The Electoral System and Women's Legislative Underrepresentation in Post-Communist Ukraine

Abstract

In comparison with the global average of democratic countries, Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, remains well below average in terms of women’s legislative representation. This article attempts to explain why Ukraine’s record is so poor by examining the impact of different electoral systems. Since the first post-Communist election in 1994, Ukraine has used three different electoral systems – majoritarian SMD, MMM, and closed-list PR. By examining the impact of these different systems on women’s representation, we can test for the effect of different institutions on representation while holding political culture constant. The empirical results find that PR systems consistently nominated more women and elected more women than did other, majoritarian systems did. In addition, there is little evidence of gender bias against female candidates in either PR or SMD elections.

Keywords: Gender, Representation, Electoral System, Culture, Ukraine