Acceleration Effects: Quotas Promoting Women's Access to Power

Gender quotas may accelerate women's access to (and survival in) leadership positions by increasing both the supply of, and demand for, female leaders. Women's presence in legislatures is already positively correlated with women's access to parties’ national executive committees (Kittilson Reference Kittilson2006), cabinets (Escobar-Lemon and Taylor-Robinson Reference Escobar-Lemon and Taylor-Robinson2005; Krook and O’Brien Reference Krook and O’Brien2012; Reynolds Reference Reynolds1999), and even the posts of head of government and state (Jalalzai Reference Jalalzai2013). As more women enter legislative politics via quota policies, these broader trends suggest that the number of female leaders will similarly increase.

Acceleration effects are especially likely to emerge if quotas augment and improve the pool of female candidates for leadership posts. Despite the concern that quotas bring undeserving or unambitious female candidates into political office,Footnote ² empirical studies typically find that women elected via these policies are as (or even more) qualified as their colleagues. Comparing the backgrounds, demographic characteristics, and political experiences of Ugandan legislators, O’Brien (Reference O’Brien, Franceschet, Krook and Piscopo2012) shows that women elected via quotas meet or exceed the standards set by their nonquota counterparts. Other works demonstrate a positive link between politicians’ education levels and quota implementation (Baltrunaite et al. Reference Baltrunaite, Bello, Casarico and Profeta2014; Casas-Arce and Saiz Reference Casas-Arce and Saiz2011). Still others illustrate that women who are elected via quotas are at least as efficient as legislators as their male peers, and even outpace men on some measures of competency (Murray Reference Murray2010; Weeks and Baldez Reference Weeks and Baldez2015). In both the developed and developing world, quotas have even been found to foster female politicians’ political ambition (Geissel and Hust Reference Geissel and Hust2005). Together, these works show that quotas may bring more qualified women into the candidate pool for leadership posts, which could in turn increase the probability that a woman will be chosen to head her party. If the women selected via quotas are especially competent, moreover, these policies may also extend female leaders’ tenures in office (Fischer, Dowding, and Dumont Reference Fischer, Dowding and Dumont2012).

Quotas may not only alter the supply of potential female leaders; they may also generate greater demand for women in these posts. Increasing the proportion of female politicians may produce changes in the culture, norms, and behaviors within political parties and legislative assemblies (Dahlerup Reference Dahlerup1988). Research on female politicians in postsocialist countries suggests, for example, that women's inclusion in legislative politics changed the institutional culture in those parliaments (Galligan, Clavero, and Calloni Reference Galligan, Clavero and Calloni2007). Britton (Reference Britton2005) similarly highlights the myriad of ways in which a large influx of female legislators created a more “women-friendly” environment in the South African parliament, including changes to the institution's “hours, calendar, and climate” and to the form and content of policy debates (126). Indeed, Bauer and Britton (Reference Bauer and Britton2006) point to the positive effects of women's increased descriptive representation on institutional cultures in several African parliaments.

Beyond these broader changes in political culture, exposure to female legislators via quota policies can also make party members more receptive to the idea of a female leader. People in general, and men in particular, are often skeptical about women's leadership abilities. Recent research shows that a principal benefit of quota policies is their medium- and long-term effect on beliefs about the acceptability and legitimacy of women as political actors (Franceschet, Krook, and Piscopo, Reference Franceschet, Krook and Piscopo2012; Tripp, Konate, and Lowe-Morna, Reference Tripp, Konaté, Lowe-Morna and Dahlerup2006). Studies of both Tanzania (Yoon Reference Yoon2011) and Rwanda (Burnet Reference Burnet2011) suggest that quotas have transformed negative cultural and social beliefs about women's participation in politics and granted women access to leadership positions from which they had traditionally been excluded. In India, Bhavani (Reference Bhavani2009) shows that the selection of women as village leaders via a quota policy raised women's election probability even after the quota was removed. Beaman et al. (Reference Beaman, Chattopadhyay, Duflo, Pande and Topalova2009) add that after two randomly assigned election periods of female leadership, villagers’ confidence in female leaders’ competence improved. These exposure effects also appear to operate at the elite level. In Germany, entering parliament as a member of a quota party encourages male legislators’ participation in debates on women's issues, suggesting that quotas may influence male parliamentarians’ attitudes and behaviors (Xydias Reference Xydias2014).

