Over the past 150 years, democratic regimes have dismantled legal barriers to the political participation of women and minorities. Yet women, minorities, and minority women remain substantially underrepresented in high-level political positions worldwide (Bird, Saalfeld, and Wüst Reference Bird, Saalfeld and Wüst2011; Cederman, Min, and Wimmer Reference Cederman, Min and Wimmer2009; Paxton and Hughes Reference Paxton and Hughes2007).Footnote ¹ To rectify persisting inequalities, most countries in the world have adopted quotas—laws or policies requiring candidate lists or representative bodies to include women; racial, ethnic, or religious minorities; or members of other targeted groups (Dahlerup Reference Dahlerup2006; Htun Reference Htun2004; Krook Reference Krook2009). To date, however, researchers have not empirically evaluated how quotas affect minority women.

Liberal political theorists who advocate group-based representation suggest two different views regarding the effects of quotas on minority women. On one hand, by addressing only one dimension of inequality at a time, e.g., sex or ethnicity, quotas may reinforce within-group inequalities (e.g., Young Reference Young, Shapiro and Kymlicka1997).Footnote ² On the other hand, because women and minorities are significantly underrepresented in politics, any policy that increases their presence may boost the chance that a more heterogeneous group of women or minorities will be elected (e.g., Mansbridge Reference Mansbridge1999).

Intersectionality scholarship also produces competing expectations. Grounded in black and multiracial feminist thought, theories of intersectionality conceptualize sexism, racism, and other forms of bigotry as interrelated systems that create “multiple barriers” to power (Collins Reference Collins2000; Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1989; Reference Crenshaw, Fineman and Mykitiuk1994; Glenn Reference Glenn, Ferree, Lorber and Hess1999; McCall Reference McCall2005; Weber Reference Weber2001). Thus, although minority women could theoretically benefit from either gender or minority quotas, they may, in fact, benefit from neither (Hancock Reference Hancock2007). But intersectionality research also finds that minority women's dual identities can sometimes provide them with strategic opportunities (Fraga et al. Reference Fraga, Martinez-Ebers, Lopez, Ramírez and Reingold2008). Minority women may be able to emphasize their gender or minority status in different institutional contexts to enhance electability.

In this article, I suggest that support for one or the other of these competing perspectives depends on the structure of quota systems; some quota systems are associated with enhanced minority women's legislative representation, whereas other quota systems leave minority women behind. Specifically, which groups are targeted (i.e., women, minorities, or both) and the level at which quotas are regulated (i.e., national level, party level, or both) might explain how quotas impact minority women's descriptive representation. As standalone policies, gender and minority quotas should increase minority women's legislative representation, although to a lesser extent than for majority women and minority men, respectively. Additionally, because national gender quotas affect all political parties in a system, including those that tend to represent minority groups, such policies may more effectively advance minority women's representation than gender quotas voluntarily adopted by one or more political parties.

How gender and minority quotas interact is also likely to produce variation in minority women's legislative representation, at least in part because different quota systems present different levels of threat to majority men. Minority women are especially likely to benefit when national gender policies are adopted alongside minority quotas, a system I characterize as “tandem quotas.” In the presence of tandem quotas, adding minority women to the national legislature helps to satisfy both gender and minority quotas; their election unseats fewer majority men. In contrast, in what I call “mixed quota” systems, a combination of party gender quotas and national minority quotas, minority women should not benefit much. Because mixed quotas are regulated at different levels and by different actors, the strategic advantage afforded to minority women by their dual identities in tandem systems is lost. That is, minority women no longer do double duty, so their election displaces more majority men than in tandem systems.

Differences in quota systems potentially have profound consequences for minority women's political representation. Using hierarchical linear modeling, I analyze how gender and minority quotas—both as separate policies and in combination—affect the election of women from 328 majority and minority groups to national legislatures in 81 democratic and semidemocratic countries. An added benefit of this research is that it constitutes the first global empirical analysis of the factors that predict minority women's legislative representation. Before turning to these analyses, however, I first discuss types of quota policies adopted around the world, theorize how quotas might advance diversity in disparate ways, and introduce other factors likely to impact minority women's representation in national legislatures.

VARIATION IN QUOTA POLICIES AND ADOPTION

Quota policies are generally designed to advance descriptive representation—the “numeric similarity between legislative bodies and the electorate they represent in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, or other demographic characteristics” (Paxton, Kunovich, and Hughes Reference Paxton and Hughes2007, 265; Pitkin [Reference Pitkin1967] 1972). Both theorists and empirical researchers have been critical of the link between descriptive and substantive representation, arguing that female and minority legislators are not necessarily better able to represent the interests and policy preferences of women and minorities (e.g., Swain Reference Swain1993; Young Reference Young, Shapiro and Kymlicka1997).Footnote ³ Still, arguments for descriptive representation have continued to gain currency as more and more countries adopt policies to redress the political underrepresentation of marginalized groups (Squires Reference Squires, Lovenduski and Norris1996).

