Gender Quotas and Gender Mainstreaming

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Gender Quotas and Gender Mainstreaming

• Mona Lena Krook and Judith Squires

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Separate Strategies

• Quotas and mainstreaming appear as global gender
  equality strategies around the same time
• Research on quotas and mainstreaming has largely
  developed in isolation
• How do these strategies converge or diverge in
  their attempt to promote gender equality?

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Quotas

• Gained prominence in the late 1990s
• Framed as a question of justice and democracy
• Actors promoted by womens lobby groups, members
  of political parties and, in some cases,
  legislators

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Quotas

• Politics narrow focus on formal institutions of
  political representation
• Representation focus on descriptive
• Gender focus on sex as subject of policy
• Equality a form of positive action

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Mainstreaming

• Gained prominence in the late 1990s
• Framed as a question of justice, modernization
  and efficiency
• Actors civil servants, government ministers,
  civil society actors

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Mainstreaming

• Politics wide focus including bureaucracy
  (technocratic model) and civil society
  (participatory model)
• Representation focus on substantive
• Gender focus on gender as object of policy
• Equality a third equality strategy complementing
  equal treatment and positive action

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Competing Strategies

• Politics quotas focus on vertical distribution
  of power within party and parliamentary
  structures, mainstreaming focuses on horizontal
  flow of initiatives across departmental
  boundaries
• Representation quotas focus on measurable
  numbers, mainstreaming on policy shift
• Gender quotas focus on women, mainstreaming on
  gender (and sometimes equalities)
• Equality quotas privilege positive action,
  mainstreaming unsettles it

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Complementary Strategies

• Politics wider more fluid conception of politics
• Representation explores link between descriptive
  and substantive representation
• Gender women as subject and object of politics,
  sensitive to intersectionality without losing
  focus on women
• Equality generates a richer conception of
  equality of opportunity

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Case Study Quotas in the UK

• Emerged in Labour Party in 1980s
• All-women shortlists approved in 1993 and
  declared illegal in 1996
• Parties in the evolved administrations adopt
  twinning and zipping
• High-profile campaigns and legal disputes
• Clear impact

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Case Study Mainstreaming in the UK

• Emerged with Labour Government in 1997
• Creation of the Womens Unit and Minister for
  Women in 1997
• Devolved administration given remit to promote
  equality of opportunity and adopted participatory
  equalities mainstreaming
• Low profile policy development with little
  controversy
• Impact difficult to discern

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Competing?

• Compete for public attention
• Tension between bottom-up and top-down strategies
• Twin limitations of essentialism and diversity
• Tension between framing democratic justice or
  efficient governance

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Complementary?

• Presence of female actors as a precondition for
  the successful implementation of mainstreaming
• Effective participatory mainstreaming as a means
  of facilitating greater female engagement in
  politics