Gender Quota Laws and Women in Cabinets

Abstract

Do legislative gender quotas increase women's presence in executive cabinets? Women are underrepresented in politics, especially in leadership roles. As a remedy, quotas, requiring women to be nominated as candidates or elected in reserved seats, have been adopted for national parliaments in over 80 countries. But, can quotas work beyond the positions to which they apply? We argue that legislative quotas increase women in the executive by augmenting the supply of women ministers. Using a differencein-differences approach, we analyze the impact of quotas on the gender composition of cabinets worldwide (1990-2021). We find quotas increase women in cabinets by 2.2 percentage points. Consistent with our supply-side argument, effects are concentrated in parliamentary democracies, countries sustaining a high 'shock' to women in parliament post-quota implementation, and low-prestige portfolios. Our findings suggest quotas for parliaments have important spillover effects in governments, while leaving male dominance in the most powerful roles largely intact.

Keywords: gender quotas, gender and politics, political representation, cabinets, executive branch