Gender Equality in Politics: Implementing Party Quotas in Germany and Austria (SpringerBriefs in Political Science) 3030348946, 9783030348946

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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

Petra Ahrens Katja Chmilewski Sabine Lang Birgit Sauer

Gender Equality in Politics Implementing Party Quotas in Germany and Austria 123

SpringerBriefs in Political Science

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8871

Petra Ahrens Katja Chmilewski Sabine Lang Birgit Sauer •

•

•

Gender Equality in Politics Implementing Party Quotas in Germany and Austria

123

Petra Ahrens Faculty of Social Sciences Tampere University Tampere, Finland Sabine Lang The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies University of Washington Seattle, WA, USA

Katja Chmilewski University of Vienna Vienna, Wien, Austria Birgit Sauer University of Vienna Vienna, Wien, Austria

ISSN 2191-5466 ISSN 2191-5474 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Political Science ISBN 978-3-030-34894-6 ISBN 978-3-030-34895-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34895-3 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without our patient interlocutors in parties and election-relevant units of public administrations of Germany and Austria. Katharina Hajek kindly added evidence by providing us with additional interview data. We also would like to thank many colleagues who commented on chapter drafts at various stages and shared their ideas during several conferences, in particular Rosie Campbell, Karen Celis, Louise Davidson-Schmich, Isabelle Engeli, Joni Lovenduski, Amy Mazur, Petra Meier, and Joyce Mushaben. Lance Bennett wielded his editing pen over a long weekend. And, finally, a number of colleagues were kind enough to answer very detailed questions we had about electoral systems features, in particular Marcelo Jenny and Thomas Meyer. As always, any errors are ours.

v

Contents

1 Introducing the Cross-National Comparison of Quota Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 The Post-Quota Gender Gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Why Germany and Austria? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 The Methods We Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 How the Book Proceeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2 Contextualizing Quotas: The Political Systems of Germany and Austria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 The 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

History of Electoral Gender Quotas . . . . . . . . . . The Global Road to Gender Quotas . . . . . . . . . . . Quotas and Women’s Representation in Germany Quotas and Women’s Representation in Austria . . Comparing Quotas and Women’s Representation in Germany and Austria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 The Post-Quota Gender Gap: Standard Explanations . . . . . . 4.1 Controversial Historical Legacies of Quotas: Lack of Social Acceptance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Male Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Gender Images and Gendered Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 The Women’s Candidate Pool is Too Small . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Lack of Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Reconciling Politics and Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

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5 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Federal Level . . . . . . . 5.1 The Gendered Effects of Electoral Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Party Statutes, Rules, and Regulations for Federal Elections 5.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Land Level . . . . . . . 6.1 The Gendered Effects of Land-Level Electoral and Party Regulations in Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 The Gendered Effects of Land-Level Electoral and Party Regulations in Austria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 Conclusion: The Long Road to Parity in Politics . . . . . . . . . 7.1 The National Post-Quota Gender Gap in Germany and Austria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 The Subnational Post-Quota Gender Gap in Germany and Austria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 New Debates: From Voluntary Party Quotas to Legislated Quotas? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 The Way Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Appendix A: Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Appendix B: Supplemental Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. 6.5 Fig. B.1

Proportion of women and men in German Bundestag, Federal Elections (1949–2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Proportion of women in Parliaments of German Bundesländer (2004–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Proportion of women and men in Austrian Nationalrat, Federal Elections (1945–2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Proportion of women in Parliaments of Austrian Bundesländer (2004–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Women in National Parliaments of Germany and Austria 1983–2017 (in percent) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post-Quota gender gap in German Bundestag 1983–2017 . . . . Post-Quota gender gap in Austrian Nationalrat 1986–2017 . . . Women’s parliamentary representation in the four Länder Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Upper Austria, and Vienna 1983–2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post-Quota gender gap in the Landtag Baden-Württemberg 1988–2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post-Quota gender gap in the Abgeordnetenhaus Berlin 1985–2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post-Quota gender gap in the Landtag Upper Austria 1985–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post-Quota gender gap in the Landtag Vienna 1987–2015 . . . . Party membership, candidates and elected—CDU women, 1946–2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 6.1 Table 6.2

Table 6.3 Table 6.4 Table 6.5

Table 6.6 Table B.1 Table B.2

Women and men in Bundestag by caucus and election cycle, 2009–2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Women and men in Nationalrat by Parliamentary Club and election cycle, 2008–2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Candidates and elected by sex in German federal elections 2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Candidates and elected by sex in Austrian federal elections 2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Women’s representation Länder level Germany May 2019 . . Women and men among candidates and elected first and second mandates in Land election Baden-Württemberg 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Women and men among candidates and elected for direct and list mandates in Land election Berlin 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . Women’s representation Länder level Austria 2019 . . . . . . . . Women and men among candidates and elected for basic mandates and remaining mandates in Land election Vienna 2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Women and Men among district and Land list candidacies and mandates in Land election Upper Austria 2015 . . . . . . . Gender quotas in EU member states and women’s representation in Parliament (June 2019) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Share of women in Landtag Baden-Württemberg caucuses (1988–2016) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Introducing the Cross-National Comparison of Quota Implementation

Germany and Austria celebrated 100 years of women’s suffrage in 2018 and 2019, respectively. The promise of parity that came with the active and passive right to vote, however, remains elusive. Contrary to optimistic research conducted in the 1990s and the early 2000s, the pursuit of gender equality in descriptive political representation does not follow an ‘S-Curve Model’ (Salmond 2006; Matland 1993). According to this model, early tokenism gives way to a rapid increase in women’s representation and an upper ‘S’-line that invokes ‘true gender equality’ (Salmond 2006, p. 183). In fact, only half of the ‘S’ has materialized to date. Most countries feature little more than roughly 30% of women in their legislatures. Germany and Austria are no exceptions. Empirical feminist research posits that good representation of women should include three elements: their physical presence, that is, equal descriptive representation of women; real opportunities for voice, i.e., the existence of women’s policy agencies; and evidence of an effective process, such as guidelines for using gender mainstreaming in policy processes (Squires 2007). This book focuses on the first dimension of good gender representation, the descriptive representation of women. More specifically, we assess the oldest, and at the same time most controversial, instrument of better women’s political representation: the quota. In 2018, women held 30.7% of seats in the German Bundestag and 34.4% in the Austrian Nationalrat, putting both countries mid-field on rank 14 and 18 among 42 OECD and EU member states (Dingler and Kroeber 2018, p. 2). Given that it took 100 years for women to claim about one-third of parliamentary seats in those states, we would expect it to take at least another half-century before all gender imbalances in political representation become a thing of the past. This, however, amounts to an ‘optimistic’ modernization tale. The prevailing and empirically supported narrative is one of stagnation or even backlash. In many European countries, the parliamentary gender gap—one-third female, two-thirds male—seems to have solidified in recent years, leading observers to proclaim a new ‘glass ceiling’ in descriptive political representation (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2017, p. 2; Dingler © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. Ahrens et al., Gender Equality in Politics, SpringerBriefs in Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34895-3_1

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1 Introducing the Cross-National Comparison …

and Kroeber 2018, p. 3f.). Country-specific stagnation in representation is primarily attributed to party cleavages, as some—usually center-left—parties fare better in advancing women than other—mostly traditionally conservative or right-wing— parties (Beckwith 1992; Franceschet et al. 2012; Matland 1993; Matland and Studlar 1996). The latter eschew the notion of gender equality and thus dampen the effect of pro-women strategies in other party caucuses. Gender scholars have identified different forms of backlash against women’s political representation. These range from the re-imposition of a ‘hypermasculine’ state (i.e., Wilkinson 2014; Wood 2016), characterized by masculinist leadership at top executive levels (i.e., Brasilia, Russia, Hungary, Poland, USA), to increasing rightwing or nationalist and authoritarian party influence (Brasilia, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, UK), to more subtle exclusionary mechanisms at work during candidate selection in what political scientists call the ‘secret garden of politics’ (Gallagher and Marsh 1988; Bjarnegård and Kenny 2015; Dahlerup 2018, p. 41). What takes place in this secret garden of politics is removed from the public eye. At issue are the informal elements of the democratic election process such as internal power struggles, male networks, and historical legacies reign, rendering candidate selection an onerous process for women. Not only is the entry to the secret garden difficult to find, but its layout might resemble more of a maze than a set of clearly marked pathways into politics. Feminists in Western democracies have long demanded that these secret gardens be turned into public or at least publicly monitored spaces, and that candidate selection, in particular, be formalized as much as possible with the goal of advancing as many women as men into legislatures. The mechanism by which this can be achieved entails either a formal legal or constitutional commitment to a women’s or gender quota1 (i.e., a legislative or constitutional quota) or a voluntary commitment by parties to present a certain percentage of women for electoral office (a voluntary party quota).2 By 2016, 19 member states of the European Union had at least one party employing voluntary party quotas, and 10 member states used legislative women or gender quotas for parliamentary representation (Lépinard and Rubio-Marín 2018, p. 4f.). The Green Parties (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and Die Grüne Alternative) and the Social Democrats (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands/SPD and Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs/SPÖ) introduced these in Germany and Austria in the 1980s, followed by the Christian conservative parties (Christlich Demokratische Union/CDU and Österreichische Volkspartei/ÖVP). Respective quotas ranged between one-third and 50% of candidates for electoral as well as for party office. After German unification, the successor party of the East German Socialist 1 A women quota sets goals for the share of women, while a gender quota defines a minimum share

for each sex. 2 To some extent, the qualifier ‘voluntary’ is misleading. Although the term voluntary party quotas is

firmly established, it should be clear at the onset that such quotas are not ‘voluntary’ in an everyday sense; they are labeled ‘voluntary’ because they lack formal legislation and applicability to all parties. They do, however, pose a formal (self-induced) set of rules for the adopting party.

1 Introducing the Cross-National Comparison …

3

Unity Party, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which now runs as The Left (Die Linke), also adopted quotas.3 For a long time and even though it was merely a semantic ploy, the conservative parties in both countries shunned the term quota, labeling it an aspirational ‘quorum’ of 33% instead. In reality, however, the conservatives did establish a de facto minimum ‘soft quota’ amounting to one-third women candidates for electoral as well as for party office. The strength of women’s parliamentary representation usually corresponds with their presence in party offices. Not surprisingly, quota regulations for party offices were often codified in party statutes in a similar manner as electoral-list quotas. While the Green parties in both countries decided fairly early in favor of gender-equal dual leadership, the two social democratic parties (SPD and SPÖ) first elected women party leaders in 2018 after more than 100 years of existence. In Germany, Andrea Nahles attained office from fall 2017 until June 2019, and in Austria, Pamela RendiWagner was elected in 2018. The conservative German CDU elected Angela Merkel as its chair in 2000, albeit initially as a sort of Trümmerfrau (rubble woman) following a major party corruption scandal (Mushaben 2017). Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer succeeded Angela Merkel as party chairwoman in 2018. The Austrian conservative ÖVP has never chosen a woman leader. Not all parties in their respective parliaments utilize women or gender quotas4 : In Germany, the liberal Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) has steadfastly rejected quotas as the wrong strategy for increasing the share of women in their Bundestag caucus, currently at 22.5%. The FDP party congress finally agreed in 2019, by a slim 60% majority to address numerical underrepresentation of women by way of mentoring and so-called target agreements,5 negotiated separately between each Land and federal level party unit for respective candidate lists and executive party offices (FDP Bundesparteitag 2019). The right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) not only abhors the use of internal party quotas as mirrored in its very low representation of only 10.8% women in the 2019 Bundestag but also polemically targets quotas across all public sectors and denounces gender equality policy in general as ‘gender-mania’ (Kemper 2014; Hentges and Nottbohm 2017). The Austrian right-wing Freedom Party FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs) exhibits an equally negative attitude towards quotas and rejects gender equality policies as well (Mayer and Sauer 2017). In 2019, the party had 3 Even

though the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) did not have an official women’s quota in politics, the share of women in the national parliament, the Volkskammer, was always higher than in the German Bundestag. Already the first assembly had a share of 20% women and the percentage increased to 32.2% in 1986 (Pawlowski 2008). By comparison, the ‘critical mass’ of 30% was reached in unified Germany only in 1998 (Abels et al. 2018). As this study interrogates a subset of parties that started to implement voluntary party quotas in former West Germany, all following references to Germany in historical context refer to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). 4 We are aware that the question of adequate political participation and representation also speaks to intersectional aspects. It is beyond the scope of this book, however, to address these aspects. 5 Zielvereinbarungen (translation by authors). All following translations from original German text are from the authors.

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1 Introducing the Cross-National Comparison …

27.9% of seats in the Nationalrat, but women held only nine out of 51 mandates (17.6%) in the FPÖ caucus. The liberal NEOS (Das Neue Österreich und Liberales Forum) as well as the ‘Jetzt—Liste Pilz’ (‘Now—List Pilz’) a splinter party from the Austrian Greens that entered parliament in 2017 do not use quotas either.6

1.1 The Post-Quota Gender Gap All quota parties under investigation here articulate in their statutes the goal of equal participation of women and men in elected and party office. Their declared goal, in other words, is gender parity. Quotas are presented to party members and voters as a means to exactly that end. Despite this overarching and noble objective of all quota parties, however, parity remains elusive. Not just Germany and Austria, but most countries operating with voluntary party quotas exhibit what we call a postquota gender gap. Given that women make up more than 50% of both countries’ populations and given the quota parties’ parity goals, we consider it fully justified to measure parties against gender parity. However, we take a more moderate stance in defining and measuring the post-quota gender gap. In the analysis presented here, the post-quota gender gap signifies the difference between a party’s adopted quota and the actual share of women in a legislative body, that is, the gap between formal quota commitment and output. Quota parties tend to justify the difference between quota and output by arguing that it is ultimately up to the voters to choose their representatives. As long as parties fulfill their commitment to present a certain percentage of women candidates whose selection they can directly influence (usually party list candidacies), they have done all they can—so some quota parties argue. The fact that parties, in general, meet their formalized minimum standards has led Louise Davidson-Schmich, among others, to argue that ‘German parties consistently fulfill their quotas for high-level elective bodies such as the European Parliament, the Bundestag, and Germany’s state legislatures’ (Davidson-Schmich 2016, p. 223f.).7 If one considers solely the share of women on electoral lists, this is absolutely correct in the vast majority of cases. However, given that parties tend to frame their respective quota as a step towards reaching parity, we find it important to assess the difference between quota policy and output. Therefore, we invite the reader to look beyond formal input by investigating policy throughput (the secret garden) and output (policy in practice). This study challenges the notion of ‘quota fulfillment’, highlighting two levels of inconsistency that potentially subverts a party’s quota commitment: The first inconsistency appears when assessing overall fit of quotas with existing electoral laws. We argue that party quotas sit uneasily within the particularities of the electoral system. In Austria, it is the aggregation of different lists on different electoral and party organization levels that inhibits quotas. In Germany, voluntary party 6 However, in 2019, the NEOS featured 50% women’s representatives and among ‘Jetzt—Liste Pilz’

three out of seven representatives were women. fact, on the Land level, parties still sometimes even miss their electoral-list quota.

