Over the course of the last thirty years, women have made significant strides toward gender equity in politics. The percentage of women serving in state legislatures has risen from 8.1% in 1975 to more than 24% in 2013 (CAWP 2013). Not surprisingly, this increase of women in politics has sparked many questions and much research about the impact of women in public office (Carroll 2001). While this body of scholarship has investigated such important and diverse topics as legislative strategies (Reingold 1996), conversational dynamics (Kathlene 1994; Pearson and Dancey 2011), and legislative effectiveness (Anzia and Berry 2011; Volden, Wiseman, and Wittmer 2013), the substantive effects of having women in office have garnered the most attention.

The now well-developed literature on gender quotas focuses mainly on two areas: the causal mechanisms that can be advanced to explain the adoption, diffusion, and effectiveness of political gender quotas worldwide (Baldez 2004; Dahlerup 2006; Krook 2006; 2009; Krook, Lovenduski, and Squires 2009; Krook and O'Brien 2010; Lovenduski 2005; Meier 2012); and the benefits, as well as the dangers, that this “fast track” to gender equality can have for women's substantive representation and for politics in general (Celis and Childs 2012; Celis et al. 2008; Childs and Krook 2009; Dahlerup 1988; Franseschet, Krook, and Piscopo 2012; Franseschet and Piscopo 2008; Kittilson 2005; Phillips 1995; Squires 2001). Most studies on gender quotas approach “women” as a group defined by a single axis of oppression and the quotas' consequences for gender equality broadly. The growing literature on intersectionality, however, calls attention to the internal heterogeneity of the category “women” and the fact that gender relations are embedded in race or class relations, forming a “matrix of domination” rather than a single axis of oppression (Collins 1990). But the question of how gender quotas relate to intersectionality has remained, until now, much less investigated.

The use of electoral gender quotas—both nationally-mandated and party-based—has generated a large and growing body of research examining these policies. The rapid development of this literature stems from the widespread nature of this phenomenon, with quotas being adopted in more than half of all countries worldwide—nearly all within the last 20 years. The “first generation” of quota research focused primarily on mapping the contours of these measures, theorizing elements of quota design, paths to quota adoption, and reasons for variations in quota effects on the numbers of women elected. While such studies continue to remain important, scholars increasingly recognize that quotas are not simply about increasing the number of women in politics. This has led to the emergence of a “second generation” of quota research, examining their impact on legislative diversity, policy-making behavior, public opinion, and mass mobilization. In contrast, non-gender scholars have generally been slow to respond to these developments, despite the potential for quotas to shape a variety of political dynamics—and thus to illuminate trends in relation to many key debates in comparative politics.

Gender quotas transform comparative politics by reimagining the relationship between citizens and representatives. Gender quotas invite citizens to revisit their expectations of what it means to be represented and what makes a “good” politician. As quotas introduce new norms and emphasize different qualities to be valued in a representative, they provide an opportunity to reappraise the attributes and qualifications of all politicians, including men. Although some quota advocates have been keen to ensure that quota claims focus only on increasing women's presence in politics, the wider debates surrounding quotas have ensured that they go beyond the simple feminization of politics. Arguments in favor of quotas based on gender differences also lead to expectations that quotas will effect wider change and renewal. Quotas thus afford scholars of comparative politics an opportunity to test whether the current actors and rules of the game of politics are necessarily the best and only way of doing things.

The diffusion of gender quotas reflects the legitimation of the normative principle of women's equality in public life. Legislative gender quotas, whether adopted through top-down elite decision making or through bottom-up feminist activism, are frequently justified via appeals to norms of inclusion and fairness. These democratic ideals of women's full representation and participation have indeed gained traction: Over the past two decades, quotas have extended beyond legislatures to public institutions, such as cabinets and executive agencies, and to state advisory councils, subnational governments, labor union directorates, and corporate boards. Such diffusion signals a profound gendering of public space and leadership, a transformation initiated by states assuming active roles as the guarantors—rather than mere promoters—of equality.

Scholars of gender quotas have paid increasing attention to the ways in which formal and informal institutions shape the outcome of this electoral reform (Hassim 2009; Jones 2009; Zetterberg 2009). Quotas, however, are not only affected by the institutional context in which they are adopted; their transformative nature also implies that they (should) contribute to changing political institutions. This dynamic relationship has consequences for the analysis of key institutions within representative democracy: Electoral quotas may, in some cases, challenge well-defined analytical frameworks and established ways to study political life. This essay aims to demonstrate theoretically how quota adoption exerts an impact on established political structures and thus challenges existing understandings within subfields of comparative politics. More specifically, I bring up two institutions within representative democracy that are likely to be affected by quotas: the political recruitment process and intraparty politics within legislative institutions.

Mainstream comparative politics (CP) rarely attends to gender scholarship. Conventional wisdom urges gender scholars to speak to the broader concerns of CP to avoid this marginalization. But feminist concerns are broader than those of CP. Feminism promotes changes in power relations to advance “justice for women and everyone” and offers tools for assessing injustice (Weldon 2011, 443). In contrast, CP promotes stability and order that benefits elites; it values predictive models over usefulness (Clarke and Primo 2012). How can feminist quota scholars address their broader concerns and speak to CP? I argue that we need to lead with feminism. Doing so not only ensures that our work will address broader concerns, but also ensures that we will have insights to offer CP that demonstrate the value of feminist analysis. Leading with feminism, I evaluate whether legislative quotas for women change the political dynamics sustaining gender injustice. I find that they rarely do so. I then draw on feminist quota scholarship to highlight the limits of CP toward democracy and institutional change to demonstrate the value of feminist analysis. I conclude with suggestions on how to advance a feminist agenda in the discipline.

As a strategy to promote gender equality, gender mainstreaming has received considerable attention worldwide. The language of gender mainstreaming has been quickly adopted (True and Mintrom 2001), which is why, in the beginning, many hopes were pinned on this strategy. Scholars have shown that gender mainstreaming has triggered organizational and procedural changes within state bureaucracies, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations. Gender equality units have been established, new policy tools have been introduced, and new procedures have been created. But feminist scholars also have shown that, all these changes notwithstanding, gender mainstreaming has not proven to be successful in achieving gender equality (cf. True and Parisi 2013). More than 15 years after the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, there are serious problems in translating the commitment into action. This is, as many scholars argue, not only a result of institutional and political resistance to substantially changing gender relations, but also a matter of conceptual clarity (Daly 2005; Lombardo and Meier 2006; Meier and Celis 2011; Subrahmanian 2004).

Claiming the rights of women in a world of blatant gender hierarchies is an international feminist strategy that has been around for a long time. Rhetorically, it has been part of the human rights framework since its very inception, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 already contains important elements of gender equality, thanks to the lobbying efforts of a handful of women's rights advocates at the time. But it took the wave of global consciousness regarding gender inequality that swept the world in the 1970s to make women's rights relevant enough to codify them in a human rights treaty: the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). A decade and a half later, the Vienna Conference on Human Rights (1993) coined the slogan “women's rights are human rights” and thus emphasized the centrality of women's experiences for a holistic understanding of human rights. In the time since then, the human rights discourse has become increasingly intersectional and inclusive. While the scope and content of human rights remain contested, many women's rights activists around the world rely on this framework in their struggles for global justice.

Despite the large amount of attention by politics and gender scholars to analyzing gender parity in political representation and the impact of the increasing participation of women in electoral politics, little attention has been paid to women's participation in the governance of the economic sphere nationally or globally. Yet men overwhelmingly dominate economic decision-making positions, such as those on corporate boards, as business executives, government financial regulators, trade negotiators, and central bankers around the world.