The Increasing Effectiveness of National Gender Quotas, 1990–2010

• Published date: 01 August 2015
• Author: Pamela Paxton,Melanie M. Hughes
• Date: 01 August 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12079

PAMELA PAXTON

University of Texas-Austin

MELANIE M. HUGHES

University of Pittsburgh

The Increasing Effectiveness

of National Gender Quotas,

1990–2010

National gender quotas—policies that require a certain percentage of women

candidates or legislators—are becoming more effective over time. Using data on 145

countries from 1990 to 2010, we document this trend with latent growth-curve models.

Part of the explanation for increasing effectiveness is that countries have ratcheted up

targets for women’s inclusion and that quotas are increasingly written in ways that make

them more effective at achieving stated goals. Activists, political elites, and policy mak-

ers have learned over time which quota policies are most effective, resulting in quotas

with provisions that more often lead to success. But, changes in rules alone do not

account for the increasing effectiveness of quotas over time. It appears that changing

norms about women’s incorporation in politics are also increasing quota effectiveness

regardless of policy design.

Gender quotas are arguably one of the most important political

developments of the last 30 years. By 1990 only a handful of countries

used any type of national political quota for women. During the 1990s,

however, Argentina passed a law designed to aggressively advance

women’s representation, and national quotas in various forms began to

proliferate widely. By 2010, more than 60 states had written gender

quotas into their electoral laws or constitutions, mandating that a certain

percentage of women must be included as candidates or legislators

(IDEA 2013; Krook 2009). The spread of quotas has not ended. Today,

countries continue to debate both the adoption of new gender quotas and

reforms to existing quota provisions.

Quotas are designed to “jumpstart” women’s political representa-

tion—to move from incremental gains to substantial growth in women’s

political presence (Dahlerup and Friedenvall 2005; Krook 2009).

Research increasingly demonstrates that quotas are accomplishing this

goal, at least in recent years (Bauer 2008; Beaman et al. 2009; Dahlerup

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 40, 3, August 2015 331

DOI: 10.1111 /lsq.12079

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C2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa

2006; Hughes 2011; Krook 2009; Tripp and Kang 2008). However,

existing cross-national research on the effect of quotas on women’s

representation is overwhelmingly cross-sectional, analyzes only quotas

adopted before 2000, and/or ignores key policy differences across types

of quotas. Consequently, at least two important questions have been left

unanswered: (1) Have national gender quotas become more effective in

producing gains for women over time? (2) Do differences in quota

design alone explain changes in policy effectiveness? We judge the

effectiveness of a quota based on the success of its implementation or its

ability to meet legislated goals (Jones 2009; Schmidt and Saunders

2004; Schwindt-Bayer 2009). That is, if a country adopts a gender quota

with a 30% threshold or target, the quota is judged as more or less effec-

tive depending on how close the country subsequently comes to electing

30% women to its national legislature.

Existing studies show that policy design can inf‌luence the size of a

gender quota’s effect on women’s legislative representation (e.g., Krook

2009; Matland 2006; Schwindt-Bayer 2009). Quotas with a higher

threshold—those that require a greater share of female candidates or

seats—produce higher levels of women’s legislative presence (Paxton,

Hughes, and Painter 2010; Schwindt-Bayer 2009). Reserved seats,

which set aside a specif‌ic share of seats for women, may be more effec-

tive at increasing women’s numbers than candidate quotas, which affect

only the candidate pool. Within candidate quotas, rules requiring that

women occupy certain positions on candidate lists, called placement

mandates, and measures that penalize parties for failing to comply with

quota provisions, called sanctions for noncompliance, have both been

shown to enhance quota effectiveness (e.g., Schwindt-Bayer 2009).

But, we are not interested here in the average effects of quotas.

Instead, we hope to understand the extent to which quotas and their

effects on women’s representation are changing over time. The quota-

adoption literature emphasizes the importanc e of information sharing

and learning, whereby activists and policy makers look to the experien-

ces and outcomes of other countries when advocating for and making

policy choices (e.g., Krook 2004, 2009). Sharing implies that if quotas

with stronger provisions (e.g., placement mandates) come to be seen as

more effective at reaching stated goals, those pressing for increased polit-

ical representation for women—be they activists, policy makers, or other

elites—should increasingly favor quotas with such provisions, potentially

increasing quota effectiveness over time.

But quota effectiveness could also increase be cause domestic and

international norms about women’s participation in politics have

changed (Berkovitch 1999; Bush 2011; Hughes 2009; Towns 2010).

332 Pamela Paxton and Melanie M. Hughes

Women’s inclusion in politics was historically perceived as problematic

but is now seen as not only acceptable, but desirable (Paxton, Hughes,

and Green 2006). Increasing norms of equality could result in declines

in political party efforts to circumve nt quota targets and a simultaneous

increase in the public’s taste for the inclusion of women, which together

would decrease the need for strong quota provisions to achieve gains

for women.

In this article, we consider the effectiveness of gender quotas in

producing women’s legislative representation over time. Fundamental to

our approach is the idea that countries exhibit trajectories of growth in

women’s representation over time and that quotas should push countries

off their existing trajectory. We examine the effect of quotas in 145

countries from 1990 to 2010, using Latent Growth Curve models

(Bollen and Curran 2006) and controlling for the electoral system,

democratization, and economic development. If quotas are becoming

more effective over time, not only should we see increasingly large

jumps above the existing trajectory of the country, but the percent

women “returned” for a percent increase in the quota threshold should

also increase. We assess whether stronger quota rules—specif‌ically,

placement mandates and sanctions for noncompliance—can fully

account for increasing returns for quotas over time or whether better

returns are seen even in countries with weaker quota provisions.

The Influence of Gender Quotas

Gender quotas are laws or party rules requiring that women make

up a certain percentage of a candidate list, parliamentary assembly, com-

mittee, or government. We focus here on national gender quotas—those

that affect national legislatures and are system-wide. Broadly, quotas are

either reserved seats, which set aside a certain share of seats in the

national legislature for women, or legislated candidate quotas, which

require that all political parties in a system f‌ield a certain percentage of

female candidates or nominees.

Numerous case studies have evaluated the inf‌luence of gender quo-

tas on women’s numerical presence in national legislatures, f‌inding that

quotas sometimes increase women’s numbers (e.g., Dahlerup 2006;

Jones 2004; Krook 2009).

1

These studies do not consider how growth in

women’s representation in countries with quotas compares to change in

countries without quotas (except see Archenti and Johnson 2006). Most

countries are on upward trajectories of women’s political representation.

If women’s representation is growing at similar rates in countries without

333Increasing Effectiveness of Gender Quotas