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Quotas as a ‘fast track’ to equal representation for
women
Why Scandinavia is no longer the model
Drude Dahlerup & Lenita Freidenvall
To cite this article: Drude Dahlerup & Lenita Freidenvall (2005) Quotas as a ‘fast track’ to
equal representation for women, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 7:1, 26-48, DOI:
10.1080/1461674042000324673
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Published online: 16 Aug 2006.
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Quotas as a ‘Fast Track’ to Equal
Representation for Women
WHY SCANDINAVIA IS NO LONGER THE MODEL
DRUDE DAHLERUP AND LENITA FREIDENVALL
Stockholm University, Sweden
Abstract -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recent years have witnessed the rapid diffusion of electoral gender quotas. Today,
about fourty countries around the world have introduced gender quotas for parliamentary
elections, either by constitutional amendment or electoral law. Also, quotas for
public election have been laid down in major political parties’ statutes in more than
fifty countries. This article, which is based on the first worldwide overview of the use
of quotas, presents general trends in quota adoption. It identifies two discourses: the
incremental track versus the fast track to women’s parliamentary representation, and
argues that the Scandinavian countries – which represent the incremental track –
may no longer be a valid model for ways to improve women’s representation. The
article also analyses the implementation process, and concludes that, without specifications
of quota provisions that match the electoral system in question, and rules about
the rank order of candidates as well as sanctions for non-compliance, quota provisions
may be merely symbolic.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keywords
election, fast track, incremental track, parliament, quotas, representation, women
INTRODUCTION
Although highly controversial, electoral gender quotas are being introduced in
an increasing number of countries in all the major regions of the world. About
forty countries have already introduced gender quotas for parliamentary elections
by constitutional amendment or electoral law, most of them in recent
years. In more than fifty countries, quotas requiring that a certain minimum
of the parties’ candidates for election to national parliament must be women
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 7:1 March 2005, 26–48
ISSN 1461-6742 print=ISSN 1468-4470 online # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
http:==www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080=1461674042000324673
are now stipulated in major political parties’ own statutes. This development
challenges previous theories of variations in women’s political representation.
In the Latin American debate, the very high representation of women in
Scandinavian parliaments has been used to support the introduction of
electoral gender quotas, first in Argentina and later in several other Latin
American countries.1
This example is somewhat misleading, however,
because in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, quota provisions were first introduced
in the 1980s, when women already occupied 20–30 per cent of seats
in parliament, which was already the highest in the world at the time. The
real take-off for women’s representation in the Scandinavian countries
occurred in the 1970s, before the introduction of any quotas.2
Moreover,
electoral quotas have always been voluntary in Scandinavia, never a legal
requirement, and only used by some political parties.
This historical development led to the realization that empowering women
through quotas would require a strong power base. Because of strong resistance,
it was assumed that the introduction of quota systems would be difficult
or even impossible if women did not already have a solid power base in parliament
and in the political parties (Dahlerup 1988a). In the Scandinavian
countries, quotas were seen as a critical act by a large minority of women to
consolidate women’s representation and make way for more elected women
(Dahlerup 1988b). In general, the Scandinavian countries come close to what
we in this article refer to as the incremental track to equal political representation
for women and men. It took approximately sixty years for Denmark,
Norway and Sweden to cross the 20 per cent threshold, and seventy years to
reach 30 per cent. Today, women’s movements are unwilling to wait so long.
In this article, we contrast the Scandinavian development with that in
countries that represent what we call the fast track. Today, quotas are introduced
in countries where women only constitute a small minority in parliament,
and we are now witnessing historical leaps in women’s representation,
e.g. from 19 to 35 per cent women in parliament in one election (Costa
Rica), or 30 per cent women elected in the very first democratic parliamentary
election (South Africa).
Major historical leaps in women’s parliamentary representation can occur
without quota provisions, just as the mere introduction of quotas has not resulted
in uniform increases in the numbers of women parliamentarians worldwide.
However, this article focuses on electoral gender quotas as an affirmative
action measure to increase women’s representation. First, the article identifies
two discourses: the incremental track versus the fast track to women’s parliamentary
representation. Second, it outlines the amazing new development in
the introduction of quotas worldwide. Third, it analyses the troublesome
implementation process. Finally, the article discusses the implications of the
incremental versus the fast track in terms of women’s empowerment. The conclusion
is that, today, the Scandinavian countries may no longer be the model,
at any rate not the only model, for ways to improve women’s political representation.
The introduction of a fast track, notably the introduction of legal electoral
------------------------------------------ Drude Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall/Quotas as a ‘Fast Track’ 27
quotas in Latin American and other Third World countries, may represent an
alternative and faster model, though this may also have its problems.3
The article is based on the first worldwide overview of the use of quotas
(www.quotaproject.org).4
Here, only electoral gender quotas are discussed,
defined as legal rules (constitutional or legislative) or internal party regulations
setting a minimum proportion of women, or both sexes, in the political
parties’ candidates for public election or among those elected.5
THE FAST TRACK VERSUS THE INCREMENTAL TRACK
The recent expansion of quota provisions throughout the world points to new
routes to equal political representation for women, which differ from previous
experiences. Figure 1 shows what we call the fast versus the incremental track
to high representation for women. By means of a strong quota regulation (40
per cent) and forceful implementation procedures, women’s representation in
Costa Rica’s parliament jumped overnight from 19 to 35 per cent in 2002. In
Denmark, where 38 per cent of members of parliament are women (2001 election),
the same move took twenty years of incremental increase over eight
elections. It should be mentioned that there had already been a gradual
increase in women’s representation in Costa Rica during the last two
decades, before the introduction of quotas.
