Breaking the Political Glass Ceiling: Do We Need Quotas?
Congratulations everyone! We have finally done it. As of September 1st, 2018, 24% of all seats in parliaments and senates globally are held by women.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking: “Wait a second… HALF the population is made up of women, yet women make up only a quarter of those who create policy for the rest of the world…?” Exactly, and thus my question: To break the political glass ceiling, do we need quotas?
Since 1918, the number of female MP’s (Members of Parliament) in Britain TOTALED 489. That is 100 years of elections. To put this into perspective, a little less than 450 MP’s currently sitting in the House of Commons are men. In the US, there are 11 states that have no women representing them in Congress. The percentage of women in the German Parliament is the lowest it has been in the past 20 years. Women still do not have equal representation in politics on an international level and I wanted to know why. Here are just four reasons:
- Wealth Gaps and the High Costs of a Political Career
- The median wealth for single women overall ages 18 to 64 is only 49 percent of the median wealth of their single male counterparts.
- Men raise more money than women do as candidates with regards to both campaign contributions and individual donors.
- Women Know Political Discrimination Exists
- Women are often discouraged early on from entering politics because they know that running will be harder based on their gender. This causes a lack of confidence for success. Interestingly, this lack of confidence only increases as women age. Politico explains “while only a third of high school girls doubt they’d ever be qualified to run, half of college women have the same doubts… College-age men who didn’t think they’d ever be qualified to run for office were still 50 percent more likely than women with the same doubts to consider running anyway.”
- Men Are Urged to Run at a Higher Rate
- Women Are Still Responsible for the Majority of Child Care and Household Tasks
But let’s take a look at examples where women have more government representation. When you look at the top countries in the world that have the most women in government, you see that female representation isn’t lacking completely across the board. In fact, some countries (Rwanda and Bolivia, for example) have more women than men in their Parliament. So, what are these countries doing differently?
(Business Insider- Link Above)
The simple answer is gender quotas: In fact, over half of the countries in the world today use some type of electoral quota for their parliament. How do these quotas work? Quotas usually relate to three distinct environments in which women usually face disproportionate challenges: quotas for women as aspirants, candidate quotas, and reserved seats for women. These can be incredibly useful as they mitigate the problems that women are faced with in the political scene. For example, women are now no longer competing with men to fund their campaigns, so the playing field becomes more even. Further, the doubt that comes with being discouraged by the sexism inherent to the campaigning system no longer exists.
Countries that have implemented these quotas have seen great success in increasing their female representation. This is important because, with female representation, we are better able to combat issues that arise as we increase the diversity of thought presented. We give a larger platform to those that have been historically discriminated against. We inspire women to fall into industries that have been traditionally dominated by men. We can make a difference.
So, what is the down side to a quota system? In a democracy specifically, many people feel quotas undermine principles of liberal democracy; there is no longer equal opportunity for all (women are given preference over men), and voters are limited in candidate selection because of this restraint. Further, many people believe that when a woman earns a spot simply because she is a woman, she doesn’t really ‘earn’ the spot at all. This decreases women empowerment as she cannot claim ownership of her ability to compete for her spot against the entire pool of candidates; rather, she has won only amongst the female candidates.
On the contrary, many believe that quotas actually increase access to the principles of liberal democracy as now women are able to overcome the barriers set before them in participating in politics. Further, women can be empowered as they see that those like them are able to reach their dreams in working in industries historically dominated by men. The simple fact of the matter is that we need women to be in positions of power. Hopefully, one day, the world won’t need a special system to get women into these positions, but in the status quo a proven mechanism might be exactly what we need.
What do you think?