idea of mirror [descriptive] representation is untenable”
(1995, 139). Iris Marion Young concluded that “a relation of
identity or similarity with constituents says nothing about what the representative
does” (1997, 354).
In general, whenever interests conflict, the theory of aggregative (or
“adversary”) democracy mandates the representation of those interests
in proportion to the number of interest bearers in the population (Mansbridge
1980). In addition, whenever different perspectives might significantly
improve a deliberation, the theory of deliberative democracy
mandates the representation of those perspectives (Mansbridge 1999).
These criteria answer what Anne Phillips (1995, 45) has called the
“slippery slope” objection that no guiding principles can distinguish
which groups have weaker and which stronger democratic claims for
representation. Yet neither the democratic mandate for equal representation
of interests in moments of conflict nor the mandate for representation
of relevant perspectives in deliberation requires representation
by actual members of the represented group. Members of a group need
such descriptive representation only when their interests or perspectives
cannot adequately be represented by individuals who are not
themselves members of the group. The key question is when and why
those interests and perspectives cannot adequately be represented by
others.
In at least two circumstances, the interests and perspectives of members
of a group cannot be adequately represented by others: 1) when
representatives who are members of a group tend to respond to grouprelevant
issues with greater concern than nonmembers, and 2) when representatives
who themselves are members of a group can communicate
better among themselves, with other representatives and with constituents
from that group. This capacity for better communication is accentuated
a) when issues and even interests are uncrystallized, so that
representatives who are members of a group have far more information
about the relevant aspects of an issue than nonmembers; b) when a history
of mistrust impedes communication and effective delegation between
members of a subordinate group and representatives from a
dominant group; and c) when the physical presence of representatives
from the group induces other representatives to make greater efforts to
624 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
understand that group’s interests and give those interests more salience.
In addition to promoting substantive representation in these contexts, descriptive
representatives also play a powerful symbolic legitimating function
by making the statement to the entire citizenry, including its other
representatives, that members of that group are capable of ruling.2
These
considerations apply equally to both powerful and marginalized groups,
but powerful groups are far less likely in practice to experience proportional
shortfalls in descriptive representation. When they occasionally
have this experience, they also have a greater capacity to counterbalance
in other ways the negative effects of not being descriptively represented.
Concern
We know that in the cases of gender and race, legislators who themselves
are members of a group respond to issues affecting that group with greater
concern than do nonmembers. Female legislators in almost every measured
representative body, from the U.S. House of Representatives to
the Indian panchayats, give more attention than do male legislators to
issues, such as education and women’s rights, that also typically concern
female constituents more than they do men. Sue Thomas (1994),
Michele Swers (2002), and others have shown that the differences between
male and female legislators are most likely to appear on issues that
absorb a great deal of the legislator’s time and energy, such as the choice
of committees to join and legislation to sponsor. By contrast, on simple
roll-call votes, the representative’s party has a greater effect than the
representative’s gender. Descriptive representatives from groups particularly
affected by particular issues tend to care more about those issues,
put their time in on them, and struggle to bring them to the legislative
fore.
Barry Burden’s (2005) recent research also demonstrates the importance
of the personal experiences of the representatives. In the U.S.
House of Representatives, he reveals, members who smoke are more
likely than the nonsmokers to vote against, speak against, and sponsor
bills against tobacco control measures. Members with school-age children
are more likely than the others to be active on school choice issues.
Members with children in public school are more likely to vote against
2. This list of the circumstances in which descriptive representation enhances substantive representation
expands on those referenced in Mansbridge 1999. For other positive symbolic effects of
descriptive representation, see Mansbridge 1999.
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 625
voucher programs that help parents transfer their children out of public
school. Members who themselves are Evangelical Protestants or Catholics
are more likely to support faith-based initiatives and more likely to
oppose stem cell research. The personal experiences of these representatives
alert them to the needs of constituents like themselves and impel
them to act on those needs, even when the numbers of individuals with
those needs within their own districts do not make their pursuit of these
issues electorally rational. Descriptive representation of this sort is particularly
important on uncrystallized issues—that is, issues that have
not found a salient place on the political agenda, so that political parties
have not taken positions on those issues and politicians have not
run for office on them (Mansbridge 1999).
Communication
In situations of relatively uncrystallized interests, marginalized groups
in particular often need a critical legislative mass of descriptive representatives
in order for the representatives to consult among themselves, as
well as with their constituents, to try to understand what their descriptive
constituents most need. In many such cases these representatives are acting
as surrogate representatives for descriptive constituents outside their
districts as well as within them (Mansbridge 1999).
Descriptive representatives have, moreover, several advantages in communicating
with other legislators. In listening, they can respond flexibly,
drawing not just from what they have heard from their constituents,
but also from what they know from their own lives. In speaking, they
can call up anecdotes from personal experience to describe how a piece
of legislation may affect their group. They can speak vividly with facts
and emotion drawn from their experience. They can speak with authenticity
and be believed. They can also call on the relationships they have
developed with other legislators for the empathy that the others might
need to understand the descriptive representative’s position. Even when
the descriptive legislator is silent, his or her mere physical presence
reminds the other legislators of the perspectives and interests of the
group of which he or she is a descriptive member. In deliberative settings,
many members of marginalized groups have had the experience
of seeing members of dominant groups cut themselves short as they are
about to say something demeaning to members of that group and substitute
something more sensitive. This behavior is not simply a matter
of surface conformity. The presence of someone who represents a group,
626 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
particularly descriptively, physically reminds others of that group’s interests,
making it more likely that those claims and perspectives will be
taken into account.3
Descriptive representatives also have advantages in overcoming the
mistrust that potentially impedes any interaction between representative
and constituent. When the constituents are members of marginalized
groups, with a justified history of mistrust of the dominant groups,
the need to help overcome constituents’ distrust of their representatives
is even greater (Mansbridge 1999; Williams 1998). In the early years of
the global violence-against-women movement, for example, women of
the global “North” (broadly, the developed nations) primarily directed
that movement. Women from the “South” (the less-developed nations)
distrusted the leadership and failed to coordinate their efforts, with the
result that the global movement had relatively little impact. After donors
and other organizers realized that the women of the South needed funding
to create their own autonomous organizations from which leadership
could arise, descriptive representatives from the South began to
lead and participate extensively in the global conferences. These representatives
brought legitimacy, credibility, and open lines of communication
with their “constituents” in their own countries, helping the
movement become a model of successful transnational activism.4
Descriptive representation thus has positive effects on outcomes important
to a group through at least the two mechanisms of investing more
heavily through greater concern and communicating interests more thoroughly.
The communication function is particularly important when the
group’s interests are uncrystallized, occur in settings of historical mistrust,
or might be overlooked without the representative’s physical presence.