7 In

1.1 The Post-Quota Gender Gap

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quotas conflict with the direct election provision of the electoral system. The second inconsistency arises at the intersection of electoral laws and party regulations. The way parties craft and enforce regulations results in not all parties on all levels at all times fulfilling their quotas in candidate selection processes. We need to understand better why this is still the case. All quota parties use language in public and in their respective statutes that articulate the objective of gender parity. The quota, in other words, is a means to an end, and that end is the equal descriptive representation of women and men. The 2017 German SPD statute, for example, explicitly states the goal ‘that men and women are represented to a minimum of 40% in all parliaments and district level representative bodies’ (SPD 2017, § 11.2). More than 30 years after introducing quotas, however, the SPD still appears to have difficulties fulfilling this goal by employing quotas for electoral lists. When questioned about this shortfall, parties almost reflexively cite the electoral system in which they operate as the main culprit. However, if the electoral system prevents party parity policies from becoming effective, isn’t it time for the quota parties themselves address this inconsistency, either by fortifying party regulations or by joining attempts to change the electoral system? This book, while putting emphasis on what needs fixing, also seeks to identify the factors that contribute to progress in descriptive representation of women. At the national level, for example, Austria’s post-quota gender gap drastically declined for the Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ) as well as for the conservative ÖVP as a result of different party strategies and sanctions in the 2017 elections. The Greens, by contrast, had no problem to meet their quota for most of Austria’s electoral cycles under consideration here. This is also true for the German Greens, even though their commitment still has to be put to the test when gaining a sizable number of direct mandates in a national election. For the SPD, distributing winnable direct candidacies equally among women and men has become a core concern. The CDU recognizes this challenge as well, but until now has not actively addressed it. As our analyses show, working around existing legal obstacles requires unusually high levels of party commitment and creative engineering of lists and candidacies. Such party-level arrangements may vary over time, and by region, creating internal conflicts. Therefore, we submit that analyzing the fit in applying quotas under specific electoral law provisions as well as on the interaction of inner-party regulation and electoral laws will more effectively advance discussions on parity. Parties either need to fortify their quota regulations to minimize undesired gender effects (this is the Green Party strategy) or we need electoral reform in both Austria and Germany to enforce stricter parity by way of law or constitutional amendment. Our study of the post-quota gender gap adds a new dimension to the knowledge base of the international research network Gender Equality Policy in Practice (GEPP) understanding if and when party quotas result in stronger representation of women requires assessing quota policy ‘in practice’ (Engeli and Mazur 2018,

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1 Introducing the Cross-National Comparison …

p. 112).8 By focusing on policy implementation, we draw attention to the ways in which institutional factors shaping the political systems of Germany and Austria interface with voluntary quota policies. We complement the existing literature on recruitment and socio-cultural legacies (Schüttemeyer and Sturm 2005; Reiser 2013; Davidson-Schmich 2016; Manow 2015) by showing how institutional design shapes the effectiveness of quotas. Introducing the post-quota gender gap to the study of electoral politics will undoubtedly provoke controversy, not least because it puts the spotlight on those parties that in fact are trying to do something about gender equality in their ranks and across representative political institutions. Exploring the post-quota gender gap among parties that have adopted quotas might, at first sight, appear like pointing fingers in the wrong direction, as if we were letting parties that adhere to old-style masculinist traditions and promote mostly men largely off the hook. We do not intend to undermine party policy initiatives to target massive gender imbalances in representation. We nonetheless submit that parties which have, in fact, vowed to address gender equality with active and interventionist policies should also be subject to scrutiny, given decades of evidence that quota parties do not, or cannot, effectively implement their own commitment to parity. We do, however, proceed with some caution by setting the argument pursued in this book in a broader context: We note, first, that a party’s post-quota gender gap says little to nothing about its overall commitment to gender equality. A party with a stated quota of 50%, where women’s actual parliamentary representation amounts to 40%, might have a 10% quota gap, but it is still performing better than a party with a 33% quota but only 32% women in parliament and therefore a quota gap of just 1%. The reader should bear in mind that a large post-quota gender gap does not mean being ‘bad’ on gender equality in political representation. What it means is that a clearly articulated aspiration of a party has not been realized, requiring further analysis as to why that is the case. Our second caveat is that the post-quota gender gap cannot be explained solely by actions endogenous to a party. As our findings show, the quota gap is most likely to be reproduced at the intersection of party action and electoral law. Consequently, changes in both domains, in party procedure as well as in electoral laws, might be necessary to achieve parity in both of our cases.

1.2 Why Germany and Austria? The study is based on what political scientists call a ‘most similar case’ design. Germany and Austria share many core features with regard to their political systems, the nature of their economies, and their civic cultures, allowing us to better isolate

8 The

authors would like to thank the founders and members of the Gender Equality Policy in Practice (GEPP) project (https://www.csbppl.com/gepp/) for stimulating discussions about gender equality in political representation and, more specifically, quota implementation.

1.2 Why Germany and Austria?

7

the factors that, in effect, influence quota implementation. Both countries are parliamentary democracies in which parties dominate the political process. They share the post-war history of building substantial social welfare states with strong corporatist governance, in which trade unions in particular long supported benefits based on a single (male) wage earner. In both countries, the male breadwinner society started to erode during the neoliberal restructuring since the 1980s (Bergmann et al. 2019; Ferree 2012; Gresch and Sauer 2018; Scheele 2019). In addition, in Germany after 1989, an East German society based on a dual earner model was confronted with lingering economic and cultural patterns in the West built on stay-at-home moms and half-day kindergartens (Lang 2017). What makes this comparison most interesting, however, are the stark differences in electoral systems. Germany with its mixed-member proportional system (MMP) and Austria with its proportional electoral system (PR) should, in theory, fare quite differently in terms of their post-quota gender gap. The literature on gender quotas stipulates that proportional systems do considerably better in accommodating quotas (Matland 2006; Salmond 2006; Meier 2012a, b). However, as we will show, deeper electoral systems factors need to be assessed in relation to party stipulations and enforcement. In fact, up until 2017 German parties fared better than Austrian parties in fulfilling their respective quotas on the federal level. Despite a more adverse electoral context in the German case, more women were elected to the German Bundestag by quota parties than to the Austrian Nationalrat. One can best explain this anomaly by investigating how various dimensions of respective electoral systems interact with party laws and regulations. We also assess comparatively how particular quota parties engage with the issue of ‘best fit with quota,’ in particular how they might alter their party regulations in order to advance more women. This occurred, for example, when Austrian ÖVP leader Sebastian Kurz revised ÖVP electoral regulations in 2017, leading to a substantial increase in its women Nationalrat representatives. Over the post-war decades in both Germany and Austria, we see similar trajectories by major parties in designing quotas, but historically different outcomes. Previous research has identified a ‘local–national gender gap’ (Fortin-Rittberger et al. 2017, p. 2), arguing that in states like Germany and Austria, women’s representation is stronger on the national than on the local level because local elections are often dominated by small and non-party-affiliated groups such as Freie Wähler (free voters) or other loose voter associations, independent candidates, or other fringe parties without gender-sensitive cultures (see also Eder et al. 2016). In addition, local levels are particularly vulnerable to male dominance in representation, and research shows that compliance with voluntary party quotas is lacking much more on the local level than on higher levels of government (Davidson-Schmich 2016). The structural problem of women’s exclusion on the local level partly translates to the higher levels of governance, as the German term ‘Ochsentour’ (‘ox tour’) signals (Sch¨uttemeyer and Sturm 2005; Reiser 2011, 2013). Gender biased recruitment and socio-cultural legacies have shown to inhibit women’s commitment to this ‘ox tour,’ making their advancement to higher bodies of representation more unlikely, be it on the Land or the federal level.

8

1 Introducing the Cross-National Comparison …

As a result of looking at different levels of government across time in two nations, some of our findings differ from previous studies for Land and federal levels. If we look merely at overall representation in the boom years of the so-called Volksparteien, the catch-all parties, between the mid-1980s and the end of the twentieth century, a pattern emerges in which it seems as though the quota was more effective on the national level in Germany and more effective on the Land level in Austria, with overall higher representation of women on the Land level in Austria and the national federal level in Germany. This pattern has changed in the past two decades, as in both countries stronger parity initiatives have taken hold. Our study shows that political dynamics within countries can lead parties to adapt quota strategies to changing political contexts. Such political dynamics can have their roots on the national or the Land level. In order to grasp particular quota environments, we compare nationallevel party action between countries, but also Land-level policies in two German and two Austrian Länder. We capture quota policies of parties in the (progressive) citystates and country capitals Berlin and Vienna and in the (conservative) territorial states of Baden-Württemberg and Upper Austria.9 Both Baden-Württemberg and Upper Austria are economically affluent and culturally more conservative states with sizable rural populations. Mobilization for gender equality has historically been weaker than in Berlin and Vienna. The two city-states, by contrast, have been hubs for gender activism geared towards parity. The comparison of federal and Land levels within one country might explain how differences of electoral law design and party statute implementation impact an isolated case of women’s descriptive representation. The country comparison of federal and Land levels highlights the differences in the multilevel architecture of our two cases.10

1.3 The Methods We Use For examining the post-adoption phase of party quotas, we drew on a mixed methods approach and applied it in a similar fashion to the two countries and to the national and the Länder levels. We collected a broad range of primary and secondary data in different iterative and interlinked processes.

9 Our

case selection might be criticized for encompassing two West German Länders and not an Eastern Land. We submit that Berlin is in fact an East-West mixed Land and that, in order to analyze quota development over time, we needed a fit between two structurally similar cases from Germany and Austria with medium to low women’ representation. Baden-Württemberg is similar to Upper Austria in terms of political economy and conservative culture, and it is the German Land with the poorest descriptive representation in its Landtag. 10 We exclude the community level in our analysis, because any case selection would become a random choice with the high number of municipalities in both countries. For studies on women’s descriptive representation on the community level please refer for Germany to Holtkamp et al. (2009), Kletzing and Lukoschat (2010), Lukoschat and Belchner (2014), Davidson-Schmich (2018), Kletzing (2018a, b); for Austria please refer to Steininger (2000b, 2019).

1.3 The Methods We Use

9

We started by collecting core documents such as party programs, statutes, and federal electoral regulations. From each of the documents, we extracted the formal rules concerning quota regulations, the steps of how quotas shall be ensured in selecting party candidates for electoral competition, and information on the procedures to ensure quota implementation. Furthermore, we collected additional information on party debates on quota regulations by keyword search on the party and newspaper websites with the aim to understand official party positions. Next to the documentary analysis, we gathered studies on women’s representation in Germany and Austria over time, by parties and on the different levels to be able to judge differences between quota targets and women’s representation in elected office ‘in practice’. Moreover, we assembled electoral statistics from public statistical services and from federal and Land-level election commissioners providing gender disaggregated raw data of candidates and elected along party lines. This allowed us to see changes regarding quota fulfillment at candidate and elected stage. While collecting documents and statistics, we also developed a semi-structured questionnaire with broad question sections applicable to both countries and national and Land levels. The question sections covered a variety of topics, including: general explanations of post-quota gender gaps and party discussions, historical accounts of quota developments, information on recruitment for the party and for electoral offices, sanctions and changes in rules, and future perspectives on representational equality. In addition, we added specific questions for each case and/or for specific functions, for instance, for legal advisors of the party. All interviews conformed to ethical requirements as regards data protection and anonymization. All interviewees were guaranteed anonymity; identifiers are limited to party family. Quotations in the text refer to original statements translated by the authors. From 2016 to 2018, we interviewed party experts for gender equality on national and Land levels, attempting to cover the same number for each party and each level. In total, we conducted 16 interviews in Germany and 19 in Austria; interviews lasted between 40 min and two hours, were audiotaped, transcribed, and anonymized (see Appendix A for complete overview). In the process of interviewing, we contrasted interview data with statistical and documentary data in order to adjust the questionnaire, collect additional documents, and identify places to mine for specific information, such as the party legal offices. All interview quotations were translated by the authors; the abbreviation INT G1 stands, for instance, for ‘Interview Germany 1’, INT A1 for ‘Interview Austria 1’ (see Appendix). After transcription, the authors coded the interview material manually in order to systematize information on the different factors that help us understand the post-quota gender gap. We contrasted the findings from the interviews, documentary analysis, and statistical analysis for the different parties, countries, and for the national and Land level. We paid particular attention on the fine print of the electoral architecture as well as party statutes and regulations. We scrutinized the fit of party statues and electoral regulations as well as what derails quota implementation or renders it ineffective. Collectively employing this process, we were able to determine to

10

1 Introducing the Cross-National Comparison …

what degree party commitment matched regulations and proceedings. By way of this multi-factor contrasting comparison, we uncovered a set of quota roadblocks for the federal and the Land levels (see Chaps. 5 and 6).

1.4 How the Book Proceeds In the following Chap. 2, we will outline our cases’ political systems in order to isolate the main features that explain differences in quota implementation. Chapter 3 presents a short history of women’s and gender quota adoption in Germany and Austria and provides empirical evidence of lingering imbalances in women’s representation in parliaments. Based on this empirical evidence, Chap. 4 introduces the post-quota gender gap and proposes ways to study it. Chapters 5 and 6 present the results of our empirical research, focusing on the reasons for the national-level postquota gender gap in Chap. 5 and looking more specifically at the four Länder level cases in Germany and Austria in Chap. 6. We end with a set of recommendations that point towards ways to decrease the post-quota gender gap, either through innerparty regulatory changes or by changing electoral law. These recommendations are intended to engage with ongoing debates about electoral law reforms in both countries. In Germany, these debates have most recently been fueled by a constitutional court decision requiring changes in federal electoral law in the context of efforts to reduce the number of members of the Bundestag. In Austria, some political scientists have called for implementing a majority system. Women party activists, meanwhile, scrutinize the weaknesses of voluntary party quotas in their current form. We hope that our analyses and findings help inform these debates.

Chapter 2

Contextualizing Quotas: The Political Systems of Germany and Austria

In this chapter, we outline the main features of the political systems of Germany and Austria and explore how they impact gender equality and quota implementation both on the national and Länder levels. Germany and Austria are similar polities with respect to federal architecture, party-centered democracy, and neo-corporatist governance (von Beyme 2000; Pelinka and Rosenberger 2014). Both countries have multi-party systems with diverse populations and still exhibit strong allegiance to local and regional cultures and norms, including those on gender. Both are organized as federations in which quota implementation faces different electoral laws and party regulations not just when comparing the two countries, but also, in Germany in particular, between national and subnational levels and between Länder.1 Both have historically prospered by way of fortifying their respective conservative, male breadwinner-oriented welfare regimes (see Dackweiler 2003; Ferree 2012; Leitner 1999; Ostner and Lewis 1995). In effect, both labor market participation and political representations of women were historically low compared to other European countries, suggesting that neither politics for, nor politics by women had been considered an important public value. This only changed with the emergence of the second women’s movement in the 1970s. Germany and Austria share a history of National Socialism that after WWII resulted in institutional ‘re-democratization’ as well as Germany’s division into the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The FRG and Austria established parliamentary democracies with two-chamber parliaments: The first chamber, the German Bundestag and the Austrian Nationalrat, is elected every fourth (Germany) or fifth year (Austria) in direct general elections. The second chamber, the Bundesrat, represents the federal states. In both Germany and

1 The

different electoral systems of Germany and Austria will be centrally featured in Chaps. 5 and

6. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. Ahrens et al., Gender Equality in Politics, SpringerBriefs in Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34895-3_2

11

12

2 Contextualizing Quotas: The Political Systems …

Austria, Bundesrat mandates are distributed among the states according to population size and appointed by Länder governments in Germany and by Länder parliaments in Austria. Presidents have a largely ceremonial function in both countries. They are in essence ‘chancellor democracies’, with power concentrated in the Chancellor’s office. Whereas German Cabinet secretaries are constrained in their policy prerogatives by the Chancellor’s guidelines,2 the Austrian Chancellor has less formal steering capacity (for Austria: Müller 1997, p. 126ff.), providing overall more autonomy to ministries’ policy actions. Both Germany and Austria are strong ‘party democracies’. Parties in the German constitution are tasked with contributing to the formation of a popular will. In Austria, where parties are less prominently featured constitutionally, their dominance developed by way of tightly engineered association with central civil society actors such as labor and professional organizations. In both countries, the multi-party system fuels political decision-making processes via party mobilization and organization on all levels (von Beyme 2007; Decker 2011; Gabriel 1989). In Germany after WWII, three parties from the Christian conservative, social democratic, and liberal party family were re-established alongside social partner organizations with tight relationships to particular parties. The Christian Democratic Party (CDU) was in power without interruption for the first seventeen years of the consolidation of postwar democracy between 1949 and 1966. With backing from the omnipresent Catholic Church on the one side, industrial associations on the other, the CDU and their Bavarian partner CSU (Christlich-Soziale Union) steered Germany towards a conservative family model and a male breadwinner society.3 German corporatism with its concerted action model provided a platform for industrial and labor associations to advance economic stability and workers’ rights, while neglecting to address how these rights were gendered. Only in the late 1970s, when social movements put pressure on Willy Brandt’s Social Democratic Party, did women’s interests and policies get more attention. The Social Democrats had historically been in a tight relationship with German unions, favoring special protections for women that in effect restricted participation in the labor force. By the 1980s, women in the SPD pressed the party to position itself against the lingering conservative family model as well as against union protectionism of women disguised as family-friendly industrial and welfare politics. Austrian party democracy historically developed around the cooperation of two ‘Lager’ (camps) of Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the People’s Party (ÖVP) which are traditional Christian conservatives. Both promote Austrian consociational democracy through social partnership and neo-corporatism (Tálos 2008). Social partnership still defines the two Lager as the conservative ÖVP cooperates with business chambers 2 Richtlinienkompetenz. 3 The CSU only participates in elections in Bavaria and not in any other Bundesland. Vice versa, the

CDU does not run in Bavarian elections but in all other Bundesländer. This applies also to federal elections, where the two parties form one parliamentary caucus. As we reflect primarily on the discourse and actions in the CDU, we will label data and other information from the joint caucus also as CDU-driven.

