Beyond Entry: Affirmative Action and Parliamentary Seniority in Senegal, South Africa, Malawi, and Uganda

Affirmative action measures such as gender quotas and gendered electoral financing have become a widely adopted mechanism for increasing women’s political representation in legislatures, yet their role in shaping career trajectories—particularly in terms of political career endurance—remains underexplored. While quotas are often evaluated based on their impact on women’s descriptive representation, this paper argues that they should also be understood as structural mechanisms that shape access to political power over time, including parliamentary seniority. Using a novel cross-national dataset covering four African countries—Senegal, South Africa, Malawi, and Uganda—this study examines political career longevity in contexts where diverse affirmative action mechanisms have influenced women’s descriptive representation. Senegal mandates absolute gender parity through legislated quotas; South Africa employs voluntary party quotas with 50% targets; Malawi has experimented with gendered electoral financing; and Uganda reserves seats specifically for women. The paper asks whether these measures contribute to women’s reelection and accumulation of seniority, or whether they facilitate frequent turnover, replacing women with other women without fostering long-term political careers. The paper contributes to the literature on gender representation by shifting the focus from political entry to career endurance, offering a framework for understanding how institutional arrangements shape gendered access to political influence. It highlights the importance of seniority as a resource—linked to institutional knowledge, agenda-setting capacity, and leadership opportunities—that takes time to build. By examining African cases where quota adoption has been both rapid and varied, the study also broadens the geographic scope of research on political longevity, which has largely centered on gradual gains in the Global North. Ultimately, the paper offers insights into how different affirmative action measures influence not just who gets elected, but who stays—and how this endurance matters for gendered power and influence in political institutions.