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Simone Johnson
Gender Politics 166
10/06/22

Current Debate 3 Note: Can Gender Quotas Improve Women’s Representation?

Q1 Thesis: There are three types of gender quotas (reserved seats, party quotas, and legislative
quotas) which consist of similarities as well as big differences.
● The reserved seats are Parliamentary seats that may only be filled by women regardless
of the number of women candidates and will mandate that a certain percentage of women
are elected (Paxton 2020 195).
● A political party quota is a voluntary party choice to ensure that a certain percentage of
its candidates are women. Political party quotas are regulated through the internal rules of
political parties and are enforced by party leadership (Paxton 2020 195).
● The legislative quotas deal with quotas as it pertains to regional assemblies. In Africa, for
example, quotas are used for the African Union and the Parliamentary Forum of the
Southern African Development Community (SADC; for more on these bodies, see
Chapter 15; Ballington 2004). Some countries in Europe use quotas to decide who
represents them in the European Parliament (Paxton 2020 195).
Q2 Thesis: In my case study article, the representation is proportional representation where
voters get a voice in government with some control also going to the parties.
● Proportional representation (PR) systems that ask voters to vote for a list of candidates to
represent them (Paxton 2020 165).
● The voters will first go to the polls, see the list of parties (each of which has a list of
candidates), and then choose a party to represent them. The authors of the article also
state that in a PR system, the number of seats that a political party wins is directly related
to the number of votes cast for that party (Paxton 2020 165).
● So, if a party wins 30% of the votes, the party receives approximately 30% of the
parliamentary seats; then the Legislators are selected by moving down the party’s list, in
order, until the party’s 30% of seats are filled (Paxton 2020 165).
Q3 Thesis: In my case study article, there were reserved seat gender quotas for under-
representation of women in elected positions around the globe (Krook 2009 115-116).
● In the case study article, by 2014, more than 130 countries had witnessed the adoption of
some type of electoral quota, ranging from seats reserved for women, to laws requiring
all parties to include female candidates, to party rules committing individual political
parties to select more women (Krook 2009 116).
● The impact of these policies resulted in the world average of women in national
parliaments nearly doubling in the last 20 years, from 11.7% in 1997, when the Inter-
Parliamentary Union first began to publish world rankings, to 21.8% in 2014 (Krook
2009 115-116).
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● Gender quotas remain controversial, even though studies from other countries still are
searching for their broader impact (Franceschet et al. 2012) (Krook 2009 115-116).
Q4 Thesis: The consequences of gender quotas in the country are evidence from other countries
indicates, women nominated through quotas tend to be placed in districts and list positions that
parties judge to be lost in advance. Overall the new quotas are effective in creating more job
positions for women, but still have not yet addressed other issues like economic racism and
prejudice (Krook 2009 115-116).
● These consequences are similar to what Duroseet al.(2013) observed in relation to BAME
candidates in the UK, who continue to overestimate the negative electoral consequences
of selecting a diversity candidate. The study found that they were also logical given the
design of the AWS policy and from the very beginning it was clear that officials and
some of the public already believed that this was the only way to ensure that more
women would be elected ( Krook 2009 115-116).
● In Other words, while the public may continue to hold stereotyped views on women and
politics, however, this type of attitude rarely translates into their voting behavior
(Matland and Tezcu ̈r, 2011) ( Krook 2009 115-116). Therefore, overall the evidence
suggests that quotas are not the only way to solve sexism; especially seeing how quickly
so many women found leadership positions.
● The author also states that one potential set of negative consequences could lie in the idea
that in order to increase women’s representation that a need to decrease the number of
men is necessary. This could possible create more discrimination in the future (Krook
2009 115-116).
Q5 Thesis: In my articles, it can be seen that the gender quotas instantly created thousands of
needed jobs for women across the state to improve the economy, however, many have
overturned the quotas due to the lack of diversity among candidates.
● According to the article titled Impact on California Gender Quotas written by Brett M.
Rhyne, in 2018, California enacted a new law that required all publicly held corporations
headquartered there (12 percent of all US firms) to have at least one woman director by
the end of 2019. By the end of 2021, the statute requires boards with five members to
include at least two women, and at least three women on boards with six or more
directors. In Gender Quotas and Support for Women in Board Elections (NBER Working
Paper 28463), Marina Gertsberg, Johanna Mollerstrom, and Michaela Pagel study the
early effects of this legislation on the composition of boards, the support for men and
women who are nominated to corporate boards, and the share prices of California-based
companies. They studied the Securities and Exchange Commission data on 585 firms of
all sizes from January 2016 to July 2020 with a two-year bracket around the law’s
enactment. They found out that the legislation had an immediate impact on the gender
composition of boards and that the average share of women on boards of California
companies was 12.9 percent in 2016, 15.8 percent in 2018, and 23.2 percent in 2020.
There was also an increase during the two years after the enactment which was more than
twice as large as the increase in the two years preceding the new quotas (Rhyne 2021 1).
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● There was also more evidence presented in the article titled How California’s ‘woman
quota’ is already changing corporate boards written by Martha Groves. The author of the
article states that in California, women now hold 21.2% of the board seats at the state’s
444 largest corporations and that the 2020 Women on Boards of an education and
advocacy organization based in Los Angeles is also backing the statistical data as
accurate. The author also claims that in the boardrooms of the 414 companies on the
Russell 3000 lists in both 2018 and 2019, female corporate directors gained 183 seats
between July 2018 and June 2019. Still, 36 of the Russell 3000 companies in California
had no women on their boards as of June. The Russell 3000 tracks the performance of the
3,000 largest U.S.-traded stocks (Groves 2019 1).
● In addition to new jobs, there was also an issue with improving the economy that was
supposed to be remedied by the new changes. In the article titled Workplace Gender
Equality May Suffer Without California's Board Quotas written by Corrine Post, the
author also states that when California announced in 2018 it would insist that women be
included on corporate boards, the law said that it would “boost the California economy”
and “improve opportunities for women in the workplace.” In the short time since the law
went into effect, it appears to have been successful in speeding up the inclusion of
women’s voices and perspectives in corporate decisions with an increase from 16% to
29% (Post 2022 1).

Q5 URL LINKS:
1. https://www.nber.org/digest/202105/impact-californias-gender-quotas-corporate-boards
2. https://calmatters.org/economy/2019/12/california-woman-quota-corporate-board-
gender-diversity/
3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/corinnepost/2022/05/17/workplace-gender-equality-may-
suffer-without-californias-board-quotas/?sh=72de66ef6508