So far, the concepts of fast versus incremental tracks have been used to
characterize two different empirical routes to high political representation for
Figure 1 Women’s parliamentary representation in Costa Rica and Denmark (Percentage)
28 International Feminist Journal of Politics ------------------------------------------------------------
women. But the discussion of the use of quotas touches on very central issues in
feminist theory and feminist advocacy. Figure 2 shows the two tracks as two
different discourses – constructed as ideal types. Both discourses advocate
equal representation for women, but their general perception of the historical
and the future development varies, as does their identification of both the
causes of under-representation and understanding of women’s under-representation
as a problem, and the proposed strategies. Actual discourses might be analysed
in terms of how close they come to these ideal types, and to what extent
Figure 2 Two tracks to equal political representation
------------------------------------------ Drude Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall/Quotas as a ‘Fast Track’ 29
actual policymaking rests on such a logical coherence between the perception of
the problem and the choice of strategies that the model implies.
According to the incremental track discourse, the primary problem is that
women do not have the same political resources as men. While there is prejudice
against women, this will eventually disappear as society develops. There is
thus an inherent concept of gradualism, leading to strategies such as women’s
capacity-building and parties’ responsibilities to recruit more women.
From a liberal perspective, quotas as a specific group right conflict with the
principle of equal opportunity for all. Explicitly favouring certain groups of
citizens, i.e. women, means that not all citizens (men) are given an equal
chance to attain a political career. The incremental track discourse thus
points to the reluctance to give specific categories the right to a guaranteed
number of representatives based on their specificity, preferring equal opportunity
to equal results. Concerns about the multiplicity of categories and groups
that might claim quota provisions have also been raised (Maier and Klausen
2001), as well as arguments focusing on social cohesion, accountability and
fear of fractionalization (Phillips 1995).
In contrast, the fast track discourse rejects the idea of gradual improvement in
women’s representation. It is even assumed that an increase in resources might
not automatically lead to equal representation. Exclusion and discrimination are
regarded as the core of problem identification and understanding, the solution
to which could very well be affirmative action. The fast track discourse
represents the impatience of today’s feminists, who are not willing to wait
seventy to eighty years to achieve their goals. The gradualism of the Nordic
countries might be seen as having been relevant in earlier historical periods,
but not today. Since the political parties are the real gatekeepers, they are the
ones capable of increasing the proportion of nominated women candidates
by defining formal rules that prescribe a certain proportion of women among
the party’s candidates. According to this understanding of women’s underrepresentation,
mandated quotas for the recruitment and election of female
candidates, possibly also including time-limit provisions, are needed.
Advocating the use of quotas thus represents a shift from one concept of
equality to another. The incremental track is associated with the classic liberal
notion of equality – ‘equal opportunity’ or ‘competitive equality’ – whereas
quotas represent a shift towards ‘equality of results’. According to some nineteenth-century
authors, e.g. John Stuart Mill (1869), the removal of the formal
barriers to women’s political participation by giving women the vote was considered
sufficient. It was then up to individual women to act. Gradually, even
the liberal notion shifted towards a demand for de facto opportunities or ‘real
equal opportunities’, according to which real, not just formal, equal opportunities
must be guaranteed from the start in order to secure fair competition. As
a result of strong pressure from the women’s movement and international organizations
in the last few decades, and the slow development in women’s representation
in general, the concept of equality of results has gained increasing
relevance and support, based on the understanding that direct discrimination
30 International Feminist Journal of Politics ------------------------------------------------------------
and a complex pattern of hidden barriers prevent women from attaining a fair
share of political power and influence. Consequently, quotas and other measures
aimed at increasing the level of women’s political participation are thus regarded
as a means towards equality of results – or at least real opportunity for an equal
number of women and men candidates to meet the voters. If barriers exist,
compensatory measures must be introduced as a means to achieve equality of
results. In this perspective, we will argue that quotas are not discrimination
(against men), but a compensation for structural barriers that women face in
the electoral process. Carol Bacchi (2004) warns against using the notion of ‘preferential
treatment’, because this implies that the present social rules are generally
fair. Thus, quotas as a fast track not only challenge the Scandinavian model
of women’s representation, they also question the concept of equal opportunity
by giving the concept of equality new significance and implications.
Women as a Group
Electoral gender quotas also touch on the current theoretical debate about
‘women as a group’ and draw attention to the problem of whether it is theoretically
acceptable to continue saying ‘we’ about a single category of women.
One may argue that women as a group are both the Achilles’ heel of the
feminist movement and its raison d’eˆtre. The present critique within feminist
theory is partly a critique of western ethnocentrism, stressing the principle
of multiple identities, and partly a post-structuralist critique that feminism
tends to construct the very category it wants to dissolve (Benhabib et al.
1995). Do quotas construct women as the second sex, and thus contribute to
a reproduction of stereotyped gender roles and a stigmatization of women?
We will argue that, rather than using static concepts of ‘essentialism’, the
dilemmas and strategic choices of women in various contexts should
be explored empirically. Research on quotas must therefore empirically
analyse which groups of women are involved in the promotion of quotas as
well as their alliances with men. The demand for quotas has led to vehement
debates in many countries; quota controversies thus represent an interesting
subject for future comparative research (see Bacchi 1996; Squires 1996;
Dahlerup 1998; Gaspard 2001; Marques-Pereira 2001; Sineau 2002; Skjeie
2002; Borchorst and Christensen 2003).