As well as shifting the norms concerning women in political leadership, quotas may also incentivize women to jointly promote each other's (re-)election to top positions. The “critical mass’’ literature is based on the assumption that female legislators will form coalitions once their numbers are sufficiently large. Increasing female representation can thus alter the way in which women conduct politics. Female members of parliament (MPs) describe a feeling of camaraderie once their numbers grow (Grey Reference Grey2002), and women in committees are more likely to be inclusive and collaborative as the percentage of female leaders increases (Rosenthal Reference Rosenthal1998).

While women's greater numbers alone can lead female politicians to work together, quotas may have consequences above and beyond what is achieved by reaching a critical mass of female representatives. By generating “mandate effects” (Franceschet and Piscopo Reference Franceschet and Piscopo2008), quotas may heighten women's “gender consciousness,” making them especially likely to band together in support of prospective or incumbent female leaders. Quota adoption can also serve as a focal point that encourages women's organizing for higher office. When the Swedish Social Democrats introduced their quota, for example, the party's women's association produced a handbook that both encouraged women to nominate female candidates for top positions and provided them with specific advice on how to achieve this aim.

Gender quotas can increase the supply of qualified women in the candidate pool for leadership positions. Exposure to women in politics can also reshape the culture to be more women-friendly and increase the support for (or at least tolerance of) women's ascension to top posts. Quotas may even encourage coalitions to form in support of current (or prospective) female leaders. Together, these claims suggest that introducing a gender quota may accelerate women's access to top positions within political parties and help them remain in these posts for longer periods. These positive outcomes are especially likely to emerge in cases where the quota has a greater impact on women's descriptive representation, and thus generates larger changes in the candidate pool, a stronger push for a more female-friendly culture, and/or greater opportunities for women's mobilization and coalition formation. This leads to the first set of hypotheses concerning quotas’ acceleration effects on women's representation in leadership positions:

Trade-Off Effects: Quotas Hindering Women's Access to Power

Though quotas may increase women's presence in elected office, in public debates it is often suggested that these policies hurt the very groups they are designed to help. Critics hold that positive discrimination undermines the status and efficacy of the targeted group(s) within the legislature. In other words, women's immediate gains in descriptive representation come at the risk of increased stigmatization that can damage their long-term career prospects.

Social stigma occurs when a majority group assigns negative and stereotypical attributes to minority group members (Link and Phelan Reference Link and Phelan2001). This process has tangible consequences for the lower-status group, which stem both from being subjected to active marginalization by the dominant group(s) and also from minority group members’ internalization of these negative attributes. Women are particularly vulnerable to stigmatization in the political arena. Legislatures are traditionally masculine environments (Diamond Reference Diamond1977; Thomas Reference Thomas1994), and there are gender biases in the personnel, policy, and cultures of political institutions (Lovenduski Reference Lovenduski2005). Bills sponsored by women, for example, are sometimes subjected to greater scrutiny, hostility, and debate than male-sponsored legislation (Kathlene, Clarke, and Fox Reference Kathlene, Clarke, Fox and Dodson1991). Male legislators also pressure women to focus on traditionally feminine issue areas, while maintaining their dominance in high-prestige policy domains (Schwindt-Bayer Reference Schwindt-Bayer2006). In discussions, female politicians sometimes find it difficult to make their opinions heard, and have even reported being subjected to bullying by male legislators (Galligan, Clavero, and Calloni Reference Galligan, Clavero and Calloni2007). Indeed, women speak substantially less than men in most mixed-gender settings (Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and Shaker Reference Karpowitz, Mendelberg and Shaker2012).

The threat of stigmatization may also be especially acute for female politicians elected via quota policies (Dahlerup and Freidenvall Reference Dahlerup and Freidenvall2010, 42). Central to the debates surrounding quotas is the assumption that they promote undeserving female candidates at the expense of more meritorious male politicians. Women who enter an organization with the help of affirmative action policies are frequently ascribed negative attributes, including accusations that they have not “earned” their post or are less competent than their nonquota counterparts (Murray Reference Murray2010).

