Until the early 2000s, Belgium and France were the only European countries to have introduced legislative gender quotas in politics. Between 2006 and today though, eleven additional countries have adopted such quotas, some in Western Europe (Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece), one in East Central Europe (Poland) several in the Balkans (Slovenia, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo) and one in the wider Europe (Georgia). Unsuccessful attempts to introduce quotas have been undertaken for example in Hungary. This contribution aims to provide the first systematic overview and discussion of these 'new' legislative gender quotas. Starting from a descriptive inventory of quota provisions and their links to the evolution of the presence of women in institutional politics, I will provide first tentative answers to a series of exploratory questions such as: what has prompted the introduction of quotas in the various contexts? Where have quotas initiated a "fast track" change, and where have they simply institutionalised a de facto situation? How have quotas impacted on supply and demand side factors of political representation? How have quotas matched systemic, practical and normative institutions (Krook 2009) in different contexts – or not? Do we find any systematic differences between the way gender quota work in different contexts (West/Eastern Europe; stable democracies/post-conflict contexts, etc.)?
This paper is exploratory in nature and will be written on the basis of the existent literature and documentation available in the main Western European academic languages. Its wider aim though is to identify issues and questions that would require a more systematic analysis on the basis of primary data.
This paper is complementary to the panel proposal "Gender quotas in East Central and South Eastern Europe" submitted by the author.
