Quotas for Men: Reframing Gender Quotas as a Means of Improving Representation for All

Abstract

Gender quotas traditionally focus on the underrepresentation of women. Conceiving of quotas in this way perpetuates the status of men as the norm and women as the "other." Women are subject to heavy scrutiny of their qualifications and competence, whereas men's credentials go unchallenged. This paper calls for a normative shift towards the problem of overrepresentation, arguing that the quality of representation is negatively affected by having too large a group drawn from too narrow a talent pool. Curbing overrepresentation through ceiling quotas for men offers three core benefits. First, it promotes meritocracy by ensuring proper scrutiny of politicians of both sexes. Second, it provides an impetus for improving the criteria used to select and evaluate politicians. Third, neutralizing the overly masculinized environment within parliaments might facilitate better substantive and symbolic representation of both men and women. All citizens would benefit from these measures to increase the quality of representation.

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

“…Moreover, as argued by Murray (2014), a quota reduces the number of elected seats available for men. With fewer seats to distribute, the quota may have limited the ability of mediocre leaders to nominate mediocre followers to sustain their continued leadership.…”

What Makes a Good Politician? Reassessing the Criteria Used for Political Recruitment

“…Nonetheless, political traditionalists claim that the "best" candidate should be selected even if this leads to significant gender imbalance in parliaments. Yet, if political recruitment is biased in favor of social elites, the overrecruitment of men may not derive solely from merit (Murray 2014). Without definitive criteria for evaluating prospective candidates and judging those already elected, we cannot determine whether political recruitment is meritocratic.…”

Quotas and affirmative action: Understanding group‐based outcomes and attitudes

“…Awad () demonstrates that the same policy can lead to quite different reactions based on whether it is labelled as “affirmative action” or as “promoting diversity.” When the latter was the case, African Americans were stigmatised less by others, particularly by White men and conservative participants—whose support may be hardest to gain in the first place. Similarly, Murray () argues it might be beneficial to frame quota‐like policies as focussing on men's over‐representation and the consequence of relying on a talent pool that is too narrow.…”