Gender Quotas and Ethnic Minority Representation: Swedish Evidence from a Longitudinal Mixed Methods Study

Abstract

In this paper, we study the ways in which affirmative action for one political minority, gender quotas, impact on intersectional representation. In a quantitative analysis of detailed panel data from 285 Swedish municipal assemblies, the numerical impact of a zipper placement mandate in Sweden's largest political party, the Social Democratic Party, is analyzed. No evidence that this quota helped, or hindered, the intersectional representation of men or women is found in the short run, but it is found that a weak numerical impact may exist in the long run. A qualitative analysis of party records and interviews with key actors sheds further light on these results. Differences in the norms of representation for women and polyethnic minorities, coupled with weak organizational and practical constraints for formulating policies for the latter, appear to be likely explanations.

Gender, diversity and migration – challenges to Nordic welfare, gender politics and research

“…It discusses models to overcome the unitary bias in 618 EDI 32,6 gender theory and research and to develop multiple and intersectional approaches to gender equality and diversity [2] (Hancock, 2007;Squires, 2007).…”

Gender Quotas and the Crisis of the Mediocre Man: Theory and Evidence from Sweden

“…22 Estimates in columns (7) and (8) of Table 1 show that men considered competent according to our c i measure have signi…cantly higher average scores on both tests, 0.26 points higher on the cognitive test and 0.39 points higher on the leadership 20 Web Appendix Table W2 shows that this validation holds up when we split the sample of politicians into men and women. In fact, the association between competence and political success is a bit stronger for women than for men.…”

“…Taken together, the results in Table 1 show that our income residuals c i are relevant for politics as well as for market returns. 20 [ Table 1 here] Validating competence using enlistment tests As another attempt at validation, we examine how our competence measure c i correlates with ability-test scores conducted in the Swedish militarydraft system, which used to be mandatory for all 18-year old men. Two test scores are used.…”

Gender and Dynastic Political Recruitment

“…In Sweden, the Social Democratic Party (SAP) introduced a zipper quota across 290 local parties in 1994, obligating these parties to alternate male and female names on their ballot. The substantial number of post-reform years of data now available, and the fact that the quota was introduced by the Central Party Board, whose hand was forced by a break-out feminist party, offers an excellent opportunity to study the causal impact of the quota on women's recruitment at the local level Folke, Freidenvall and Rickne, 2015;O'Brien and Rickne, 2016). Our analysis indicates that the introduction of the quota led to a quantitatively small, but positive increase in the recruitment of dynastic women.…”