Thus, there are several conflicting discourses on gender electoral quotas,
both in theory and practice. Within the Nordic research community, some
scholars see women’s under-representation as a question of a ‘time lag’, implying
that women will get an equal share of seats in political institutions as they
increase their general integration into the public sphere (Karvonen and Selle
1995). Other researchers, including the authors of this article, argue that a
backlash is possible, even in the Nordic countries, because gender inequality
is not just an historical relic, but may be (re)produced in modern settings.
Consequently, quotas are a possible remedy to the mechanisms of exclusion.
------------------------------------------ Drude Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall/Quotas as a ‘Fast Track’ 31
THE USE OF QUOTAS – A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
In recent years, countries around the world have implemented constitutional
quotas and/or quota regulations by law for elections to national parliament,
see Table 1. As the table shows, quota provisions are found in many different
political systems, including countries with less democratic elections.
Depending on how difficult it is to amend a constitution, quotas by law are
generally less robust than constitutional quota systems. At the implementation
stage, the difference between the two different kinds of legal basis is insignificant,
however. As Table 1 demonstrates, democratic countries with constitutional
quotas have usually laid down quota regulations in the electoral
law as well. A simple division between legal quotas (constitutional and/or
by law) and party quotas thus seems adequate.
Major political parties in more than fifty countries have now included quota
regulations in their own by-laws, requiring a certain minimum proportion of
women on the party’s candidate list (www.quotaproject.org). Numerous parties
have passed recommendations, but only formal regulations are included here.
It is evident that in countries with legal quota provisions (constitutional and/or
by-law), political parties have often included these legal minimum requirements
in their own by-laws. Some parties have even gone beyond the legal
requirements.6
However, when contrasting legal quota systems with party
quota systems, we reserve the concept of ‘party quotas’ for countries where
quota provisions are introduced solely by the individual political parties and
not required by national legal rules. The Nordic countries are one example
of countries without legal quotas for public elections, only party quotas
(Bergqvist 1999). It would be interesting to examine the differences that
follow from these two quota systems, apart from the obvious one that legal
quota systems apply to all political parties in a country, whereas party
quotas are voluntary. A comparison between the Nordic case and Latin
America reveals that legal quota systems do not automatically lead to
higher representation for women than systems with only party quotas.
Table 1 shows interesting regional variations, or clusters. Latin America represents
one such cluster, where, in the space of very few years (1996–8), many
countries, with Argentina as front-runner in 1991, introduced quota systems,
mostly legal quotas. Today, Latin American countries are at the core of the new
global commitment to the fast track. Researchers have explained this amazing
development, where totally male-dominated parliaments passed quota laws,
by factors such as the difficult transition to democracy in the region and the
desire of political leaders to present their countries as ‘modern’ by increasing
women’s representation (Marques-Pereira 2001; Htun and Jones 2002;
Peschard 2003).
Quota regulations are also being adopted in several countries in Asia, and
people there even talk about a new ‘quota fever’. The radical move to introduce
a 33 per cent quota in village councils in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
represents a very important step towards empowering women in countries
32 International Feminist Journal of Politics ------------------------------------------------------------
Table 1 Countries with constitutional quota and/or election law quota regulation for
national parliamentsa
Quota
typeb
(in
constitution
and/or
in law)
Year of
introduction
Present
quota
system
(percentage)
Women in
parliament
(last
election)
(per cent)
Americas
Argentina C, L 1991, 1991 30 34.1 (2003)
Bolivia L 1997 30 18.5 (2002)
Brazil L 1997 30 8.2 (2002)
Costa Rica L 1996 40 35.1 (2002)
Dominican Republic L 1997 25 17.3 (2002)
Ecuador L 1997 20 16.0 (2002)
Guyana C N/A 33 20.0 (2001)
Honduras L 2000 30 5.5 (2001)
Mexico L 2002 30 22.6 (2003)
Panama L 1997 30 16.7 (2004)
Paraguay L 1996 20 10.0 (2003)
Peru L 1997 30 17.5 (2001)
Europe
Belgium L 1994 33 35.3 (2003)
Bosnia and Herzegovina L 2001 33 16.7 (2002)
France C, L 1999, 2000 50 12.1 (2002)
Macedonia L 2002 30 17.5 (2002)
Serbia and Montenegro L 2002 30 7.9 (2003)
Africa and the Middle East
Djibouti L 2002 10 10.8 (2003)
Eritrea C N/A 30 22.0 (1994)
Jordan L 2003 6 seats 5.5 (2003)
Kenya C 1997 6 seats 6.7 (2002)
Morocco L 2002 30 seats 10.8 (2002)
Rwanda C, L 2003 24 seats 48.8 (2003)
Sudan L N/A 10 9.7 (2000)
Tanzania C, L 2000 20–30 22.3 (2000)
Uganda C, L 1989 56 seats 24.7 (2001)
Asia
Afghanistan C 2004 25 25.0 (2004)
Armenia L 1999 5 4.6 (2003)
Bangladesh C 2004 45 2.0 (2001)
Indonesia L 2003 30 8.8 (1999)
Korea, Democratic Rep L N/A 20 20.1 (2003)
Nepal C, L 1990, 1990 5 5.9 (1999)
(continued)
------------------------------------------ Drude Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall/Quotas as a ‘Fast Track’ 33
with massive female illiteracy and a strict patriarchal regime. While scholars
evaluate this extraordinary experience in different ways, there seems to be
general agreement that profound changes are taking place, but also that,
without massive support and capacity-building, these new women politicians,
of whom many are illiterate, tend to become tokens (Chowdhury 2002; Raman
2002; Mohanty 2003; Rai 2003; Sharma 2003).