The mechanisms of concern and communication apply whether or
not a group is marginal in the larger society. White Americans, for example,
seem just as alienated from Black representatives as Blacks from
White representatives, perhaps more so. Claudine Gay shows that White
constituents with Black representatives are less likely than similar con-
3. The effects of descriptive presence may go even deeper. Laboratory experiments reveal that the
mere presence of a Black experimenter reduced the level of the subjects’ implicit (unconscious)
negative associations with Blacks (Banaji, Bazerman, and Chugh 2003).
4. Weldon (forthcoming) analyzes this dynamic, adding that the movement’s commitment to a
consensual process also gave the potentially marginalized groups of the South a protected voice.
Note that “selectoral” (rather than electoral) representation in movements like this poses other
legitimacy problems
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 627
stituents with White representatives to turn out to vote, to think that their
representative would be helpful with a problem, to remember anything
that the representative had done for the district, to rate the representative
high on a feeling thermometer, or to approve of the way the representative
had been handling his or her job (Gay 2001, 2002). Black
constituents with White representatives when compared to Blacks with
Black representatives reveal the same patterns, but those patterns, if anything,
are less strong. Particularly in situations of historical communicative
distrust, it seems that everyone wants descriptive representation,
including and perhaps especially the members of dominant groups. In
practice, however, the dominant groups usually get what they want.
Discrimination
The case for quotas rests not only on the substantive benefits of descriptive
representation through concern and communication, but also, quite
solidly, on discrimination. Regarding women, the evidence suggests
strongly that both surface and structural forms of discrimination currently
impede the proportional descriptive representation that one would
otherwise expect. In surface discrimination, for example, members of
the polity sometimes vote for a man rather than a woman to represent
them, even when the woman and man are equally qualified.5
In structural
discrimination, women are expected to be the primary caregivers
for children and the elderly, and are socialized not to see themselves as
competitors in politics. They are therefore less likely to enter the competition
for office (Lawless and Fox 2005). The case for past discrimination
rests on an easily documented history in which women have been legally
denied the vote, the capacity to serve on juries, and the like (see
Williams 1998, 15–18).
5. Surface discrimination has been declining in the established democracies. In 1937, only 33%
of a representative sample of the U.S. population responded “yes” when asked, “If your party nominated
a woman for President, would you vote for her if she were qualified for the job?”; by the late
1950s, 52% answered yes; by 1971, 66%; by 1982, 83%; by 1994, 89%; and by 1999, 98% (NORC
General Social Survey and earlier surveys referenced therein). In addition, by now, laboratory experiments
in the United States using male and female names for fictitious candidates tend to show
no difference in support overall, at least among college students, although some differences in estimates
of competence in specific policy areas persist along traditional lines (e.g., women are seen as
better on nurturing issues, men on military ones). Matland and King 2002 summarize these studies,
while reporting on their own finding that Republican voters are less likely to vote for a similarly
described female candidate than for a man (probably because female Republicans tend in practice
to be more liberal than male ones). In less-developed countries, surface discrimination still plays a
major role, both in reported attitudes (Inglehart and Norris 2003) and in the experience of women
trying to run for office.
628 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
II. The Case Against Quotas
Institutions
Whether or not quotas are the most effective mechanisms for delivering
descriptive representation depends on a host of factors, including the
degree to which the deck is already stacked institutionally against the
descriptive group. We have known for a decade or more that women do
better in proportional representation systems and perhaps also slightly
better in multimember districts in general (Welch and Studlar 1990), in
part because parties putting up lists of more than one candidate feel more
compelled to put women on the list, and in part because multimember
districts encourage policy-oriented candidates, as opposed to candidates
who work specifically for benefits from their districts, and the middleclass
women who run for office are more likely to have a policy orienta-
tion.6
When list systems and multimember constituencies already exist,
therefore, it is easier to insert women into the political process without
imposing specific quotas.
The effectiveness of quotas also depends on the degree to which a
particular culture at a particular moment in history can accept them as
legitimate. In France, where a universalist political culture prevents the
state from even collecting data on the ethnicity, race, or religion of individuals,
women promoting parité had to resort to the philosophical ploy
of arguing that women were not a “group” but, instead, half of the “universal”
human race (Agacinski 2003; Gaspard 1994; Scott 1997). In the
United States, the very word “quota” implies the negation of merit, individual
worth, and fair competition, as well as the intervention of the state
in individual freedom.7
In Africa, by contrast, where the idea of representing
different territorial, ethnic, and linguistic groups descriptively
has long been part of the accepted political culture, representing women
descriptively through the allocation of denominated seats does not fall
far from the existing norms.
6. By contrast, in the U.S., working-class and black candidates often do slightly better in singlemember
districts (Welch 1990), perhaps because such districts are more often homogeneously working
class or black and the local communicative advantage of these candidates helps them to run on
a platform of bringing home local benefits.
7. An article advocating cumulative voting—a procedure sufficiently compatible with existing
values in the United States as to have been in place in Illinois for many years—was, in the hands
of opponents, enough for them successfully to label Lani Guinier a “quota queen” and cause
President Bill Clinton to withdraw his recommendation of Guinier for Attorney General (Carter
1994).
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 629
The central institutional challenge is to devise a system of quotas with
few unintended negative side effects. The opposition of the feminist journal
Manushi to the proposed system of rotating seats reserved for women
in India, for example, is grounded almost entirely in the unwanted institutional
side effects of that system.8
Essentialism
The broader challenge, which cannot in practice fully be met, is to institute
some form of quota system without encouraging essentialism. It is
a commonplace these days to point out that we all have multiple identities,
and that those identities are socially constructed, flexible, performative,
and in many cases even, with some investment, discardable. The
movements toward bisexuality, transgendered identities, multiraciality,
and multiple nationality are all helping these forms of identity move down
the road that religion in the United States has already traveled, from
ascription to choice. In this more flexible world, quotas work on the side
of rigidity.
The belief that there is some “essence” of womanness or femininity,
blackness or negritude, that members of the group have and that is not
accessible to an outsider, reinforces group stereotypes from both without
and within. Social psychologists have shown us that human beings, perhaps
innately, judge members of an in-group as more alike than they in
fact are, and members of an out-group as more different from the ingroup
than they in fact are (Turner 1987). In order to process reality
accurately, we need to combat these cognitive biases. Cultural conventions
that reinforce group differences make this struggle harder. In the
case of gender, beliefs in a gendered division of labor that make some
tasks taboo for either males or females, jokes and traditions about female
and male traits, divisions of the universe into the male and female principles,
and even the linguistic division into male and female nouns all
suggest some essence of maleness and femaleness. Implicit association
tests reveal some of these associations, which by and large even the most
politically sensitive continue to hold.9
Human cognitive capacities tend automatically toward some forms of
essentializing. Thus, terms in the language tend to call to mind the dom-
8. Manushi, issues 96, 97, and especially 116. See also Baldez forthcoming.
9. For the “gratuitous gendering” of labor, parts of speech, and essences, see Mansbridge 1993.
For implicit association tests, see Banaji 2001 and the website ^https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit&,
which allows one easily to test one’s own unconscious associations.