Interviews with “quota women” in both developed and developing states indeed indicate that they experience stigmatization. Franceschet and Piscopo (Reference Franceschet and Piscopo2008) note that several female legislators in Argentina felt that the quota law resulted in their political professionalism being called into question, which in turn undercut coalition-building opportunities. Childs and Krook (Reference Childs, Krook, Franceschet, Krook and Piscopo2012) similarly reveal that women in the British parliament—especially those elected via the Labour Party's all-women shortlists—experienced social stigma. While some perceived these differences as narrowing over time, others experienced lingering stigmatization. Women in reserved seats in Tanzania likewise reported being treated as “second-class” MPs and feeling that their work did not receive sufficient recognition (Yoon Reference Yoon2011).Footnote ³

As well as stigmatization, sudden increases in the number of women in elected office can generate adverse reactions from their male colleagues. As a minority group's presence grows, group members are likely to bolster their claims on limited political resources. To protect their power, male elites may attempt to limit the authority of female entrants and sideline women as a group. Men have been shown, for example, to become more verbally aggressive and controlling of both committee hearings (Kathlene Reference Kathlene1994; Rosenthal Reference Rosenthal1998) and parliamentary debates (Grey Reference Grey2002) following an expansion in the proportion of women in the legislature. Kanthak and Krause (Reference Kanthak and Krause2012) find that men devalue their female colleagues as the proportion of women in the US Congress increases. Large numbers of female legislators have similarly been tied to both women's diminished success in passing legislation (Bratton Reference Bratton2005) and reduced chances of being appointed to “masculine” and “powerful” committees (Barnes Reference Barnes2014; Reference Barnes2016; Heath, Schwindt-Bayer, and Taylor-Robinson Reference Heath, Schwindt-Bayer and Taylor-Robinson2005; Towns Reference Towns2003). Quotas may not only limit female politicians’ access to power; they may also shorten their tenure in leadership posts. Weeks and Baldez (Reference Weeks and Baldez2015) demonstrate, for example, that due to elite discrimination—and despite their success as legislators—women selected via the Italian quota policy were significantly less likely than their nonquota counterparts to be re-elected to office.

In addition to stigmatization and backlash effects, sudden increases in women's descriptive representation can also create barriers to female politicians’ organizational efforts. While the critical mass literature suggests that women will work together once their numbers are sufficiently large, studies examining both women's substantive representation (Childs and Krook Reference Childs and Krook2009; Grey Reference Grey2002) and access to leadership posts (Bratton Reference Bratton2005) have failed to find support for these coordination effects. Kanthak and Krause (Reference Kanthak and Krause2012) even suggest that female legislators are less supportive of their female copartisans when women's numbers are greater (as indicated by data on donations to fellow politicians). Increasing women's descriptive representation thus does not guarantee that women will join forces to achieve common ends (Beckwith and Cowell-Meyers Reference Beckwith and Cowell-Meyers2007). Indeed, there are examples of women within the same party simultaneously pursuing different aims, even on issues related to women's descriptive (Evans Reference Evans2011) and substantive (Smooth Reference Smooth2011; Xydias Reference Xydias2014) representation.

Male legislators’ active and passive marginalization of women following large increases in their representation—combined with women's internalized stigmatization and limited capacity to cooperate—can together undermine women's advancement up the political ladder following quota adoption. These factors may also jeopardize female leaders’ survival in these posts. Just as with the acceleration effects hypothesized above, moreover, these negative repercussions are likely to be greatest when the quota has a larger effect on the proportion of elected women. That is, quotas may result in a trade-off between an increase in women's representation in the legislature and their subsequent access to leadership posts. This suggests a second set of hypotheses:

The Quota Policy

In 1993 the Swedish Social Democratic Party introduced zippered party lists. This policy—which requires all party lists to alternate between male and female candidates—was adopted in response to events in the national political arena. The party's previous quota policy (a target of 50% women on the ballot) had not increased numeric representation. A fall in the share of female parliamentarians between 1988 and 1991 prompted a heated debate in which a network of prominent women threatened to form a new feminist political party. They explicitly demanded that parties give women half of the political power by providing them with positions high up on the party ballots. The risk of losing both politicians and voters to the new party motivated the Social Democrats to adopt a zipper provision. Local parties were asked to compose two separate lists of candidates, one male and one female, and then “zip” these together to produce the final list (see Figure 1).

FIGURE 1.

