Discursive Strategies for Institutional Reform: Gender Quotas in Sweden and France

Abstract

Gender quotas have emerged in recent years as a key strategy for increasing women’s representation in electoral politics around the globe. Appearing today in more than 100 countries, these measures take several forms, including changes by individual political parties to their party statutes, as well as reforms initiated by national legislatures to revise constitutions and electoral laws (Dahlerup 2006b; Krook 2009). The shared goal is the nomination of more female candidates, most often to national parliaments. The spread of gender quotas to diverse contexts, as well as their mixed effects on the numbers of women elected, has inspired a large literature on quota policies. To understand quota adoption, scholars often begin with an analysis of quota debates, exploring how proposals are framed and justified in specific contexts. While advocates and opponents may vary across countries, a common approach is to map and unpack the content of these discourses,noting how actors articulate their positions in relation to existing political values (Freidenvall 2005; Holli et al. 2006; Krook et al. 2009). In many cases, these controversies lead to quota reform, but the apparent resolution of these debates does not ensure that quotas will be implemented fully. Rather, some reforms produce jumps, while others experience stagnation, or even decreases in the numbers of women elected.