2 Contextualizing Quotas: The Political Systems …

13

and industrial associations,4 while the SPÖ collaborates with trade unions and labor associations.5 A third Lager is represented by the Freedom Party (FPÖ), founded in 1949 as the Association of Independents,6 gathering former members of the National Socialist Party. In 1955, it re-named itself FPÖ. Before the NEOs entered the political landscape in 2012, a liberal party was never successful in the Austrian Lager context. The Greens, as well, never associated with any of the two Lager. Austrian social partnership is known for its tight male networks. Neither the business chamber nor the industrial association or the trade unions ever had a woman as a leader. Only in 2018 did a woman become president of the Austrian Chambers for Workers and Employees.7 The two Austrian center parties have a quota for members of the trade unions (SPÖ) and the business chambers (ÖVP) on their electoral lists; these tend to be men (Neyer 1996). Mobilization for stronger political representation of women historically originated in party women’s organizations or from the cooperation between women party functionaries and their associations. In Austria, in particular, where ÖVP membership is tied directly to being part of a select group of associations (Bünde), the Bünde have considerable influence over the party’s women’s policy. Advocacy for increasing women’s representation depends not just on programmatic commitment within the ÖVP but also on the agenda and influence of the women’s association (Frauenbund), which traditionally has a weak position within the party. In both countries, this party landscape changed with the growth of social movements in the 1970s and their institutionalization as Green parties. The Greens in both countries entered the Federal Parliament about the same time in the mid-1980s and brought with them feminist policies and a 50% women quota (see Chap. 3). The power of German neo-corporatism and Austrian social partnership eroded over the next two decades. This created openings for smaller parties and in particular encouraged the (re)formation of ultra-right nationalist parties, such as the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD), the Republikaner, and the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, and boosted the FPÖ in Austria.8 Jörg Haider seized FPÖ leadership in 1986 and ‘modernized’ the party’s ideological foundation from a focus on German nationalism towards a broader populist, anti-elite, and anti-migration agenda. In the last decade, FPÖ and AfD gained public visibility and substantial parliamentary representation in both countries, increasing the representational gender gap through overwhelmingly male MPs on federal and subnational levels. As neither Germany nor Austria have a legal gender quota, parties are in effect the major actors in the field of women’s representation. The changing party

4 German:

Wirtschaftskammer and Industriellenvereinigung. Chambers for Workers and Employees represent Austrian employees. Membership is compulsory and fees are 0.5% of a member’s gross salary. 6 Formally: Verband der Unabhängigen. 7 German: Kammern für Arbeiter und Angestellte. 8 Until the late 1980s, the FPÖ was a small niche party promoting German nationalism as its main ideology. 5 The

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2 Contextualizing Quotas: The Political Systems …

landscape in both countries currently puts ever more weight on center and left party action towards gender parity (see Chap. 3). Federalism is an important element of both the German and Austrian polities. Prominent women’s policies, for example in the domain of gender-based violence, did not originate on the national, but on subnational levels. After WWII, West Germany reinstituted eleven Länder in order to curb centralization and abuses of power (Gabriel 1989, p. 66). The GDR government, by contrast, dissolved the Länder in 1952, to be reinstated under the first post-unification government in 1990. In Austria, the postwar architecture included reestablishing nine Länder in 1945 (Fallend 2006). Both federations have been classified as cooperative or interwoven (Erk and Koning 2010, p. 371), sharing many competencies vertically between the federal and subnational units as well as horizontally between the Länder. Cooperation is also engrained in both countries’ constitutional provision to guarantee ‘uniform living conditions’ by redistributing resources from richer to poorer Länder. In 1994, the German provision was softened and amended to ‘equivalent living conditions’. Public opinion polls showcase that Germans and Austrians both appreciate unitarism as a central element of federalism and that the notion of competition is disliked (for Germany: Kahl 2016, p. 3; Petersen et al. 2008, p. 473; for Austria: Bußjäger and Seeber 2010, p. 41). Federalism is said to account for and promote cultural diversity, innovation capacity, and a system of checks and balances in both countries. They differ, however, with respect to Länder influence and how they incentivize cooperation, in effect exposing Germany’s strong as opposed to Austria’s weak federalism. In Germany, the Länder are central policy players via (1) the second Parliamentary Chamber, the Bundesrat, whose powers include all matters of taxation and central policy initiatives; (2) elaborate intergovernmentalism between the Länder and between Länder and the federal state; and (3) their power to administer their own policies in the areas of labor market, environment, or education, and also their direct engagement with many federal and European Union policies. Thus, Länder strength is not primarily based on autonomy from the federal level, but on their institutionalized role as interlocutor, partner, and frequently powerful opponent of the federal government (Hueglin and Fenna 2006, p. 235f.). In gender equality policies, all three sets of ties have proven to be door openers for Länder initiatives: (1) Länder frequently initiate laws from the second Chamber, a recent example being the law for quotas on corporate boards; (2) during their regular joint intergovernmental meetings,9 Land-level women’s and gender equality ministers confer among themselves, as the federal minister is invited to attend but cannot set the agenda; and (3) German Länder have not only independent legislative competency in important areas of gender equality policy such as education, they also can creatively structure policy in areas where they have implementation capacity, such as in domains of social welfare and employment that affect women in particular ways.

9 Gemeinsame

Konferenz der Gleichstellungs- und Frauenministerinnen und -minister, -senatorinnen und -senatoren der Länder GFMK.

2 Contextualizing Quotas: The Political Systems …

15

Austrian Länder, by contrast, have much less autonomy and their formal influence in the policy-making process is weak (Erk 2004, p. 5; Fallend 2006, p. 1024ff.). The Second Chamber of Parliament, representing the Länder (Bundesrat), plays only a minor role in the lawmaking process (Fallend 2006, p. 1028). Political decisions are taken and laws are crafted overwhelmingly on the federal level (Nationalrat), while implementation and enforcement are the duty of the Länder. Policy areas exposing divided responsibility between lawmaking and execution include for instance social welfare, mother’s and youth welfare, elderly care or hospitals (ibid., p. 1029), all areas in which gender considerations feature prominently. Austrian Länder hold legislative rights only in very few areas, such as for public housing, sports, or kindergartens. Thus, in effect, Austria is often considered to be one of the most centralized federal states worldwide (Bußjäger 2010) or a ‘federation without federalism’ (Erk 2004), where lack of formal influence is compensated for by strong informal ties between Bund and Länder and between Länder. The resulting ‘executive federalism’ (Fallend 2006, p. 1035; Helms and Wineroither 2017, p. 20), with its lack of public debate or parliamentary deliberation, can appear hermetic and non-transparent. Both federations are fueled by strong ‘party federalism’. Parties provide formal as well as ‘informal connective mechanisms’ (Karlhofer 2010, p. 142; also Schambeck 1993) both among Länder and between Länder and federal level politics. Party interests and party mobilization are driving policy processes on the Länder as well as on the federal level. Whereas policy development in Germany has long been dominated by party alignment, Austria had developed stronger corporatism alongside a tradition of consensus democracy (i.e. Helms and Wineroither 2017, p. 23; Lijphart 2012; Vatter and Stadelmann-Steffen 2013). Since the 1990s, however, party differences tend to override corporatism and consensus also in Austria. As both federal and Land-level governments are most often coalition governments, parties in power have significant influence over respective gender equality agendas. Historically and up to today, one or both of the German center parties CDU and SPD has been part of all governing coalitions on the federal or Land levels. In 2019, the Green Party was partner in half of the 16 Länder coalition governments. The AfD, as of this writing, held no executive power in any Land. In Austria, by contrast, the FPÖ is part of three Austrian Länder governments, whereas the Greens are in the governing coalitions of five Austrian Länder. As center and left parties in power are particularly important in crafting and implementing quota policies, the long-term presence of the FPÖ not just in Länder, but also in national government negatively impacts gender equality in representation as well as gender equality policies. As noted earlier, Germany and Austria have long been labeled strong and conservative male breadwinner-oriented welfare states (Leitner 1999; Dackweiler 2003; Ferree 2012; Lang 2017). Until the 1980s, trade unions in both countries advocated for, and public opinion supported, a single (and male) ‘family wage’, feeding into the dominant family model of a male breadwinner and a stay-at-home or only part-time employed mother. A gendered division of labor has shaped political participation and representation of women in both countries. In effect, throughout much of the twentieth century, both were among the laggards in Western Europe in terms of promoting gender equality. Ultimately, the German ‘Red-Green’ era between 1998 and 2005,

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2 Contextualizing Quotas: The Political Systems …

with substantial Green representation in national and subnational legislatures, as well as a strong Social Democratic footprint in Austrian government in the mid-1990s, initiated a wave of gender equality policies (Ferree 2012; Lang 2017). Women’s activists chose to utilize ‘party federalism’ to work their way into parties and to establish a women’s policy infrastructure from within executive offices within the government. In both counties, women’s policy agencies (WPA), which we consider to be any government office or personnel employed with the purpose of advancing women in society (see Lang 2017; McBride Stetson and Mazur 1995, p. 3), have developed from the local level to the national level. Germany has the most extensive WPA network in Europe, with more than 1,900 equality offices organized within state or state-dependent agencies.10 Although WPA in Austria are somewhat less ubiquitous, they have also created a stable network of equality agencies (Lang and Sauer 2013). Their influence grew with the 2013 constitutional requirement to implement gender budgeting on all levels of the Austrian polity. Thus, although women in both countries remained socially and economically disadvantaged for much of the twentieth century, the political system has created opportunities for insider advocacy by gender activists from the center-left spectrum. Within German and Austrian multiparty democracy, women’s activists used party federalism to institutionalize a gender equality infrastructure that allowed for strong Länder voice in the strong federalism of Germany and for historically strong top-down women’s policies in Austria’s weak federalism. With stronger executive power of women, the call for more legislative representation became louder. In sum, several features of respective political systems have shaped women’s policies and representation in Germany and Austria: In both countries, the multi-party system offered early visibility of Green parties with their strong quota policies, in turn pushing center-left parties to enact gender equality measures. German party federalism emboldened women’s activists on the subnational level to push for institutionalization of WPA. Austrian party federalism, with its smaller scale,11 had historically stronger corporatist and informal components with a tendency to consensual decision-making. While this allowed, for example, trade unions to push for stronger women’s protective legislation, it also somewhat stifled subnational women’s voice. As Austrian weak federalism allows for fewer policies to be decided on the Länder level and less Länder influence on the federal level, gender equality activists from the movement and the social democratic party chose to mobilize from top-down, utilizing executive federalism to promote women’s policies through the Federal Women’s Minister’s office. In Germany, by contrast, strong federalism facilitated the uptake of women’s policies from the Land to the national level and stronger policy learning between Länder. In both countries, as we will show in Chap. 3, party mobilization and party policies turned out to be a key to rising women’s representation.

10 https://www.frauenbeauftragte.org/die-bag/wer-wir-sind. 11 Austria

has a tenth of the population of Germany.

Accessed January 4, 2019.

Chapter 3

The History of Electoral Gender Quotas

In order to contextualize our two cases in time and in global electoral quota developments, this chapter first looks at gender quotas worldwide. We focus on different quota designs and provide examples of quota reforms from neighboring countries before reviewing the history of voluntary party quotas in Germany and Austria.

3.1 The Global Road to Gender Quotas In Western Europe, the call for quotas emerged in the 1970s. It was the result of the women’s movements’ strategy of moving into the state, accompanied by the highly controversial ‘bureaucratization’ of feminism (Squires 2007). Feminist rationales, however, were not the only motive for parties’ warming to the idea of quotas, as Dahlerup (2008, p. 322) has pointed out. ‘How was it possible,’ she asks, ‘that so many male-dominated parliaments could pass quota laws with the aim of limiting male dominance?’ Part of the push for quotas was that male party leaders hoped to be rewarded with loyal women followers within the party and with women voters on election day (ibid.; see also Kittilson and Schwindt-Bayer 2012). When women or gender quotas were first introduced, they were mostly seen as a temporary measure. Today, however, they have become a mainstream and lasting feature of systems of political representation (Dahlerup 2008, 2018). Quotas are considered crucial for increasing the share of women candidates and women representatives (Franceschet et al. 2012; Tripp and Kang 2008).1 Quota research suggests that quotas not only affect descriptive representation but also women’s substantive

1 Some

studies, however, question this causal connection (Tremblay 2007), arguing that, for an example, Denmark and Finland reached a high share of women in their parliaments without quotas (Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2010). We will address this debate further below. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. Ahrens et al., Gender Equality in Politics, SpringerBriefs in Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34895-3_3

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3 The History of Electoral Gender Quotas

representation by increasing attention towards ‘women’s issues’ and changing the gendered organization of politics (Franceschet et al. 2012). Franceschet et al. (ibid., p. 5f.) identified four broad sets of reasons why quotas came about and vary across countries and time: (1) women’s mobilization for equal representation as well as for hard and measurable targets; (2) strategic decisions of party leaders to brand their party as women-friendly in order to fend off other parties or internal party rivals; (3) promoting equal representation as core value of (left-wing) parties or as an element of responding to diversity in societies; and (4) as a result of transnational norm diffusion. In many cases, these causes took on different relevance for different sets of actors over different periods of time. Since their first inception, gender quotas have spread across all world regions. The 1990s, in particular, saw increased diffusion of target quotas for women in political decisionmaking (Paxton et al. 2006, p. 902ff.; see also Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005; Sawer 2019). Today, they exist in more than 100 countries,2 even though their format and reach show substantial variability. Quotas can take different forms. Most commonly, we distinguish legislative quotas, reserved seats, and voluntary party quotas (Krook 2009a). Legislated or legislative gender quotas go back more than 25 years, with Argentina being the first country that adopted a quota law in 1991, the ‘Ley de Cupos,’ for the elections of the Argentinian Congress (Franceschet and Piscopo 2012). Legislated quotas are either embedded in a country’s constitution or adopted in the framework of electoral laws (Dahlerup 2007; Norris 2004). The constitution or law generally stipulates a target either for women or for the maximum/minimum share of women and men as party candidates. Some legislative quotas specify women’s share of mandates per party. Legislative quotas are common in Africa (mostly North and Central Africa) and some countries in (Central) Asia, Europe, and South America. The targets set by legislative quotas vary widely; most commonly, they stipulate between 20 and 50% women or one sex. Results as of 2019 are mixed—some countries exceed their quota, some meet it, some do not. Not meeting a legislated quota, however, appears to be largely due to countries’ adopting them only during the past five to ten years. Reserved seats define the number of mandates independently of candidate nominations for a specific group, usually women, as a share of an assembly. They range between 10 and 30%. Reserved seats exist predominantly in Africa (mostly North/North-East), (Central) Asia, and the Middle East, and most recently were adopted in a wave between 2000 and 2015.3 Reserved seats appear to be working, with most countries above or close to reaching their target. How reserved seat policies are organized, however, differs—with implications for democratic accountability. Some countries set a specific target and the respective number of women is appointed by the government or ruler. In other cases, such as Tanzania, seats are distributed according to parties’ success (proportional share of votes), but women 2 See

https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/gender-quotas for an overview. Accessed June 21, 2018.

3 Franceschet et al. (2012, p. 5) highlight that reserved seats emerged already in the 1930s and were

also often used in the 1970s.

3.1 The Global Road to Gender Quotas

19

are not formal candidates in the election, meaning that they do not compete with mostly male candidates in a district. In such reserved seat policies, their mandate is not connected with an electoral district, which raises other electoral accountability challenges. In other countries, such as Uganda, women compete for reserved seats on special women-only district-level lists (Clayton 2016, p. 11). Voluntary party quotas were adopted in the 1970s by some socialist and social democratic parties in Western Europe. From the mid-1980s onwards, they spread to Africa (mostly North-East and South), America (Canada and South America), Australia, and to some Asian countries (Clayton 2016). The Danish Socialist People’s Party was the first in 1977 to adopt a 40% quota for each sex for its internal office and the Social Democratic Party followed in 1983. Women in these parties, however, had reached a 40% quota already before adoption (Dahlerup 2013, p. 161; Freidenvall et al. 2006, p. 70). Voluntary party quotas leave it up to parties to decide if, when, and which quota they want to pursue (Krook et al. 2009). As a consequence, within a single country, we may have different party quotas, as the examples of Germany and Austria in this book illuminate. Party quotas tend to have a range between 30 and 50% and, despite their long history, are often not met and only rarely exceeded.4 Today, the quota landscape in EU member states is rather diverse, with legislative, voluntary party quotas, and no quota regulations coexisting and the share of women parliamentarians ranging between 11 and 46% (see Table B.1 in Appendix B). Before turning to Germany and Austria, we take stock of central quota reforms in neighboring European countries that we consider instructive for our cases. The starting point will be Denmark, exhibiting long-term mobilization for gender equality as a core societal value and high levels of women’s representation without a quota. We then turn to France as one of the few countries worldwide that have legislated parity. In Germany and Austria, France is often cited as a role model. Next, we assess the Belgian federation, which employs legislated quotas for open lists combined with preferential votes; the latter being a core feature of the Austrian proportional representation (PR) system. Finally, we explore the UK, where the Labor Party created All-Women-Shortlists (AWS) to counter the effects of the first-past-the-post system, a system that poses similar challenges as the direct candidacy portion of the German mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system. Denmark showcases that, even without quotas, women can reach a sizable and stable minority share in the legislature. The Danish electoral system combines 135 seats via direct candidacies and 40 seats via open lists. After WWII, the share of women in the Folketing increased steadily, surpassing 30% in the mid-1980s (and even earlier in left parties). In 2018, it reached close to 38%, awarding Denmark rank 24 on descriptive representation of women worldwide. Researchers cite the historical strength of the Danish women’s movement as the primary driver for strong representation without a quota (Rolandsen Agustin et al. 2018, p. 409f.). When the Socialist 4 Some countries adopted ethnic minority quotas alongside gender quotas for elections to the national

parliament. Contrary to expectations, such quotas did not result in gains at the intersections, but show rather independent effects (Bird 2016). None of the parties in Germany or Austria designed ‘ethnic’ quotas, for instance for (women) migrants, even though women migrants and also Muslim women are considerably underrepresented (see for Germany Jenichen 2018).

