Resisting Institutions: Gender Quotas for the Irish Parliament

The Irish Parliament (Oireachtas) is among the most recent group of parliaments to which legislated gender quotas for addressing women’s under-representation applies. The implementation of the law has met with limited success, in part due to local party resistance and in part due to limited efficacy when interacting with the electoral system. This paper assesses the effectiveness of the quota policy to date, and examines the mix of cultural, political and institutional factors that give rise to this limited outcome.