A distinction should be made between Western Europe and Eastern Europe.
In the former, there are few legal quota systems, France and Belgium being the
exceptions. However, party quotas are becoming more and more widespread.
In contrast, in the former communist countries in Eastern and Central
Europe and Russia (with the exception of countries in former Yugoslavia),
quotas are very unpopular, and with few exceptions not used. In some of the
post-communist countries, e.g. Russia, quotas are actually being discussed,
but resistance is fierce, also among women, because it reminds people of
what is seen as the ‘forced emancipation’ of Soviet rule.
It is however a widespread myth that most communist countries had a stable
20 or 30 per cent quota specifically for women. But, unlike the myth of the
long-time use of quotas in the Nordic countries, which influenced quota discourses
in other parts of the world, the myth of 30 per cent quotas for
women under communism has contributed negatively to current discussions
on quotas in Eastern Europe and Russia.7
Several countries in Africa and The Middle East have introduced quotas.
Uganda introduced a system of reserved seats for women as early as 1995.
One of the most notable examples is South Africa, where the 30 per cent
quota system of the ANC party brought the Republic of South Africa to the
top of the world ranking of countries with high women’s representation
(Ballington 2002; Goetz and Hassim 2003). In late 2003, Rwanda topped the
Table 1 Continued
Quota
typeb
(in
constitution
and/or
in law)
Year of
introduction
Present
quota
system
(percentage)
Women in
parliament
(last
election)
(per cent)
Pakistan L 2002 60 seats 21.6 (2002)
Philippines C, L 1995, 1995 20 17.8 (2001)
Taiwan C 1997 10–25 22.2 (2001)
a
Lower House or Single House. Moreover, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro,
Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Bangladesh, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, The Philippines and
Taiwan have constitutional quotas for local and/or regional parliaments. See www.quotaproject.org.
b
C refers to quota provisions stipulated in the constitution, and L refers to quota provisions stipulated
in law.
Source: www.quotaproject.org and national parliaments.
34 International Feminist Journal of Politics ------------------------------------------------------------
world ranking, thus surpassing Sweden (www.ipu.org). In the 2003 election,
twenty-four seats were reserved for women on women-only ballots, but
another fifteen women were elected among the ‘free seats’, thus giving
women thirty-nine out of eighty parliamentary seats, or 48.8 per cent.
Women’s representation in the Arab world is negligible, although quotas are
currently being discussed there. Recently, by agreement among the political
parties, Morocco elected thirty women on the ‘national list’, and in the June
2003 election in Jordan, six seats were reserved for women for the first
time. In Egypt, quotas were in use only between 1979–86 (Abou-Zeid 1998).
Quotas for women are also being discussed in countries administered or
occupied by the international community. In some cases, e.g. Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the initiative came from international organizations in cooperation
with local women’s organizations (Jalusic and Antic 2001; Nordlund
2003). In the case of East Timor, however, the UN actually rejected a quota
demand put forward by East Timor’s women’s organizations (Pires 2002). In
both Afghanistan and Iraq, women’s organizations have demanded quotas
for women in the process of building new political institutions, and to some
extent these demands seem to be being met (Dahlerup and Nordlund 2004;
Nordlund 2004). This development makes it important to discuss further the
concepts of empowerment ‘from above’ versus ‘from below’.
Do quotas work? When comparing the percentage of women in Latin
American countries covered by quota provisions with the international
average percentage of women in parliament, there is only a small difference
(17.3 per cent compared with 15.2 per cent). The intra-regional figure for
countries with and without quotas is 17.3 and 11.1 per cent respectively.
Thus, Table 2 shows that the use of quotas alone is not sufficient to ensure
high levels of women in parliament. Moreover, a high level of representation
could also be achieved without quotas.
Table 2 shows the top sixteen countries in the world, ranked according to the
level of women’s representation in national parliament. As can be seen, a
majority of countries with more than 30 per cent women in the national parliament
have implemented quota provisions.8
Political party quotas for electoral
candidates are the most frequent type of quota provision among countries
with quotas. However, some countries at the top of the list, such as Denmark
and Finland, have not implemented any type of quotas for national parliament.
Tables 1 and 2 show that the use of quotas alone is not sufficient to ensure
high levels of representation for women. Properly implemented, however,
quotas can bring about substantial improvements in women’s political representation.
Thus, a high representation of women may be attained by the
implementation of various types of quotas, but it can also be achieved
without them.
Table 1 revealed frequent discrepancies between the provision of quotas and
the actual representation of women. This discrepancy between the quota
requirement and the de facto election outcome should not just be regarded
as a question of time, i.e. women’s representation will reach the required
------------------------------------------ Drude Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall/Quotas as a ‘Fast Track’ 35
percentage in due course. After all, the very aim of quota systems is to produce
a rapid and immediate change, i.e. in the next election.9
The information about the electoral systems of the top sixteen countries
(see Table 2) supports the well-known theory that electoral systems based on
proportional representation are better at ensuring women’s representation
than the majority system (see also Rule 1987; Reynolds 1999). All the democratic
countries listed in Table 2 use the proportional representation (PR)
system, except for Germany. However, women’s representation is considerably
higher among those elected to the German Bundestag from the PR lists than
from the majority constituencies.
