Gender Quotas and Women's Increasing Political Competitiveness

Chang-Ling Huang

《Taiwan Journal of Democracy》 15卷1期 (2019/07) Pp. 25-40

摘要

Taiwan is a leader and exception in Asia concerning political representation by women, with women being 38 percent of its parliament's members. Previous studies attributed such a high percentage of women in politics to Taiwan's early and comprehensive adoption of gender quotas, applied to both local and national elections. The increase of the number of women in parliament came from an unlikely source, however: single member districts (SMDs), which have no applied quotas and are widely regarded as unfavorable for female candidates. Based on Taiwan's election data since the early 2000s, this essay explores the relationship between gender quotas and the increasing competitiveness of female politicians. The essay illustrates two major findings: (1) quotas for party lists have had little effect on motivating women in the proportional representation (PR) tier to run in SMDs, and (2) most of the women elected in SMDs, including parliamentary members and mayors, have chosen to run in districts with reserved seats when entering politics. The effect of gender quotas on motivating women to participate in politics under the single non-transferrable vote (SNTV) electoral system, used for national elections until 2008 and still used for Taiwan's local elections, is again confirmed, but from a different angle.

關鍵字

Gender quotas ； mixed member electoral system ； reserved seats ； SNTV ； women's political participation

參考文獻

Mala Htun, Inclusion without Representation in Latin America: Gender Quotas and Ethnic Reservations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

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Women in Politics page of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm (accessed August 2, 2018).

Robert Darcy, Susan Welch, and Janet Clark, “Women Candidates in Single- and Multi-Member Districts: American State Legislative Races,” Social Science Quarterly 66, no. 4 (1985): 945-953

Richard Matland and Deborah Brown, “District Magnitude’s Effect on Female Representation in U. S. State Legislatures,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 17, no. 4 (1992): 469-492