The Impact of Party Quotas on Women’s Political Ambition

authored by

Frederik Springer, Markus Klein, Yvonne Lüdecke

Abstract

Do women’s motives for joining a political party depend on the implementation of a gender quota for party offices and electoral lists? Based on multiple waves of the German Party Membership Studies, we address this issue using survey data for about 5,000 female party members. We find that women’s probability of joining a party because of their political ambition, i.e. attaining a public or party office, slightly improves with the quota size. But more importantly, there is a robust, statistically significant interaction between the quota targets and the percentage of female party members. Women are most likely to report instrumental reasons for joining when there is a large gender gap for the party members and a quota requiring a high percentage of female office holders. These results strongly imply that women, at least roughly, calculate the intensity of the intra-party competition for political offices when deciding to join a party.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Political Science

Type

Article

Journal

Journal of Women, Politics and Policy

Volume

45

Pages

213-229

No. of pages

17

ISSN

1554-477X

Publication date

2024

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 5 - Gender Equality

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.15488/16744 (Access: Embargoed)
https://doi.org/10.1080/1554477X.2023.2206978 (Access: Closed)