20

3 The History of Electoral Gender Quotas

People’s Party and the Social Democratic Party adopted their first 40% quotas in the late 1970s and again during limited periods of the 1980s, the share of women as stipulated by the quota had already been met (Dahlerup 2013, p. 161; Freidenvall et al. 2006, p. 70). These quotas, moreover, applied only to European Parliament elections and internal party positions, not to national elections. By 1996, both parties had abandoned them again, as the proportion of women continued to match or exceed respective quotas. Ongoing controversies about their effectiveness, moreover, were perceived as distracting from competition with other parties (Dahlerup 2013). Thus, it was not formalized quotas, but mobilization by radical grassroots and moderate feminists inside and outside of political parties that many consider to be the main driver for advancing women in Danish politics (ibid.) and for competing as equality leader with other Nordic countries (Freidenvall et al. 2006). In public debates within the consensus-oriented Danish political culture, feminists managed to replace the framing of women’s underrepresentation as lack of interest or qualification with one of debating it as a result of patriarchy, male dominance, and masculinist political culture (Dahlerup 2013, p. 158). Non-quota-based advances notwithstanding, researchers point to the ‘apparent paradox that the Danish parliament with 37% women’s representation is regarded as gender equal, whereas the Swedish parliament with 45% women is seen as gender unequal’ (Rolandsen Agustin et al. 2018, p. 410). If the Danish legislature will ever see gender parity without a quota remains an open question. France is typically considered to have a male-dominated public sphere in major areas of politics, economy, science, arts, and media. As late as 1993, this was reflected in just 6.1% women in its Assemblée Nationale. In part reacting to this massive underrepresentation, France ironically became the first country to legislate a de facto 50% quota in 2000, with the so-called Parity Law. Most notably, public debates in France— stretching more than two decades prior to constitutionally enforced parity—sidelined the term quota in favor of ‘equal representation of both sexes’ (Murray 2012, p. 28). This change in framing promoted the notion of sharing power equally between ‘two sexes’, whereas ‘quotas’ were interpreted as special representation rights (Freidenvall and Krook 2011; Lépinard 2016, 2018). At the same time, however, the French constitution obliges parties to place 50% women and men on lists, and, for direct elections, find other modes for reaching parity. For Département elections, a reform in 2013 decreed candidate duos of one man and one woman in order to reach parity. The impact, particularly when keeping in mind where French women’s representation stood not long ago, has been substantial. Département assemblies are made up of 50% women. The number of women parliamentarians in the Assemblée Nationale in 2019 reached 39% (placing France on rank 16 worldwide) even though numbers differ among parties. Parity thus is still elusive on the national level, first, because women were (and are) often on lower list positions with no chances to win a seat, and, second, because parties may ignore the 50% quota and instead accept reduced state party funds (Lépinard 2018; Murray 2012). Dysfunctional elements notwithstanding, the French ‘Parity Law’ is most often cited among German interviewees for this book as a blueprint, with SPD and Green interlocutors committed to finding a way of adopting a similar law in Germany (see Chap. 5 and Chap. 7).

3.1 The Global Road to Gender Quotas

21

Electoral law in the Belgian federation combines aspects of both the German and Austrian election systems, as voters can either confirm a party’s pre-set electoral list order5 or alternatively decide to distribute preferential votes to single candidates,6 thereby turning the closed list into an open list.7 Belgium first adopted legislated quotas in 1994.8 Parties had to limit men (or women) to two-thirds on electoral lists. If that ratio was not met, lists could be rejected. However, no placement obligations existed (Meier 2004), resulting in women candidates being mostly grouped at lower ends of lists. Since 2002, lists must ensure an equal share of women and men. The top two positions, moreover, have to be of different sexes or else the list will be rejected (Meier 2012a). Despite legislated quotas, the politics of candidate rankings as well as preferential voting have, as of 2019, led to just 38% women in the Belgian parliament (worldwide rank No. 21). Legislating quotas, however, has helped to turn sex into a salient factor for recruiting and selecting candidates. As a secondary effect, they led to parties more broadly considering other categories such as age or ethnicity when reflecting on representativeness of the legislature (ibid., p. 166; Mügge and Erzeel 2016). The UK with a 32% share of women parliamentarians in the House of Commons (rank 41 worldwide) offers another set of insights into how parties attempt to counter women’s underrepresentation. In 1993, the Labor Party introduced AllWomen-Shortlists (AWS) obliging itself to appoint women candidates for half of the winnable vacant seats (Childs and Krook 2012; Krook 2009b). The strategy was geared towards balancing male overrepresentation in direct candidacies within the first-past-the-post system. While other parties did not copy Labor’s strategy, some started to set up ‘priority lists’ that included a higher number of women than before (Childs and Krook 2012, p. 92f.).9 UK politics is traditionally male-dominated, and, predictably, the policy led to criticisms that women on AWS would (a) turn out to be not qualified, (b) not represent their local constituencies, and (c) be beholden to party leadership (ibid., p. 90). In 1996, two male party members challenged the AWS in court and won. The Labor Party had to abandon AWS, but in 2002 changed the Sex Discrimination Act in order to stipulate quotas (Krook 2009b; Childs and Krook 2012, p. 92). Quotas or other instruments for ensuring a higher share of women in legislatures are increasingly common among British parties, with the exception of the Conservative Party and the UK Independence Party (Childs and Krook 2012, p. 92). The four countries we presented in our cursory overview of quota policies have developed different strategies to increase women’s legislative representation. With 5 Similar

to German electoral law for the list part of the MMP system; see Chap. 5. to Austrian electoral law; see Chap. 5. 7 See for details http://www.pdg.be/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-4051/7265_read-42084/. Accessed November 8, 2018. 8 Before 1994, several parties had voluntary gender quotas. In the aftermath of the 1994 and 2002 quota laws, voluntary quotas disappeared from party statutes (Meier 2012a, b). 9 The idea of tailored lists or All-Women-Shortlists has also been discussed in the German Land Baden-Württemberg (see Chap. 6). 6 Similar

22

3 The History of Electoral Gender Quotas

the exception of Denmark, which has built its gender equality regime on exceptional women’s mobilization and culturally engrained equality norms, most other European countries reckon with the fact that without state intervention, the numbers of women in legislatures remain far behind their population share and thus far short of their gender equality goals. A constitutional parity law (France), legislated quotas (Belgium) and AWS (UK) all carry significance for the debates in Germany and Austria. In the following section, we shed light on how party quota regulations developed in Germany and Austria in order to assess respective traditions and path-dependencies of quota debates. The goal is to identify the main historical drivers of and obstacles to developing inner-party voluntary quota regulations.

3.2 Quotas and Women’s Representation in Germany In Germany, since the early days of the fight for women’s suffrage, activists insisted both on women’s right to vote and their right to fair representation. The SPD women’s sections, in particular, were not only key to gaining suffrage in 1918, but also to demanding better representation afterwards (Sacksofsky 1996). As early as 1908, women tried, unsuccessfully, to establish procedures to ensure participation of women in all party functions in line with their membership percentage. While SPD party statutes acknowledged the importance of democratic representation of women, there were no specific stipulations on how to realize that goal. In 1919, women gained 9.7% of the seats in the first democratic national German parliament and an average of 6% in all later elections, before their share dropped below 4% during the dictatorship of National Socialism (Geißel 2013, p. 201). The low share of women continued in West Germany after the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949. In the first post-war national election, women gained 7.1% of seats. Until 1987, their share never exceeded 10% (Abels et al. 2018; Geißel 2013). Representation was particularly low in the 1960s and early 1970s. As Fig. 3.1 demonstrates, the share of women in the German Bundestag decreased continuously in the four elections after 1961, reaching an all-time low of 5.8% in 1972. After 1976, women’s representation improved slightly and reached almost 10% in 1983. Only in 1987, however, did women’s parliamentary representation see a significant increase; an upward trend that continued in the following seven elections until 2013. The increase in 1987 was the result of the Greens entering parliament with a 50% quota that—despite their overall low share in parliamentary seats—changed the sex composition of the Bundestag. The rise in women’s representation in the 1990s was triggered by ‘quota contagion’ (Lépinard and Rubio 2018).10 Taking cues from the Green Party, the SPD adopted a 33% quota in the late 1980s. The CDU followed suit with their own version of a 33% soft quota that, fearing the stigma of the term quota, 10 A contagion effect (see also Bauer 2016; Clayton 2016; Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005; Lépinard 2016; Matland and Studlar 1996) may appear between parties, neighboring countries, whole regions, or to other societal areas or between social spheres.

3.2 Quotas and Women’s Representation in Germany

23

Fig. 3.1 Proportion of women and men in German Bundestag, Federal Elections (1949–2017). Source Der Bundeswahlleiter (2017c). Data for 2017 election from www.bundestag.de. Accessed November 20, 2018. Figure design by authors

they labeled ‘quorum’ instead. In the following section, we take stock of who and what drove quota development as well as resistance in the three main quota parties under consideration in this study over time. Historically, women’s parliamentary representation deviated strongly from women’s party membership (see Fig. A.1 in Appendix B). In 1949, the SPD had 19% women members, but women held only 9.5% of parliamentary seats. This ratio even worsened during the 1950s and 1960s. In the CDU and the Liberal Party (FDP) as well, activities to increase the presence of women in parliamentary caucuses did not exist. Overall, this massive underrepresentation of women echoed the pervasive male breadwinner model in Germany and case law by the German Constitutional Court (BVerfG) that was based on the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine (Berghahn 2011; Sacksofsky 1996). In the early 1970s, at a time when the SPD parliamentary caucus still had only 5.4% women representatives, Chancellor Willy Brandt (1969–1974, SPD) pushed the idea of a voluntary party quota for women that was to reflect the percentage of women party members (Wettig-Danielmeier and Oerder 2012, p. 21). Claiming that the existing SPD party program with its soft stipulations that more women should be included would suffice, the proposal was voted down by the majority of party members, among them many women (ibid., p. 23). The SPD debate at the time also

24

3 The History of Electoral Gender Quotas

framed one of the central German quota tropes, namely that respect for women should be based on individual competency and quotas would undermine this valorization of individual achievement. Whereas the SPD started to seriously debate quotas in the 1970s, engrained masculinist political cultures in the conservative CDU and the liberal FDP inhibited engagement with quotas or, for that matter, gender equality policy more generally (Geißel 2013; Lang 2018). As a consequence, none of the parties represented women in line with their membership, let alone their share of the population (see Fig. A.1 in Appendix B). In the aftermath of the 1968 student protests, the German feminist women’s movement picked up the fight for stronger representation. As they mobilized for gender equality, some parts emphasized the need for autonomous feminist and women’s spaces, while others chose the path of institutionalized politics and engaged in the newly founded Green Party (Geißel 2013; Lang 2018). Thus, from its inception, gender equality was a key concept for the Green Party. While the social democratic women’s organization (Arbeitskreis Sozialdemokratischer Frauen, ASF) still sought to convince men rather than legislate equality, the Green Party entered the Bundestag for the first time in 1983 and ended the ‘meager years’ for women’s representation (Geißel 2013, p. 200; Lang 2018). Initially, the Greens failed to adhere to their soft parity stipulation and sent only 10 women, but 18 men, into the Bundestag (Briatte 2018). As a consequence, women party members with strong ties to feminist autonomous groups initiated a Women’s Statute in 1986. With this statute, the Greens established ‘zippered’ candidate lists that stipulated that every uneven seat on all candidate lists from local to national-level elections, as well as for party functions, needed to go to a woman. In the 1987 German federal elections, the Greens were the only party sending more women than men into parliament (Lemke 2001). The party also established a system of two party leaders with the stipulation that at least one be a woman, as well as a dual leadership for their parliamentary party caucus. The contagion effect, originating with Green Party quotas, most prominently altered SPD policy (Kolinsky 1993; Davidson-Schmich 2016, p. 13). Afraid of losing women voters to the Greens, the SPD voted in 1988 with a two-thirds majority of party delegates to adopt quotas as a binding principle. At the time, women made up 27% of party members. Setting a 33% goal quota for elections and party office, the party congress defined this quota as a temporary measure, set to expire after 25 years. This, however, proved to be an elusive goal, as underrepresentation did not vanish over the next two decades. The SPD moved in 1996 towards establishing a 40% quota for both genders in candidate selection and parity in all elective party offices (Wettig-Danielmeier 2012, p. 21f.). In 2004, the ASF succeeded in turning the gender quota from a temporary measure into a fixed parity objective (Lang 2018). With the SPD and the Greens courting women voters, the conservative CDU was pressured by its own women’s organization to address the underrepresentation of women within the party (Kolinsky 1991; Lang 2018). In 1985, an entire party congress was devoted to women’s issues (Wiliarty 2010, p. 24). A controversial party meeting in 1988 refused to use the term ‘quota,’ but instead created a voluntary ‘quorum’ of 33% of party list seats and party office seats that should go to

3.2 Quotas and Women’s Representation in Germany

25

women (Lemke 2001). As in the SPD, it was the ‘Women’s Union’ (Frauenunion), the party’s women’s branch within the CDU that pushed for the quorum.11 Their Bavarian based ally, the Christian Social Union (CSU), by contrast, refused all statutory equality measures and instead added a paragraph to the party statute stipulating in most general terms that ‘women have to be considered’ as candidates (ibid.). This principled stance of the CSU against quotas was particularly ironic since the party had actually instituted a minimal inner-party representation of women (one woman in every elected and appointed party office) as early as 1946 (Werner 2010, p. 96). The rationales of opponents of formal quotas in both parties centered on the notion that women would not be perceived as competent if elected via quotas and that a quota would undercut democratic choice by promoting women over men (Poleschner 2010, p. 44). For both the CDU and the CSU, it proved difficult to shed the women’s ‘3K’ image (Kinder, Küche, Kirche—children, kitchen, church) that had been reconfigured as conservative gender ideology after the end of Nazism. The fall of the Wall in 1989 and German unification in 1990 fundamentally changed the social and political landscape in Germany, not least in matters of gender equality as two quite different gender regimes collided (Lang 2017). Change did not occur overnight and its impact on gender equality policies has not been fully grasped to date. While in the first election after unification the share of women among elected parliamentarians from former East Germany was higher than in former West Germany, the fact that Social Democrats had adopted a quota shortly before the Wall fell created a stronger effect on the overall share of women in the German Bundestag (Geißel 2013). Lang (2017), however, cites indirect effects of unification on women’s political representation. She points out the importance of mobilization among East German women for gender equality (instead of women’s rights), as well as their struggles against re-traditionalization and gender segregation on the labor market. Those agendas were advanced by dedicated East German-born women ministers who shaped gender-sensitive policies in the new Berlin Republic that in turn attracted women to run for office. Moreover, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which succeeded the former East German governing party Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), adopted a 50% quota similar to the Green Party and declared to pursue gender equality in its policies (ibid.).12 On the other side of the political spectrum, the number of women CDU parliamentarians decreased after unification and ‘the CDU began to look out of touch’ (Wiliarty 2013, p. 178). The perceived need to capture more women voters led the Women’s Union and also Chancellor Kohl to mobilize for the ‘quorum,’ as the majority of party members still considered a quota unacceptable (Wiliarty 2010, p. 130f.). Notably, the 11 ‘What really helped us (on participation) was the Greens getting into the Bundestag with lots of women. The SPD also had a quota early and they had more women’ (Renate Diemers, leader in the Women’s Union, op. cit Wiliarty 2010, p. 124). 12 The PDS changed its name to ‘Die Linkspartei.PDS’ (The Left Party.PDS) in 2005 when it entered an electoral alliance with the party ‘Arbeit und soziale Gerechtigkeit—Die Wahlalternative’ (WASG; Labor and Social Justice—The Electoral Alternative), which was founded in 2004 as a reaction to the Red-Green political program, the so-called Agenda 2010. In 2007, the two parties merged and formed ‘Die Linke’ (The Left).

