Gender and Elections

Topic IndexCandidate recruitment and women’s participation

The process of candidate recruitment is key to promote the access of women to representative roles and it is articulated through different stages. Eligible candidates include all those fulfilling legal requirements to run for elected office. The pool narrows when it comes to aspirants, who would actually consider putting themselves forward as possible candidates. The following stage in candidate recruitment, the process of nomination, is the most crucial for getting women into office.[1] Male-dominated leadership structures often hinder the nomination of female candidates, resulting in weak representation of women, since nominations usually happen through back door dealings and through networks that women do not have access to. Also, ensuring a gender-balanced composition of the committees responsible for selecting the party’s candidates can be instrumental to increasing women’s candidatures, since male-dominated selection committees tend to result in practice in lower levels of women’s participation in the electoral contest. When there is “weak internal organization, lack of internal democracy or unclear internal rules of recruitment, decisions tend to be made by a limited number of elite members, typically men”. Nomination processes should be transparent and formalized, which usually leads to stronger internal democracy and greater fairness in representation.[2]

The following graphic resource, extracted from UNDP and NDI’s 2012 publication “Empowering Women for Stronger Political Parties: A Guidebook to Promote Women’s Political Participation”, describes the main stages in candidate recruitment.

Temporary special measures can help political parties address de facto inequalities between men and women and ensure certain levels of representation for female candidates. Political parties can adopt voluntary quotas, seeking a target for women’s representation among candidates. According to 2013 data extracted from the Atlas of Electoral Gender Quotas, in around 37 countries or territories, one or more parties have adopted this type of affirmative action measure. Voluntary party quotas are increasingly popular among left or center-left parties in Europe, such as Green, Socialist and Social Democrat parties, although they are widely used in many countries by all sort of political parties regardless of their ideological background. Voluntary quotas have contributed to increase women’s political representation in countries such as Sweden, Germany, Australia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, South Africa and the United Kingdom, among many others.[3]

Example: In the Seychelles, the Seychelles National Party (SNP) adopted in 2009 a policy of advancing gender equality in political participation, through a 33 percent quota for women in the Executive Committee, in leadership positions at district level and also on the candidate list to the National Assembly.[4]

Example: In Burkina Faso, the Congress for Democracy Party (CDP) adopted a 25 percent quota for women in party lists for the 2007 parliamentary elections.[5]

Example: In Luxembourg, the Christian Social People’s Party (CSV) aims for a target of 33 percent women in their candidate lists.[6]

Example: In South Africa, the ANC adopted a 30 percent quota in candidate lists since 2003, which was raised to 50 percent women candidates for the 2009 elections.[7]

Example: In Spain, the Socialist Party adopted a policy that 40 percent of all candidates should be women.[8]

Example: In Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, political parties present women candidates in winnable constituencies or safe seats to increase the number of elected women.[9]

[1] Ballington, J. (2004): “Strengthening Internal Political Party Democracy: Candidate Recruitment from a Gender Perspective”, International IDEA.

[2] UNDP and NDI (2012): op. cit., p. 21.

[3] International IDEA, Inter-Parliamentary Union and Stockholm University (2013), op. cit.

[4] International IDEA (2013): op. cit.

[5] UNDP and NDI (2012):op. cit., p. 25.

[6] UNDP and NDI (2012):op. cit., p. 25.

[7] UNDP and NDI (2012):op. cit., p. 25.

[8] UNDP and NDI (2012):op. cit., p. 25.

[9] UNDP and NDI (2012): op. cit., p. 25.

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Gender and Elections