On a global scale, political quotas are quite diverse, shaping the political representation of a wide range of social groups. Quotas today advance representation by sex, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, caste, language, age, disability, profession, and location of residence (Krook and O'Brien Reference Krook and O'Brien2010). Gender quotas are the most prevalent. By 2008, more than 100 countries had adopted gender quotas in some form (IDEA 2007–08; Krook Reference Krook2009). But minority quotas are not uncommon, affecting national legislatures in more than 20 countries (Htun Reference Htun2004; Reynolds Reference Reynolds2005).

Quotas also vary in the level at which they are regulated, some through constitutional provisions or electoral laws, and others through party rules. About one-third of all countries regulate the political representation of one or more groups at the national level, sometimes dubbed “legal quotas.” Some countries with legal quotas reserve seats in parliament, filling seats through special electoral rolls, separate party lists, or separate mechanisms for direct appointment (Htun Reference Htun2004). In other countries, national electoral laws regulate representation by requiring all political parties to field a certain share of women or minority candidates. For instance, in Singapore, parties must field at least one minority candidate in all multimember districts. Argentina was the first country to adopt a national candidate quota for women in 1991, and countries such as Armenia, Belgium, Peru, and the Philippines have since followed suit (IDEA 2007–08; Jones Reference Jones1996). In still other countries, gender quotas have been adopted by one or more political parties as voluntary measures.

National gender quotas that regulate representation at the candidate level also vary in the manner and degree to which they are enforced. Simply requiring that parties field female candidates does not ensure their election. Parties may run women in unwinnable districts or place them at the bottoms of party lists. Thus, some quotas include placement mandates—rules about the order of men and women on candidate electoral lists. Another important consideration is whether quotas include sanctions for noncompliance. Without penalties for failure to comply with provisions, quotas may be merely “window dressing” (Ballington Reference Ballington2004, 14). For example, after Honduras instituted a 30% gender quota without any consequences for noncompliance, most parties simply ignored the quota, and the gender composition in the national parliament changed little (Paxton and Hughes Reference Paxton and Hughes2007).

That quotas are not randomly distributed across countries further complicates their evaluation. The type of quota adopted differs according to a country's geographic region, party ideology, level of democracy, and electoral system, and according to the type of group targeted (Dahlerup Reference Dahlerup2006; Reference Dahlerup2007; Htun Reference Htun2004). Voluntary party quotas are particularly widespread in the West. Indeed, in the majority of Western democracies, one or more political parties employ a gender quota. Within countries, parties and politicians on the ideological left are generally more likely to favor quota adoption (Caul Reference Caul1999; Dubrow Reference Dubrow2010). Less democratic countries trend toward reserved seat quota systems, and national quotas regulating parties are more frequently adopted in proportional representation (PR) electoral systems (Dahlerup Reference Dahlerup2006). Gender quotas more often regulate the proportion of women candidates in one or more political parties, whereas minority quotas tend to operate through reserved seats at the national level (Htun Reference Htun2004). In assessing the effects of different quota policies, therefore, it may be important to account for factors such as geographic region and a country's electoral system.

EFFECTS OF QUOTAS ON LEGISLATIVE DIVERSITY

The relative success of different types of quota policies in generating legislative diversity has been heavily debated in recent years. Yet little consensus about which type of quota is best for promoting representation of marginalized groups has emerged. One reason is that the vast majority of research on quota effects focuses on one or two countries at a time or a single geographic region (e.g., Baldez Reference Baldez2004; Bauer Reference Bauer2008; Htun and Jones Reference Htun, Jones, Craske and Molyneux2002; Schmidt and Saunders Reference Schmidt and Saunders2004; but see Paxton, Hughes, and Painter Reference Paxton, Hughes and Painter II2010, Tripp and Kang Reference Tripp and Kang2008). Empirical research on quotas also tends to ignore minorities and minority women. In fact, no cross-national study yet has empirically evaluated the effects of gender or minority quotas on minority representation. Even the highly contextualized case study research on gender quotas does not assess how quotas affect minority women.

Research on quotas has left at least three important questions unanswered. First, do quotas effectively increase the political representation of minority females relative to their majority female and minority male counterparts? Second, which policies—party gender quotas, national gender quotas, or minority quotas—tend to benefit minority women the most? Third, do minority women benefit or suffer from the simultaneous presence of these policies? I now consider each of these questions in turn.

