Quotas and Gender Gaps in Political Participation Among Advanced Industrial Democracies: A Longitudinal Analysis

It is argued that the positive impact of gender quotas on women’s advancement is not limited to the proportion of women in state legislatures. Gender quotas could contribute to the advancement of women in all spheres of politics. It is believed that quotas affect women’s attitudes about their role in politics (Dalherup and Freidenvall, 2005; Kittilson, 2005), leading to a greater involvement of women in the political process. Little empirical research has focused on the impact of gender quotas on citizens' behaviour. Previous studies tend to analyzed the behavior of women at only one point in time (ie. Zetterberg, 2009). This paper proposes to expand the knowledge on the effects of legislative quotas on gender differences in political participation by comparing gaps before and after the introduction of gender quotas in four advanced industrial democracies--Belgium, France, Portugal, and Spain. The main argument is that gender quotas act as a symbol that signals to woman that their presence in politics is welcome, leading to a subsequent increase in their involvement in political activities. This increase in political behavior should not be reproduced in men, and thus, when gender quotas are present, the gap between men's and women’s participation narrows. Additionally, the paper tests a socialisation hypothesis, stipulating that younger generations, who became aware politically during gender quotas debates, are more likely to be influenced by this symbol promoting gender equality in the political sphere. Using the European Values Survey, this paper demonstrates that the conventional wisdom on the effect of gender quotas is misguided by only focusing on women, as results show that gender quotas have an influence on both men’s and women's level of political participation, leading to variations in gender gaps over time.