Example of “Zipped” Social Democratic Party Ballot from the Ekerö Municipality in the 2006 Election

The adoption and implementation of the Swedish 50–50 subnational level quota was unrelated to municipal or local-level party features, including attitudes towards gender equality and women's political representation. Indeed, when the quota policy was adopted, there was a great deal of variation in municipal Social Democratic parties’ behavior towards women. Some were progressive and inclusive, while others excluded women from power. Yet all local parties were required to alternate male and female candidates on their electoral ballots. Figure 2 shows that the quota substantially affected women's numeric representation in the local-level parties. It also shows that these increases were not limited to either small (rural) or large (urban) localities. Both above- and below-median-sized municipalities experienced a 10% jump in the average proportion of elected women in the year the policy was first applied.

FIGURE 2.

Trends in Women's Numeric Representation in Local-Level Social Democratic Parties

Note: Councils are divided by above- and below-median council size. The x axis denotes election years and the y axis shows the average percentage of seats on local assemblies held by women. The vertical lines mark the introduction of the zipper gender quota in 1994.

The high variation in local parties’ initial positions, combined with the near-universal implementation of the electoral affirmative action policy, together resulted in a quota that had widely disparate effects. For parties that were already near parity, this policy had little influence on women's descriptive representation. For parties that had previously excluded women, the quota radically increased the number of female representatives.

The Swedish Social Democrats’ local-level zipper quota thus provides a unique opportunity for studying policy impact. The exogenous assignment of this 50–50 quota allows us to circumvent the concern that these policies are primarily implemented by parties that are already accepting of women in leadership, or whose female members aspire to these posts. With data on leadership appointments ranging from 1988 to 2010, moreover, we are able to examine women's access to leadership posts within each municipality over time. That is, in each local party we can compare the likelihood of selecting and reappointing female leaders before and after the quota was implemented in 1994. This allows us to determine whether, and to what extent, “quota impact”—i.e., the change in women's descriptive representation following quota implementation—increases or decreases the probability of selecting and reappointing female leaders within each local party. This prepost comparison further ensures that the impact of the quota within each municipality is unrelated to trends in women's political leadership that began in the pre-quota era.

Swedish Political Institutions

We examine trends in women's representation across Swedish local-level Social Democratic parties over seven elections. The 290 municipalities considered vary in size from approximately 3,000 to 800,000 citizens. They are parliamentary democracies with list proportional representation electoral systems. This is the most common voting method in the world, and is especially prevalent in countries implementing both voluntary and statutory gender quotas.

Local legislative bodies are called municipal assemblies, and their boards are the local equivalent of the national government. Compared to other countries, these local governments have substantial economic powers. Their public expenditures account for one-fifth of Swedish GDP, and they employ over one-fifth of the country's labor force. Each municipality also sets its own income tax rate, which is usually around 20%. The main political responsibilities of these municipal governments lie in the areas of education, elder care, and childcare, though they also handle issues such as building permits, transport, and infrastructure.

All eight political parties represented in the national parliament are typically represented in municipal assemblies. Most municipalities also have smaller local parties, which hold an average of 2% of seats. Nominating these representatives is a highly local affair. Parties are decentralized and there is a strong culture of local autonomy. The Social Democrats’ party lists, for example, are composed in three steps. First, a group of potential candidates is selected from among the party membership by internal nominations from the local party “clubs” and under the administration of a selection committee. These clubs organize party members, each of whom belongs to at least one club based on geography (neighborhood) and usually at least one fractional club (most commonly a youth, women’s, or union club). In a second step, the selection committee uses these nominations to assemble a preliminary list that, in the third step, is subject to a vote in a party member meeting.

Elections to the municipal assemblies occur at the same time as the national elections and have historically had a turnout of approximately 90% of eligible voters. They were held every third year prior to 1993, and every fourth year thereafter. While most municipal politicians maintain a “day job” on the side, the leaders of the two largest local parties are often full-time politicians, which gives them a great deal of influence over the political process compared to other assembly members. Combined with the municipal governments’ economic power, the position of local leader is a politically important post. Indeed, a leadership position in a large municipality is generally considered to be more influential than a rank-and-file seat in the national parliament.

Measuring Female Leadership and Survival

Our first dependent variable is a binary indicator that takes a value of 1 if the leader of the municipal Social Democratic Party is a woman. As previously noted, we identify the leader as the candidate occupying the top position on the party ballot.Footnote ⁴ These top-ranked candidates are almost always awarded the most desirable appointment available to each party in the municipal political hierarchy, which we verified using data on appointments following the 2006 and 2010 elections.Footnote ⁵ Given the power of the Social Democratic Party in Swedish politics, the local leader will almost always serve as either the chairperson or vice chairperson of the executive committee.