26

3 The History of Electoral Gender Quotas

CDU, despite having one of the lowest shares of women parliamentarians in 2005, was the first German party to present a woman, Angela Merkel, as a candidate for chancellorship. In the aftermath of a major party finance scandal, Merkel turned out to be one of the few senior party leaders not involved in illegal money transfers and thus managed to attract support from various internal party groups (Mushaben 2017). Primarily due to quotas in the SPD, the Left Party, and the Greens, the share of women parliamentarians in the Bundestag increased in every election after 1990. Women’s representation started to stagnate, however, after the turn of the millennium (Geißel 2013), as women candidates could not cut through a roughly one-third glass ceiling in the elections between 1998 and 2009. Kroeber et al. (2018) argue that this stable glass ceiling signals a saturation point for women’s parliamentary representation far below parity. The 2013 federal elections gave women a (temporary) push, increasing parliamentary representation by roughly 4% from 32.8% to 36.3%, before it dropped again to 30.9% (see Fig. 3.1). One might explain the increase in women parliamentarians in 2013 with an indirect contagion effect for the CDU, resulting from Angela Merkel’s second term as Chancellor. Even though Merkel was historically opposed to quotas, she might have paved the way for other women in her party as well as in others to consider and submit candidacies (Mushaben 2017, 2018). According to Wiliarty (2013), Merkel, although not initiating modernization of the CDU in gender issues, helped to accelerate the process. Internal debates about the quorum, moreover, contributed to increasing women’s representation on the federal level, though not on Land and district levels. The SPD in 2013 also increased its share of women parliamentarians. The Greens and the Left kept theirs stable, while the male-dominated FDP missed re-entry due to not meeting the 5% threshold (see Table 3.1). The drop in women’s representation in the 2017 elections was caused by a substantial swing to the right of the electorate. The left-oriented parties SPD, the Left, and the Greens—while securing a high share of women parliamentarians—received together only 289 out of 709 mandates (40.8%) compared to 320 out of 631 (50.7%) in the 2013 elections. The CDU acquired also fewer mandates, and at the same time, the share of women in their caucus decreased from 24.8 to 19.9% (see Table 3.1). Additionally, the FDP re-entered the Bundestag with only 22.5% women (less than during their previous parliamentary term 2009), and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) for the first time successful in federal elections showcased the lowest share of women of all parties with 10.8% (see Table 3.1). Parties without quotas sent the fewest women to parliament, all of them below the share among their women party members (Abels et al. 2018). While the German Bundestag crossed the 30% threshold in 1998, many German Länder exhibited glaring implementation deficits (see Fig. 3.2). Until most recently, women’s parliamentary representation was consistently below 30% on the Land level (Kroeber et al. 2018; Arregui Coka et al. 2017). Figure 3.2 also illustrates that there is no linear trend in the Bundesländer and that only four—Bremen, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Thüringen—have ever crossed 40% women’s representation in one or two elections between 2004 and 2018 (see also Arregui Coka et al. 2017).

19.9% F

%

24.8% F

197

%

No

234

19.0% F

%

No

191

No

49

77

48

41.8% F

89

42.2% F

112

38.3% F

88

M

64

81

58

F

53.6% F

32

56.3% F

28

55.3% F

34

M

The Left

37

36

42

F

58.2% F

28

55.6% F

28

54.4% F

32

M

39

35

35

F

The Greens

22.5% F

61

–

–

24.7% F

70

M

FDP

19

–

23

F

10.8% F

82

–

–

–

–

M

AfD

10

–

–

F

Source Der Bundeswahlleiter (2017c). Data for 2017 election from www.bundestag.de. Accessed November 20, 2018. Calculation and table design by authors

2017

2013

2009

SPD

M

F

CDU

Table 3.1 Women and men in Bundestag by caucus and election cycle, 2009–2017

3.2 Quotas and Women’s Representation in Germany 27

28

3 The History of Electoral Gender Quotas

Fig. 3.2 Proportion of women in Parliaments of German Bundesländer (2004–2018). Source European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) Gender Statistics Database, http://eige.europa.eu/genderstatistics/dgs. Accessed November 20, 2018. Figure design by authors

A particular outlier—and therefore selected for examination here—is BadenWürttemberg. It is the only Bundesland that has never reached a 25% share of women in parliament in any election since 1949. By contrast, Berlin, the second case we will explore in more detail, exhibits a share of roughly 35% women parliamentarians over time and has settled at the upper end of the Land spectrum in women’s political representation.13 In sum, the history of German electoral gender quotas points to the central question that this book addresses, namely why a system with strong formal quota commitments by the majority of parties has still not achieved equal representation. SPD and CDU, in particular, seem to have learned to live with a kind of cognitive dissonance, advocating on the one hand for parity, on the other pointing to the electoral law as only allowing them to influence lists, but not direct candidacies. If, as we argue below, it is the 13 Similar

to the Bundesländer, the share of women in political offices of municipalities remains below an average of 30%. There has been slow progression over time and large variation from one election to another in both directions—upwards and downwards (Arregui Coka et al. 2017; Geißel 2013; Kroeber et al. 2018). The reasons for variation and limited average gains in municipalities are tied to specific spatial settings. Fortin-Rittberger et al. (2017) cite the success of independent (male) candidates and minor and regional parties plus lower electoral success of left-wing parties as core factors for low representation of women in municipalities. On a more individual level, Kletzing (2018a) finds that women mayoral candidates often find themselves in a different and more difficult setting than male candidates from their party: Women’s deviation from informal candidate selection criteria tends to lower their own sense of aptitude; they get to be candidates in ‘unwinnable’ districts and often lack support from the local party section. As we show below (see Chap. 6), these factors re-emerge also on Land levels.

3.2 Quotas and Women’s Representation in Germany

29

mismatch between party quotas and electoral law that allows parties to (dis)miss their quota, then the most obvious solution might be to change electoral law. The majority of German parties, however, seem unwilling to embark on legislation that would reform electoral law in order to generate and implement effective quotas. Reforms on the Land level, recently adopted in Brandenburg and Thuringia, tackle only part of the issue as we explain in the concluding chapter.

3.3 Quotas and Women’s Representation in Austria Austria’s history of women’s suffrage and representation largely mirrors Germany’s pathway. When the first Austrian Republic was established in 1918, women gained active and passive voting rights, in other words, the right to vote and the right to represent. Socialist women had been fighting with the national and international suffrage movement for the right to vote since the second half of the nineteenth century (Bader-Zaar 2019, p. 41ff.). However, after inner-party conflicts, they agreed to a twostep approach and mobilized first for the ‘general’ male right to vote (ibid., p. 45f.). Adelheid Popp, socialist politician and founder of the Austrian proletarian women’s movement, in 1899 demanded action to represent women within the Socialist Party. Her request led to the formal institutionalization of a party women’s section14 in 1909 (Niederkofler 2013, p. 92). As in Germany, Socialist Party statutes did not include specific prescriptive measures to increase the representation of women within the party organization or on party lists. Thus, the representation of women in the Austrian national parliament remained low. Between 1919 and 1975, their share stagnated below 10%.15 When the Green Party entered parliament in 1986, women moved beyond 10%, reaching 19.7% in 1990 (see Fig. 3.3).16 The upward swing since the 1980s was largely due to SPÖ and Green Party quotas. As discussed in Chap. 2, the Austrian gender regime has been described as conservative and male breadwinner-oriented, with low labor market participation of women, poor public childcare facilities and lingering traditional gender images (Gresch and Sauer 2015, p. 2). Political representation of women is also impacted by the Austrian social partnership model, dividing the country into camps (Lager) that thrive through their male networks and male bonding within a structure of mostly all-male leadership (Neyer 1996). This fabric of parties, unions, and interest organizations strengthened male networks in politics by way of informal quota regulations on respective electoral party lists. The conservative ÖVP is based on a structure of inner-party unions or associations (Bünde). The ‘women’s association’ (Frauenbund) was set up soon after the party’s 14 Frauenkomitee,

now: Bundesfrauenorganisation.

15 In 1938, Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany and remained part of it until the end of the WWII;

hence, the representation of women in parliament was below 4% (Geißel 2013; Gehmacher 2019). 16 https://www.parlament.gv.at/SERV/STAT/PERSSTAT/FRAUENANTEIL/entwicklung_ frauenanteil_NR.shtml. Accessed November 28, 2018.

30

3 The History of Electoral Gender Quotas

Fig. 3.3 Proportion of women and men in Austrian Nationalrat, Federal Elections (1945– 2017). Source Entwicklung des Frauenanteils im Nationalrat. https://www.parlament.gv.at/SERV/ STAT/PERSSTAT/FRAUENANTEIL/entwicklung_frauenanteil_NR.shtml. Accessed December 13, 2018. Figure design by authors

founding congress, putting itself in the tradition of the catholic women’s movement (Ziegerhofer 2015, p. 17ff.). As opposed to the socialist women, the ÖVP Frauenbund practiced a family-oriented women’s policy and did not put equal representation of women in the party or in national politics on their agenda until the late 1980s. Up until the 1970s, SPÖ party women fought in vain for formal inclusion in decision-making bodies as well as on electoral lists. SPÖ Chancellor Bruno Kreisky (1970–1983) created a window of opportunity for addressing equal representation of women in the party and for the institutionalization of women’s policy agencies, governmental gender equality institutions aiming to transform ‘policy masculinity’ (Gresch and Sauer 2015, p. 8). Additionally, the SPÖ women’s section gained visibility and power by forming an alliance with the second wave women’s movement. As opposed to Germany, where autonomous women’s movement actors up to the 1980s were much more hesitant to engage with center parties, SPÖ women liaised with women’s movement activists to push forward a policy agenda that included stronger women’s representation (Hacker 2019, p. 254ff.). The Social Democratic Party and the Green Party established voluntary quotas since the mid-1980s. At the party congress in 1976, the SPÖ women’s section demanded to put an end to the ‘underprivileged status’ of women within the party and requested an amendment to the party statutes with a quota system for party subdivisions and for election lists (Niederkofler 2013, p. 95). Almost ten years later, in 1985, the SPÖ was the first Austrian party to introduce a non-mandatory 25% quota for women on candidate lists and for appointed party offices (ibid., p. 97). Central

3.3 Quotas and Women’s Representation in Austria

31

to this success was the first women’s state secretary and women’s minister, Johanna Dohnal. Just as among the German SPD women, however, quotas were contested among members of the SPÖ women’s association, as some wanted to win over their male comrades with competencies rather than using a quota. Even though Dohnal, pointing to the sluggish progress of women’s representation in the SPÖ, had become a committed quota advocate, her call for a 40% quota was turned down (Ablinger 2014, p. 1). Instead, SPÖ women settled on a 25% quota and lobbied during the following party convention in 1989 to decide on regulations for how to implement this non-mandatory measure (Niederkofler 2013, p. 99; Hajek and Sauer 2019, p. 287). Witnessing the Green Party ascend onto the political stage with a 50% quota, a new wave of inner-party mobilization by the SPÖ women’s section led to calls for a stronger quota. In 1993, the party’s statutes were once more amended to state that at least 40% should be women or men for inner-party elections as well as candidate lists. In 1998, this initially voluntary provision was turned into a binding requirement that is still in effect in 2020. In order to achieve this goal, the zipper principle was included in the party statute and turned into a binding regulation in 2010 (Niederkofler 2013, p. 100). Since then, all lists must alternate between women and men. There is, however, no defined order as to which sex holds first list position. In 2014, the federal SPÖ party statute was amended again in order to strengthen compliance and sanctions (Gresch and Sauer 2018, p. 313). Moreover, the new regulation spelled out that Land-level party chapters were governed by this federal SPÖ statute as well. Any Länder list not meeting the quota could be rejected by the federal party convent (SPÖ 2014, §16.11; INT A1, A8). In effect, the 2014 regulations, combining a strict zipper principle with the threat of rejecting a list, resulted in a substantial increase of SPÖ women elected to the Nationalrat, up from 32.7% in 2013 to 46.2% in 2017. Quota contagion in Austria, as in Germany, started with left-wing parties and then moved towards the center-right. The conservative ÖVP lost votes since the 1970s, fueling a party strategy that increasingly focused on attracting women voters. As in the SPÖ, it was the ÖVP women’s association that put the issue of greater visibility of women within the party and in elections on the agenda. In 1995, the ÖVP decided on a minimum quorum of one-third of women for candidate lists, but internal committees were not regulated. Moreover, the party strictly avoided using telected, the proportion of mhe word ‘quota.’ Besides lack of sensitivity to gender, the party pointed to inner-party electoral regulations demanding such cautious measures. Stronger quota provisions were perceived to be at odds with the party’s practice as of 1994 to hold primaries for election lists on the level of the regional party districts. Whereas the active right to vote is reserved for ÖVP members, non-party members are allowed to be candidates, in effect reducing party influence on the makeup of candidate lists (Ziegerhofer 2015, p. 76). Two decades later, however, the 1995 quorum was amended. In 2015, the ÖVP women’s organization secured a 40% quota for internal party elected bodies and successfully lobbied for introducing the zipper principle for all party lists (ÖVP 2015a, §48.7). The 2015 party statutes did not refer to a quota for electoral lists but spoke of an ‘adequate representation’ of women and men (ibid.). Addressing the issue of primaries on the regional district level, the ÖVP decided that, in order to achieve a preferably balanced proportion of women and

32

3 The History of Electoral Gender Quotas

men, party leadership could adjust the results of regional party primaries. The ÖVP continued to enforce stronger quota policies during the Nationalrat snap election in 2017, when it ran under the personalized name ‘Liste Sebastian Kurz—die neue Volkspartei (ÖVP)’ (Sebastian Kurz List—The new people’s party). Its newly elected party chairman Kurz aimed at breaking up traditional networks of ÖVP functionaries and reinventing the party as a kind of movement. Hence, he announced a 50% quota for the federal election list and re-enforced the zipper system to include more and younger women on electoral lists, branding his electoral campaign as women-friendly (see Chap. 5). The Austrian Green Party, just as its German sister party, started as a political melting pot of social movements, ranging from value-conservative environmental groups, the peace movement to the autonomous women’s movement. The Viennese Green Party, for instance, refers back to their original party identity as being ‘self-determined, grassroot democratic, solidary-oriented, feminist, ecologist, nonviolent/peaceful.’17 In 1986, the Austrian Greens entered national parliament for the first time but failed to attain their goal of a 50% women’s quota. As a consequence, the Greens established a hard 50% quota in 1987 for all elected bodies and party functions. The initial zipper system was replaced in 1994 with the provision that a candidacy of men is only permitted if, when elected, the proportion of men overall will not be higher than 50%. This implies that if a man is on the first position of a candidate list, the next two following slots must be taken by women (Geisberger 2010, p. 371). In effect, the Greens are the only Austrian party that exceeds its quota on the federal level and in the Länder we selected for this study. Besides the quota system, the dual leadership model on the federal party level, which allows for representation of both genders, is practiced since 2008. During preparation for the snap elections in 2017, however, quarrels among the Greens emerged that had an impact on the election outcome. Following disputes about the party direction, former representative Peter Pilz lost a high-ranked position on the Green electoral list. He established the splinter party ‘Liste Peter Pilz’ (Peter Pilz List), resulting in massive election losses of the Green party. While the Liste Peter Pilz18 received eight mandates, four of them held by women, the Green party did not meet the 4% threshold for entering the Natio-nalrat. Thus, for the first time since 1986, the Green Party was not represented in the Austrian Parliament. With substantial differences in quota design and enforcement among Austrian quota parties, women exceeded the 30%-mark of representation in the Natio-nalrat for the first time only in the 2002 elections (34%) and since have stabilized their representation between 27% (2009) and 31% (2013) (Geisberger 2010, p. 361). A substantial increase of women in the 2017 snap elections to 35.5% reflects the fact that the SPÖ for the first time met its quota and that the ÖVP advanced more women than ever before. The far-right FPÖ and BZÖ19 produce additional negative effects

17 https://www.gbw.at/oesterreich/artikelansicht/beitrag/gruene-grundwerte.

Accessed March 29, 2019. 18 In the meantime, the party changed its name to JETZT—Liste Pilz (NOW—Pilz List). 19 Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ), founded by Jörg Haider in 2005, is a splinter party of the FPÖ.

3.3 Quotas and Women’s Representation in Austria

33

for representational gender equality in Austria.20 The FPÖ, which, at the time of this writing, was the second strongest party in parliament, had only 26% of women representatives. Overall, on the federal level, only the Greens continue to successfully implement their quota regulations, while both SPÖ and ÖVP did not manage to convert their candidate list quotas into an equivalent number of seats for women. Table 3.2 illustrates the gender composition of the Austrian Nationalrat for the three election cycles beginning in 2008 by party. The SPÖ’s share of women members of parliament until 2013 never reached 40%, in fact missing that target substantially in all elections—despite, to remind the reader, a 40% mandatory list quota. Only in 2017 did women receive 46% of SPÖ mandates, reaping the effects of putting more women on the top position and stricter enforcement measures, such as the ability of party leadership to reject non-zippered lists (for detailed explanations see Chap. 5). The ÖVP’s share of women members of parliament was at 23% when they adopted their initial quota, then slowly rose to almost 30% in 2013 and 32% in the election of 2017. Thus, despite Sebastian Kurz’ proclamations, the party was not able to convert their quota targets into gender-equal outputs. In effect, only the Green Party, starting with 50% women members of parliament in 1999, exceeded its quota in every electoral cycle until dropping out of parliament in 2017. Despite the fact that the share of women in the Nationalrat increased over time, the question remains why a more than two-decade-old instrument intended to advance more women in the Social Democratic and Conservative Party has not shown stronger effects.21 In Chap. 5, we will assess and explain the persistent Austrian post-quota gender gap and what caused improved quota implementation in the 2017 elections. The representation of women in Austrian subnational parliaments varies between Länder such as Salzburg, Vienna, Tyrol, and Styria with an almost 40% share of women parliamentarians, and Carinthia and Burgenland with a share of women at around 20%. Salzburg, governed in 2019 by a coalition of Conservatives, Greens, and the liberal NEOS, had the highest number of women representatives at 38.9%. In contrast, the parliament of Burgenland, led by a coalition of SPÖ and FPÖ, only had 19.4% women in 2019. The Länder parliaments in Upper Austria had 35.7% and Vorarlberg recorded 31%. Lower Austria had 26.8% women, and the number of women representatives in Carinthia (22.2%) and Burgenland (19.4%) was at the bottom (see Fig. 3.4). Since 2004 the share of women in the Land-level parliaments (Landtag) of Lower Austria and Styria increased steadily, while in Upper Austria, Vorarlberg, and Salzburg, their share declined. In fact, Upper Austria featured an all-time high representation of women in its Landtag after the 2013 election (see Fig. 3.4), followed by a massive decline in 2017. We will use the case of Upper 20 The right-wing party Team Frank Stronach held Nationalrat seats only in the 2013 electoral cycle

and had 46.2% women. The liberal 2013 newcomer party NEOS started with 28.6%, but reached parity (five men, five women) in the 2017 Nationalrat elections. 21 https://www.parlament.gv.at/SERV/STAT/PERSSTAT/FRAUENANTEIL/frauenanteil_NR. shtml. Accessed July 4, 2018.

