Striking out women: preferential voting and gender bias in Latvian Saeima elections

ABSTRACT

The 2018 parliamentary elections were a watershed year for women in Latvian politics where women's descriptive representation increased from 18% to 31% in one election with no gender quota. This paper explores this significant gain by examining ranked choice (positive and negative) preference voting in the Latvian Saeima (parliament) elections. The results show that small institutional changes increased the pool of candidates and countered stagnant levels of women's representation. Though female candidates were less likely to have their names struck out on party lists, women received fewer pluses than their male counterparts, revealing gender bias against female candidates.

KEYWORDS:

• Latvia
• preference voting
• electoral discrimination
• party lists
• institutional change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 This ratio was calculated based on the cumulative results from three different political parties (Kustība Par!, Latvijas attīstībai, and Izaugsme) that merged before the 2018 election.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies [Research Grant for Emerging Scholars].

Notes on contributors

Laura A. Dean

Dr Laura A. Dean is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Millikin University. She is also a Regional Faculty Associate at the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In 2016, she was a Title VIII Summer Research Scholar at the Kennan Institute part of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Her works include 2020: Diffusing Human Trafficking Policy in Eurasia Policy Press, University of Bristol (ISBN 978-1447352839). 2018: “Criminalizing Human Trafficking in Latvia: The Evolution and Implications of Human Trafficking Policies” Journal of Baltic Studies 49(2):129–155. 2017: “The Diffusion of Human Trafficking Policies in the Post-Soviet Region: Case Studies of Policy Adoption in Ukraine, Latvia, and Russia” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 19(5): 403–418. 2017: “Repurposing Shelter for Displaced People in Ukraine” Forced Migration Review Shelter in Displacement, Issue 55, June: 49–50. 2017: “The Implications of Gender Quotas in Ukraine: A Case Study of Municipal Party-Level Quotas in Eastern Europe’s Most Precarious Democracy” with Pedro Dos Santos Journal Teorija in Praksa Special Issue on the legitimacy and effectiveness of gender quotas in Central and Eastern Europe 54(2): 355–375. 2016: “The Role of Anti-trafficking Organizations in Human Trafficking Policy Implementation” Femina Politica: Feminist Journal of Political Science Special Issue on Modern Slavery and Extreme Exploitation in Globalised Labour and Gender Relations 25(1): 79–92. 2014: “Policy Responses to Human Trafficking in Southern Africa: Domesticating International Norms” with Hannah Britton. Human Rights Review 15(3): 305–328.