Gendered Electoral Financing: Two Approaches Toward Funding as an Affirmative Action Measure

Abstract

Gender equality has become good economics. The main argument for this is that if women—or other groups—are discriminated against, it hinders them from reaching their full potential as caregivers, workers, and citizens, which then has negative effects on market-led growth for society in general. This causal relationship between gender equality and economic development has made gender mainstreaming a globally accepted strategy and mainstay for change and gender quotas in public office. Through gender quotas, we have seen an increase in the number of women elected into political office during the last decade. The questions now are whether gender quotas have met a saturation point, and whether other measures would be more efficient in dealing with one of the key barriers for women in politics: women’s lower access to financial resources. This chapter discusses examples of how financial incentives have been used in recent years to spark women’s desire to seek political leadership and to stimulate the demand of key gatekeepers to have women as leaders. The chapter concludes that such initiatives can work, both in tandem with and as a substitute to gender quotas, but that their efficiency depends on the institutional context and the design of the measure. This chapter is based on a keynote address given at the International Conference on Gender Mainstreaming in Politics, Administration and Development in South Asia and Beyond, North South University, Dhaka, Bangladesh, November 18–19, 2017. The talk is based on findings from the project Money Talks: Gendered electoral financing in democratic and democratizing states, funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant number 250669/F10).