32.3% F

%

27.5% F

41

%

No

37

25.5% F

%

No

38

No

20

14

13

46.2% F

28

32.7% F

35

33.3% F

38

24

17

19

F

–

–

54.2%F

11

50.0% F

10

M

–

13

10

F

The Greens

21.6% F

40

20.8% F

38

19.0% F

34

M

FPÖ

11

10

8

F

–

–

–

–

13.0% F

20

M

BZÖ

–

–

3

F

–

–

46.2% F

7

–

–

M

–

6

–

F

Team Frank Stronach

50.0% F

5

28.6% F

10

–

–

M

NEOS

5

4

–

F

42.9% F

4

–

–

–

–

M

3

–

–

F

PILZ/JETZT

Source https://www.parlament.gv.at/WWER/NR/SITZPLANNR/index.shtml. Accessed June 17, 2019. https://www.parlament.gv.at/WWER/NR/ABG/index. shtml?jsMode=&xdocumentUri=&filterJq=&view=&GP=XXIV&R_WF=WP&WP=FP%C3%96&R_BW=BL&BL=ALLE&W=W&listeId=4&LISTE= Anzeigen&FBEZ=FW_004. Accessed June 17, 2019. Calculation and table design by authors

2017

2013

2008

M

M

F

SPÖ

ÖVP

Table 3.2 Women and men in Nationalrat by Parliamentary Club and election cycle, 2008–2017

34 3 The History of Electoral Gender Quotas

3.3 Quotas and Women’s Representation in Austria

35

Fig. 3.4 Proportion of women in Parliaments of Austrian Bundesländer (2004–2018). Source European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) Gender Statistics Database, http://eige.europa.eu/genderstatistics/dgs. Accessed November 20, 2018. Figure design by authors

Austria in Chap. 6 to show how, despite overall increases in Land-level women’s representation, adverse effects are produced at the intersection of quotas and electoral laws that impede gender parity. The Viennese parliament is one of the Länder with a historically high percentage of women. Their representation rose from 35% in 1996 to 37% in 2015. As in the citystate of Berlin, a traditionally progressive political culture ensured strong showing of women candidates in elections. It is noteworthy, however, that even in this center-left leaning context, women were not able to pass the 40% hurdle until 2019—a puzzle that we will also engage with in Chap. 6. As in Germany, the share of women in political offices of Austrian municipalities is worse than on the Land level. From 1991 until 2018, the number of women mayors remained under 10% in eight of the nine Austrian Länder (Steininger 2019, p. 278). In 2018, only 7.6% of the Austrian mayors were women (ibid., p. 278f.) and Austrian vernacular has it that the percentage of mayors named Josef (a traditional Austrian male name) is higher than the percentage of women mayors. Women in municipal councils are equally underrepresented. In 1991, only 7.7% of the members of municipal councils were women; by 2017, that number had risen to 25% (ibid., p. 279). This history of Austrian electoral gender quotas adds suspense to our puzzle. We have strong quota commitments in an electoral system that, by way of proportional list-based voting, should allow parties to utilize their zippered lists to advance women. As the statutes for voluntary party quotas in Austria apply to all

36

3 The History of Electoral Gender Quotas

levels from the federal to municipal elections, it is noteworthy that, just as in Germany, both Austrian traditional center parties were not able (or willing) to turn list parity into actual representational parity. We will develop explanations for this puzzle in Chaps. 5 and 6.

3.4 Comparing Quotas and Women’s Representation in Germany and Austria Quota adoption in both countries occurred in similar ways, starting with competition for votes between the traditional social democratic left and the Green newcomer parties in the 1980s and leading to more focused attention to women’s underrepresentation in legislatures. Drawing on Murray, Krook, and Opello’s framework for analyzing the institutionalization of quotas (Murray et al. 2012), the German and Austrian cases exhibit a confluence of all three of the authors’ possible explanations for instituting party quotas: (1) German and Austrian parties first from the left and later from the conservative spectrum adopted quotas strategically in order to attract women voters (see also Davidson-Schmich 2006; Kittilson 2006; Meier 2004). (2) Ideological incentives were particularly dominant in the Green Parties of the two countries with their general focus on including previously underrepresented societal groups such as women and migrants. (3) Moreover, a strategic element in party competition can be detected (Krook 2006), in particular as Social Democrats were pressured by the Greens to sharpen their equality profile. Furthermore, the role of (strong) women’s party organizations as well as women’s movement articulation of the gender gap in descriptive representation need to be taken into account as additional factors influencing quota adoption in our cases. Hence, it was a combination of inner-party rationales as well as women’s insider and outsider mobilization that led to the early adoption of quotas in Germany and Austria. The two cases, however, also show substantive differences in quota adoption. Whereas in Germany, parties limited their capacity to enact parity by way of only addressing the list portion of candidacies, the Austrian electoral system at first sight provided for a better fit of quota implementation via list-only proportional representation. The example of the German Green Party, in particular, showcases that addressing underrepresentation at the direct candidacy level is possible. The Greens did not stipulate that half of their direct candidates in Germany needed to be women; they did, however, decree in their Women’s Statute that women had at all times the right to first list place. This initiated a shift in party culture that enabled stronger representation of women in direct candidacies. Neither SPD nor CDU, however, followed suit. Instead, they pointed to electoral law as the reason for focusing their quota implementation solely on list candidacies and not direct candidacies, thus voluntarily limiting quota effectiveness. In Austria, even though lists might be constructed with parity as a central consideration, the electoral system operated with mechanisms that appear to upend zippered lists, as explained in the coming chapters.

3.4 Comparing Quotas and Women’s Representation in Germany …

37

In both countries, quotas have had a positive effect on women’s representation, but women parliamentarians seem to be hitting a roughly one-third glass ceiling. Our overview also showed that women’s underrepresentation is even higher at lower levels of politics, the Land, and municipal level. As of late, the rise of liberal and right-wing populist parties shatters the hope that parity is near. Thus, quotas appear to be in need of better institutional anchoring in parties’ regulatory frameworks and electoral laws. As we will submit and analyze in detail in Chaps. 5 and 6, part of the answer to the problem of continuous underrepresentation of women lies in the misfit between party quota regulations and electoral laws. Before we turn to this argument, however, we will in the following chapter assess other prominent explanations for the lingering post-quota gender gap.

Chapter 4

The Post-Quota Gender Gap: Standard Explanations

The process of quota adoption was similar in Germany and Austria, starting with the gender parity commitment of the Greens as well as Social Democrats’ attempts to harness the women’s vote and increase gender equality in politics. Their quota policies in turn put pressure on the Christian conservative parties, not wanting to appear as backward-oriented men’s clubs and thus as unattractive for women voters. The previous chapter also showed, however, that even as major parties developed commitment to gender equality in political representation, the electoral gender gap persisted in both countries. Only the Greens did consistently fulfill their self-proclaimed voluntary quotas, as SPD and SPÖ, often, and CDU and ÖVP most often missed their quota targets. Literature on women’s underrepresentation has submitted a number of factors that arguably also impede the implementation of quota regulations.1 In this section, we consider each of the main factors in turn, discussing how they influence quota implementation. More specifically, we engage with (1) a perceived lack of social acceptance of quotas, (2) the role of male party networks, (3) persisting gender images and gendered practices in parties, (4) too small a women’s candidate pool, (5) lack of resources by and for women candidates, and (6) problems in reconciling political activity with family and work responsibilities. We supplement this literature review with interview data from Germany and Austria.

1 The majority of factors speak also more generally to the question why

often fewer women engage

in parties and in political office, regardless of the existence of quotas. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. Ahrens et al., Gender Equality in Politics, SpringerBriefs in Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34895-3_4

39

40

4 The Post-Quota Gender Gap: Standard Explanations

4.1 Controversial Historical Legacies of Quotas: Lack of Social Acceptance Despite the broad adoption of quotas worldwide, normative objections have been identified as one of the main factors preventing their effective implementation (Krook 2006; Krook 2014).2 Typically, these objections claim that quotas ‘privilege groups over individuals, undermine equality of opportunities, and ignore other more pressing social cleavages’ (Krook 2006, p. 110). The objections include two different rationales: First, that ‘quota women’ devalue the position of all women politicians and thereby delegitimize the success of those women who secure mandates without a quota. Second, that ‘quota women’ are not equally qualified and competent3 (Besley et al. 2017; Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2010)—an assumption we will consider in more detail below when discussing gender images. Concomitantly, quotas may lead to open resistance by male party members and to challenging a party’s selection process, because quota-based rule changes will lower their chances to secure a political mandate (Besley et al. 2017; Cutts et al. 2008; Krook 2016). There is, however, also evidence that quotas over time may lead to growing social acceptance. Krook (2006, p. 111) highlights as a positive implication of quotas that they increase gender awareness of women politicians; an effect confirmed by Xydias (2014) also for male politicians in the German Bundestag. Quotas may also change public attitudes towards, and norms about, women in politics in a positive way (Kittilson 2005), leading to more social acceptance over time. In our sample of parties in Germany and Austria, only the Greens exhibit a political culture in which the quota is by and large accepted (INT G6, G10, G14; INT A3). The Green Party ‘favors women as long as they are disadvantaged at large in society’(INT G10). Quotas are described by our interviewees as ‘the most normal thing in the world’ (INT A3, A10) and ‘a given’ (INT G5). Successfully establishing and maintaining a strict quota regime is the result of a discourse of parity in which gender equality and quota regulation were framed from the onset as relevant for both sexes and not as an exclusive women’s issue (INT A10). Moreover, the Greens’ image of being a ‘quota party’ in fact helped the party recruit women. Women joined the Greens in larger numbers than other parties, because they knew there to be a participation guarantee (INT G10, G14). This is in line with broader research. Quotas signal

2 It is important to point out the paradox of norms: As the previous chapter highlighted, quotas were

adopted because of the normative consideration to represent women and men equally. Also, such norms seem to play out differently in different regions of the world. Piscopo (2016) illustrates that the recent shifts from quota laws to parity regimes in Latin America can be attributed to framing gender balance as a prerequisite of democracies. 3 Contrary to this assumption, various studies highlight the positive effects of quotas on recruiting more qualified and diverse politicians (Bjarnegård 2013; Franceschet et al. 2012; Mügge and Erzeel 2016; Murray 2010; Besley et al. 2017).

4.1 Controversial Historical Legacies of Quotas …

41

to women the availability of candidacies and increase the probability to put themselves forward (Fox and Lawless 2004; Krook 2006). Recent successes of right-wing political forces in both countries led to an even stronger affirmation and a clearer commitment to supporting gender quotas by male Green Party members (INT G14). When the German SPD in 1977 discussed the introduction of a party quota that would award women mandates and seats for party office according to their percentage of party members, this demand was in line with what their center-left sister parties in Norway, the Netherlands, and Sweden were instituting at the same time. It was, however, first and foremost the German social democratic women’s organization (ASF) itself that voted against such a measure. Those opposed to quotas in the ASF campaigned with the slogan ‘Lasst die Pfoten von den Quoten’ (leave the paws from quotas) (Adam 1977). Ultimately, they convinced a 2/3 majority of the ASF convention to disavow quotas altogether. The vast majority of social democratic party women at the time wanted to convince men of their participation ‘in a fair fight’ and ‘mitigate stigmatization by way of rational discussion’ (Sparkelis-Sperk 1977, op. cit. Adam 1977).4 The idea of ‘convincing’ male party members of one’s qualities rather than countering blatant discrimination has lost some of its appeal over time, but it never completely vanished in Germany’s traditionally strong male breadwinner society. In Austria just as in Germany, it was useful to frame quotas not primarily as a women’s issue, but to situate them in the broader context of social justice (INT A1). Austrian SPÖ interviewees, while acknowledging the lingering existence of a negative ‘quota woman’ label in the party (INT A5), try to counter it with pride. A SPÖ national spokesperson refers to her party having the longest historical tradition of gender quotas, giving her party a leading role in this context (INT A1). Being called a ‘quota woman’ remains a stigma for many women in both countries. Not surprisingly, this stigma is most palpable in conservative parties and particularly in the German CDU. The CDU historically decided against employing the term ‘quotas’ and instead settled on using the term ‘quorum’ as a target percentage that, so the argument went, would still allow picking the ‘best qualified person’ (INT G11; see also Wiliarty 2010, p. 158f.; 2013, p. 178f.). While signaling a distance from quotas to the CDU electorate, the quorum in fact serves as a soft party quota. Strict quotas are still seen by a majority of CDU members as limiting freedom of choice and the selection of the best and brightest. Using a less polarizing term than quota is not unique to the CDU. Similar semantic strategies to prevent inner-party conflicts existed in the USA, Sweden, and Southern Africa (Krook et al. 2009; Krook 2014). The CDU’s linguistic quorum strategy, however, had its own pitfalls. No matter if women were elected to a party position or failed in elections: male party members called them out as ‘quota women’ or running on a ‘women’s ticket’ (INT G11). This implied that a woman was not selected because of her qualification, competency or expertise, but just because she is a woman. The ‘women’s ticket’ label in particular

4 Sigrid

Sparkelis-Sperk in 1977 was a newly elected member of the ASF Federal Council and a strong quota supporter.

42

4 The Post-Quota Gender Gap: Standard Explanations

left a CDU interviewee irritated, because (male) members also get selected—undisputedly—due to a ‘regional ticket’ (ibid.). Negative labeling, in turn, lowered support for the quorum among women party members (INT G15). Research confirms that reinforcing negative stereotypes about women politicians might further discourage their engagement (Franceschet et al. 2012). Predominantly, male party members still use the label ‘quota women’ to safeguard their positions, for example, countering proposals of women members for party positions by claiming that it would not be justifiable having one more woman when a male expert is at hand (INT G15). Likewise, Austrian ÖVP interviewees state that avoiding the use of the term quota is particularly necessary in rural conservative circles: ‘I can’t use the word quota, it’s a taboo-word.’ (INT A9) They rather speak of a distribution of all party positions according to the notion of parity. The interviews, however, also show that many conservative women in both countries over the past two decades have come to realize that quotas might be the only means by which to achieve parity. A women CDU politician we interviewed started out from the party baseline of quota opposition. ‘It’s not worthy for a woman to get into public office via a quota’ (INT G3), since ‘women can talk for themselves’ (ibid.). Later in the interview, however, she articulated her own ambivalences: ‘I have to admit that the older I got, the more I became open to the quota […] because really nothing changed over a long time’ (ibid.). She also linked the question of being for or against the quota to age and experience in the party, observing that the quota is a taboo in the conservative youth organization, where especially women members mobilize against it. ‘It is the older women who argue it is a strategy because otherwise nothing changes’ (ibid.). To prove her point, she cited the former woman Governor of Saarland Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who became CDU party leader and prospective Chancellor candidate in 2018. She has publicly stated that if not for the quota, she would not have become Governor. Likewise, an ÖVP interviewee refers to the most recent success of her party in implementing a 40% share of women for all elections within the party and therefore concludes: ‘We are ahead of the others’ (INT A2), referencing the quota’s positive impact. In both countries, negative stereotyping of ‘quota women’ seems to persist particularly in the countryside. Interviewees of all three party women’s organizations in Upper Austria highlighted that the gender quota discussion has a negative connotation in their respective constituencies (INT A8, A9, A10). While this was not unequivocally the case for the Greens in Baden-Württemberg, SPD and CDU women reported similar experiences (G3), also for other territorial states (G16). Overall, the image of ‘quota women’ remains a strong metaphor for explaining the post-quota gender gap. Parties still face a quandary, as the majority of men run for office because they want a political career, while many women run if asked to become candidates, for instance, when parties need to comply with quota stipulations (Krook 2006). And although women most likely stay in politics after their initial candidacy, the label ‘quota women’ appears difficult to shed.

