Sustainable representation of women through gender quotas: A decade's experience in Morocco

Gender Quotas in Morocco: Lessons for Women's Descriptive and Symbolic Representation

“…(Respondent 5) Thus, the focus group suggests that the lack of partisan support indirectly dissuades women to run in local districts. Note that the 2002, 2007 and 2011 election results for parties' district lists and national lists are almost identical, which indicates that voters cast their votes for the women's list according to their party preferences (Darhour and Dahlerup 2013). Put differently, voters do not have distinct and explicit preferences for the women's national lists.…”

“…The concept of 'sustainable representation' has been proposed by Darhour and Dahlerup (2013) and can be measured through three indicators: 'the number of women in reserved versus open seats, whether reserved seats serve as a point of entry to open seats, and whether quotas provisions have been strengthened over time' (Krook 2013b).…”

“…More precisely, quota provisions first guaranteed 30 seats out of 325 to women in the lower chamber. The 2011 electoral reform then increased reserved seats for women to 60 out of 395 and added 30 reserved seats for young Moroccans under the age of 40 (Darhour and Dahlerup 2013). Women candidates run on national closed party lists and are elected through a proportional system with a threshold of 3%, while the other 305 members of parliament are elected in 92 local constituencies through a proportional representation system and the electoral threshold is 6% (Global Database of Gender Quotas 2013).…”

“…Figure 1 shows that they functioned as a 'fast-track' to increase women's descriptive representation in Morocco (Dahlerup and Friedenvall 2005;Darhour and Dahlerup 2013;Sater 2007). After the introduction of reserved seats in 2002, the percentage of women in parliament jumped from less than 1% to more than 10%.…”

Electoral quotas and political representation: Comparative perspectives

“…'Who' is recognised as a minority depends closely on the political context. In some countries, policies target groups based on race (Van Cott, 2005), nationality (Alionescu, 2004), religion (Salloukh, 2006), language (O'Neill, 1998), caste (Galanter, 1984), age (Darhour and Dahlerup, 2013) and ability (Powley, 2005). Almost always taking the form of reserved seats (Htun, 2004), these measures establish a minimum level of group representation, making them stronger guarantees than most gender quotas.…”