Thursday, February 6, 2020
Making the Case for Political Gender Quotas
The Equal Division Rule: Making the Case for Political Gender Quotas in the U.S.
In 1978, the Democratic National Committee voted on new rules for the selection of primary delegates that included the Equal Division Rule. The policy requiring state delegations to the Democratic National Conventions to be made up equally of men and women was also extended to apply to all national party bodies across the states and territories, and it was first applied in the 1980 Democratic Primary—the same year women became the majority of Democratic voters, making up a whopping 60 percent of all voters in the primary contests.
In 1987, the rule made it to the Supreme Court. In the Bachur v. Democratic National Party case, the Court upheld the rule “as a means to broaden public participation in party affairs,” equating it to parties’ ability and right to open their primaries to unaffiliated voters.***
A total of 115 out of 192 countries use gender quotas, including 75 percent of the countries which rank above the U.S. for gender parity in national legislatures. Many countries and individual political parties around the world have instituted gender quotas to deal with the ongoing low number of women running and winning elections, countering the idea that the low number of women in elected positions is due to a lag effect which will eventually and naturally catch up.
Most opponents of gender quotas suggest that they are undemocratic because they grant women candidates an unfair advantage not given to men, but this ignores the fact that our own democracy and electoral system finds its basis in granting more rights, opportunities and privileges to white men. Carol Bacchi, a professor of political science, suggests that gender quotas, rather than privileging women with preferential treatment, are instead “an attempt to redress entrenched privilege.”
My article discussing political gender quotas, and gender quotas more generally is Tracy A. Thomas, Reconsidering the Remedy of Gender Quotas, Harvard J. Law & Gender (online) (Nov. 2016).
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/gender_law/2020/02/making-the-case-for-political-gender-quotas.html