Measuring the Quality of Politicians Elected by Gender Quotas – Are They Any Different?

Abstract

Do gender quotas reduce the quality of politicians elected to a legislature? For the first time in the literature, this article addresses this question by examining the quality of 'quota women' compared to their non-quota colleagues at three stages of their political career: their electoral performance, their qualifications for political office and their post-election legislative career trajectories. Drawing on the unique case of Britain following the 1997 general election, no significant difference is found between the quality of 'quota women' and their non-quota colleagues. Voters do not punish 'quota women' at the ballot box; 'quota women' are as equally qualified for political office as their colleagues; and the gatekeepers of executive office do not discriminate against 'quota women' in front-bench promotions. Considering this, the article concludes by asking whether the similarity of 'quota women' to their colleagues may actually impact on their capacity to affect transformative substantive representation.

Pathways to power: Women's representation in the 2014 European Parliament elections

“…Overall, however, we find that women's and men's paths to the EP are more similar than different: women and male MEPs have comparable levels of prior political experience in elected office and, in fact, women MEPs have a slightly higher probability of being incumbents than men, indicating that once women make it to the EP, they have a good chance of being re‐elected. Moreover, women from parties that use candidate gender quotas have similar levels of political experience as women from parties without quota rules – a finding which corresponds more broadly to research on the effect of quotas on the types of women elected to legislatures at the national level (see, e.g., Murray ; Schwindt‐Bayer ; Franceschet & Piscopo ; Allen et al ). In fact, women MEPs from countries with legal quotas are more experienced than women from countries without such rules.…”

“…In light of the wider literature on men's and women's access to political office, we expect to find gender differences in terms of some aspects of MEPs’ career pathways (see, e.g., Murray ; Schwindt‐Bayer ; Franceschet & Piscopo ; Allen et al ). First, we expect to find gender differences in some aspects of legislator backgrounds, reflected in the type of past political experience held by female and male MEPs.…”

All-Women Shortlists: Myths and Realities

“…Other academic studies on quotas and qualifications reach similar conclusions. A study of men and women elected for the first time in 1997 discovers that the age, education and prior experience of AWS women were comparable with those of Labour men (Allen et al, 2014). Comparisons in other countries find either few differences (Murray, 2010) or that quota women are more qualified than their male and female counterparts (O'Brien, 2012;Sater, 2012).…”

Solving the problem of social background in the UK ‘political class’: Do parties do things differently in Westminster, devolved and European elections?

“…viii The rise of the SNP and Plaid Cymru in the new legislatures has reduced the share of female legislators, and only Labour retains an active commitment to achieving gender parity. Moreover, the drive to recruit more women has not been accompanied by a similar effort to ensure a political class that is more broadly representative of the population in social terms -although we have found no evidence to suggest that it exacerbates these broader problems of representation (a point reinforced by Allen et al 2014). Overall, new levels of elected representation have not have not reversed the trend to a narrower recruitment base.…”