4.2 Male Networks

43

4.2 Male Networks A second factor impeding quota implementation is the power of male networks that, despite existing regulations, continue to promote men over women. As quotas help uncover these networks and their influence on party selection processes (Krook 2006, p. 112), they are also a target for attacks from male networks. Those networks mean power over, and access to party resources and positions (INT G14), along with power to prevent the lawful implementation of quota regulations (INT G11, G16). Male networks are intractably connected with gendered power relations. Young women party members recognize implicit structures at work when entering the party (INT G10), and these structures tend to be sustained by male networks. Male networks exist in all parties, although to a different extent. Their influence seems to be particularly strong at the Länder and local levels of German and Austrian politics. In both countries, local levels of politics function as stepping stones for higher office. Local male networks largely consist of elderly and long-established politicians who control their community’s politics and hence also who get access to positions—most often to the disadvantage of women (Holtkamp et al. 2009). Women politicians present evidence that fear of male networks holds back other women from entering politics (Kletzing and Lukoschat 2010, p. 80). The narratives of social democratic and conservative interviewees in both our country cases are strikingly similar. They are led by accounts of how male networks are reproduced institutionally, by organizing party work in a way that is not inclusive to all interested in it. Meetings often take place in male-dominated settings and are at times incompatible with childcare duties, which are still almost always expected to be performed by women (INT G8, G13). In some more culturally progressive regions such as Berlin, young fathers who engage in parties while also being active childcare providers start facing the same problem with the same outcome as mothers, namely their exclusion from party functions (INT G11). An interviewee stated that ‘attendance and visibility at party events is a prerequisite for content-related and internal party networks. Presence is required for networks and these are required for success in the party’ (ibid.). Similarly, in Austria, representatives of SPÖ and ÖVP emphasize the impact of male networks in preventing women to be represented within the parties: ‘Of course there are old boys networks, named or unnamed’ (INT A1, also A2, A10). In the ÖVP, the inner-party associations have a long masculinist tradition, most prominently the Farmers’ Federation (Bauernbund). Moreover, the CV (Cartellverband), an umbrella association of catholic student fraternities, was singled out as a specifically inveterate male network, which has grown over many generations and is still very influential within the ÖVP. The impact of male networks in both countries is also evident in the process of composing electoral lists. In the ÖVP, male networking seems particularly successful since candidates are recruited according to the membership in one of the associations. Due to the male dominance within these associations, ‘there is a 90% chance that a male candidate is on top of the list,’ a national ÖVP interviewee claims (INT A2). If

44

4 The Post-Quota Gender Gap: Standard Explanations

women want to advance within party ranks into official positions, (former) leadership position in one of the associations is most often a necessary pre-condition (INT A9). Being present and visible, however, is not a sufficient condition for making it onto an electoral list. Male party members receive more direct and indirect supports as they are being pulled into candidacies while young women’s talents are less often acknowledged and mentored (INT G8, G13). If women speak out about such informal discriminatory practices, they have to expect opposition and possibly negative consequences. An interviewee from the German SPD stated that speaking out might mean that ‘you are perceived as a disruptive element, because the men just sealed their agreement and then we show up and demand sticking to the quota, or that instead of the male predestined a long time ago, they now need to make an effort to recruit a woman’ (INT G8). Women in one woman-led CDU Land association proposed to put another woman on the fourth electoral list place, which is in line with the quota stipulation. This made the male district leaders (who knew each other for 20– 30 years) rebel as they saw their chances decrease. The proposal was immediately rejected and it became clear that the woman Land leader would not be re-elected by the district leaders if she would dare to push for the quorum or simply for more women on the list (INT G15). Whereas in both countries, the role and influence of male networks are emphasized by social democratic and conservative representatives, the Green Parties appear to be less encumbered by longstanding male formal or informal networks. This is in part due to the Greens’ historical legacy, as women occupied on equal levels of party hierarchies from the start. Interviewees also point to an active debate culture in which attempts of informal networking tend to be called out in public conventions and meetings. In the end, said one interviewee, ‘the dominant position is that if we have a woman’ for a position, ‘we’ll take her’ (INT G14). Likewise, for Austria, interviewees claimed that networks do not play a role within the Green Party (INT A3). In both countries, the problem of male networks is linked to the question of women’s networks. Interviewees across parties see women’s networks as an appropriate and effective means to support women in their party and submit that women should not think twice about closing ranks for strategic gains (INT A3, A10; INT G9). At the same time, some interviewees raised doubts about how powerful such women’s networks could actually become (INT A8), and articulated potential generational differences between older women party officials and young women that might impede networking (INT G13). Networking, in the account of an interviewee, means for her ‘going to the Ratskeller with older men and women party members’ (INT G13). The Ratskeller in German and Austrian towns tends to be in the cellar of the town hall, featuring an old-style restaurant. Traditionally, it is the hub of male networking activity. In Ratskeller networking, male privilege and generational exclusivity intersect, presenting young women in politics with a particularly stark challenge.

4.3 Gender Images and Gendered Practices

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4.3 Gender Images and Gendered Practices Gendered stereotypes shape political culture and produce a ‘double bind’ for women in politics; they neither can appear ‘too masculine’ nor ‘too feminine’ as both hamper their chances for success (Kletzing and Lukoschat 2010, p. 18). Various studies suggest that societal modernization tends to correlate with norm changes towards supporting gender equality and increasing women’s political participation5 (Alexander 2012; Hughes and Paxton 2008; Inglehart and Norris 2003; Paxton et al. 2010; Stockemer and Byrne 2012). However, our data show that gendered stereotyping persists in most parties, and particularly at local levels where traditional values last, making formal regulations for women’s access to political positions an imperative. Indeed, our interviewees noted that traditional gender images are still at work at the community level and in rural areas, meaning that ‘women have no chance to get politically visible’ (INT A3). If they raise their voices too much, they are ‘perceived as obstinate’ (INT G8). ‘Role models that have been in people’s heads for centuries prevent a lot’ (INT A9). Therefore, women who engage in politics are still being considered dangerous and bad mothers (ibid.). Both Germany and Austria traditionally operated with a ‘politics of difference,’ attributing different roles in public and private to men and women. These different roles in public and private were translated into complementary or at least different roles in politics. Today, still lingering conservative gender images of women as being family-oriented and not really interested in (political) power are perceived as obstacles for women to engage in politics, and thus limit political career success. At the same time, particularly conservative parties invoke the same stereotypes to emphasize the positive contribution of women and the difference they can make in politics. As a result of such stereotypes, women might distance themselves from women’s issues and from quotas (Franceschet and Piscopo 2008). Some react by adopting a masculinist view of their fellow women politicians. One interviewee resentfully articulated that via the CDU quorum, women come into public office who ‘just want to test how much they’re liked […] They only come every third meeting, then they’re sick, the children, have to go on vacation’ (INT G3). Women, she continued, might not be tough enough for politics, which is ‘not a pony ranch, we are not in a girl’s boarding school’ (ibid.). To the contrary, politics can be ‘quite brutal, which I have experienced much this year’ (ibid.), something articulated by other interviewees from the CDU in particular (INT G11, G15, G16). As a consequence, women in politics still face the upward challenge of having to perform better than men in order to be respected. An interviewee from the ÖVP summed this up with the statement that ‘women must always give 180–200%’ in order to be respected (INT A2). Young women in particular are critical of the brutal power play that still seems to define political engagement, concluding that ‘as long as [politics] is made by older 5 Contrary

to this general account, Kroeber et al. (2018) found for Germany no straightforward pattern and showed instead the constant up and down of women’s representation on all electoral levels below the federal level.

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4 The Post-Quota Gender Gap: Standard Explanations

men, young women are not interested’ (INT G1). Women in general appear more task-oriented and less interested in power than men. ‘Women don’t necessarily want power, they are interested in moving an issue forward, and being bridge builders’ (ibid.). While women politicians ‘want to achieve something in smalls steps, men understand politics as a stage and as self-promotion’ (ibid.). Having different perspectives on power thus appears to be part of a gender image that has not much changed over time. 20 years ago, Geißel (1999, p. 151) cited a German woman politician saying that ‘most speaking notes and contributions of men just contain about 20% effective information; the rest is ego boost and image cultivation.’ Interviewees across parties and countries articulated that having more women in politics threatens male image cultivation because ‘a party with more parity sets a different tone’ (INT G3) as ‘women improve how we work together and cultivate a different culture of language’ (INT A2). Different interviewees stressed the many other ways that politics change once women are involved (INT A8, A9). A Green interviewee explains: ‘We have all these boys in parliament and that has repercussions for how one deals with each other, for the communication culture, for the public speaking culture, the way people shout during somebody’s speaking time, how hurtful one is’ (INT G2). Women have an ‘emotional intelligence that keeps these things in check’ (ibid.). While a majority of studies found that gender images prevent women from engaging politically, the opposite may also occur. Adman (2009) argues for Sweden that women, not men, were more likely to adhere to norms that emphasize the importance of political engagement. The interviewees from the German Greens indicated that particularly their women members felt obliged to engage. One interviewee described women as a solution to political disenchantment and joked: ‘You know, when you want to get something done, you go for a woman. If you just want to talk, you go for a man’ (INT G14). Interviewees also reflected on how gendered socialization shapes public performances in various ways such as: women training to restrain themselves and men more likely to believe they can manage additional tasks; or men repeating arguments, and women adding new aspects (INT G10). Such differences led the German Green Party to establish quotas for speaker lists in meetings and in effect countering the legacy of gender images not just by a quota for political office, but also for internal party communication processes (ibid.).

4.4 The Women’s Candidate Pool is Too Small Often, women’s underrepresentation is presented as a problem of supply, in other words, an assumed or existing lack of motivation by women to engage in politics (Burns et al. 2001; Adman 2009). Dahlerup and Freidenvall (2010) point to several studies that show that the number of women candidates increased after the establishment of quotas and difficulties in recruiting women decreased considerably over time, for instance in Sweden and France.

4.4 The Women’s Candidate Pool is Too Small

47

In both Germany and Austria, the problem of not recruiting enough women starts on the local level where politics is still most strongly male dominated (FortinRittberger et al. 2017; Steininger 2019). In Germany, in 2017, women made up 8.2% of mayors in cities with over 100.000 inhabitants (Holtkamp et al. 2017, p. 15). In Austria, in 2018, only 7.6% of mayors were women (Steininger 2019, p. 128). In both federations, local political office is an important incubator for candidacies to higher levels on the Länder or federal level. The typical political career development of German and Austrian politicians is still perceived to be an Ochsentour (ox tour or hard slog). Candidates start at the municipal level, then might move on to a Land parliament and finally enter the German Bundestag or the Austrian Nationalrat. According to Holtkamp et al. (2009), it is in particular the municipal level with its persistent masculinist behavioral patterns that discourage women from fulfilling their political ambitions; a finding confirmed in our interviews (INT G6, G11, G13, G15, G16; INT A1, A3, A7, A8, A10). Florian Goetz, a German electoral expert, stipulates that ‘it even shows in international comparisons that women in (German) single member districts often are afraid to run because they abhor the harshness of the conflicts’ (op. cit. Soldt 2015). In historically conservative, male-dominated states, recruitment appears to be key to explain the post-quota gender gap. All interviewees referred to the difficulty of recruiting women for electoral office (INT G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, G6, G7). ‘One realizes that women are not really interested in politics,’ claimed a SPD interviewee on the state level of Baden-Württemberg (INT G1). She further explained that ‘the men argue that women don’t want to do politics, but women need role models. Women on the district level say: ‘I don’t take pleasure in this, why would I want to sit with 20 old men in a district council’?’ (Ibid.) Women, moreover, often do not have networks and allies on the local level: ‘So you do this [become a candidate], and then you are totally alone, and you can’t ask anybody’ (INT G2). A CDU interviewee described that men are pushed upwards by their networks, but almost no one encourages young women party members to take the next step in a political career, in particular if they have care responsibilities. Many older women, particularly in rural areas, still hold on to a traditional division of labor and see themselves solely as party supporters and not as candidates (INT G11). On the other hand, a Social Democrat talked about a recruitment model that worked in her own town: ‘We have always had more than 50% women of our party in the council, and these women are the main force behind local party politics. That means, if we talk to women citizens, they can connect with us’ (INT G1). In general, recruiting and encouraging women and providing them with insider knowledge for political mandates were seen as an important task in all parties included in our study. Greens and Social Democrats, often in collaboration with the parties’ youth organizations, run tailored workshops for young women party members. They also organize mentoring or shadowing programs and campaigns to attract women to public office (INT G6, G7, G8, G11). These strategies are considered successful, as many participants afterwards enter politics (INT G6). The CDU also started

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campaigns targeting women, but interviewees were more mixed regarding their effects: ‘Honestly, this will not work. No woman enters just because someone hands out a flyer’ (INT G15). Another noted that seminars for women, organized on the federal level, are too scarce to be fully effective (INT G4). Hence, finding candidates to fulfill the quota does indeed remain a challenge for center parties in particular. A CDU interviewee stated that women want to remain in the background and just support their husband (INT G15). At the same time, many party members would strictly reject a 50% quota with the argument that the overall share of women among party members is much lower than 50% (ibid., G16). A Green interviewee questions this perspective by arguing that it is precisely the quota that attracts women, because (young) women see quotas as insurance for their participation and for spending their precious time wisely (INT G14). In effect, so this interviewee, the Green Party in the past 30 years never had problems finding qualified women. The Austrian interviewees also see the low availability of women for political positions as a source of women’s underrepresentation. As in Germany, the small women candidate pool is described as a result of an intricate mix of supply and demand (INT A9). Interviewees point to the gendered division of labor and the (missing) reconciliation of work and family life that keep women out of powerful positions in politics (INT A2). This argument is supported by comparing the age of entry into politics between men and women. In general, women enter politics later compared to male colleagues, due to child-care or other care duties (Rosenbluth et al. 2015). An ÖVP interviewee refers to women’s political engagement as more projectoriented and, hence, difficult to combine with traditional party structures (INT A2). Additionally, since career opportunities are limited particularly in rural conservative areas, running for political office means taking the risk of losing one’s job or not finding a new one once the political career is over (INT A1, A2, A3, A8, A9). The influence that social pressure may have on women in conservative communities is also emphasized by the Greens (INT A3). An ÖVP national spokeswoman, therefore, points out that a critical mass is needed to promote political representation of women. She explains that the ÖVP Women’s Association is a critical voice within the party, but to speak of a ‘critical mass’ with respect to the Women’s Association would be exaggerating its influence (INT A2). Both SPÖ and ÖVP interviewees agree that role models are needed: ‘We need more women that motivate others.’ (INT A2) In both countries, the supply-side argument as an explanation for small candidate pools seems to outweigh reflections on the demand side. At the local level, in particular, constraints for women who seek electoral office are still perceived to be much higher than those for men, feeding off lingering traditional divisions of labor as well as gender images and material career choices. In line with these empirical observations, Davidson-Schmich (2016) establishes for Germany that quotas have the strongest impact on ‘women’s chances of seeking and receiving a local-level ballot nomination’ (ibid., p. 190). In other words: Quotas are the best demand-side answer to a strongly supply-side-framed problem.

4.5 Lack of Resources

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4.5 Lack of Resources Research proves that lack of resources such as money, time, and networks hamper women’s political participation in all world regions (Rosenbluth et al. 2015). Despite a narrowing educational gap, women are still disadvantaged in terms of employment, income and wealth, compounded by a traditional division of labor that puts care duties still most often in their domain. Lack of personal material and immaterial resources clearly influences capacity and options for political engagement (Adman 2009; Kletzing and Lukoschat 2010). We have discussed the impact of some of these resources already above. Here, we engage with interviewees’ perspectives on how party budgets impact women’s recruitment and participation in a way that contributes to the post-quota gender gap. Overall, lack of resources, particularly financial, was not regularly put forward as important factor in our cases. The German Green Party provides earmarked funds to its regional branches with low numbers of party members for campaigns to attract more women (INT G14). CDU interviewees, likewise, considered special funds or lower fees for party district groups supporting or recruiting women an attractive idea. Monetary incentives, however, were expected to be of interest only to less well-resourced party branches, while those with a representative in the Bundestag or European Parliament would not buy in (INT G15). One interviewee claimed that resources are core for party members who move to a new district in order to be accepted as candidate. Thus, soliciting support from party colleagues and voters in the new district may depend on how many personal resources a new person is willing to invest (ibid.). Besides mentoring programs for women in politics and workshops for newly elected women (INT A1, A3, A5, A6, A10), the representatives of the Austrian parties do not mention any specific financial support for women party members. However, some interviewees point out that it is much easier to attract women for paid positions than voluntary work. This is especially striking on the municipal level, where board members only receive attendance fees (INT A8, A9). Overall, as a representative of the ÖVP states, male networks still tend to have more financial resources at their disposal than women’s organizations (INT A9).