630 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
inant or majority variant of those terms. When we envision “table,” we
envision something brown, thus marginalizing the green, white, and yellow
tables of this world. When we envision “chair,” we envision something
with four legs, and so forth (Bartlett 1990). Thus, “woman” does
not automatically conjure up, in today’s world, “woman with disabilities”
or “lesbian.” Efforts to remember the heterogeneity within any human
group must war against the way the brain itself generalizes.
Quotas can undermine some essentialist beliefs by, for example, bringing
sufficient women of different kinds into political arenas to allow both
men and women to experience them as capable leaders, thus undermining
the belief that women qua women are incapable of rule. At the same
time, they are likely to reinforce essentialist beliefs by suggesting that for
essentialist reasons, only women can represent women (and therefore
that women cannot represent men). Quotas that work by forcing members
of a descriptive group to vote only for members of that group and
not for members of other groups rigidify group lines in the most dramatic
way.
It is particularly hard to avoid essentialist arguments when making the
case that descriptive representation is substantively important for the descriptively
represented group and for the polity as a whole. It is factually
the case that in legislatures all over the world, women are more likely to
take the lead on two kinds of “women’s” issues: issues associated with
women’s traditional responsibility for the family, such as education and
health, and women’s rights issues.10
But explaining these differences, correctly,
as the result of modal differences in experience leading to modal
differences in interests and preferences skirts dangerously close to postulating
essential differences in interests and perspectives.
The connection is not necessary. It is perfectly possible to talk about
and act on the basis of experiences that many women have shared in one
form or another without assuming that those experiences represent every
woman’s experience or that the forms in which a “shared” experience
comes are the same for everyone. Nor need we collapse “experiences” in
the plural into a singular “essence.”11
When we move from arguing that descriptive representation by gender
will be good for women to the argument that such representation
10. In the U.S. Congress, women are also more likely to take the lead on issues on which noticeable
differences appear on average in public opinion polls between men and women. For this category,
see Strauss 1998, with thanks to Patricia Connelly.
11. For alternate ways of conceiving of groups, see Young 1994 on “seriality,” Ferguson 2003 on
family resemblances, and Zerilli 1998.
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 631
will be good for the polity, we come even closer to the essentialist danger.
It is possible, for example, that on the margin and on average, women
in many polities may be slightly more honest, caring, and cooperative
than men. Laboratory and field experiments cannot usually detect significant
differences between men and women on these and other stereotypically
gendered traits. But interacting as a group may accentuate group
differences, perhaps in part by activating group stereotypes, which women
hold as well as men.12
In addition, relatively large differences between
men and women do appear, on average, in some areas, such as physical
aggression and attitudes toward war (Goldstein 2001; Maccoby 1998;
Maccoby and Jacklin 1978). Building on the existing differences and
influenced by the exaggeration of stereotypes to which the human brain
tends, advocates often claim that the polity would benefit from more
women in legislatures because of women’s greater honesty, care, cooperation,
or concern for peace. Some imply that these gender differences
are innate.
The temptation to make such claims is great, both because some activists
believe in the political significance of innate differences and because
such claims have some weight with the general public. The
campaign for suffrage in the United States, for example, did not acquire
sufficient majorities to pass the required constitutional amendment until
the proponents’ argument had shifted from one based on women’s
rights to one based on women’s contributions, as women, to the polity
(Cott 1987; Kraditor 1965; Marilley 1996). Such claims slide easily from
those based on different experiences, such as modally different experiences
of parenting, of housekeeping, and generally of being “outside the
beltway,” to those based on innate differences. Only a constant, explicit
stress on experiences rather than innateness can mitigate this tendency.
Optimally, the stress on experience should be coupled with some knowledge
of the difficulty of finding any gender differences in the laboratory
in most settings once most conditions are made the same (see, e.g., Hyde
1990).
Quotas tend to reinforce the existing human cognitive tendencies to
see the members of the group as more similar than they are and more
different from members of other groups. Membership in groups is already
“something that you are ‘born’ into and that constitutes you as be-
12. In one experiment, although no significant differences appeared at an individual level, groups
with a high proportion of women deliberating to a conclusion about how much to give the disadvantaged
were more generous than groups with a high proportion of men (Mendelberg and Karpowitz
forthcoming). See also Sunstein 2002 and others on group polarization.
632 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
ing who you are and is ascribed to you by others in a way that makes it
involuntary from your point of view” (Gould 1996, 182; see also Williams
1998, 6). Based by their nature on group membership, quotas are
also almost certain to reinforce the social and personal meanings of that
membership, impeding from both outside and inside a flexible, performative
relation with one’s multiple identities.
The best way to fight the reification of essentialism that quotas inevitably
suggest is to reinforce constantly the ways in which the great
differences in existing systems of representation derive from historical
and structural biases. For African Americans, for example, the near exclusion
of black veterans in the South from business and home loans under
the GI Bill by making applications local, a deliberate policy insisted
upon for racial reasons by white southern senators, resulted in greatly
lower rates of home ownership and, therefore, family wealth for blacks
(Katznelson 2005). Yet the instability of politics as a career makes some
family wealth a major asset in running for political office. For women,
the currently near-universal assumption that women will take primary
responsibility for child care makes an early political career difficult. Yet
politicians who begin their careers late are less likely to reach the highest
political office, and those who begin a political career after their
children have gone to college are even less likely to advance far in the
system. These deep structural biases, in addition to the unconscious
assumptions that prejudice the voters, the party leaders who might
ask someone to run for office, and the potential candidates themselves,
work to make it unlikely that without some institutional intervention,
African Americans and women will be represented in law-making bodies
in proportion to their numbers in the population. Making arguments
for quotas explicitly and only on the basis of these historical
and structural biases helps, to some degree, to counter essentialist
arguments.
We also know that the elected women who will represent “women”
descriptively will not represent proportionally the full diversity of
women in the polity. Iris Marion Young (1997) points out that whenever
any one individual represents many, the process necessarily suppresses
the differences among the many. Descriptive representation does
not avoid this problem. The diversity within historically disadvantaged
groups is no less than in any other groups; all forms of representation
here too result in the suppression of difference. Thus, Young warns that
any scheme of representation must rest on “acknowledging and affirming
that there is a difference, a separation, between the representative
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 633
and the constituents,” and she stresses the importance of authorization
and accountability.13
If biases in proportionality are corrected only for gender, the voting
citizens in the polity will not be represented proportionally in their diversity
(leaving aside the issues of representing noncitizens in the
polity, nonresidents who are affected by the policies, and future generations).
