Undoing Equality? Retractions of Gender Quota Laws in an Era of Anti-Gender Backlash

Over the past three decades, more than one hundred countries have adopted electoral gender quota laws to increase women’s representation in parliament, during a time when global norms strongly endorsed gender equality and women’s political participation. Quota policies have been hailed as one of the most successful institutional innovations for diversifying contemporary politics. Yet, the recent retraction or rejection of quota and parity laws in countries such as Georgia, Tunisia, Uruguay, and Paraguay raises new and unsettling questions about the durability of women’s political inclusion. These rollbacks suggest that the backlash now targets not only rights long viewed as controversial—such as abortion and marriage equality—but also those once considered settled and widely accepted, like women’s political inclusion. While a growing body of research examines backlash against gender and LGBTQ rights, it has yet to grapple with this erosion from within—the dismantling of gender-inclusive institutions in formal electoral politics. Recent research shows that resistance to gender quota reforms has often been quiet and adaptive, as open opposition to women’s representation has been normatively constrained in most contexts (see e.g. Josefsson 2024). However, emerging evidence suggests that such resistance is becoming increasingly overt. Rather than being merely stalled or chipped away at the edges, gender quotas are being fully dismantled—but with less fanfare and attention compared to other rollbacks, such as retractions to LGBTQIA+ rights. This paper explores how and why quota policy retractions occur, conceptualizing them as a distinct form of institutional resistance. By tracing cases where electoral gender quota laws have been repealed, weakened, or blocked, the analysis investigates the mechanisms through which inclusionary reforms are undone. It asks: under what conditions are inclusionary institutions vulnerable to reversal? How do appeals to “gender ideology,” democratic legitimacy, or technocratic reform serve to justify dismantling quotas? And what do these developments reveal about the changing status of women’s political rights and inclusion amid wider anti-gender mobilization? The paper contributes to feminist institutionalist and backlash scholarship by highlighting both the limits and the resilience of gender equality policies in contemporary global politics.