The Political Cure: Gender Quotas and Women's Health

Abstract

Political gender quotas have become the institutional solution for most governments hoping to increase women's descriptive and substantive representation in national and local government, despite the lack of consensus over whether quotas have a consistent positive effect on the lives of women. We argue that the different forms in which quotas are implemented result in diverse effects in the substantive representation of women's issues. Using women's health to illustrate the substantive effect of women's political participation through quotas, we utilize multilevel models to find that quotas are effective at placing women into legislative office and that this descriptive representation is associated with positive conditions for women's health. However, the strength of the relationship depends on the type of quota implemented. Countries implementing candidate quotas exhibit more consistent but weaker relationships between representation and women's health outcomes than in countries with reserved seat quotas. These results affirm the quota's objective to place women in political office but suggest that the policy effectiveness of the individual female legislators may depend on the quota system in place.

In Whose Interest? Gender and Mass–Elite Priority Congruence in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Second, we find that women MPs prioritize health more than men MPs, whereas there are no differences among citizens. Our finding that health is a domain prioritized by women legislators is consistent with previous studies on MP priorities (Norris, 1996; Schwindt-Bayer, 2006; Tremblay, 1998; Wängnerud, 2000) and aligns with recent work suggesting that women’s increased presence in legislative bodies leads to more public spending on health (Clayton & Zetterberg, in press) and better public health outcomes (Bhalotra & Clots-Figueras, 2014; Swiss et al, 2012; Westfall & Chantiles, 2016). Why we observe this trend—especially when, at least among African cases, it is not observed among citizens—is puzzling.…”

Quota Shocks: Electoral Gender Quotas and Government Spending Priorities Worldwide

“…It is possible that our results stem from funds that are being redistributed to areas within the health sector that predominately affect women -such as women's maternal or reproductive healthin which case, our findings would fit well into the framework of women's substantive representation (see e.g. Westfall & Chantiles, 2016). Another possibility is that women legislators prioritize health because it is a relatively uncontentious policy area; one they can safely claim as political newcomers.…”

“…Although of course not all topics related to health are exclusively of women's interest (see e.g. Murray, 2014), we do see strong evidence that women citizens and women MPs support increased funding for public health, particularly maternal and child health (Bhalotra & Clots-Figueras, 2014;Miller, 2008;Schwindt-Bayer, 2006;Swiss et al, 2012;Westfall & Chantiles, 2016). As for education, we see less evidence of a consistent gender gap (Chattopadhyay & Duflo, 2004;Clots-Figueras, 2012;Gottlieb et al, 2015); and there is some evidence that military spending is associated with male dominance in parliaments (Koch & Fulton, 2011).…”

Equality prescribed? Contextual determinants of citizens’ support for gender boardroom quotas across Europe

“…Kunze and Miller 2014). Moreover, it has been argued that women in politics can act as gatekeepers to push for more gender equality and better living conditions for women in society (Ferrarini 2006;Westfall and Chantiles 2016). Empirical evidence on the possible spill-over effects of political legislative gender quotas shows that beyond increasing women's formal representation, quotas have led to an increase in the gender consciousness and some forms of political activism among women (Beauregard 2017;Krook 2006).…”