Beyond Quotas: Strategies to Promote Gender Equality in Elected Office
| Date | 01 March 2014 |
| Author | Mona Lena Krook,Pippa Norris |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.12116 |
| Published date | 01 March 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
Beyond Quotas: Strategies to Promote Gender
Equality in Elected Office
Mona Lena Krook
Rutgers University
Pippa Norris
Harvard University/University of Sydney
Gender equality in elected office has become a commitment of national governments and international organizations
around the globe. To date, much of the discussion has revolved around electoral gender quotas – policies that set aside
seats in political assemblies for women or require that political parties nominate a certain percentage of female
candidates. Focusing exclusively on quotas, however, obscures the broader range of efforts around the world to bring
more women into political office. This article surveys non-quota strategies used globally, developing an analytic
framework for theorizing potential interventions into candidate selection and election processes. Whether used in
conjunction with, or as an alternative to, quotas, the diversity of these measures points to a wide array of creative
solutions, engaging a variety of actors, which might be pursued to enhance women’s political representation. Future
research should focus on evaluating the effects of these policies, both alongside and separately from quota policies.
Keywords: gender equality policies; electoral quotas; women in politics
Gender parity in elected office has become a central goal of national governments and
international organizations around the globe, motivated by arguments that women’s
inclusion is crucial to achieve justice, promote women’s interests and make use of women’s
resources for the good of society (Phillips, 1995). The roots of this demand extend back to
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, which enshrines the equal
rights of men and women, including the right to participate in government. A series of
other documents signed by United Nations (UN) member states over the years – including
the World Plan of Action in Mexico City in 1975, the Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1979 and the Nairobi Forward-Looking
Strategies in 1985 – resulted in a landmark commitment in the 1995 Beijing Platform for
Action, signed by all member states at the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women, to
a specific target of 30 per cent women in decision-making positions.1
The Platform for Action suggests that this target might only be achieved through greater
use of positive action in candidate selection.2Following the conference, electoral gender
quotas were passed in more than 100 countries – nearly all specifying 30 per cent women
as a minimum proportion of candidates and/or elected officials – in the ensuing years.3As
a consequence, both scholars and international organizations have generated a wide body
of scientific knowledge on these policies (Dahlerup, 2006; Krook, 2009). Yet the Platform
for Action did not solely focus on quotas as a solution. It also highlighted a range of other
measures to support gender-balanced decision-making, like ‘career planning, tracking,
mentoring, coaching, training, and retraining’ for women and ‘public debate on the new
roles of men and women in society and in the family’.4
Mention of these strategies in the Platform for Action indicates that quotas alone may
not suffice to achieve gender equality in elected office. On the one hand, the application
bs_bs_banner
doi: 10.1111/1467-9248.12116
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2014 VOL 62, 2–20
© 2014 The Authors. Political Studies © 2014 Political Studies Association
of quotas may be enhanced by programs expanding the pool of female candidates,
supporting women’s legislative capacities and promoting broader transformation in public
views towards women in politics (see Franceschet et al., 2012). On the other hand, formal
quotas may not be an option in all states and political parties, due to institutional barriers
and – perhaps even more importantly – ideological objections to the concept of positive
action (Krook et al., 2009). Further, poorly designed policies can prove ineffective in
achieving their stated goals (Hoodfar and Tajali, 2011; Jones, 2009). In all these cases,
alternative strategies are required to foster greater gender equality.
In contrast to the extensive literature on quotas, however, non-quota measures have not
been subject to systematic documentation or research. In addition to being officially
documented in legal frameworks and party statutes, quotas exert – in theory – a direct
impact on candidate selection and election processes. Non-quota strategies, in contrast,
may take a variety of forms, frustrating data collection, and be pursued through both state
and civil society channels, more indirectly influencing nomination outcomes. Crucially,
these differences suggest that campaigns to increase women’s representation need not opt
exclusively for one strategy over the other, but that in fact a double-pronged approach may
be desirable.
To theorize non-quota strategies in a clearer manner, this article synthesizes work on
political recruitment and feminist research on the public/private divide to illuminate
potential points of intervention and gendered challenges to change. In so doing, it seeks to
go beyond existing typologies placing these measures together with quotas along a spec-
trum of coercive strength: equality rhetoric, encouraging women to come forward;
equality promotion, supporting female candidates through training and funding; and
equality guarantees, establishing gender quotas (Lovenduski, 2005). While a useful catego-
rization, these three headings do not exhaust the options available for promoting women
in politics and overlook possibilities outside the traditional framework of party politics –
opportunities that become evident when the analysis takes its starting point from the stages
of the political recruitment process.
These insights are used in the first section to conceptualize a range of policy solutions
for overcoming women’s exclusion. Drawing on diverse primary sources from around the
world, the second section presents examples of each type of intervention, organized
according to actor categories: civil society, political parties, parliaments and the state. The
sheer variety of these measures reveals a wide menu of tactics available for promoting
women in politics, while also underscoring the need for a multifaceted approach to tackle
the multidimensional and diverse nature of obstacles to women’s political inclusion. The
article ends with a call for future work to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of these
various strategies, collecting more systematic and rigorous evidence regarding their impact
on women’s political representation.
Problems and Solutions: A Theoretical Framework
Devising effective strategies for change requires beginning with an analysis of the status
quo, illuminating what must be done in order to set in motion an alternative set of
dynamics. Similar to research on gender policy more generally (Bacchi, 1999), however,
there are multiple interpretations as to why women are under-represented in political life
GENDER EQUALITY IN ELECTED OFFICE 3
© 2014 The Authors. Political Studies © 2014 Political Studies Association
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2014, 62(1)
To continue reading
Request your trial