The connection between electoral system and the introduction and efficiency
of quota systems is interesting, but will not be discussed further in
this article (see Matland and Studlar 1996). Quota provisions are undoubtedly
more compatible with PR electoral systems than with majority systems, even
though quota provisions are being tried out in several majority systems,
such as the UK (party quotas in the form of short lists), France, India and
Bangladesh as well as Nepal (legal quotas).
Table 2 Women in national parliament and quota provisions (parliaments with more
than 30 per cent women in last election)
Country Women in
national
parliament
(per cent)
Type of quota provisiona
constitution/
law/party/no quotas
Electoral
systemb
Rwanda 48.8 (2003) C, L List-PR
Sweden 45.3 (2002) P List-PR
Denmark 38.0 (2005) NQ List-PR
Finland 37.5 (2003) NQ List-PR
Netherlands 36.7 (2003) P List-PR
Norway 36.4 (2001) P List-PR
Cuba 36.0 (2003) NQ NDE
Mozambique 36.0 (2004) P List-PR
Spain 36.0 (2004) P MMP
Belgium 35.3 (2003) L List-PR
Costa Rica 35.1 (2002) L List-PR
Argentina 34.1 (2003) C, L List-PR
Austria 33.9 (2002) P List-PR
Germany 32.8 (2002) P MMP
South Africa 32.8 (2004) P List-PR
Iceland 30.2 (2003) P List-PR
a
Constitutional quotas (C), quotas by law (L), political party quotas only (P), no quotas (NQ).
b
First past the post (FPTP), Proportional representation (List-PR), mixed member proportional
(MMP), non-democratic elections (NDE).
Source: www.ipu.org; www.quotaproject.org and national parliaments.
36 International Feminist Journal of Politics ------------------------------------------------------------
As Tables 1 and 2 show, quotas for women are also being used in parliaments
resulting from non-democratic elections. It seems appropriate to use
the term ‘quotas as reserved seats’ for systems that guarantee women a
certain number of seats in parliament independent of the electoral result,
whereas ‘candidate quotas’ (legal as well as party quotas) prescribe a
certain percentage of women on the lists presented to voters at the election.
In reality, the difference may in some cases be quite small, and many
reserved-seat systems include some kind of election among the women
candidates. In Uganda, an electoral college in each of the fifty-six districts
elects a ‘woman representative’ to parliament. Seats are also reserved for
other groups, e.g. youth, the armed forces and workers, and a few women
are elected to so-called free seats. In all, women’s representation in
Uganda’s parliament is as high as 24.7 per cent (Christensen 1999; Tripp
2000; www.quotaproject.org). The Jordanian quota system reserves 6 seats
out of the 110 in the lower house for women. In the Jordanian debate
this is called a ‘quota system’. On the basis of the individual votes (compulsory
preferential voting in a multi-member majority system), the six women
who received the highest percentage of the total number of votes cast in
their respective constituencies were elected to parliament – if they were
not already elected by the ordinary procedure, which no women were.
THE IMPLEMENTATION OF QUOTAS
In talking to legislators, feminist political activists, and the political analysts, this
author found absolutely no evidence that any attention was paid to how quotas
would actually work in conjunction with the very different rules that are used in
municipal and congressional elections in Peru. Given the relatively high and
unanticipated impact of gender quotas in Peru, perhaps this lack of attention
to detail was a blessing in disguise.
(Smidt 2003: 3)
As a rule, there is more focus on the actual introduction of quota systems,
while the complex process of implementing quotas is often neglected in the
public debate. But while some countries have experienced dramatic increases
following the adoption of gender quotas, others have witnessed more modest
changes or even setbacks in the number of women parliamentarians. Even
decision-makers tend to pay little attention to the implementation process
that is meant to make quotas work. Passing quota regulations may be just a
symbolic gesture if implementation is not regulated and there are no sanctions
for non-compliance. Women’s movements have an important role to play, not
only when the quota rules are passed, but also throughout the whole
implementation process.
Several factors are important to the successful implementation of quota
provisions. Here, we will discuss two very crucial dimensions: first, the
specification of the quota provisions, including the question of a rank order
------------------------------------------ Drude Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall/Quotas as a ‘Fast Track’ 37
for the candidates, and second, the sanctions for non-compliance and the
eventual (non-)implementation of such sanctions. The following discussion
is limited to candidate quotas.
The Minimum Requirement
Candidate gender quotas imply that women must make up a certain minimum
number or percentage of the candidate lists (Dahlerup 1998). Today, most
quota systems aim at ensuring that women constitute at least a ‘critical minority’
of 20–30 per cent. As Table 1 shows, quota provisions vary considerably,
from Nepal’s 5 per cent to Costa Rica’s 40 per cent and France’s 50 per cent. A
required minimum of 30 per cent women is most common. Among parties with
quotas, some, like the green parties in many countries and the Swedish Social
Democratic Party, demand an equal share of female and male candidates. In
the new Italian debate on the introduction of quotas, the goal for supporters
of quotas is not a minimum proportion but an equal share, as in the French
debate on ‘parite´’.
Gender Neutral or Quotas for Women?
Most quota systems aim at increasing women’s representation, because the
historical under-representation of women is seen as the inequality to be corrected.
