Czech Social Democrats and Adoption of Party Gender Quotas: Window of Opportunity and Effect of Quotas
Abstract
While second initiative to introduce legislative gender quotas in the Czech Republic met with resistance, Czech Social Democrats adopted their own voluntary party quotas to remedy women's political under-representation on candidate lists. The separate streams of problems, policies and politics came together at critical time and created window of opportunity that contributed to adoption of measure aimed at gender-balanced composition of the party candidate lists.
I argue that Social Democratic women's faction played a central role in pushing for party quotas but without the party leadership that placed a high priority on the proposal, it wouldn't stand the best chance of passage. Nevertheless, from the first election in which quotas were applied it is obvious that the particular setting of quotas is ineffective.
Social Democratic Party did not experience big increases in women's representation following the adoption of quotas. On the contrary, the share of elected women on the regional level even decreased.