User:154662L/Gender quota

Legislated candidate quotas[edit]
Found in countries utilizing proportional representation, candidate quotas target the transition from aspirant to candidate by requiring parties to include a certain minimum percentage of women in their candidate lists. Candidate quotas are either statutory or voluntary. Legislated candidate quotas require all parties to abide by the rule and are commonly found in Latin America, such as the Argentine quota law. Thérèse Mailloux who serves as the Chair of the Board of directors for the Groupe Femmes Politique et Démocratie stated that approximately 25 of the top countries a part of the Inter-Parliamentary Union have implemented gender quotas by their constitution or as part of their law.

Case studies[edit source]
These case studies will focus on countries who have implemented gender quotas or found alternatives to gender quotas.

Argentina[edit source]
Main article: Argentine quota law

Prior to the establishment of a candidate quota in 1991, Argentina's Peronist party used internal party quotas to increase the number of women holding congressional seats. Because the party was so dominant, Argentina had one of the highest proportions of women in legislature in the world at the time.

In 1991, Argentina passed Law 24.012, the first national gender quota law in the world. The Ley de Cupos ("Law of Quotas") stipulates that the closed lists of candidates that parties present must be have at least 30% women. It also requires that female candidates are placed in winnable spots on the list, which depended on the number of seats a party is renewing from the previous election. In most contexts, this meant at least one woman candidate for every two men. To ensure compliance, parties that do not present lists meeting these requirements are rejected.

In November 2017, Argentina made changes to its Electoral Code of 2012. By Law No. 27,412 Article 60, party lists were required to follow a zipper system, in which men and women alternated spots on the list. Because of this mechanism, party lists are required to have parity (50% women) in their composition.

As of November 1, 2021, there are 42.6% women in the Chamber of Deputies and 40.3% women in the Senate.

Canada
Canada’s system is based on voluntary party quotas allowing for each Canadian political party to hold their own stance on gender quotas. This is only if they wish to implement such quotas at all. The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada has yet to implement any structure or policies to increase female representation in their party. The Progressive Conservative Party believes that a gender quota would undermine a women’s merit and that government interference with a quota would invalidate the democratic system. The New Democratic Party (NDP) has enforced a policy where during a federal election at least one female must be in contention for a nomination in each federal electoral district. Additionally, they adopted a goal to have at least fifty percent women candidates in a federal election. They also have a federal NDP Women Commission council and specific funding to advocate and support the participation of women in politics. In 1993, the Liberal Party of Canada aim to elect twenty-five percent women, although this has not been declared an official policy and is not strongly endorsed. Similar to the NDP, the Liberal Party has created a national women’s commission and a funding source to aid new female candidates. They have also implemented training for women interested in entering politics. The Green Party is currently led by a females and holds a policy that fifty percent of their Party must be female candidates.

Although there have been no gender quotas implemented by the government in Canada, some provinces such as New Brunswick have established alternatives. In 2017, New Brunswick passed a law for gender-targeted public funding (GTPF) to become an incentive to increase female representation in New Brunswick politics. The GTFP policy functions by "The origins of gender-targeted public finance measures: the case of New Brunswick, Canada"allocating funding to Canadian political parties based on the votes cast for women and men candidates in the previous election. In 2020, the party that benefited from this policy the most was the Green Party. The Green Party was able to achieve an equal slate of female and male candidates and increase their vote share by fifteen percent throughout the entire province. This in turn led to a ten percent increase in their annual subsidy received to fund their party.

The province of Quebec is another province that has implemented alternative strategies to increase the number of women who are elected in the province. The Quebec provincial government created and funds a program named “Decision-making: A Matter of Equality”. This program advocates for increasing the number of women who hold government decision-making positions. They try to achieve this by supporting projects to train women who wish to run for political office. Other groups such as the “Femme, Politique et Démocratie (FPD)” in Quebec and “Equal Voice s” work with multiple levels of office in Canada. Both groups work to increase female nominations for candidates and work to elect more women to all levels of political office.