A quota is an allocation rule through which offices, goods, or political functions are distributed in accordance with a certain formula. A quota system for women’s representation is mostly deployed because an unregulated distribution causes unintentional imbalances and inequalities. It is aimed to achieve a more equal or balanced access to political power for women by applying positive measures.
Gender quotas can be of three types: constitutional quotas, electoral law quotas (also called legislated quotas), and voluntary party quotas adopted and implemented by individual political parties.
Voluntary party candidate quotas for women are targets set by political parties to include a certain percentage of women as election candidates. Given that voluntary party quotas are not mandated by law, they are not legally binding, and there is no sanction system in place. However, since these quotas stem from an internal decision within the party, they are often just as respected as legislated quotas and thereby also as effective.
Why women?
Three main arguments lie behind the call for quotas to enhance women’s representation [1]:
- Women represent (more than) half the population and hence have the right to half of the seats (the justice argument)
- Women have different experiences (biological or socially constructed) that ought to be represented (the experience argument)
- Women and men have partly conflicting interests, and thus men cannot represent women (the interest group argument)
Types of Quotas
Internal party quota requirements can be on three levels:
- Quotas for the pool of potential candidates
This quota type is designed to open up the possibilities for party selection committees or voters in primary elections to select both male and female candidates. "Women only short lists", which only contain women candidates to choose from, is one way of broadening the pool of potential candidates.
- Quotas for candidates/candidate lists
Most voluntary party quotas fall into this category, where a fixed number or percentage of the places on the candidate lists or total number of candidates is set aside for women. For this type of quota to be really effective, it is often combined with placement criteria whereby women are promised not only nomination but nomination to "winnable" seats. This is sometimes called a "double quota". The "zipper quota" where women are put in every second place on the candidate lists is an example of this. Quotas for candidate lists are sometimes used in majority/plurality systems but tend to be more effective in proportional representation systems.
Quotas for candidate lists are sometimes phrased as targeting a gender balance rather than increasing women’s participation (even though in most, if not all, cases women are the under-represented sex). Quotas can, for example, state that neither sex may hold more than 60 percent of the candidacies, or that there should be a 50/50 distribution.
- Quotas for the elected representatives
Quotas for the elected representatives target the outcome of the elections. A political party can decide that out of the seats they win in an election, a certain number or percentage should be set aside for women.
See for example the case of Niger)
Notes:
[1]Dahlerup, Drude (2003): “Comparative Studies of Electoral Gender Quotas” in International IDEA (2003) The Implementation of Quotas: Latin American Experiences, International IDEA, Stockholm.
See also : The Quota Project,
different forms of quotas: http://www.quotaproject.org/aboutQuotas.cfm
