Gender Quotas in Public Administration Worldwide

Public administration is responsible for shaping, translating, and implementing public policy, and providing public services to its citizens. It is therefore crucial that women are included equally across all levels and sectors of public administration. Globally, women average nearly half of all public administration employees but hold less than one-third of decision-making positions. Gender quotas – rules that guarantee women (and sometimes men) a minimum share of candidates or elected positions – have transformed electoral politics by advancing women's numerical representation in national legislatures around the world. Yet, we know very little about the use of similar measures and their effects in public administration. This is the first global study of gender quotas in public administration worldwide. In partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), we collect new data on gender quotas in public administration across all UN member states. We also include Temporary Special Measures (TSMs), a broader class of instruments designed to accelerate progress towards gender equality in public administration leadership, including, for example, preferential treatment, targeted recruitment, and numerical goals connected with time frames. We then develop a scheme for classifying gender quotas and TSMs in the context of public administration, where some positions are appointed, and others are promoted through the career ranks. Using a new global dataset, Gender Parity in the Civil Service (Gen-PaCS), we also begin to explore the relationship between the use of gender quotas and women's representation in decision-making positions in public administration, including top leaders, senior managers, and managers. We complement our quantitative analysis with more in-depth attention to public administration gender quotas and their effects in Austria, Colombia, Djibouti, and France. This study will contribute to our understanding of both the pathways towards greater gender equality in decision-making positions in public administration around the world and of gender quotas outside of electoral politics.