Gender Quotas, Election Procedures and Women’s Descriptive Representation: Assessing the Impact of Election Procedure Reform on Women MPs’ Attributes in Uganda

Debates over gender quotas have to a large extent focused on the kind of women that are elected through quota provisions. While advocates argue that quotas will increase the diversity of female legislators, opponents assert that the reform will facilitate the election of unqualified women. Connected to this discussion, this study asks whether election procedures to reserved seats for women have an impact on the attributes of the elected women. Using original data from 1295 biographies of Ugandan legislators spanning over four mandate periods (1996-2016), this paper exploits a reformation of the quota law to test if a change in election procedures affects what kind of women that are elected to the reserved seats, in terms of their education, occupational background, and self-reported policy interests. In Uganda, a change from election by a small elite to election by universal suffrage was anticipated to bring in women more representative of female citizens at large, and less loyal to the regime. However, the main results show that women elected before and after the 2006 reform are similar in most regards and consequently, the results do not support the idea that mode of election affect the link between quotas and women’s descriptive representation. In addition, the study finds no evidence that women elected on reserved seats would be less qualified than their male and female counterparts in the legislature.