Despite the popularity of electoral gender quotas, the substantive impact of quotas on the plenary behavior of members of parliament (MPs) has yet to be thoroughly empirically explored, and in particular, there is a dearth of evidence from non-Western cases. Here we create a unique content analysis dataset from 14 years (1998–2011) of plenary debates, including the contents of more than 150,000 unique MP speeches recorded in some 40,000 pages of the Ugandan parliamentary Hansard to test how MP characteristics affect patterns of gender-related legislative speech. We find that female MPs speak about issues related to women's interests significantly more than male MPs. Further, we find no evidence of significant differences between female MPs elected with and without quotas, suggesting that, in the Ugandan case, gender is a more salient predictor of the tendency to “speak for women” than electoral pathway. To our knowledge, this is the first study that examines the effectiveness of quotas in promoting women's substantive representation in parliamentary debates across all policy domains over a significant time period. We discuss the implications of these findings in the Ugandan context, as well as how our evidence speaks to substantive representation through reserved seat quotas in semi-authoritarian regimes more broadly.

Quota policies securing the presence of marginalised groups in decision-making bodies have been adopted across sub-Saharan Africa. These policies are frequently understood through the lens of a pluralist perspective. This stance is not appropriate in African regimes characterised by executive dominance. Through a qualitative study of official documents, newspaper articles and interviews conducted during two field studies in Uganda in 2005 and 2010, this article shows how the understanding of quota policies in Africa may gain from the corporatist debate on interest representation. The analysis reveals that the incumbent National Resistance Movement has employed the reserved seat policy strategically to maintain its dominant position, and that strategies for using the quota system have evolved gradually over time in response to key political events, and the interests of group activists at the local and national levels with vested interests in its survival.

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