Quota Design and Gendered Legislative Careers: Evidence from 17 Latin American Parliaments

This paper examines how gender quota design shapes legislative turnover and the career trajectories of male and female MPs in Latin America. Drawing on an individual-level dataset covering 17 countries that allow consecutive reelection, the study combines chamber-level incumbent exit rates with individual-level seat-retention models to assess how quota institutions affect incumbency. Across both levels of analysis, we find a consistent pattern: while gender quotas expand women’s entry into parliament, they also increase the exit rates of women incumbents, leaving men’s survival largely unchanged. The analysis further shows that these effects depend on quota design. Quotas that mandate strong alternation of men and women on the ballot improve the reelection prospects of women, revealing gender-differentiated incentives in institutional settings. By shifting attention from descriptive representation to the stability of legislative careers, the paper demonstrates that quota design has profound and often unintended consequences for gendered patterns of political seniority in Latin America.