The highly educated, middle-class, dominant-ethnicity women
who are most likely to be elected in systems engineered to represent
only gender proportionally will represent “women’s” issues primarily
through their own experiences, which, although in some ways like, will
also be unlike those of women who do not share their class or ethnic/
racial background.14
The writings and activism of women of color make
it clear that specific problems and perspectives arise from specific intersections
of social advantage and disadvantage, structure and culture (Collins
1990; Combahee River Collective [1977] 1983; Crenshaw 1991;
Harris 1990). Yet separate quotas for women and for African Americans
could result in the election of no female African Americans.15
Some of these problems could be addressed through new democratic
mechanisms. First, citizen assemblies drawn randomly from the
population can serve both as deliberative forums and as checks on the
inevitable misrepresentation in elected assemblies.16
Second, political
parties creating gender quotas through party lists could try consciously
to represent the most relevant heterogeneities within gender.17
Third,
systems could perhaps be organized to choose primarily descriptive representatives
who have strong mutual relations with the most disadvan-
13. Young uses this analysis to conclude that constituents should not seek descriptive representation,
but rather focus on accountability and authorization (Young 2000, 129).
14. See, e.g. re suffrage, Davis 1983 and Dovi 2002.
15. In the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, African-American men were proportionally
represented descriptively in state legislatures. The under-representation of African Americans
was concentrated on African-American women (Darcy, Hadley, and Kirksey 1993).
16. For example, The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (see ^http://www.citizensassembly.
bc.ca/public/extra/Whatis.xml& and Warren forthcoming). Such randomly selected assemblies are
usually still not fully representative, because although the original selection is random and citizens
are paid for their attendance, retired middle-class and upper-working-class people are more likely to
accept the assignment than the working-age and poor. Moreover, the participants in citizen assemblies
have no reporting and formal accountability relationship with constituents. What relationship
there is works only through the feelings among the represented that the randomly selected representatives
are “like” them, and the voluntary feelings among the representatives that they have an
obligation to act both for the public good and for the good of any group they happen to represent
descriptively or through conviction. These feelings on both sides are, however, neither trivial nor
irrelevant to the relationship. Such feelings play a neglected but important role even in the elected
representative/constituent interaction, where a representative’s actual communication with all constituents
is perforce relatively meager.
17. It is not clear, however, what incentives parties would have to diversify their lists in this way.
634 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
taged subgroups within their descriptive group (Dovi 2002). In current
practice, only political self-organizing among marginalized groups can
provide forums for the deliberation and articulation of interests, from
which members at various intersections in those groups can enter the
representative process. Given the relatively meager resources of many
marginalized groups, that self-organizing must usually be funded from
outside the group.18
Although no practically imaginable reform will
eliminate this problem, those involved in electoral reform should at
least try to prevent the marginalization of subgroups from being worse
under quotas than under nonquota systems.
In short, with the great costs in increasing essentialism that are likely
to attend any move toward quotas, such a move should be combined
with significant conscious efforts to point out that the need for quotas
derives from biases in current systems produced by historical and structural
discrimination, to anchor arguments for descriptive representation
in differences in experience rather than innate characteristics, to find
ways to represent institutionally the diversity within the group, to remind
both members of the group and others of the great dissimilarities within
the group and the great similarities with others outside the group, and to
stress the fluidity of identity.
Quotas inherently rigidify identities. If adopted, they should be kept
as flexible as possible, being instituted preferably at the party level rather
than at the legislative level, by voluntary adoption rather than by legislation,
and by legislation rather than by constitutional mandate. They
should be used and portrayed as a practical and perhaps temporary
response to centuries of discrimination, rather than as an eternally necessary
recognition of essential differences. Even when quotas are the
best practical route for achieving substantive gains, we should go forward
with them conscious of the dangers and ringing them with safeguards.
Subordinate groups have much to lose from practices that
reinscribe difference.
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18. See Weldon 2006. The best descriptive representatives will themselves contribute to organizing
their own communities, but if they are concerned with reelection, they will probably not focus
on the hardest segments to organize.
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 635
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Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1991. “‘Mapping the Margins’: Intersectionality, Identity Politics
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Darcy, Robert, Charles D. Hadley, and Jason F. Kirksey. 1993. “Election Systems and
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Davis, Angela. 1983. Women, Race, and Class. New York: Vintage Books.
Dovi, Suzanne. 2002. “Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Will Just Every Woman,
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In Support of Gender Quotas:
Setting New Standards, Bringing Visible Gains
Miki Caul Kittilson, Arizona State University
Are gender quotas a good idea? Yes, for two reasons: Quotas are an
effective mechanism for improving women’s numerical representation,
and they encourage new attitudes towards women in politics. I argue
that the numerical and ideational gains brought by gender quotas outweigh
the potential pitfalls they might introduce. From a pragmatic standpoint,
quotas constitute an imperfect means to a positive end: women’s
political empowerment. What is more, formal rules may become norms,
reinforcing changing attitudes.
The implementation of candidate gender quotas is often followed by
a dramatic increase in women’s parliamentary participation. This process
is supported by cross-national, cross-temporal and nation-specific
evidence (Kittilson forthcoming). As an exemplar of the process, in 1988
the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) adopted candidate gender
quotas, and the proportion of women from the SPD rose from 18% in
1987 to 27% in the first postquota election of 1990. Gender quotas are
effective because they set benchmarks and allow advocates for change to
hold the key players accountable for these goals. In most political systems,
parties are the gatekeepers to elected office, and they can facilitate
or hinder women’s efforts to gain nomination in winnable positions. Because
parties are not unitary actors, but rather made up of competing
factions, the process of agreeing on quotas establishes shared goals and a
formal commitment, making it unlikely that women’s claims will slip off
the agenda when a new issue emerges.
Gender quotas are a mechanism for enriching democratic inclusion.
They represent a shared agreement that women have often received short
shrift in the nomination process, and an admission that a concerted effort
should be made to get more women elected. With a formal commitI
would like to thank Marilyn Dantico, Kim Fridkin, Adrian Pantoja, Becki Scola, and the editors
of Politics & Gender for their constructive comments on this essay.
638 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
ment, women can insist that their party measure up to defined standards.
Without clear, stated objectives, most goals are forgotten. Promises to
increase women’s candidacies can be mere lip service if not institutionalized
as formal rules. The process of setting benchmarks commits political
leaders and party faithful alike, and participation in the process may
alter perceptions of the importance of gender balance, and as a result,
women’s presence becomes a “party position” in itself.
Because effectiveness is one of the justifications upon which I base a
case for quotas, one might question why a national-level quota law was
largely ineffective in France. The simple answer is this: All quotas are
not created equal. Quota policies may prove ineffective if they contain
loopholes. Further, without the support of those charged with implementation,
quotas may not be enforced, as occurred in the French case.
