![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
More than 100 countries have adopted gender quota policies worldwide and a growing literature attempts to evaluate their impact. This article focuses on the Moroccan experience and investigates the effect of quotas on women's descriptive and symbolic representation at the party level. More precisely, I examine whether the Moroccan social-democratic party underwent changes since the 2002 introduction of reserved seats for women in parliament. The findings draw on the perceptions of members of the women's section of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (SUPF) and show that written rules expanding women's rights do not automatically lead to more gender equality in practice. The article discusses these findings in the light of international experience of gender quotas and points towards conditions that are important for ensuring different dimensions of women's political representation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Morrocco for making this article possible as well as the Swiss National Science Foundation for its postdoctoral fellowship. Thanks are also due to Kristina Birke and Mourad Errahib for the insightful conversations on Moroccan gender quotas.
Notes
1 According to Freedom House (Citation2014), Morocco is only partly free. The country scores 4.5/7 for freedom, 4/7 for civil liberties and 5/7 for political rights (1= best, 7= worst).
2 According to this international quota, women must fill at least 20% of positions in all its leadership committees.
3 The proportion of women elected to the lower chamber has steadily increased in Rwanda from 48.8% in 2003, 56.25% in 2008 and 63.75% in 2013.
4 The concept of ‘sustainable representation’ has been proposed by Darhour and Dahlerup (Citation2013) and can be measured through three indicators: ‘the number of women in reserved versus open seats, whether reserved seats serve as a point of entry to open seats, and whether quotas provisions have been strengthened over time’ (Krook Citation2013b).
5 For a thorough discussion on the conditions necessary for effective gender quotas, see Matland (Citation2006).
Additional information
Anouk Lloren is a postdoctoral fellow with the Swiss National Science Foundation and a lecturer at the University of Geneva. Her research proposes a general assessment of how politically and socially disadvantaged groups influence or not policy-making institutions. Within the field of political behaviour, her work relates to political participation, representation, gender and socio-economic inequalities.