There are a number of different ways for ensuring that women are represented in parliament. First, there are statutory quotas where women must make up at least a minimum proportion of the elected representatives. This happens in a handful of cases: Italy, where women must make up 50% of the Proportional Representation (PR) ballot, Argentina (30%), and Brazil (20%). It has also been proposed for the Indian Lok Sabha. Such quotas are usually perceived as a transitional mechanism to lay the foundation for a broader acceptance of women's representation.
Second, the electoral law can require parties to field a certain number of women candidates; this is the case in the PR systems of Belgium and Namibia, while in Argentina there is the extra proviso that women must be placed in 'winnable' positions and not just at the bottom of a party's list, while in Nepal five percent of the single-member district candidates must be women.
Third, political parties may adopt their own informal quotas for women as parliamentary candidates. This is the most common mechanism used to promote the participation of women in political life, and has been used with varying degrees of success all over the world: by the ANC in South Africa, the PJ and the UCR in Argentina, CONDEPA in Bolivia, the PRD in Mexico, the labour parties in Australia and the United Kingdom, and throughout Scandinavia. The use of women-only candidate short-lists by the Labour Party at the 1997 United Kingdom elections almost doubled the number of female MPs, from 60 to 119.
Reserved seats have also been set aside for women in Taiwan and other countries. Again, as with all reserved seats, these mechanisms help guarantee women make it into elected positions of office, but some women have argued that quotas end up being a way to appease, and ultimately sideline, women. Being elected to a legislature does not necessarily mean being given substantive decision-making power, and in some countries women parliamentarians, particularly those elected from reserved or special seats, are marginalized from real decision-making responsibility.
See Candidates' Qualifications