The French policy is a national-level requirement that all parties nominate
equal proportions of men and women as candidates in their election
lists in municipal elections, and as overall equal proportions of
candidates in National Assembly elections. However, the first postquota
national elections of 2002 brought few gains: Women still held only 12%
of the seats in the French National Assembly, up only one and a half
percentage points from the previous election. Most of the major parties
violated either the spirit or the letter of the new law, nominating women
to unwinnable seats, or simply ignoring the new law and accepting the
financial penalty (Russell and O’Cinneide 2003). For example, the
French Socialist Party (PS) nominated women in only 36% of the districts
it contested and the Union for a Presidential Majority (UMP) nominated
only 20%, while the smaller National Front (FN) nominated
women in 49% of its races.
The major parties, such as the PS and UMP, could afford the fines in
their state subsidies, while smaller parties could not, and thus complied
fully. French parties receive public subsidy based upon two separate equations.
The first is calculated on the basis of the votes a party receives
(equal to about 1.55 euros per vote), and the second on its share of seats
(equal to about 45,125.00 euros per seat). Parties deviating from a 50/50
split by more than 2% are fined in the first “votes” equation, not the
“seats.” The larger the difference between male and female candidates
offered by a party, the larger the party’s fine. On the basis of these calculations,
Bird (2002) estimates that the UMP had its subsidies reduced by
roughly four million euros—a significant sum, but some party leaders
may have speculated that they could make up for this loss on the “seats”
end of the subsidy equation. In fact, Bird (2002, 696) quotes a member
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 639
of the UMP’s nominations committee as stating, “It is more profitable to
have men elected than to have female candidates defeated.”
The quota policy was difficult to implement for National Assembly
elections due to the single-member districts from which legislators are
elected. As opposed to multimember districts, which are more easily
“balanced” by adding women to the party lists, single-member districts
require seats to be designated specifically for women, to the exclusion
of all men. Faced with challenges to entrenched power holders, many
French party leaders skirted the quota policy because they remained
unconvinced of the electoral payoff for their party. In fact, it appears
that some nomination committees may have calculated that women
candidates might cost the party votes. Without the backing of the party
leaders, these rule changes were ignored. In short, the more effective
strategy for women activists is to couple demands for inclusion at the
national level with party-level efforts to win the cooperation of party
leaders (Kittilson forthcoming). Party-level campaigns for quotas may
drum up support based upon democratic ideals, such as inclusion or
justice, or based on the promise that women candidates may yield a
decisive “women’s vote.”
Further, gender quotas fall short if they lack the sort of sanctions that
make the policy costly to ignore. For example, if a party were to risk
disqualification or losing the bulk of its total state subsidies by ignoring
gender requirements, it would have a distinct incentive to follow the law.
Moreover, a more specific policy that mandates equal proportions of
women in winnable seats would bring greater gains.
If gender quotas are so important to women’s gains in parliament, one
might also ask, how did Finnish women, for example, make such remarkable
strides in getting elected to the national parliament without any formal
gender quota policies? By 1970, Finnish women already held nearly
20% of the seats in the Eduskunta. Early in the 1960s, Finnish women
activists had concentrated the full force of their efforts on party politics
and gaining equality, rather than aiming part of their efforts outside party
channels through an autonomous women’s movement. Importantly,
Finland’s electoral rules are uniquely conducive to women’s parliamentary
participation. In general, party-list proportional representation systems
create incentives for parties to include women on the list. By adding
women candidates to the list, the party broadens its appeal among women
voters. In Finland, women have long been an especially important constituency,
for they have turned out to vote at higher rates than their male
counterparts since the 1970s (Sundberg 1995).
640 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
In most party-list proportional systems, voters are bound to cast a ballot
for “closed” lists, which are comprised of a predetermined set of candidates
ranked by party leaders. In most Western European nations in
the 1970s, women were most often relegated to the bottom of these lists,
rendering them the last to fill party seats in parliament. Therefore, without
a sweeping victory for the party, women’s chances to win a seat were
grim. However, what is unique to Finland is that the ballot rules allow
voters to indicate their preference for particular candidates on the list.
Finnish women candidates avoided the trap of predetermined ranking,
and voters were able to support women candidates. In essence, the configuration
of electoral rules in Finland did not present the same barriers
as in other party-list systems. As a result, Finnish women made great strides
in parliamentary presence early on, and saw little need to press for candidate
gender quotas.
However, few political systems offer this specific set of favorable electoral
rules. And a reworking of national electoral rules is usually not a
practical goal. In the design of a new constitution, an electoral configuration
based on Finland’s system might be ideal. Not only do Finnish
women face fewer obstacles to elected office, but the same “logic of
inclusion” and ability to cast preference votes favors the election of candidates
from minority groups in general. In short, this open-list configuration
enhances the opportunity for diversity in parliament—at least in
countries where voters are likely to support women.
Debates over quotas often focus on candidate quotas at the national
or even party levels. Yet gender quotas are not exclusive to parliamentary
bodies. Where single-member districts make implementing candidate
quotas difficult in practice, gender quotas within the party ranks may be
a more effective policy. Cross-national research shows that more women
in the top echelons of the party leadership leads to more women in parliament
(Kittilson forthcoming). The most common way for women to
gain positions among top party leaders is by gaining midlevel positions.
In a sequence of positive forces for change, gender quotas for positions at
all levels, including decision-making bodies, is an effective way of raising
the number of women nominated and elected.
Importantly, often the more contentious candidate quotas may be
less imperative where intraparty quotas are adopted. In fact, gender
quotas within political parties can provide a foundation upon which
women can launch efforts to gain nomination for parliamentary seats,
change the party culture, and press for policy goals. With women’s
presence at the local or intraparty level, the infrastructure behind
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 641
female candidates is set, even if women suffer setbacks in a particular
election.
In the United States, gender quotas at the candidate level may not be
a good idea. Such rules mean that a certain number of open seats would
be designated as “women only.” This is likely to be far too contentious to
be a practical strategy. Instead, it would be more effective for women to
push for internal gender quotas of 50% within the Democratic and Republican
Parties. Although the Democratic Party currently requires that
half of its delegates to caucuses be women, these quotas would be more
effective if they were to apply at all levels within the national, state, and
local parties. For example, in the resource-intensive candidate-centered
campaigns of U.S. politics, women among the top leadership ranks of
the parties may push for greater resources in contested races with women
candidates.
Gender quotas do reify differences between men and women. However,
traditionally “gender blind” approaches to women’s underrepresentation
have not created the equal opportunities they promise. In political
systems where prescriptions for women’s numerical underrepresentation
merely call for incremental change based on women’s educational
and professional gains, such as in the United States, women’s numbers
in the national legislatures lag far behind those where direct steps are
taken. At the current rate, it will take decades to see anything approaching
equal presence for women.
Will quotas lead to fundamental transformations in party or parliamentary
culture? Not necessarily. Will quotas deliver policy changes that
enhance women’s opportunities and lives? More than likely. Women’s
faces in the halls of parliament may not spontaneously generate a “womenfriendly”
environment, nor comprehensive substantive changes. However,
bringing in the perspectives of women to the decision-making process
enhances the chances for real change. More women means greater odds
that the issues that affect women’s lives disproportionate to men’s will be
debated among political decision makers.
