Quotas or Gendered Funding? Zambian Candidates' Preference for Gendered Intervention in the Recruitment Process

The gender divide in recruitment to political office has been placed on the political agenda throughout the world over the last few years. Recent studies show how nomination processes within political parties tend to put women in a disadvantaged position. This resulted in calls for interventions to promote a better gender balance in political recruitment. Among the measures that can be adopted to address this gender gap, electoral gender quotas have received most attention. However, there seem to be limits to what gender quotas can achieve in certain contexts. In this paper we study the case of Zambia, where the idea of electoral gender quotas has been met with stark resistance. We use a mixed methods approach to study whether non-quota strategies, such as gendered electoral funding, may be perceived as preferred strategy among candidates running for the 2011 Parliamentary elections—and if so, by who. We first conducted a field study, including interviews with MPs, donors, and NGOs, to establish which kinds of interventions were known and discussed in this context. Subsequently, we conducted a survey among successful and unsuccessful parliamentary candidates in the 2011 elections, asking whether they preferred gender quotas or gendered funding. The sample includes 108 respondents, and the data indeed reveal differences in whether what respondents thought is the preferred solution, and whether it should be the responsibility of a party or the state. We find that female respondents favor state solutions more than men, and observe a clear ethnic divide.