Unequals among equals: Party strategic discrimination and quota laws

Abstract

The introduction of quotas can help women overcome certain obstacles to political office that thwart an egalitarian representation. Various countries have recently adopted quota laws in order to grant a gender-balanced composition of political office. However, the effectiveness of quota laws is constrained by several discriminatory manoeuvres that parties use to circumvent the law. This article aims at unveiling the broad array of strategic discrimination practices that parties apply, irrespective of their ideology and the electoral system in use. These practices seriously diminish the equalising potential of positive action measures. The empirical analysis concentrates on France and Spain, two countries where a statutory quota has been recently introduced and already tested on various elections. © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.