Several cross-national and country-specific studies support this proposition.
In the United States, Carroll’s (2002) in-depth interviews with
women in Congress reveal that these women most often share a group
identity and carry a responsibility to represent women’s interests. Similarly,
research on the U.S. Congress finds that female legislators raise
new issues that are important to women as a group (Dodson et al. 1995),
and that they demonstrate greater commitment to these issues in the
legislative process, even after controlling for their partisan affiliations
642 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
(Swers 2002). When and where women’s presence is stronger, this group
consciousness may have a substantive impact. In the United States, Sue
Thomas (1994) shows that when women constitute 20% of the state legislature,
the legislature is more likely to pass bills concerning women. In
a survey of party politicians in five Scandinavian countries, Lena Wangnerud
(2000) finds that the majority of respondents indicate that their
party altered its issue position at least once in direct response to the presence
of female legislators among them. In another example, in Norway,
which is a world leader in women’s representation, Kathleen Bratton
and Leonard Ray (2002) find that at the municipal level, the proportion
of women elected is positively related to the percentage of children in
state-funded child-care facilities.
Admittedly, gender quotas can be used by political parties as mere
rhetorical symbols designed to attract more votes. The finding that quotas
often spread among parties within a country and to the national
level in a process of “contagion” (Baldez 2004; Matland and Studlar
1996) suggests that quotas may be more of an election strategy than a
real reflection of a party’s support for women’s parliamentary presence.
However, quotas may be adopted for one reason but have broader,
unintended consequences. Once women have gained power, it is difficult
to take it away, and women will become entrenched power holders.
Achieved gains mark a new standard, or norm, upon which parties
can be held accountable in the future. Heightening women’s presence
in parliament—even when they are labeled “quota women” by some—
shapes our collective perceptions of what political leaders should look
like, where women’s place is, and by changing expectations, encourages
a greater number of young women to enter party politics and run
for elected office.
In short, then, in addition to their practical efficiency, gender quotas
and the increase in women’s parliamentary presence that quotas achieve
also have ideational, or normative, effects. In their study of the “rising
tide” of women’s equality around the world, Ronald Inglehart and Pippa
Norris (2003) argue that cultural change is necessary for institutional
change. Attitudes surrounding women’s roles shape the kinds of policies
that are adopted. Indeed, changes in attitudes and values underpin
women’s advances toward greater equality—formal rules are not sufficient.
However, formal rules and informal cultural norms mutually
reinforce each other. In this way, gender quota policies can act as mechanisms
for bringing women immediate gains in parliamentary seats, and
can also reshape attitudes, values, and ideas towards women’s roles in
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 643
politics long after the quotas have expired. So even where general attitudes
toward quotas might be overtly hostile, the adoption of this policy
may in itself alter attitudes toward women’s representation over the long
term.
In addition to creating new standards regarding what is appropriate
for women’s parliamentary presence within countries, gender quotas can
be a powerful symbol for democracy and justice beyond national borders.
Gender quotas represent practical means for achieving the democratic
ideal of inclusion. Where democracies adopt gender quotas for
candidates or within the political parties, those quotas and women’s presence
can serve as a peg upon which women in newly emerging democracies
hang their claims for equitable representation. As such, gender
quotas may enhance the opportunities for women’s political empowerment
globally.
REFERENCES
Baldez, Lisa. 2004. “Elected Bodies: The Gender Quota Law for Legislative Candidates
in Mexico.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 29 (2): 231–58.
Bird, Karen. 2002. “Does Parity Work? Results From French Elections.” Feminist Studies
28 (3): 691–98.
Bratton, Kathleen A., and Leonard P. Ray. 2002. “Descriptive Representation, Policy
Outcomes and Municipal Day-Care Coverage in Norway.” American Journal of Political
Science 46 (2): 428–37.
Carroll, Susan J. 2002. “Representing Women: Congresswomen’s Perceptions of Their
Representational Roles.” In Women Transforming Congress, ed Cindy Simon
Rosenthal. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 50–68.
Dodson, Debra L., et al., eds. 1995. Voices, Views, and Votes: The Impact of Women in
the 103rd
Congress. New Brunswick, NJ: Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers, The
State University of New Jersey.
Inglehart, Ronald, and Pippa Norris. 2003. Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural
Change Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kittilson, Miki Caul. Forthcoming. Challenging Parties, Changing Parliaments: Women
and Elected Office in Contemporary Western Europe. Parliaments and Legislatures
Series. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Matland, Richard E., and Donley T. Studlar. 1996. “The Contagion of Women Candidates
in Single-Member District and Proportional Representation Systems: Canada
and Norway.” Journal of Politics 58 (3): 707–33.
Russell, Meg, and Colm O’Cinneide. 2003. “Positive Action to Promote Women in Politics:
Some European Comparisons.” ICLQ 52: 587–614.
Sundberg, Jan. 1995. “Women in Scandinavian Party Organizations.” In Women in
Nordic Politics: Closing the Gap, ed. Lauri Karvonen and Per Selle. Aldershot, Eng.:
Dartmouth.
Swers, Michele. 2002. The Difference Women Make: The Policy Impact of Women in
Congress. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Thomas, Sue. 1994. How Women Legislate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
644 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
Wangnerud, Lena. 2000. “Representing Women.” In Beyond Westminster and Congress:
The Nordic Experience, ed. Peter Essaiasson and Knut Heidar. Columbus: Ohio State
University Press, 132–54.
The Desirability of Gender Quotas: Considering
Context and Design
Mark P. Jones, Rice University
October 3, 2005, marks a dozen years since Argentina started the quota
ball rolling via the first use of gender quota legislation applying to all
parties for the election of national legislators.1
For the October 3, 1993,
Argentine Chamber of Deputies election, all political parties were required
to present closed party lists on which women accounted for a
minimum of 30% of the candidates, and furthermore, a comparable proportion
of these women had to be placed in “electable” positions on the
lists (Jones 1996). Although the initial implementation process was not
free of problems (Durrieu 1999), in a short time the gender quota became
an established fixture of the Argentine political system. The impact
of the quota legislation on the representation of women in the
Argentine congress was nothing short of dramatic, with women now accounting
for 34% and 44% of the seats in the Argentine Chamber of
Deputies and Senate, respectively, a marked contrast to the situation prior
to the adoption of the quota legislation, when women on average held a
mere 5% of the seats in both legislative bodies.
