Gender quotas: an interdisciplinary scoping review

Abstract

Gender quotas have proliferated worldwide as a major tool of gender equality policies, first in the electoral arena and then expanding to other socioeconomic spheres, notably corporate boards. The ensuing rich body of scientific literature on gender quotas so far remains split across disciplines, with a main partition between political science and economics. This scoping review aims at fostering an interdisciplinary dialogue between research on gender quotas conducted from different disciplinary and methodological perspectives. To this effect, we compiled an original bibliographical database of 379 peer-reviewed articles, which we coded according to a series of variables including discipline, geographical area, quota domain, methodology and research question. Drawing on this database, this review presents an overview of the main findings regarding the genesis and the impact of this policy tool, and offers ideas for the further development of interdisciplinary quota research.