The Bill on Quotas should Ensure Meaningful Increase of Women’s Representation
In a few days the Parliament of Georgia will consider a legislative initiative of 37,455 constituents mandating political parties and blocs to alternate female and male candidates on party lists for parliamentary and local self-government elections. It has been reported that the ruling party is thinking about amending the bill to mandate reserving every third position for a candidate of a different sex on proportional lists, and every sixth position on majoritarian lists. If passed, such law will guarantee increase of women’s representation by 15% in Parliament, and by 23% in majoritarian districts if female candidates prevail.
We would like to underline that amending the bill in such manner will not ensure substantial increase of women’s representation. Quotas in a majoritarian system do not guarantee that female candidates will gain seats in the legislature and therefore, they do not provide effective means for ensuring gender-balanced representation. When there are quotas in a majoritarian system, parties may formally meet the requirement of nominating female candidates but they may also nominate women for non-winnable districts where chances of victory are lower. Ensuring gender balanced representation in single-member districts is essentially impossible because each party can only nominate one candidate and there is no guarantee that women candidates will be elected to the legislative office. Increasing women’s representation by one-sixth is unfair and contradicts the spirit of equality.
The initiative widely supported by constituents offers equal representation of women and men in the proportional system, which in the existing parallel system is the only viable way for increasing number of women in Parliament; however, it only ensures 25% representation.
It is no accident that the initiative backed by over 37 thousand constituents mandates alternating male and female candidates on proportional lists only. Organizations that make up the Women’s Political Group have supported the move to a proportional system from the very beginning, including because majoritarian system is less favorable to women’s political representation. The analysis of international experience and different electoral systems worldwide clearly indicates that gender quotas are mostly found in a proportional system. In addition, research has proven many times that in countries that practice proportional system only, women’s representation is twice as much as in countries that practice majoritarian system only. In a parallel system, the rate of women’s representation is in-between.
We urge Parliament to support the legislative initiative on gender quotas in its original form, as submitted by constituents to Parliament, because the alternative will only be introduced pro forma and will not work as an effective and substantial mechanism for increasing women’s participation.
Since the day it was founded in 2014, the Task Force on Women’s Political Participation has been advocating a range of issues to increase of women’s political participation. The Task Force drafted the legislative initiative on mandatory gender quotas. Had the initiative been adopted, it would have ensured at least 25% representation of women in the 2016 parliament.