Over the past dozen years, a host of other countries have adopted quota
legislation. While the effectiveness of this quota legislation in enhancing
the presence of women in the legislature has varied, with far more
negative than positive experiences (Htun and Jones 2002; Krook 2005),
we can identify several other “success” stories, such as Belgium (Meier
2004), Costa Rica (Jones 2004), and Mexico (Baldez 2004). Here, however,
my goal is not to explain the success or failure of different forms of
quota legislation, or to analyze the effect of increases in the number of
female legislators on public policy. Instead, I will endeavor to answer the
three questions posed by the editors for the authors in this Critical Per-
1. Prior to this date, the world’s experience with quotas had been limited to intraparty quota rules
and token reserved seats. For a cogent discussion of the distinction between quota legislation, reserved
seat legislation, and intraparty quota rules, see Norris (2001).
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 645
spectives on Gender and Politics section: 1) Are quotas a good idea? 2)
Should more countries adopt them? 3) Should the United States consider
them?
Are Gender Quotas a Good Idea?
My answer to this question is context and quota contingent. By context, I
refer to existing barriers to women’s equal representation in a country (or
state or municipality). By quota, I refer to the specifics of the quota legislation
being discussed.
Quotas are a good idea in instances where women are significantly
underrepresented in proportion to their presence in the general population
(i.e., approximately 50%).2
This significant underrepresentation constitutes
a very strong signal that there are cultural, economic, institutional,
and/or societal factors that combine to unfairly limit women’s access to
equal representation in public office. And in virtually all instances, the
only method that will redress this underrepresentation in the short or
medium term is the adoption of effective gender quotas.
For example, a country like Denmark, which has neither a national
quota law nor relevant political parties that possess intraparty quota
rules (International IDEA and Stockholm University 2005), and yet
where women account for 37% of the unicameral national legislature
(Folketinget), is a place where I would suggest that the adoption of gender
quotas is not a particularly good idea. On the basis of the current
gender distribution of legislative seats, it would appear that significant
barriers to the election of women legislators do not exist, and that the
political costs of gender quota legislation outweigh the marginal representational
benefits that would be achieved by this legislation.
In contrast, a country like Japan, which has neither a national quota
law nor relevant political parties that possess intraparty quota rules (International
IDEA and Stockholm University 2005), and where women
account only for 7% of the national lower house (Shugiin), is a place
where I would suggest that the adoption of gender quotas is a good idea.
Clearly, the Japanese political system possesses a variety of cultural, economic,
institutional, and/or societal barriers that combine to severely limit
the election of female legislators.
2. I do not address the issue regarding what constitutes “significant” underrepresentation, since
what is considered significant will depend in part on context-specific factors, such as age of the
democracy, the status of women in society, political culture, etc.
646 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
As I mentioned, my response to this question also depends on the type
of gender quota that is being proposed. All quota legislation is not equally
effective in the goal of facilitating the election of a substantial proportion
of female legislators (Htun and Jones 2002; Jones 2004; Krook 2005). The
most effective quota laws generally contain all of the following features:
placement mandates (in concert with closed party lists), a high minimum
percentage of women candidates (or low maximum percentages for
either sex), application to all legislative seats (and not, for instance, to
only a modest proportion of the seats), the employment of quotas within
a context of moderate-to-large multimember electoral districts (i.e., districts
that elect a moderate to large number of legislators), and adequate
enforcement of compliance with the quota legislation.3
Quota legislation
that lacks one or more of these features often will be ineffective.
Quota legislation that is likely to be effective—that is, it will result in
the election of a substantial proportion of women legislators—is a good
idea. In contrast, quota legislation that is likely to be ineffective is not a
good idea. The latter legislation will in most instances not have the desired
effect (i.e., the election of a substantial proportion of female legislators).
At the same time, it will allow the primarily male establishment
to claim to have supported legislation to enhance women’s representation
(and, hence, not to feel as much pressure to support other legislation
in the future that would be beneficial for women, perhaps even an
effective gender quota law). It is also likely to weaken a country’s most
prominent feminist leaders (assuming they were key advocates of the
adopted quota legislation), who, following election after election in which
the proportion of women elected does not significantly increase, will be
compelled to explain the quota legislation’s failure to their constituents.
One caveat to the preceding statement that the adoption of ineffective
quota legislation is a bad idea is the following. It is possible for
quota activists to employ a two-stage quota legislation adoption strategy.
Under this strategy, quota activists agree to the adoption of inferior
legislation (the first stage) under the logic that at that point in time,
they have two choices: the inferior quota legislation or no quota legislation
at all. At the same time, the antiquota establishment is content
with the ineffective legislation because it realizes that it will, in practice,
not have a salient impact on the electoral process. Then, once this
3. Quota legislation can potentially be successful in concert with relatively small electoral districts,
assuming an ideal configuration of the rules regarding placement mandates, minimum quota
percentages, compliance, and seat allocation.
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 647
adopted quota legislation fails to have its “promised” effect of electing a
significant proportion of women, quota activists can use the gap between
the legislation’s “promise” of enhanced female representation and the
legislation’s “reality” of limited female electoral gains to pressure the
antiquota establishment, via the courts and public opinion, to adopt
effective quota legislation (the second stage).
Should More Countries Adopt Gender Quotas?
The answer to this question follows directly from the discussion in the
previous section. If a country finds itself in a situation where women are
significantly underrepresented in its legislative bodies (national, state,
municipal), and at the same time the type of quota legislation proposed
is likely to be effective, then that country should by all means adopt quota
legislation. Quota legislation represents the only method by which to
substantially increase the percentage of female legislators in a country
in the short to medium term.
If, on the other hand, a country finds itself in a situation where women
are not significantly underrepresented in its legislative bodies, then that
country should not adopt quota legislation. Similarly, even if a country
finds itself in a situation where women are significantly underrepresented
in its legislative bodies, but the quota legislation proposed is unlikely
to be effective, then quotas are not a good idea (unless, perhaps, as
part of a well-planned two-stage “bait and switch” strategy, such as that
described in the previous section).
Should the United States Consider Adopting Gender Quotas?
The anemic representation of women in the U.S. House of Representatives
(15%) and U.S. Senate (14%) is a national embarrassment. As of
June 30, 2005, the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s ranking of women in the
lower/unicameral legislature of the world’s nations placed the United
States sixtieth (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2005). While this ranking is
somewhat misleading, since several of the legislatures ranked ahead of
the United States are oppressive dictatorships (e.g., Cuba) where the national
legislature performs a purely decorative function and has scant
political or policy relevance, the fact remains that the percentages of
women in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are comparatively
very low. Furthermore, this low level of female legislative presence
is repeated in the country’s state legislatures where, as of 2005, a mere
648 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
average of 23% of state legislators were women, with the state with the
greatest presence of female legislators (Maryland) possessing a legislature
(General Assembly and Senate) in which only a third (34%) of the
members were women (Center for American Women in Politics 2005).
