Quotas and Gender Gaps in Political Participation among Established Industrial European Democracies

Distinguishing Within- and Across-Country Effects

Bibliographic Data

ID7972072
AuthorsKatrine Beauregard (0000-0002-0861-6219, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume70
Issue3
Pages657-672
Publication date2017-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Research Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1065-9129 • E-ISSN: 1938-274X
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1065912917710116
OpenAlexW2620674788
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited52

This paper proposes to investigate the influence of legislative quotas on gender differences in political participation by analyzing the within- and across-country effects of quotas. Gender quotas can signal to women that their presence in politics is welcome, leading to a subsequent increase in their involvement in political activities. This change in political behavior should not be reproduced in men; thus, when gender quotas are present, the gap between men’s and women’s participation narrows. Using the European Values Survey and data from eighteen European democracies, this paper demonstrates that this indeed occurs for some political activities when gender gaps are compared before and after the introduction of quotas within countries. This result, however, is not replicated for across-country analyses. European countries without legislative gender quotas tend to have smaller gender gaps than countries with them. This result is explained by referring to the context of the adoption of gender quotas

Context (archaeology · Demographic economics · Economics · European Social Survey · Gender equality · Gender gap · Geography · Legislature · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Survey data collection · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Studies · Social Policy and Reform Studies

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