However, the rules are often formulated in a gender-neutral way.
While gender neutrality may be a way to overcome resistance, some legislators
or parties have not realized that there is a difference between gender-neutral
and women-based quota systems.
A minimum requirement for women implies a maximum for the representation
of men. In contrast, gender-neutral quotas involve a maximum for
both sexes. An often-used rule is that neither gender should have more than
60 per cent and less than 40 per cent of the candidates. In many countries
where women’s organizations have demanded quotas for women, the actual
law was written in gender-neutral terms. As long as women’s representation
remains low, gender-neutral framing has no consequences. But in, for
instance, the Nordic countries, party quotas were deliberately designed to be
gender-neutral, as are generally equal opportunity policies in these countries.
Gender-neutral quotas may thus also help men. In the Scandinavian leftwing
parties, most of which changed from male-dominated to equalityoriented
parties with many active women during the peak of the new
Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s and 1980s, gender-neutral
quotas have in some instances moved men up the ladder. In its first use of
the party’s new rules on gender-neutral quotas, the Danish Socialist People’s
Party moved a man up to number two on the electoral list after an internal
primary had nominated four women for the top positions on the party’s list
38 International Feminist Journal of Politics ------------------------------------------------------------
for the European Parliament in 1984. Since the party got only two seats in the
election, this man and only one woman was subsequently elected (Dahlerup
1988a: 88).
In Sweden, the gender-neutral quota provision was introduced by some
parties in the 1980s and early 1990s, when the more vague discourse on
‘discrimination against women’ had not yet given way to the more radical discourse
on ‘men’s discrimination against women’, directly blaming the homosocial
recruitment pattern of male politicians (Freidenvall 2003).
The green parties were among the first to introduce gender quotas and to
present gender-balanced lists for the elections. Many green parties also have
one woman and one man as spokespersons. The German Greens, however,
can also, and have actually had, two women leaders. Why have a maximum
for women in an otherwise male-dominated society (Offe 2001)?
A 50–50 quota is by nature gender neutral. In the Swedish Social Democratic
Party’s so-called ‘zipper system’, the nomination committee suggests
two lists of candidates, one for women and another for men. These two lists
are then combined like a zipper, and the only thing left to decide is whether
the combined list should be topped from the top of the women’s list or the
men’s. In 50–50 per cent quota systems, the question of stigmatization of the
elected women (‘elected just because you are a woman’) is not relevant, since
both men and women are there as a result of the quota. Seen in relation to
the discussion of women as a group, the 50–50 system no doubt constructs
women and men as two separate categories in the nomination process.
However, the discussion of categorization seems to be more heated in
systems with lower quota requirements, especially in the introduction phase
(Freidenvall forthcoming).
Rules on the Ranking of Candidates
A requirement of 30 per cent women on the list may result in no women being
elected at all. But even a radical 50–50 regulation, where women and men are
alternated on the list, can, under special circumstances, result in the election of
only men from the party in question. If, for example, a small party nominates a
man as first on the list and a woman as second in a closed-list electoral system,
and the party wins none or only one seat in all constituencies, then a 50–50
quota provision is of no help. In this case, as in majority systems, the
central party has to intervene in order to break the tradition, which counteracts
the tradition of local party autonomy in nominations.
The women’s movements in Latin America quickly formulated new demands
and got them passed when the first quota regulations failed in most cases to
fulfil the 20 or 30 per cent requirement, both on the lists and among the
elected (Marques-Pereira 2001; Peschard 2003). In countries such as Argentina,
Paraguay, Bolivia and Ecuador, rules were eventually passed on the ranking of
candidates on the electoral list, the so-called ‘placement mandates’ or ‘double
------------------------------------------ Drude Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall/Quotas as a ‘Fast Track’ 39
quotas’. In Argentina, the quota pioneer among Latin American countries, the
decree of 1993 fixes the minimum number of seats guaranteed to women: at
least one when two–four are available; two when five–eight are available, etc.
In Costa Rica in 1999, after intervention from women’s organizations, the
Supreme Electoral Tribunal came up with the following radical interpretation
of the quota law: women should not only have the required 40 per cent of the
candidates on the lists, but also 40 per cent of the ‘electable’ seats, interpreted
as the number of seats that the party won in the constituency in the previous
election. There are ongoing discussions about how to interpret this ruling for
new parties (Peschard 2003; Quesada 2003).
In the case of Peru, a 25 per cent quota was introduced in 1997, to be raised
to 30 per cent in 2001. In 1997, women constituted only 11 per cent of Congress,
today the figure is 18 per cent. Women’s organizations have pushed hard
to make the National Board of Elections actually implement the rules. A complaint
for non-compliance has been filed with the Inter-American Commission
of Human Rights (www.quotaproject.org).
Sanctions for Non-Compliance
The distinction between legal quotas and party quotas becomes highly relevant
in the case of sanctions for non-compliance. In party quota systems, the sanctions
are only political – critique from women’s groups within the party or
reactions from the voters. In contrast, legal quota systems often have some
rules about sanctions in case of non-compliance. However, our global
overview shows a vast range of sanctions, from none whatsoever to the
most efficient – the duty (and not just discretionary right) of the electoral
commission to reject lists that do not comply with the required quota provisions.