This significant underrepresentation of women would at first glance
make the United States an excellent candidate for gender quotas. Furthermore,
the United States already has substantial experience with implicit
racial and ethnic quotas, that is, majority-minority districts (Lublin
1999) designed to increase the descriptive representation of racial and
ethnic minorities (principally African Americans and Latinos, but also
Native Americans and Asian Americans).4
The United States also is not
without experience with gender quotas, as the Democratic Party employs
gender quotas for the selection of delegates to its quadrennial national
convention. In 2004, the party’s rules mandated that the rankordered
closed party lists used for the election of delegates at the state/
district level alternate women and men on the list (i.e., a zipper system).
However, unlike the case for the selection of delegates to the Democratic
National Convention, all members of the U.S. House of Representatives
and U.S. Senate are selected from single-member districts. In a
similar vein, an overwhelming majority of U.S. state legislators also are
chosen from single-member districts. Furthermore, the most popular electoral
reform being advocated today in the United States (instant runoff
voting/the alternative vote) would not alter the single-member district
aspect of elections at the national, state, and local level.
Finally, the successful creation of majority-minority electoral districts
depends in large part on residential housing segregation based on race
and ethnicity. The lack of gender-based housing segregation, combined
with the relative absence of gender-polarized voting, indicates that the
majority-minority district model is not an option for the enhancement of
women’s representation in the United States. At the same time, the options
of mandating that specific congressional districts only elect women
or that a political party present a set of congressional candidates of which
women represent a minimum percentage (e.g., no more than 67% of a
party’s U.S. House candidates can be of the same sex) are sufficiently at
odds with political and constitutional reality in the United States that it
is unrealistic even to consider them as potential remedies.
4. Although there is no legislation requiring majority-minority districts to be represented by legislators
who belong to the minority group that is the majority (or plurality) in the district, empirically
there are relatively few cases in which Anglos (or other nonmembers of the minority group)
are elected in majority-minority districts (Lublin 1999).
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 649
In sum, while the United States clearly represents a case where women
are significantly underrepresented in the country’s most prominent legislative
bodies, it is not a good case for the adoption of quotas, inasmuch as
quota legislation is incompatible with the combination of the electoral
rules (i.e., single-member districts) employed to select all national and
most state legislators and the country’s weak political party system in which
individual politicians, not the national or state political parties, are the
relevant political unit. In addition, any reform of the current singlemember
plurality (or majority runoff) districts employed for the election
of all national and most state legislators is unlikely in the immediate future.
And in any event, the most likely electoral reform (instant runoff voting)
would not alter the single-member district nature of the system.
While the probability of the creation of multimember districts for the
election of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate is
extremely unlikely in at least the short to medium term, quotas do represent
a potential viable option for the United States at the state level in
two rare instances: for the election of legislators to the handful of state
legislative chambers that presently employ multimember districts for the
election of a large percentage of their legislators (e.g., at least two-fifths
of the chamber) and to the one state legislative chamber in which there
exists a realistic (albeit still remote) possibility of adopting multimember
districts along with a semiproportional form of seat allocation (i.e., cumulative
voting).
Eleven state legislative chambers (10 lower houses and one senate) elect
their members (in all cases more than half) from multimember districts
(with the most common size for these districts being two legislators)
(Squire and Hamm 2005).5
In these states, the adoption of effective quota
legislation is eminently feasible. For example, legislation could be adopted
that specifies that no more than 50% of the candidates in a district with an
even number of legislators can be of the same sex (with a one-candidate
gender difference allowed in districts with an odd number of legisla-
tors).6
However, in some of these chambers (where multimember districts
are employed), quota legislation may not be advisable due to the
5. Two of the chambers (the Idaho House and the Washington House) possess two-member districts
in which citizens cast a single ballot in two separate races within their district (i.e., the “post or
place” system) (Squire and Hamm 2005). The remaining nine chambers employ the plurality rule,
with voters allowed to vote for multiple candidates (but not allowed to cast multiple votes for the
same candidate).
6. In a district that elects three members (or where a party has three candidates, if, for instance, it
does not present a full slate), a party would have to present at least one female candidate, while in a
district with five members, a party would have to present at least two female candidates, etc.
650 Politics & Gender 1(4) 2005
substantial proportion of women elected to office at present (without quota
legislation), such as the Idaho House (36% female), Maryland House
(35%), Arizona House (33% ), and Vermont Senate (33%). In contrast,
quota legislation would clearly be advisable in some of the other chambers,
such as the South Dakota House (20% female), North Dakota House
(19%), West Virginia House (18%), and New Jersey House (16%).
For instance, the New Jersey House (General Assembly), North Dakota
House, and South Dakota House elect all of their members from
two-member districts (every political party can nominate two candidates,
and voters are provided with two, noncumulative, votes). If gender quota
legislation were adopted, requiring each political party to nominate one
person of each sex for elections in every district, the percentage of women
elected would increase dramatically. This increase would be especially
large in New Jersey, where in July 2005, only three districts had legislators
from different parties (one Democrat and one Republican), while
the 37 other districts had legislators from the same party (i.e., both were
either Democrats or Republicans).7
Assuming that partisanship would
continue to dominate vote choice more than would gender (which is the
case in most instances), the adoption of a 50% quota would substantially
increase (to somewhere between 35% and 50%) the percentage of women
in the New Jersey General Assembly.
The other potential avenue for the implementation of effective quota
legislation would exist in Illinois if the state returns to the use of cumulative
voting to elect the members of its House of Representatives (between
1870 and 1980, the Illinois House was elected using cumulative voting).
Under the proposed system, each district would elect three representatives.
Were cumulative voting to be adopted in Illinois, political parties
could be required (via the adoption of gender quota legislation) to present
lists at the district level in which no sex accounted for more than 67% of
the candidates, if the party runs three candidates, or 50% of the candidates,
if the party runs two candidates. However, the adoption of quota
legislation might not be considered necessary in Illinois at the present
time, since women now account for 30% of House members, and the
adoption of quota legislation, such as suggested here, would be unlikely
to increase this percentage by more than 10% at best.
7. The adoption of similar legislation for the North Dakota House and the South Dakota House
would likely have a comparable (though perhaps slightly weaker) effect on women’s representation.
As of July 2005, 36 of North Dakota’s 47 two-member districts are represented by legislators from
the same party, while 28 of South Dakota’s 34 two-member districts are represented by legislators
from the same party (one of South Dakota’s districts is presently split into two single-member districts
in order to create a majority–minority district for Native Americans).
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 651
Conclusion
Gender quotas are a good idea in principle. However, when considering
the adoption of gender quotas in a country, state, or municipality, the
context of women’s representation and the details of the quota legislation
to be adopted (including how it interacts with the existing electoral
rules) are of paramount importance. Quotas are only a good idea in the
context of significant underrepresentation of women in the targeted legislative
bodies, combined with quota legislation that is likely to be effective
(i.e., to result in a substantial increase in the percentage of women
elected). Absent a significant underrepresentation of women or quota
legislation that is likely to be effective, quotas are in most instances not a
good idea, since either they are unnecessary or they are destined to fail
to result in a noteworthy increase in the percentage of women elected.
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