Quotas, the Electoral System Type and the Election of Young Women

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on a specific group of legislators facing large hurdles during recruitment processes, namely young women. Building on the institutional literature, we hypothesize that gender quota regulations, youth quotas, and proportional representation (PR) electoral systems should particularly benefit young women. Our quantitative study, capturing one hundred elections conducted between 2012 and 2017, finds partial support for our expectations. For the three hypotheses, we find that legislative quotas and voluntary party quotas for both youths and gender do not significantly increase the share of young women. In contrast, PR electoral systems render the electoral arena less discriminatory toward younger women.