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Abstract
This article explores the gender regime that regulates access to, and the biased power distribution embedded in, political office at the local level, a seriously underresearched unit of analysis. Ultimately, it aims to contribute to wider reflection on the informal rules entrenched in political parties' candidate selection processes. I do so by analyzing candidate lists in the context of the application of a quota law. The article is empirically grounded in Spanish subnational politics. I find that quota laws do not eliminate gender differences among parties: Inequality is less marked in organizations with long-established gender quotas than in those where recent quotas, targets, or goals are used. Nonetheless, the prevalence of pervasive sexist organizational cultures within the parties impedes a greater efficacy of gender quotas. Finally, I show that women are more likely to recruit women than men and that women's agency in its diverse forms boosts female representation.
The author wishes to thank Mona Lena Krook, Meryl Kenny, Abel Escribà-Folch, and the four anonymous reviewers of the journal for their rich and useful comments to a previous draft of this work. I am also grateful to the female party officers interviewed in this research.
Notes
1. This is the definition of parity we will use throughout the article. For an overview of the use of quotas worldwide see the Global Database of Quotas for Women at http://www.quotaproject.org.
2. See CitationKrook (2003) and (Citation2006b) for a review of the literature.
3. Women's agency, transnational emulation, and international tipping were relevant elements in the introduction of gender quotas (CitationThrelfall 2007: 1,080–82).
4. Only those parties that can be considered “relevant” according to CitationSartori's rules (1976, 122–23) during the whole period of the study are included in the analysis. These are either parties that find themselves in a position to determine, at least at some point in time, one of the possible governmental majorities or whose existence affects the tactics of party competition of the governing-oriented parties.
5. Party targets do not have the mandatory character of quotas. They establish minimum percentages or representation levels and might define a specific timetable for their realization. Goals entail a commitment to recruit more women, although how, when, and to what extent this recruitment will take place is not made explicit (CitationFreidenvall 2003, 11).
6. The PP is the regional branch of a nationwide party. The other parties do not have a nationwide referent although they also compete in national elections and obtain seats in the national lower house. The case of the PSC merits some attention. The PSC is PSOE's sister party in Catalonia as the latter does not have a regional party branch in Catalonia since 1979 when two social-democratic parties and the PSOE's Catalan federation merged to form a new party, the PSC. The two parties are linked by a special agreement which defines the PSC representation in PSOE's executive bodies and conferences and establishes a common vote discipline for both parties' representatives in the national lower house. However, the PSC is completely autonomous to recruit and select its candidates and reform of its statutes do not need PSOE's approval.
7. Plaintiffs mantained that the electoral gender quota offended several sections of the Spanish Constitution regarding political parties (article 9), right of association and participation (articles 22 and 23) and equality (article 14). The Constitutional Court argued that public authorities must promote conditions which ensure that the freedom and equality of individuals may be real and effective, and remove the obstacles which prevent or hinder their full enjoyment, and facilitate the participation of all citizens in political, economic, cultural, and social life.
8. Nevertheless, since March 2004 the national government has reached or exceeded parity. Besides, despite not being obliged to, after the last regional elections (May 2007), 11 out of the 17 regional governments have gender-balanced cabinets (CitationVerge 2009a).
9. In those very same years, regional women MPs represented 13.9% and 35.6%, respectively. In the national lower house, women reached 16% in 1993 and 36% in 2004.
10. Since 2003, ICV has formed an electoral coalition with Esquerra Unida i Alternativa [United and Alternative Left] (EUiA), a party that broke away from ICV in 1998. For the sake of simplicity, we will simply refer to the results obtained by this coalition as those of ICV which happens to be the largest party in the coalition.
11. The number of offices (councillorships) that corresponds to each town follows this scale: up to 250 inhabitants, 5; from 251 to 1,000, 7; from 1,001 to 2,000, 9; from 2,001 to 5,000, 11; from 5,001 to 10,000, 13; from 10,001 to 20,000, 17; from 20,001 to 50,000, 21; from 50,001 to 100,000, 25; and over 100,001 inhabitants, one more office for each extra 100,000 inhabitants or fraction thereof. The average party list is made up of 12.1 candidates. In 5,000-inhabitant towns the average increases to 18.3.
12. This trend holds for those parties which applied a voluntary quota and those which did not as well as for independent candidatures.
13. In fact, female party membership is quite low in small towns, which may cause problems for party selectorates when they search for female candidates.
14. Of councillors aged 18–25, women represent 44%; of those aged 26–45, 37%; of those aged 46–65 years, 24%; and, of those over 65 years, 10% (CitationMinistry of Public Administrations 2008).
15. Even if it might well be that women are resigning from office at a higher rate than men for reasons different than party pressure, a hypothesis which should be tested in the future with extra qualitative research, we rely here on the perception of the Women's Secretaries of all parties examined in this research but that of the center-right PP. Interviews were carried out by the author in Barcelona in April 2007. Two former PSC women secretaries were also interviewed by the author in Barcelona in June 2008.
16. Women's membership is currently 39.9% in PSC, 35.1% in ICV-EUiA, 35.8% in CiU, 32.8% in PP and 32.3% in ERC (CitationVerge 2009b).
17. If any other candidate gathers the signature of a certain amount of the (which varies among parties, although a minimum threshold of 20% is predominant), then a ballot is held.
18. In the case of CiU, as it is a two-party federation a liason committee agrees on the selection of the head of the list according to the strength each party has in a particular town and defines what positions on the list correspond to each party. The rest of the candidate selection process follows the explanation provided.
19. Interviews with the women's secretaries of all parties.
20. Pearson correlation coefficient for PSC elected women and PSC swing 2003/07 is 0.282 and that between PSC-elected women and safe seats for women is 0.830; Pearson correlation coefficient for ERC elected women and ERC swing 2003/07 is 0.315 and that between PSC elected women and safe seats for women is 0.697. All coefficients are statistically significant (p < .01).
21. This variable is a proxy for what CitationMatland (1993) defines as “party magnitude”—the number of seats a party can actually expect to win.
22. If the critical mass is fixed at 40% (46% of PSC's local branches and 18% of ERC's), we find the same pattern: the percentage of safe positions increases from 36% to 42% in PSC and from 22% to 42% in ERC.