Do gender or minority quotas increase the political representation of minority women? On one hand, as a standalone policy, gender quotas may benefit only women from dominant groups. Research suggests that advocacy designed to promote the interests of minority groups tends to prioritize advantaged members, for example, male rather than female minorities (Strolovitch Reference Strolovitch2007). Similarly, intersectionality scholars warn that any legislation targeting “women” may not effectively aid minority women (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw, Fineman and Mykitiuk1994). More directly, political theorists who defend group-based representation caution that gender quotas will benefit highly educated middle- to upper-class women from dominant racial, ethnic, or religious groups (Mansbridge Reference Mansbridge1999; Reference Mansbridge2005). Where women's movements have pressed for quotas, concerns of this sort have been echoed by quota opponents. In India, for example, efforts to pass a gender quota at the national level have been continuously undermined by claims that the proposed quota legislation would benefit only elite Hindu women from upper castes.

On the other hand, at least one recent comparative study presents empirical evidence that quotas help to recruit nonelite women into politics. Geissel and Hust (Reference Geissel and Hust2005) find that German political parties with gender quotas are more likely to elect women with working class backgrounds and women without a university education. It follows that gender quotas may also benefit other nonelite women, including women from racial, ethnic, or religious minority groups. Scholars have also argued that because women are significantly underrepresented in politics, any policy that increases their presence may boost the chance that a more heterogeneous group of women will be elected (Mansbridge Reference Mansbridge1999; Paxton and Hughes Reference Paxton and Hughes2007). Given these competing expectations, I suggest the following hypothesis:

Minority quotas may follow a similar pattern. Indeed, there are reasons to expect that special group rights for minorities may disproportionately benefit minority men. Throughout history, efforts by dominant groups to incorporate minorities into the political system have often served minority men. In the United States, for example, efforts at redistricting to improve the political representation of blacks increased the representation of black men more than that of black women (Darcy, Hadley, and Kirksey Reference Darcy, Hadley and Kirksey1993). Furthermore, the design of the typical minority quota may disadvantage women. Minority quotas tend to set aside a small number of seats in the legislature (Krook and O'Brien Reference Krook and O'Brien2010). Given that women are generally disadvantaged in terms of resources and political experience (Paxton and Hughes Reference Paxton and Hughes2007), women may be less likely to fill quota seats without requirements to include women.

Yet, in many countries, minority women today are better positioned than in times past to benefit from policies targeting minority communities. Recent research suggests that by defining norms, exerting pressure on states, interacting with local women's movements, and providing resources and training to women, the activities of international organizations matter for the incorporation of women into national-level politics (Paxton, Hughes, and Green Reference Paxton, Hughes and Green2006). Over the last few decades, the international women's movement has become a much broader and more inclusive force for change, as women from a wider range of nationalities, identities, and backgrounds have taken on leadership and organizing roles (Weldon Reference Weldon2006). Taken together, these statements suggest that as the international women's movement has grown more inclusive, the gains observed in women's political representation overall may also extend to minority women. Thus, I suggest the following:

Which quota policies benefit minority women most? The majority of political research to date has found that minority women's outcomes are more often tied to the fortunes of minority men than to those of majority women (Kymlicka Reference Kymlicka1995; Mansbridge and Tate Reference Mansbridge and Tate1992). Consider, for example, the progression of universal suffrage in countries like Australia, where white women had suffrage rights decades before Aboriginal women, who gained suffrage alongside Aboriginal men. Political representation often follows a similar pattern—minority women are elected to national legislatures for the first time years after minority men, but decades after majority women. In Canada, for example, the first woman was elected to the House of Commons in 1920, but the first African-Canadian woman was not elected until 1972, nine years after the first African-Canadian man was elected. And in Ecuador, indigenous women candidates have only been fielded by the Pachakutik Movement, despite a national gender quota requiring all parties to include women (Pacari Reference Pacari2002). Because the electoral fates of minority women are often tied to those of minority men, minority quotas may be more likely than gender quotas to benefit minority women. This leads to the following hypothesis:

Not all gender quotas may be equally effective at increasing the political representation of minority women. In particular, party quotas alone may be less likely than national policies to benefit minority women. If minorities tend to align with particular parties (Htun Reference Htun2004), there is no guarantee that the political party that most often represents the interests of a minority community will adopt a gender quota. Indeed, as of 2008, there were no ethnic, religious, or indigenous political parties that had voluntarily adopted party gender quotas. Therefore, I suggest the following:

