Gender quotas traditionally focus on the underrepresentation of women. Conceiving of quotas in this way perpetuates the status of men as the norm and women as the "other." Women are subject to heavy scrutiny of their qualifications and competence, whereas men's credentials go unchallenged. This paper calls for a normative shift towards the problem of overrepresentation, arguing that the quality of representation is negatively affected by having too large a group drawn from too narrow a talent pool. Curbing overrepresentation through ceiling quotas for men offers three core benefits. First, it promotes meritocracy by ensuring proper scrutiny of politicians of both sexes. Second, it provides an impetus for improving the criteria used to select and evaluate politicians. Third, neutralizing the overly masculinized environment within parliaments might facilitate better substantive and symbolic representation of both men and women. All citizens would benefit from these measures to increase the quality of representation.

The introduction of France's "parity" law in 2000 raised fears of electing inferior women candidates via a gender quota. France has since held two legislative elections, with the proportion of women in parliament rising from 10.9% to 12.3% in 2002, and 18.5% in 2007. These rises permit an empirical evaluation of whether "quota women" measure up to those elected without a quota. New women parliamentarians are compared to their male counterparts and to women elected before 2002 to see whether there are any noticeable differences in their background (profession, age, and prior experience) and their levels of parliamentary activity (including numbers of bills, reports, and questions introduced). The findings challenge the notion that parity is producing weak politicians. The slightly different profiles of men and women politicians reflect wider barriers to women's political careers that would not have been overcome without the parity law. Once women are elected, the volume of activity shows no evidence of being gendered, suggesting that women are as effective in the job as men. These findings imply that sex is a barrier to entry but not to performance, reinforcing claims for the use of quotas to overcome entry barriers and negating claims that quotas produce second-rate parliamentarians.

Gender quotas are a growing worldwide phenomenon, yet their political implications remain under-researched. Using the prominent case study of France, which has the world's highest quota (fifty percent, or 'parity') but low proportions of women in its parliament, Rainbow Murray looks at quotas from the perspective of the key actors responsible for them-political parties. Parity in France has posed many riddles: its implementation has varied across parties and elections and over time, and French parties pay millions of euros each year in fines for neglecting to implement a gender quota that they themselves introduced. Using original data and insights, this book solves these riddles through a framework based on the parties' underlying motivations. By placing quotas within the broader context of party strategy and candidate selection processes, Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France demonstrates how quotas present conflicting interests for political parties which shape their behaviour when introducing, implementing and-on occasion-undermining gender quotas.

The passage of electoral gender quotas raises questions about why male elites would support policies that seemingly go against their self-interests. Recent work on France suggests that quota adoption is self-interested because male legislators benefit from alleged voter bias against female candidates. This article evaluates this explanation as a means for understanding quota adoption globally. It argues that the key actors are not legislators but political parties. Developing an alternative causal story centered on "party pragmatism," it finds that decisions to introduce quotas are rational and consistent once a range of incentives-ideological, electoral, and strategic-are taken into account.Keywords comparative politics, elections and voting behavior, political organizations and parties, women and politics at NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY on June 12, 2015 prq.sagepub.com Downloaded from

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This article nuances the argument that ethnic minority women experience cumulative disadvantage within politics. Drawing on the French case study, I demonstrate a complex relationship between gender and ethnicity. The gender parity movement saw ethnicity as competing with gender and rejected claims for ethnic minority representation, but still drew attention to the homogeneity of French politics. Descriptive representation of minority women is now slowly progressing, as they simultaneously promote gender and ethnic diversity within politics. However, their inclusion is conditional on their willingness to act as symbols of secularity and assimilation. This particularly constrains the substantive representation of Muslim women.

Certain societal groups are significantly overrepresented within politics, including men, ethnic majority groups, and socioeconomic elites. This has fueled debates regarding meritocracy within political recruitment. While meritocracy is desirable, its definition and measurement are contested. The criteria used in theoretical and empirical academic studies differ from those of political parties and voters, as discussed below. Furthermore, there is bias in favor of the male status quo, with all groups preferring the qualities of existing elites. The definition of a “good” politician is therefore highly subjective. Nonetheless, political traditionalists claim that the “best” candidate should be selected even if this leads to significant gender imbalance in parliaments. Yet, if political recruitment is biased in favor of social elites, the overrecruitment of men may not derive solely from merit (Murray 2014). Without definitive criteria for evaluating prospective candidates and judging those already elected, we cannot determine whether political recruitment is meritocratic.

The study of electoral quotas is often focused on tangible outputs, with far less research considering the perspectives of the political parties charged with quota implementation. Using the French 'parity' law as a case study, this article explores how political parties will respond to a compulsory quota and seek to incorporate it into the candidate selection process. Parties are faced with competing and contradictory demands throughout this process, and the ordering and evaluation of these demands depends on the party in question. A model is offered that illuminates how parties' underlying goals will dictate their trajectory through the process of deciding whether and how to implement quotas.