POLS 280 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Fasttrack, Critical Mass

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Political Studies
• Course: POLS 280
• Professor: Elizabeth Goodyear- Grant

Document Summary

We"ve established that there is gender inequality in political representation, at home and worldwide. We"ve established that there are several sets of reason for this: culture, social structure and political institutions and practices. Together, these inhibit the supply of and demand for women in political office. Quotas make it mandatory that women constitute a certain number or percentage of the members of a political body, whether a slate of candidates, a legislature, or a cabinet. They can be pegged at a particular threshold. Most common is 30% because it is less controversial and the idea is that once there is this critical mass in legislature, more women will step up as candidates . Most common: candidate quotas (require that women comprise of certain proportion of party"s candidate list), reserved seats. Various forms in terms of what format that exist in: constitutional (entrenched in constitution. This is legal and hard to change), statutory (included in a piece of legislation.