Another important consideration, however, is what happens to the political fortunes of minority women when countries adopt measures to increase the political representation of both women and minorities. In the presence of tandem quotas, a combination of national gender and minority quotas, adding minority women to the national legislature helps satisfy both gender and minority targets. Arguably, minority women's dual identities benefit them precisely because their inclusion allows majority men to retain the maximum amount of seats. Research has not explored the effect of the use of tandem quotas on minority women's legislative representation nationally. But one early case study of women's political representation in local politics in India documents the recruitment of a Muslim woman over her husband “because she could take advantage of the effort to bring in both women and Muslims” (Wolkowitz Reference Wolkowitz and Afshar1987, 213). Generalizing this case suggests that in countries where both women and minorities are judged deserving of special electoral consideration, minority women may face fewer barriers to entering and succeeding in the political arena. I suggest the following:

Still, even countries with both gender and minority quotas may have low levels of minority women in parliament if these policies do not interact with one another. That is, the combination of national minority quotas and gender quotas regulated at the party level, which I call mixed quotas, may increase the representation of minority men and majority women without extending any benefits to minority women. Mixed quotas may be less successful than tandem quotas at generating gains in minority women's representation simply because national gender quotas are more effective at generating change for women than party measures. But mixed quotas may benefit minority women less often than tandem quotas for other reasons. For example, mixed quotas suggest that women and minorities mobilized separately for change, and minority women are likely to be marginalized within both of these movements. Furthermore, the failure of women to gain national gender quotas may evidence resistance to women's political representation, at least by certain political parties, making minority women less likely to benefit from minority quotas. Therefore, I expect

EXPLAINING VARIATION IN MINORITY WOMEN'S POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

Before the analysis, it is important to acknowledge that the countries that adopt quotas may be the very countries already most disposed to elect women, minorities, and/or minority women to national legislatures. Although I cannot fully resolve this endogeneity problem, I am able to consider, and later account for, factors other than quotas that might be associated with variation in minority women's political representation.Footnote ⁴ Because cross-national research to date has not evaluated variation in minority women in national legislatures, I draw extensively on research on women's representation, which considers factors that affect the “supply” of and the ”demand” for women candidates (Randall Reference Randall1987). To a lesser extent, I also draw on case-based research on minority representation.

The supply of women able to compete successfully for high-level political office is thought to be a product of socioeconomic or structural factors. Yet support for socioeconomic variables in cross-national research is mixed at best. Research finds that female labor force participation rates are an important determinant of female legislative representation only about half the time (e.g., Gray, Kittilson, and Sandholtz Reference Gray, Kittilson and Sandholtz2006; Kunovich and Paxton Reference Kunovich and Paxton2005). Research also tends to consider effects of economic development more generally. Although women's representation and economic development are not linearly related, economic development does condition how political institutions affect women's legislative outcomes (Hughes Reference Hughes2009). Accounting for cross-national differences in women's structural position and level of economic development may therefore be necessary to isolate the effects of quotas on minority women's political representation.

In addition to supply-side factors, institutional differences in political systems also create a different demand for women politicians (Paxton and Kunovich Reference Paxton and Kunovich2003). For instance, research consistently documents that PR electoral systems facilitate women's election in much higher numbers than in plurality–majority systems (e.g., Kenworthy and Malami Reference Kenworthy and Malami1999; Matland and Studlar Reference Matland and Studlar1996). Parties in PR systems are thought to be more conscious of balancing tickets to attract support from different constituencies. Minority representation scholarship similarly emphasizes electoral system effects (Bird Reference Bird2004; Lijphart Reference Lijphart, Grofman and Lijphart1986; Rule and Zimmerman Reference Rule and Zimmerman1994). Bird (Reference Bird2004) theorizes that PR systems with preference voting (where voters may change the order of candidates on party lists) should encourage both party support for minority candidates and minority mobilization. However, not all scholars agree that PR is best for minority representation. Even if successful at forming parties, small minority groups may find it difficult to obtain the minimum number of votes for representation in parliament (Shugart Reference Shugart, Rule and Zimmerman1994). Because minority populations are often regionally concentrated, plurality–majority systems can effectively increase the representation of minority groups (Lijphart Reference Lijphart, Grofman and Lijphart1986). Recent research also suggests that minority women may face particular obstacles to election in PR systems; in particular, religiously based ethnic political parties elect fewer women only in these systems (Holmsten, Moser, and Slosar Reference Holmsten, Moser and Slosar2010).

