Playing with different cards: Party politics, gender quotas and women’s empowerment

Abstract

Although statutory quotas have considerably expanded worldwide, the bulk of gender quotas in place are party quotas used in the selection of candidates and composition of party bodies. This article aims to examine whether reforms addressing women’s representation translate into greater power for women within political parties, thus providing new insights into how transformative gender quotas may (or may not) be in promoting gender equality in politics more generally. Specifically, we look beyond the distributive logic of gender quotas and examine instead the party institutional configuration in which patterns of distribution are realised, through the daily enactment of informal institutions. Our findings suggest that while unequal patterns of office distribution can be effectively fixed through gender quotas, this ‘simple’ solution cannot automatically subvert the main informal sources of male power in the party organisation. As change and continuity coexist, gender quota reforms are layering processes in which some elements are renegotiated while others persist.