Our second dependent variable is a binary indicator of the leader's survival from the last election period. It takes a value of 1 if a female leader remains in the top position on the electoral ballot, and 0 otherwise. As we wish to compare women's tenure in leadership positions before and after quota implementation, groups with male leaders are not included in this analysis.

Figure 3 illustrates the time trends of the two dependent variables.Footnote ⁶ The left graph shows the proportion of municipal Social Democratic parties with a female leader. It demonstrates that women's access to power has risen steadily since 1988. The right pane plots the proportion of female incumbent leaders that remain in power. Fifty percent of women retained their posts both in the year before the quota (1991) and in the year it was introduced (1994). There was a dip in 1998, but women's reappointment rate appears to rebound over the next two elections.

FIGURE 3.

Selection and Survival of Female Leaders Over Time

Note: The left graph plots the share of local-level Social Democratic parties with a female leader, while the right graph plots the proportion of incumbent female leaders that held onto their posts in each election period.

Empirical Modeling Strategy

To test whether the gender quota influenced both women's promotion to leadership positions and their survival in such posts, we rely on logistic regression analyses with a difference-in-difference specification.Footnote ⁷ For our dataset of Social Democratic municipal parties, we estimate

(1) $$\begin{eqnarray} \eta _{m,t} = \alpha + \beta _t \Delta w_{1994 - 1991,m} *Election_{year_t } \nonumber\\&& +\, \gamma _t Election_{year_t } + \theta _m Mun_m ,\end{eqnarray}$$

where $\eta _{m,t} = \log \left( {\frac{{{\rm p}_{m,t} }}{{1 - {\rm p}_{m,t} }}} \right)$ is the transformed expectation, p _{m, t} = P(Lead _{m, t} = 1), and Lead_m,t represents each of the two dependent variables. The treatment Δw _{1994–1991,m} measures the size of the quota's impact in each municipality. It captures the change in the proportion of elected women between the 1994 and 1991 elections, minus the time trend in the proportion of elected women. This trend adjustment allows us to distinguish between the underlying process of women's increasing presence in the party groups over time (i.e., the increases that would have happened even without the quota) and the quota's impact on women's numerical representation. We compute the linear trend in the share of women in each party group between 1982 and 1991, and then subtract this trend from the change in the share of women from 1991 to 1994. The resulting adjusted shift in the proportion of women in the quota year captures the inflow of female politicians attributable to the quota policy. The municipalities with the largest quota impact are those in which women's representation was initially the lowest. For these local-level parties, the quota dramatically increased women's descriptive representation. Low-impact municipalities, in contrast, are those that were already close to gender parity before the policy was implemented in 1994. For those parties, the quota policy had a limited effect on women's representation.

The quota impact measure is interacted with a dummy variable for each election between 1988 and 2010: Election _yeart . The 1991 election is used as the reference category. The key vector of estimates, β _t , captures the difference in the log odds of the response variable in the year in question compared to the reference year (1991) for a unit increase in quota impact. Our specification includes fixed effects for each election year, denoted by Election _yeart , to ensure that we hold constant any time trend(s) in the averages of our outcome variables across all municipalities. We also include fixed effects for each municipality (Mun_m ), so that we estimate β _t based on variation in the presence and reappointment of female leaders within a specific municipality and over time. These fixed effects account for time-invariant municipal-level factors that might influence both quota impact and parties’ (re)selection of a female leader.

Though the variation in quota impact across municipalities is not exogenous—because it is determined by preexisting levels of women's descriptive representation—our results are generated by comparing changes in women's access (and reappointment) to leadership before and after quota implementation within each municipality. Our municipal-level fixed effects account for locality-specific features that might simultaneously determine both our dependent variables (women's access to and survival in power) and our main predictor (quota impact). We further re-estimated our baseline analysis with variables controlling for the local Social Democratic Party's electoral support, the size of the municipal assembly, and the municipality's socioeconomic conditions including the gender gap in income. All results are robust to these additional controls (see Tables A5 and A6 in the Online Appendix for details). In essence, combining the exogenous assignment of the local-level quota policy with a difference-in-difference estimation strategy allows us to treat our data “as-if” random. Together, these two features of the analysis make this study a natural experiment.