Additional demand-side factors thought to influence the representation of women and minority groups include district magnitude—the number of seats from a legislature that are elected in each district—and party ideology. Theoretically, having to run multiple candidates in the same district should encourage parties to include more diverse candidates that appeal to different segments of the electorate. However, multimember districts may also dilute the voting power of spatially concentrated minority groups, preventing the election of minority representatives (Gay Reference Gay2001; Persons Reference Persons, Rule and Zimmerman1992). Left-leaning parties are believed to be more egalitarian in their gender attitudes and more likely to promote traditionally underrepresented groups (Beckwith Reference Beckwith1992; Caul Reference Caul1999; Norris Reference Norris1985). Across countries, left party prominence has been shown to increase the percentage of women in legislative positions (Kenworthy and Malami Reference Kenworthy and Malami1999; Reynolds Reference Reynolds1999; Rule Reference Rule1987). Yet the importance of leftist parties may be decreasing as parties across the spectrum increasingly nominate women as candidates (Caul Reference Caul1999).

Cultural factors, expected to influence both the supply of and the demand for female candidates, form a third important explanation for variation in levels of female participation in parliament. Research on women's political representation often models the effects of cultural differences across countries by including country-level measures of region and/or dominant religion (e.g., Kenworthy and Malami Reference Kenworthy and Malami1999; Paxton Reference Paxton1997; Reynolds Reference Reynolds1999; Rule Reference Rule1987). Generally, this research finds that Scandinavian countries tend to outpace the rest of the world in women's legislative representation, whereas regions such as the Middle East and Asia tend to fall behind the West.

Overall, a range of socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors likely impact the political representation of minority women. In the next section, I explain how I evaluate the effects of these factors to test the aforementioned hypotheses.

DATA AND METHODS

Measures

The measures used throughout the quantitative analyses are presented in Table 1. The dependent variable is the percentage of women serving in the lower or single house of the national legislature, measured at the group level. For example, in 2004 black women in the United States held 2.8% of seats in Congress, so the dependent variable for blacks in the United States is 2.8.

TABLE 1.

Measures and Data Sources

The major theoretical variables of interest measure whether groups and countries are impacted by gender and minority quotas. I consider only those policies that affect national legislatures, and I exclude quotas that promote representation solely by age, disability, or profession. I employ two gender quota variables: National gender quota and Party gender quota. Countries with national gender quotas have adopted electoral laws regulating women's representation in all political parties, or they reserve seats for women. To exclude quotas that are largely “window dressing” and instead code quotas likely to be effective at changing the gender composition of legislatures, I code only gender quotas that regulate at least 10% of candidates or seats; and those that include electoral list requirements, sanctions for noncompliance, and/or reserved seats.Footnote ¹⁰ Party gender quotas are coded in countries where at least one party elected to the national legislature has adopted a gender quota, but no national policy regulates the gender of representatives.

Minority quotas include all policies that require the descriptive representation of minority groups.Footnote ¹¹ Minority quota (group) is coded so that groups receive a “1” only if directly affected by quota legislation. Minority quota (country) is coded “1” if any group in a country is affected by a minority quota. So, for example, New Zealand uses a quota to guarantee representation for the indigenous Maori people. For Minority quota (group), only Maori is coded as having a minority quota. For Minority quota (country), all of New Zealand is coded as having a minority quota. (See supplemental online Appendix C for a full listing of quota policies by country.)

As noted in Table 1, I also use eight control variables: the group's share of the population (Group size), percentage of women in the workforce (% Women economically active), economic development (Logged GDP per capita), use of an open-list/preferential or closed-list PR electoral system (PR open list and PR closed list), average district magnitude (District magnitude), whether the ruling party or coalition is left-leaning (Left party dominance), and whether the country is Western (West). I also test effects of other world regions, dominant religion, level of democracy, ethnoreligious heterogeneity, and the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) in auxiliary analyses (Marshall and Jaggers Reference Marshall and Jaggers2007; United Nations 2002).Footnote ¹² Including these predictors does not alter the substantive findings regarding the effects of quotas on majority and minority women's legislative representation. However, including these measures sometimes affects the statistical significance of other predictors; I reference these findings in the results where relevant.

To collect information on group size, I began with the CIA “Factbook,” which often reports official statistics from country censuses. In many cases, I also went directly to country censuses so that I could aggregate data to reflect the majority and minority categories I selected. I also drew from recent published research on minority groups, which often provides population estimates for groups lacking official population statistics. Last, I selectively used data from the Joshua Project (2008), an online source of data on ethnicity and religion worldwide that is hosted by the U.S. Center for World Mission. For groups with disputed population statistics, I collected upper and lower estimates and used the averages of these values.