Although statutory quotas have significantly expanded worldwide in the past two decades, the bulk of electoral gender quotas in place are party quotas. This paper aims at examining the effects of gender quotas on intra-party gender power dynamics. While scholarship research on women’s descriptive representation has tended to focus on the distributive logic of gender quotas (how are offices allocated), we are interested in the institutional (party) context in which specific patterns of distribution are realized. Applying a feminist institutionalism perspective, we explore not only to what extent candidate selection practices remain gendered after quota adoption but also whether gender quotas have expanded women’s empowerment within the party organization (as both members and officeholders). We do so by paying attention to the conflicting patterns of formal power (who holds office) and real power (who has an effective agency capacity) embedded in intra-party formal and informal institutions. The empirical analysis is based on primary sources from the Spanish case and secondary sources from other countries. Our findings suggest that whereas formal power can be altered through gender quotas changing how real power operates is contingent upon deep institutional reforms that face a strong resistance. As change and continuity coexist, quota reforms are hardly critical junctures but rather layering processes in which some elements are renegotiated while others persist.
