Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Department of Communication and Department of Political Science, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
PLoS One. 2021 Sep 23;16(9):e0257665. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257665. eCollection 2021.
Underrepresentation of women in politics is a matter of great concern to social scientists, citizens, and policymakers alike. Despite effort over the past decade to ameliorate it with gender quotas of different types, scientific research provides a mixed picture on the extent to which quotas can close these gender gaps under different conditions. We approach this puzzle by focusing on the orientation of electoral systems-candidate-centered vs. platform-centered-as a context that conditions the effect of quotas on representation. Our analyses of 76 countries' electoral rules and legislatures show that contrary to expectations, it is in candidate-oriented systems that quotas facilitate stronger effect on women's representation. Even after considering proportional representation, district magnitude, human development, or labor-force participation as alternative explanations, we show that quotas foster greater increases in gender representation in candidate-oriented systems. The broader implications are that in electoral systems that tend to have larger gender gaps, quotas have a substantial contribution to equal representation.
女性在政治中的代表性不足是社会科学家、公民和政策制定者共同关注的问题。尽管在过去十年中，人们通过不同类型的性别配额制度努力加以改善，但科学研究在配额制度在不同条件下能够在多大程度上缩小这些性别差距方面提供了一个混合的图景。我们通过关注选举制度的取向——以候选人为中心与以政纲为中心——作为一个影响配额对代表性影响的背景来解决这个难题。我们对 76 个国家的选举规则和立法机构的分析表明，与预期相反，在以候选人为中心的制度中，配额更有利于增强对妇女代表的影响。即使考虑到比例代表制、选区规模、人类发展或劳动力参与等作为替代解释因素，我们也表明，在以候选人为中心的制度中，配额促进了性别代表性的更大增长。更广泛的影响是，在选举制度中，性别差距较大的国家，配额制度对平等代表权有很大的贡献。