It is important to note, however, that while regulated sanctions are
important, there is no guarantee that they will be used, as in Peru and
Brazil. In France, the rejection of lists which failed to meet the requirement
worked, and women’s representation on municipal councils in larger cities
doubled. At the national level, only financial sanctions were available,
which obviously did not deter the parties, and consequently women’s
representation increased only marginally, from 10.9 to 12.3 per cent in the
French National Assembly – a disappointment after the extensive public
debate on ‘parite´’ (Sineau 2002). More international comparisons are needed
about the effectiveness of different types of sanctions in various political
systems (see Dahlerup forthcoming).
The conclusion is that the specification of the electoral gender quota systems
is of the utmost importance and that their efficiency in terms of increasing the
number of women elected depends on how the specific rules match the electoral
system of the country in question. Quota provisions that do not match
the electoral system may just be symbolic. Furthermore, in the case of legal
quotas, sanctions for non-compliance are crucial, provided that the sanctions
40 International Feminist Journal of Politics ------------------------------------------------------------
themselves are implemented, e.g. the rejection by electoral authorities of
those electoral lists which do not live up to the required number of women.
By considering international comparative data on the introduction and
impact of gender targets or gender quotas, we argue that it is of utmost importance
to locate strategies for increasing representation in the context of specific
national circumstances, reflecting the importance of political institutions,
electoral systems and cultural dynamics. Since most quota systems were
only introduced recently, further comparative research into the rules and processes
of quota implementation is needed in the future.
QUOTAS AND THE EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN
The Scandinavian notion that the introduction of quota systems is very difficult,
if not impossible, if women do not already have a solid power base in
parliament or in the political party in question, is contradicted by the rapid
diffusion of quota measures worldwide, particularly during the 1990s.
Today, quotas have been introduced in countries where women’s representation
is low, and where women seemingly had little political influence.
Gender quotas therefore appear in countries at all levels of development and
in various social and economic political systems. This implies that we see
systems of heavy male-dominance giving way to women.
We have argued elsewhere that one of the most important factors behind
this new trend is the influence from a new international discourse supporting
active measures to increase women’s representation, as, for example, at the UN
conference in Beijing in 1995. However, this does not explain why quotas are
being introduced in some countries and not others, and why quota systems
seem to expand in clusters, as shown in Table 1. Consequently, the focus
should be on the study of the translation of these new international and
regional discourses through national actors, e.g. the women’s movement.
This translation approach is a further development of theories of contagion
and diffusion (Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2003; see also Krook 2004).
The crucial question to be discussed in the last part of this article is the extent
to which, and under what circumstances, quotas will eventually empower
women, which is after all the ultimate goal for most advocates of such measures.
In quantitative terms, quotas have proven effective at increasing the number
of women in political assemblies, provided that the specific rules match the
electoral system in question, and provided that sanctions for non-compliance
exist and are properly enforced. Without these prerequisites, quota rules may
be only symbolic and cause widespread disappointment.
Quotas are thus a means to open up systems of closed and male-dominated
recruitment patterns. Quota systems do not accept the argument that there are
not enough (competent) women, but demand that parties seriously begin to
search for women and allow women at all levels in the party organization.
In this way, quotas target the very heart of the recruitment process.
------------------------------------------ Drude Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall/Quotas as a ‘Fast Track’ 41
However, quota systems do not remove all barriers to women in politics,
such as women’s double burden, the gender imbalance of campaign financing,
the many obstacles women meet when performing their job as elected
politicians, and quotas may even contribute to the stigmatization of women
politicians. But quota provisions, properly implemented, do obstruct and
overcome some of the most crucial barriers to women’s equal political
representation, such as male succession patterns, women’s lack of power in
the parties, especially in the nomination processes, and invalidate the
common argument that the party could not find enough women to stand for
election. Instead, quota systems force parties to scrutinize and change their
male-dominated gender profile and seriously start recruiting women who
share their political conviction.
Historical jumps in women’s representation can be achieved by many other
means besides quotas (e.g. through forming a women’s party like in Iceland or,
through heavy pressure from the women’s movement on the parties like in
Scandinavia in the 1970s), and reversely quotas do not always result in
increased women’s representation. Indeed, as already mentioned, they may
even have unintended consequences. However, properly implemented and
backed by an active women’s movement, electoral gender quotas do represent
one of the most efficient measures for increasing women’s representation in
political institutions.
An evaluation of quota regulations in qualitative terms should be the
subject of future research the world over. Among important themes are the
possibilities for elected women to perform their job, changes in political
culture, changes of public policy (substantial representation of women
versus numerical representation), the interaction between the women’s movement
and elected women and the alliance structure within political assemblies.
We suggest that the two tracks may have different implications for women’s
empowerment, seen within a limited time perspective: The incremental track to
high representation usually ensures that elected women have some power base
outside parliament, whether in terms of educational or job resources, or by
their positions in political parties, trade unions or other organizations. While
the fast track does have its advantages because of the speed of the changes,
it can also create problems. The fast track, where women are given political
positions ‘from above’, so to speak, could turn them into tokens and leave
them relatively powerless, unless the initiative is followed up by massive
capacity-building, critique and support of the many newcomers by women’s
organizations. This is, of course, evident in the cases of the 33 per cent quotas
for local councils in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, which resulted in the
election of tens of thousands of non-educated women. But in no country does
the fast track quota automatically lead to the empowerment of women.
