Still “the Domain of Men?” Gender Quotas and Women's Inclusion in Local Politics in Italy

• Published date: 01 August 2023
• Author: Ana Catalano Weeks,Francesco Masala
• Date: 01 August 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12405

503

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 48, 3, August 2023

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12405

ANA CATALANO WEEKS

University of Bath,

FRANCESCO MASALA

Independent researcher

Still “the Domain of Men?” Gender

Quotas and Women’s Inclusion in

Local Politics in Italy

Gender quota laws, which require political parties to include women

among candidate lists, now exist at the subnational level in 15 European coun-

tries. Do they increase the inclusion of women in local legislative processes and

facilitate the representation of women’s interests? To make progress on these

questions, we leverage data from the “most similar” Italian region of Campania,

which implemented a quota law in 2010, and Calabria, which had no quota law.

Using a mixed- method approach, we pair quantitative analysis of all legislative

bills proposed and passed in both regional councils from 2007 to 2017 with

qualitative interviews with regional councillors. We find that Campania’s gen-

der quota law increased women’s inclusion in the legislative process, but little

evidence that this translated into substantive policy gains for women. Our quali-

tative evidence suggests that arcane legislative processes, male- dominated lead-

ership roles, and a masculinist culture prevent women’s policy interests from

being prioritized.

Women are underrepresented in politics at all levels of

government.1On average within the European Union, women

make up 33% of national parliament members, 34% of regional

council members, and 34% of local or municipal council members.2

Women’s representation in subnational governments is important

because many policy decisions that affect citizens’ everyday lives

© 2022 The Authors. Legislative Studies Quarterly published by Wiley

Periodicals LLC on behalf of Washington University in St. Louis.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and

distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited,

the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

504 Ana Catalano Weeks and Francesco Masala

are made and implemented by local and regional governments.

Just like national legislatures, local and regional councils have been

subject to electoral reforms aimed at increasing gender diversity

over recent years. Gender quota laws, which require all political

parties to include a certain share of women among candidate lists,

now exist at the subnational level in 15 EU countries.3 Our study

aims to understand the impact of these subnational gender quota

laws in Europe, beyond numbers of women elected. How do sub-

national quota laws affect the inclusion of women in the legislative

process and the substantive representation of women’s interests?

A large body of research focuses on the legislative and pol-

icy consequences of gender quotas in national parliaments (e.g.,

Clayton and Zetterberg 2018; Fernandes, Lopes da Fonseca,

and Won 2021; Franceschet and Piscopo 2008; Franceschet et

al., 2012; Kerevel and Atkeson2013; Weeks2022). However, as

Clayton points out in a recent review of the policy impacts of quo-

tas, “much less is known about subnational quotas” (2021, 237).

Local politics tends to interest women more than national politics

(Coffé2013), and subnational legislatures can have important im-

pacts on policies that shape women’s day- to- day lives, like child-

care (Bratton and Ray 2002). Compared to national legislatures,

subnational legislatures might be especially likely to harbor mas-

culinist norms, given these institutions are subject to less media

attention and public interest compared to national legislatures.

Relatedly, research demonstrates that corruption and bad gov-

ernance are widespread among subnational institutions (Charron

et al.2015). In this context, can gender quota laws overcome the

“shadowy arrangements” that benefit existing male- dominated

networks (Sundström and Wängnerud 2016)?

So far we lack an understanding of how Europe’s increasingly

popular subnational gender quota laws affect women’s inclusion in

legislative activities like proposing bills, an important initial stage

of the policy process, and attention to women’s interests. We argue

that quota laws have positive impacts on women’s legislative inclu-

sion, which we define as women’s participation in the legislative

process, and on the substantive representation of their interests.

By women’s interests, we mean those that are broadly fundamental

to women’s life chances given women’s historical and structural

marginalization from power (Beckwith 2014). Quotas increase

the supply of women in the council, disrupt male- dominated net-

works, and increase the salience of gender equality— all mecha-

nisms which can spur greater inclusion and attention to women’s

505

Still “the Domain of Men?”

concerns. While previous research has analyzed similar data on

bill proposal and passage in Latin America, mostly studying na-

tional legislatures (e.g., Barnes2016; Kerevel and Atkeson2013;

Franceschet and Piscopo2008; Htun et al.2013), to our knowledge

we provide the first study in the European subnational context.

To test our argument, we employ a difference- in- differences

approach, leveraging the “most similar” cases of Campania and

Calabria in Southern Italy. In March of 2009, the regional coun-

cil of Campania passed a gender quota law requiring that neither

gender make up more than two- thirds of candidates on party lists

and allowing voters to indicate two preference votes provided they

are different genders. The quota was controversial, but it was suc-

cessful at quickly increasing the share of women in office. In the

2010 election, when the law was first applied, the percentage of

women in the council more than doubled to 23% from 10% in the

previous election. The Campania law became a model that other

regions in Italy followed, and in 2016 the national parliament in

Italy also imitated the model to pass a law requiring regional coun-

cils to adopt quotas in their electoral laws. Calabria, a very similar

“control” region in terms of geographic location, socioeconomic

level, and cultural background, did not pass a quota law in line

with national requirements until 2020 (implemented in 2021), after

our period of analysis (2007– 17).

We find that gender quotas increase women’s inclusion in

local politics but no evidence that the quota facilitates substantive

policy gains for women. The gender quota law in Campania leads

to a 23- percentage- point increase in the share of bills sponsored

and cosponsored by women, suggesting that after a quota law

women’s voices are more included in the agenda- setting stage of

policymaking. Yet bills related to women’s interests, like violence

against women and work- family balance, are not more likely to be

sponsored or pass after the quota law, all else equal. Our qualita-

tive evidence suggests three reasons why quotas lead to women’s

inclusion without significant policy changes: powerful leadership

positions are still dominated by men, the legislative process is slow

and arcane, and the council’s masculinist culture whereby politics

is seen as “men’s domain” has not changed.

Gender Quotas and Women’s Inclusion in the Legislative Process

Gender quota laws often dramatically increase women’s de-

scriptive representation in legislative bodies— but do they also