Do Gender Quotas Foster Women’s Political Engagement?

Abstract

Gender quotas have been held to have more far-reaching consequences than increasing women’s political representation. Some scholars claim that they foster women’s overall political engagement. After elaborating a theoretical framework on how affirmative action policies to legislative bodies might be beneficial to constituents of the targeted group, the author tests this hypothesis on women in seventeen Latin American countries. Contrasting previous claims, the author shows that there is no general proof of attitudinal or behavioral effects. The analysis represents an initial attempt to theorize and use large-scale data to examine the more long-term consequences of quota policies on female constituents’ political involvement.