What is crucial is how elected women use their new political power, what
critical acts they perform in order to mobilize the resources of the political
systems to improve the situation for themselves and for women in society
in general (Dahlerup 1988b: 296). Feminist research has shown that women
42 International Feminist Journal of Politics ------------------------------------------------------------
in politics do make a difference, but also that women politicians to a large
extent adapt to the existing norms of the political institutions. It may be
that the incremental track, with its small increase in the number of women
from one election to another, increases the mechanisms of adaptation and
assimilation, whereas large increases in the number of women in parliament,
a ‘gender shock’, increases the opportunities for women to change the rules
and content of politics. Only future research into the results of fast tracks
will show whether this hypothesis holds.
Women’s impatience is growing worldwide. Women’s movements all over
the world demand gender-balanced political institutions now. We therefore
argue that the gradualist Scandinavian strategy can no longer be considered the
model for women’s political empowerment around the world, even if the goal of
50 per cent women in all political assemblies is shared by all. Impatience is also
growing in some of the Nordic countries today, and the fast track discourse is
heard, especially in Swedish and Norwegian centre and left parties today.
A frequently expressed wish in quota discourses is that some day quotas
will no longer be necessary, and equal representation will come ‘by itself’.
No political system seems to have reached that point, however.
Drude Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall
Department of Political Science
University of Stockholm
Sweden
E-mail: drude.dahlerup@statsvet.su.se
E-mail: lenita.freidenvall@statsvet.su.se
Notes
1 Oral communication from Maria´ Jose´ Lubertino, president of the Instituto Social y
Politica de la Mujer. Professor of Human Rights and Guarantees at the Universidad
de Buenos Aires. See also Phillips (1995: 57).
2 In Denmark, three parties on the left introduced quotas in the mid-1980s and abandoned
them again in the mid-1990s. The large Social Democratic Party has never
had quotas for national parliament election, only for local and European elections
(1988–96). Today, no political party in Denmark has formal electoral quotas. In
Norway, electoral gender quotas were also introduced by parties on the left (from
1975, by the Left Socialist Party, from 1983, by the Labour Party), to be followed
by all other parties except the Conservatives and the right-wing Progress Party.
In Norway today, quotas have become an institutional norm, also in other areas
of public life. In Sweden, electoral quotas were first introduced by the Green
Party (1987) and the Left Party (1987). It was not until 1993 that Sweden’s
largest party, the Social Democrats, introduced their ‘zipper system’, where
women and men alternate on the electoral ballot. An unprecedented decrease
from 38 to 33 per cent in the 1991 election contributed to a renewed discussion
------------------------------------------ Drude Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall/Quotas as a ‘Fast Track’ 43
of women’s political representation in Sweden and to the formation of the feminist
pressure group, the ‘Support Stockings’, who threatened to form a pure women’s
party, as in Iceland. The bourgeois parties in Sweden have tended to prefer nonmandatory
‘recommendation’ in order to increase the number of women on party
lists for public election. A large variety of intra-party and cross-party strategies
have been used to further women’s political representation in the Scandinavian
countries. However, the increase in women’s representation in parliament in the
three countries has always been gradual, usually a couple of percentage points
per election. Increases in any one election have never exceeded 8–9 per cent
points, and such increases have occurred both before and after the introduction
of quotas. Legal quotas for public elections were never introduced in Denmark,
Norway or Sweden, nor in Iceland and Finland (Dahlerup 1988a, 1988b; Sainsbury
1993; Bergqvist 1999; Freidenvall forthcoming).
3 In a forthcoming book (Dahlerup forthcoming), the quota systems in all major
regions in the world are compared.
4 This website, representing the first global overview of electoral gender quotas
(www.quotaproject.org), is the result of a joint venture between International IDEA
and our research project, entitled ‘Quotas – a Key to Equality? An International
Comparison of the Use of Electoral Quotas to Obtain Equal Political Citizenship
for Women’ (www.statsvet.su.se/quotas). We would like to thank everybody who
participated in the hard work of collecting data for this website: Julie Ballington
and Virginia Beramendi-Heine at IDEA, Christina Alnevall and Anja Taarup
Nordlund at our department and Mona Lena Krook at Columbia University. This
global overview would not have been possible without the help of a large number
of researchers and women’s organizations from all over the world.
5 Quotas for internal party structures are not discussed here, nor are quota provisions
for public committees and boards.
6 In Belgium, for instance, a law of 2002 lays down a 33 per cent quota, but some
parties have an even higher requirement. Here, there seems to be an interesting
interaction between party quotas and legal quotas, which, it should be remembered,
are passed by the very same parties, acting as legislators in parliament (Meier 2004).
7 Under communism, women’s representation in the powerful Central Committees of
the Communist Parties was negligible, but somewhat higher in the mostly symbolic
parliaments. A few figures may contradict the myth of a stable quota provision for
women of 30 per cent. In the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party,
women’s representation (full members) was 8 per cent in 1981, increasing only to
13 per cent in 1986, an historical high (Browning 1987: 34). Women had 31 per
cent of the seats in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and as many as 48 per cent
in the local Soviets in 1975 (Lapidus 1978: 205). Women’s representation in the
parliaments in many Eastern European countries increased during the 1970s and
1980s, but the system of selection or appointment varied from country to
country (Wolchik and Meyer 1985; Matland and Montgomery 2003).
8 In the 2003 election, 50 per cent women and men were elected to the Welsh parliament.
However, being a part of the United Kingdom and not an independent state,
Wales is not included in Table 2.
44 International Feminist Journal of Politics ------------------------------------------------------------
9 In some countries, like Belgium and Brazil, a gradual increase in the minimum
requirement was built into the law.
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