Long-term impacts of parliamentary gender quotas in a single-party system: Symbolic co-option or delayed integration?
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512118772852 |
| Author | Rakkee Thimothy,Devin K Joshi |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512118772852
International Political Science Review
2019, Vol. 40(4) 591 –606
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512118772852
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Long-term impacts of
parliamentary gender quotas
in a single-party system: Symbolic
co-option or delayed integration?
Devin K Joshi and Rakkee Thimothy
Singapore Management University, Singapore
Abstract
In recent years scholars have shifted their attention from the causes behind parliamentary gender quotas to
their consequences for women’s descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation. We contribute to
this literature by focusing on long-term effects of gender quotas in the context of an authoritarian one-party
system. Here we contest dominant theoretical explanations which posit that gender quotas in authoritarian
states primarily serve the goals of symbolic co-option and window-dressing. Rather, we argue that while
authoritarian adaptation may motivate the introduction of gender quotas, these quotas may result over time
in what we call a delayed integration process featuring a gradual rise of women into arenas of power alongside
increasing professionalization and capabilities of women within parliament. This argument is tested and
supported via a 72-year longitudinal analysis of over 6000 female and male representatives of the Vietnamese
National Assembly, a single-party parliament with long-standing gender quotas.
Keywords
Representation, gender quotas, one-party system, parliament, Vietnam, women
Introduction
Critics may argue that parliamentary gender quotas in single-party regimes are merely symbolic
window-dressing, but how do we explain the following? In 2016, Mrs. Nguyễn Thị Kim Ngân was
elected Chairperson (the most powerful position) of the Vietnamese National Assembly (VNA)
while Mrs. Tòng Thị Phóng became one of four Deputy Chairpersons. The same year women dou-
bled their numbers from 11 to 21 on influential parliamentary committees dealing with law, national
defense, and judicial affairs while climbing to 27% of all members of parliament (MPs) and 28%
of standing committee members. What explains these gains? Might they have resulted from the
Corresponding author:
Devin K Joshi, School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, Level 4, 90 Stamford Road, 178903,
Singapore.
Email: devinjoshi@smu.edu.sg
772852IPS0010.1177/0192512118772852International Political Science ReviewJoshi and Thimothy
research-article2018
Article
592 International Political Science Review 40(4)
country’s parliamentary gender quotas? Addressing the issue of how quotas impact women’s rep-
resentation, this article examines an area receiving relatively little scholarly attention: long-term
effects of gender quotas in authoritarian single-party state regimes.
Here we contest the dominant view that gender quotas in authoritarian states primarily serve the
goal of symbolic window-dressing. Rather, we see quotas in contemporary single-party regimes as
often indicative of ‘autocratic adaptation’ whereby new groups (including women) are incorporated
into the ruling elite to ‘help regime elites maintain their dominant position and hierarchical authority
over society’ (Stacher, 2012: 21). In our view, co-option may motivate the introduction of gender
quotas in single-party regimes, but over time these quotas may result in delayed integration allow-
ing for incremental growth in women’s parliamentary numbers and influence. We test and find sup-
port for these expectations in Vietnam, a crucial test case due to its long duration of gender quotas.
Our article begins with a brief literature review on how quotas can impact women’s integration
in one-party legislatures. We then contrast three competing theoretical frameworks for understand-
ing gender quotas in authoritarian regimes. The following section explains our methodology
involving a longitudinal analysis of 6257 VNA members over 72 years from 1946 to the present.
Focusing on multiple empirically testable propositions, our analysis finds the Vietnamese
Communist Party (VCP)’s first parliamentary gender quota adopted in 1967 indicative of symbolic
co-option, while its second gender quota introduced in 1994 has prompted delayed integration.
The article concludes with reflections on the generalizability of our case analysis and suggestions
for future research.
Literature review and hypotheses
Our study brings together insights from scholarly literature on single-party legislatures and gender
quotas. As the majority of countries now have some kind of parliamentary gender quota (Paxton
and Hughes, 2015), researchers have studied their causes and consequences in two waves of schol-
arship (e.g. Krook and Zetterberg, 2014). First, they have examined the adoption and implementa-
tion of different types of gender quotas (i.e. reserved seats, party candidate quotas, and statutory
quotas) (e.g. Dahlerup, 2006). Second, scholars have analyzed how quotas impact women’s
descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation (e.g. Franceschet et al., 2012). Longer-term
studies have also contrasted the respective impacts of gender quotas on incremental versus fast-
track (Dahlerup and Freidenvall, 2005) and continuous vs episodic (Hughes and Paxton, 2008)
growth in numbers of female members of parliament (FMPs).
Beyond descriptive representation, scholars have also examined path dependent ‘acceleration’
and ‘snowball’ effects whereby women’s influence in parliament increases over time as well as
stigmatization and backlash scenarios whereby short-term gains in women’s numerical representa-
tion are followed by longer-term exclusion of women from positions of authority or diminished
opportunities to be re-elected (e.g. O’Brien and Rickne, 2016; Shin, 2014). Another prominent
dichotomy contrasts mandate and label effects concerning whether ‘quota women’ take up an
active ‘mandate’ to substantively represent women or avoid doing so due to a stigmatizing ‘label’
that they are only in parliament to represent women (e.g. Franceschet and Piscopo, 2008).
Turning to one-party states, studies often find that quota women broaden the discourse and help
enact laws supporting women in countries such as Rwanda (e.g. Devlin and Elgie, 2008), Tanzania
(e.g. Yoon, 2013), and Uganda (e.g. Muriaas and Wang, 2012; Tamale, 1999). Some studies also
find that FMPs (s)elected with the help of gender quotas are increasingly more ‘professional’ and
‘qualified’ in terms of being better educated and experienced than in the past (e.g. Beer and Camp,
2016; Josefsson, 2014). Yet, cross-national comparisons also find FMPs are often younger and have
different occupational profiles than male members of parliament (MMPs) (Joshi and Och, 2014).
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