Publication from the project:

Women, Quotas and Politics
Edited by Drude Dahlerup, Stockholm University. Routledge 2006
(From Feb 2007 also available in paperback)

This is the first world-wide, comparative study of the controversial
new trends of gender quotas now emerging in global politics. The book presents a comprehensive overview of changes in women's parliamen-
tary representation across the world.

This is important reading for all those working to increase women's influence in politics, because it scrutinizes under what circumstances gender quotas do increase women's representation - and why they sometimes fail.

These distinguished international scholars also show how gender balance in politics has become important to a nation's international image and why quotas are being introduced in many post-conflict countries. They present key case studies of countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Argentina, Sweden, South Africa, Belgium - and Rwanda, which in 2003 unexpectedly surpassed Sweden as the number one country in the world in terms of women's parliamentary representation.

The book covers almost all major regions of the world: Latin America, Africa, the Arab world, South Asia, the Balkans, The Nordic countries and Europe, New Zealand, Australia and the U.S.A. Using a comparative perspective, this book contains analyses of the discursive controversies around quotas; it gives an overview over various types of quotas in use from candidate quotas to reserved seat systems, and it throws light over the troublesome implementation process. When do gender quotas lead to actual increase in the number of women parliament? When are quotas merely a symbolic gesture? What does it imply to be elected as a 'quota woman'? Tackling these and many more key questions, this is a major new contribution to the field.

Making an important contribution to our knowledge of gender politics worldwide, this book will be of interest to NGOs, students and scholars of democracy, policy-making, comparative politics and gender studies.

More on the book under Highlights.



Quotas – a Key to Equality?
An International Comparison of the Use of Electoral Quotas to obtain Equal Political Citizenship for Women.

A research project at Stockholm University

Together with International IDEA this project has constructed a web site on the use of gender quotas globally, see www.quotaproject.org

The First World Wide Study of Quota Systems

Although highly controversial, gender quotas in public elections have been
introduced in an amazing number of countries around the world in recent years - for
instance in so different countries as Sweden, Nepal, South Africa, France, Uganda,
Argentina, Pakistan, and Bosnia.

This project is the first world-wide comparative analysis of the discursive
controversies around quotas and of the actual implementation of various quota
systems. The project will study

From Equality of Opportunity to Equality of Result

Quotas represent a change in public equality policy, from “equal opportunities” to “equality of results”. But quotas also touches upon fundamental questions in democratic theory (e.g. social representation versus representation of ideas) and in feminist theory (e.g. the construction of women as a political category)
The project will also study the influence of international organisations. It will focus on the process of "translation", e.g. the strategy used by women's movements in individual countries to transform and make use of the new international discourse on quotas into their own national political process.
For the purpose of cross-national comparison, the project has formed a network of international scholars that have conducted single country studies about the introduction of quotas.
The project co-operates with International IDEA.
This research project is supported by The Swedish Research Council