4.6 Reconciling Politics and Care Family socialization and the unequal distribution of unpaid work between women and men, particularly as mothers and fathers, still limits most women’s capacity to engage in (party) politics to the same extent as men (Burns et al. 2001; Thomas and Bittner 2017; Weinberg et al. 2013). In Germany, motherhood has been traditionally the single biggest barrier for a political career, while fatherhood has long been considered to be an advantage for a man’s career in politics (Meyer 1998). This finding is also strongly supported for other European countries (McKay 2011; Campbell and Childs 2017). The extent to which women and men are working full-time and in leadership

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positions shape women’s political opportunity and activity levels (Schlozman et al. 1999). The German Second Gender Equality Report of 2017 shows that time use is still gendered. Women on average have eight hours less paid work per week than men (gender time gap), while working unpaid about one and a half hours per day more than men (gender care gap) (Sachverständigenkommission zum Zweiten Gleichstellungsbericht 2017). Our interviews support these findings. The different time use and the institutionalized masculine working logics of parties and parliaments create difficulties in reconciling political offices with care-taking duties and thereby also contribute to undermining the implementation of quotas (INT G6; INT A3, A10). As an interviewee of the SPÖ states, ‘if you want women in politics, you have to deal with the old question of unpaid work of women in their families’ (INT A8). German and Austrian parliamentarians are not eligible for maternity or paternity leave and often also not for proxy voting, which puts parties at risk of losing crucial votes if MPs are not present. The recent case of Madeleine Henfling, who was kicked out of the Thuringian Landtag for breastfeeding,6 illustrates the deficiencies of parliaments in dealing with reconciliation issues. These factors negatively impact selecting (young) mothers for direct candidacies and electoral lists. The compatibility question is not only relevant on an individual and practical level. Mothers in German politics—regardless of which party they belong to—are continuously confronted with stereotyped assumptions about the incompatibility between a mother’s role and a politician’s role, by media and party colleagues, as well as by their voters (Kürschner and Siri 2011, p. 23–28; see also on the intersection of gender and age for politicians Erikson and Josefsson 2019).7 Interviewees from SPD, CDU, and SPÖ describe the lack of women in the age group between 30 and 45 in their parties, and explicitly connect their disappearance to the persistent party working structures being hostile to care duties (INT G8, G10, G11, G15, G16; INT A8). Continuing presence is a pre-condition to manage the ‘ox tour’ and succeed in the long run; taking time off for family results in being disregarded as possible candidates (Kürschner and Siri 2011, p. 8f.). Some interviewees mentioned that lately this also affects younger men who take on care duties (INT G8, G11). The Greens in Germany address this structural barrier to party work (and subsequently availability for candidacies) by providing childcare during meetings or organizing them at different times. Interestingly, as early as 1986, the party convent discussed whether to put this into the Women’s Statute, but then decided to introduce an accompanying gender equality statute, because party members did not want to identify (child)care as a sole issue for women (INT G10).

6 See

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/abgeordnete-mit-baby-im-thueringer-landtag-ich-willeinfach-meine-arbeit-machen-1.4110799. Accessed May, 25, 2019. 7 Reconciling caretaking, job, and political career can also be successful. Some studies point out that particularly women politicians perceive having additional priorities as a comparative advantage to their male colleagues (Geißel 2000).

4.7 Summary

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4.7 Summary In this chapter, we reviewed a number of factors that hamper the recruitment and advancement of women in politics as well as the implementation of quota regulations: a lack of social acceptance, male networks, gender images and practices, a too small women’s candidate pool, lack of resources, and problems in reconciling political work with family and professional work responsibilities. The lack of qualified women candidates has become a convenient trope in response to public questions about the low number of women in the state house. These factors are undoubtedly powerful quota inhibitors, but they do not account for all variation among our cases. Indeed, since these socio-cultural inhibitors operate most strongly at the local levels, where recruitment and career building are most crucial, they are not likely to go away on their own. While some argue that the party leadership cannot do much to address such factors, we disagree. In the following two chapters, we will dissect how lack of fit between quotas and electoral laws as well as the intersection of electoral laws with party statutes (and their application) enable quota derailment and persistent women’s underrepresentation in German and Austrian Parliaments.

Chapter 5

Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Federal Level

Not fulfilling the party quota might be just as much the result of political power calculations as of political cultures that continue to rely on patriarchal norms and misogynistic attitudes. What the social and cultural factors we addressed in the previous chapter do not fully explain, however, is variance in quota implementation across states that in most measurable aspects are treated as ‘most similar,’ as well as among different governance levels within states, such as federal and land levels. Recall that we previously established that the two major centrist parties neither in Germany nor Austria met their quotas on the federal level for almost three decades. The next two chapters assess variation in quota implementation by way of institutional fit, which we analyze in two ways. First, we consider the fit of voluntary party quota design and respective national or subnational electoral laws. Second, we look at the fit of voluntary party quotas and party statutes that reflect the degree of party commitment in internal regulations and proceedings. We contend that it is both in the fine print of the legal electoral architecture, as well as in party statutes and regulations, that quota implementation is frequently derailed or rendered ineffective.

5.1 The Gendered Effects of Electoral Systems The defining role of electoral systems in shaping women’s participation is well substantiated cross-nationally. In particular, the different impact of proportional (PR) and first-past-the-post-electoral systems (FPTP) on women’s representation has been shown to have strong gendered effects (i.e., Norris 1985, 2004; Salmond 2006; Tremblay 2008), albeit muted by intervening variables such as district magnitude (Krook and Schwindt-Bayer 2013). Most generally, proportional electoral systems award seats in electoral bodies according to the percentage of votes that a party receives. FPTP systems, in contrast , award seats only to the winner in single member districts. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. Ahrens et al., Gender Equality in Politics, SpringerBriefs in Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34895-3_5

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Scholars have identified several reasons why PR systems are conduits for stronger women’s representation. First and foremost, PR systems offer the option to directly engineer voluntary party quotas via list composition. Moreover, PR systems exhibit higher turnover in candidates than FPTP systems where often incumbency is more highly valued. Finally, PR systems often operate in larger districts with multiple seats and, in effect, allow parties to gender balance a ticket within a district and thereby enhance chances of women candidates (Krook and Schwindt-Bayer 2013). Even though the prediction by Matland (1998, p. 115) that a proportional system would increase women’s representation by more than 15% has been disputed, the disputes tend to be over the size of the boost, not the general direction of the effect. Rob Salmond’s dataset of gender effects of electoral systems, covering 21 countries over half a century between 1950 and 2001 and 281 separate elections, shows the effects of a PR system at roughly five percent (Salmond 2006, p. 185). And Jennifer Rosen’s analysis of 168 countries between 1991 and 2010 shows a positive effect of 6.1% in Western countries (Rosen 2013, p. 314; also Manow 2015). Although the advancement of women in political representation occurred incrementally in Western democracies over the past half century, women made overall stronger headway in systems with PR (Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005). The comparative analysis of Germany and Austria, however, complicates this narrative. Whereas Austria has a strict PR electoral system, the German mixedmember proportional system (MMP) combines FPTP direct candidacies in electoral districts with overall proportional representation of parties in the Bundestag.1 Parties thus put up direct candidates in the 299 voting districts, but they also draft Land-level lists and negotiate placement of candidates on these closed party lists. Roughly half of the seats are awarded via direct mandate and half by way of a party’s overall percentage of votes via lists. For much of the past 30 years, Germany with its strong FPTP electoral design did better in terms of overall women’s representation than Austria with its PR system (see Fig. 5.1).2 The effect of smaller parties on electoral composition was historically negligible in both national assemblies, with the two center-right and center-left catch-all parties carrying the vast majority of votes. Both countries, as we recall from Chap. 3, followed similar trajectories in establishing quotas, and the ‘sister parties’ proclaimed nearly identical quota goals over these three decades. Since 1983, when Green Parties in both countries entered their federal assembly with a quota goal of 50%, women’s representation in Austria remained lower than in Germany, but for two exceptions in the elections of 2002 and 2017. Moreover, while following similar trajectories of establishing voluntary party quotas, neither the Social Democrats nor the Conservatives in either country managed to meet their quotas consistently. In fact, both center parties in Germany and Austria exhibit a substantial post-quota gender gap for most of the elections since their respective introduction of quotas. As we already discussed earlier, the post-quota gender gap 1 German

Länder elections exhibit variations of the MMP system, to be addressed in Chap. 6. PR system, however, allows for preference votes thus turning electoral lists into open party lists.

2 Austria’s

5.1 The Gendered Effects of Electoral Systems

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Fig. 5.1 Women in National Parliaments of Germany and Austria 1983–2017 (in percent). Sources for Germany: Bundeswahlleiter (2017c). Data for 2017 election from www.bundestag.de. Accessed November 20, 2018. Source for Austria: https://www.parlament.gv.at/SERV/STAT/PERSSTAT/ FRAUENANTEIL/entwicklung_frauenanteil_NR.shtml. Accessed June 15, 2019. Figure design by authors

does not measure party commitment to gender parity as such. It indicates the discrepancy between quota commitment and factual representation of women of a party in the parliamentary caucus. Figures 5.2 and 5.3 visualize the gap between respective party quotas and women’s representation in the three quota parties’ parliamentary caucus over time.3 In Germany, only the Green Party consistently overfulfills its gender quota in favor of women, with two exceptions: in their first election to the Bundestag and in the first election of unified Germany when the East German Bündnis’90 party joined forces with the West German Greens. The Social Democrats, in contrast, since introducing their quota in 1988, managed to fulfill it in only three elections. The CDU quorum stipulation has never been met since its introduction—in fact, it has been missed by consistently large margins ranging between 8.2 and 14.6%. In Austria, the overall magnitude of the post-quota gender gap is smaller, due primarily to the ÖVP fulfilling their (rather low) quorum goals more consistently. Before 2013, however, none of the center parties ever fulfilled their quota goals, 3 Note that the quota of a party might have changed over time. The post-quota gender gap measures

the discrepancy between quota at a given time and electoral representation of women.

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5 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Federal Level

Fig. 5.2 Post-Quota gender gap in German Bundestag 1983–2017. Source Bundeswahlleiter (2017c). Data for 2017 election from www.bundestag.de. Accessed November 20, 2018. Calculation and figure design by authors

with the Social Democrats consistently faring worse than the Conservatives. As in Germany, the Austrian Greens consistently fulfill their quota stipulations. Overall, the German SPD came closer to fulfilling their quota than the Austrian SPÖ, while the Austrian ÖVP did better in reaching their quota than the German CDU. Comparing women’s representation overall and the post-quota gender gap in the two countries, thus raises two related questions. First, why does a system that includes strong first-past-the-post elements fares better over time on women’s representation than a squarely proportional system? Secondly, why do Austrian parties not consistently fare better in fulfilling their quota, as the literature on quotas in proportional electoral systems would suggest? The answer to both questions, we argue, lies in the specifics of how direct candidates are being selected in Germany as well as how proportionality is generated in both countries. Both electoral systems thus have independent features that influence women’s representation and, more specifically, inhibit quota implementation. Beyond the formal processes of candidate selection, this chapter identifies three features impacting quota implementation in the two countries: the role of left parties such as the Greens, district magnitude, and preference votes. The literature on quotas has established that left parties overall have stronger quota commitments and therefore more women in parliaments than right parties. In both states under study, the Green parties have historically set quota standards that served as an aspirational orientation for other center-left parties. This raises the question why and how the Green

5.1 The Gendered Effects of Electoral Systems

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Fig. 5.3 Post-Quota gender gap in Austrian Nationalrat 1986–2017. Sources Data provided to authors by Parliamentary General Administration/Citizen Service. Calculation and figure design by authors

parties succeed in fulfilling their quotas while operating under the same electoral system constraints as the other parties. Studies have also confirmed that parties are more likely to nominate women for a public office, and voters are more inclined to vote for them, in multi-member districts (i.e., Norris 1985; Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2008). Whereas in the German MMP system, districts are drawn to be represented by one directly elected candidate, Austrian regional districts within the PR system elect multiple candidates. We ask if the number of directly elected candidates in a district impacts the advancement of women and quota implementation. Finally, we assess how the Austrian system of preference votes in open lists impacts quota stipulations, as voters can choose to advance candidates from lower list placements to a higher rank.

5.1.1 Gendered Effects of the Electoral System in Germany The German voting system is often described as combining ‘the best of two worlds’: a direct and personalized voter choice and a party-controlled proportional list element that decides on overall parliamentary representation according to the percentage of voters who support a party. German voters cast two ballots when electing their

58

5 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Federal Level

members to Federal Parliament: The first vote is for a direct candidate in one’s district; the second vote is for the party list and it is this latter vote that ultimately determines the percentage of seats that a party receives. Historically, women have gained better representation via the second vote. Since the 1980s, the Green Party followed by the SPD and the CDU set quotas for women’s inclusion into the party and elected office. The engineering for more women in elected office took place almost exclusively via quotas applied to party lists. Data from the 2009 federal election shows that of all mandates won, CDU women received only about 15% of their party’s direct mandates (SPD women app. 30%) and 28% of list mandates (SPD women app. 46%) (Holtkamp et al. 2009, p. 19; Davidson-Schmich and Kürschner 2011). In the 2013 federal elections, 30% of the major parties’ direct candidates4 were women as opposed to 27% in the 2009 elections (Davidson-Schmich 2014, p. 86). This slight upward trend in overall direct candidacies of women, however, did not persist in 2017, due in part to the emerging AfD and to the FDP not advancing many women direct candidates. In addition, both center parties consistently declare themselves unable to influence direct candidate selection in party districts, a claim that we questioned in Chap. 3, and will address in the concluding chapter. In 2013, the percentage of women running on party lists was about 10% higher than the percentage of women direct candidates (ibid., p. 87). Almost twice as many women in 2013 were elected by way of the second party list vote as opposed to the first-past-the-post direct candidate vote (ibid.). In 2017, women direct candidates across all parties barely made up 25% of all direct candidacies (Bundeswahlleiter 2017a, p. 10). The CDU advanced 21.4% women direct candidates, down from 22.4% in the 2013 elections (Chojecka and Lukoschat 2013, p. 2). The SPD had 37.8% direct candidacies by women, and even the Greens did not reach parity with 42% women direct candidates. It is noteworthy that none of the parties under investigation here were able to design their direct candidate pool so it would adhere to their parity goals or, at a minimum, to the party’s quota (see Table 5.1). For CDU and SPD, in particular, the number of elected women direct candidates is lower than their (already low) share of candidacies, thus increasing the negative effect of direct elections for women. Only 19.9% of directly elected CDU/CSU MPs in the 2017 Bundestag were women, whereas the actual share of women candidates (direct and list) actually had gone up by 3.5 percentage points from 32.6 to 36.1%. The CSU, which in Bavaria won all direct mandates, elected only 17.4% women directly. In the SPD, the share of directly elected women went up slightly to 27.1% compared to 25.5% in 2013. In the Green Party, only one woman was successful in a direct candidacy for the Bundestag in 2017 and no man.5 Therefore, even if parties fulfill their quota in selecting direct candidates, the current German electoral 4 The ‘major parties’ in 2009 and 2013 included CDU, CSU, SPD, Greens, Left, and, for 2009, FDP. 5 In

the 2013 federal elections, none of the parties did fulfill their quota in terms of nominations for direct candidates and only the conservative Christian-Social Union (CSU), which in many parts of Bavaria had a monopoly on the vote, managed to get all their eight women direct candidates elected. The Greens, by contrast, who had nominated 121 women direct candidates out of 299 possible candidates, did not get a single woman (and only one man) elected.

173

125

W

113

M

186

W

64

W

M

235

M

42.0

58.0

37.8

62.2

21.4

78.6

141

133

194

281

189

310

Source Bundeswahlleiter (2017a, b). Calculations by authors

Green Party

SPD

CDU/CSU

0 1

51.5

16

43

44

187

48.5

40.8

59.2

37.9

62.1

List candidacies (% of party candidacies total)

Direct mandates (absolute)

List candidates (absolute)

Direct candidates (absolute)

Direct candidates (% of party candidacies total)

Elected

Candidates

Table 5.1 Candidates and elected by sex in German federal elections 2017

100.0

0.0

27.1

72.9

19.0

81.0

Direct mandates (% of party total)

38

28

48

46

5

10

List mandates (absolute)

57.6

42.4

51.1

48.9

33.3

66.7

List mandates (% of party total)

58.2

41.8

41.8

58.2

19.9

80.1

(% of party total)

Total elected

5.1 The Gendered Effects of Electoral Systems 59

60

5 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Federal Level

system offers no measures to ensure that women are actually also elected as direct candidates.6 Only the Green Party has proportionally more women parliamentarians than they nominate as direct and list candidates. However, in the past, they rarely have won direct mandates. Women thus face obstacles to being nominated at all for direct candidacies. Even more importantly, they also face a persistent challenge of not being nominated for ‘safe districts’ in which their party has enjoyed long-term success (INT G15). Bieber (2013) has shown that in all elections between 1947 and 2009, the percentage of women direct candidates across parties in ‘safe districts’ was much lower than their average share of candidacies—and, conversely, their percentage in more contested districts considerably higher (Bieber 2013, p. 211).7 Interviewees from all three parties mention considerable challenges here. A SPD spokesperson for women on the federal level speaks of a persisting ‘rule that women are not nominated for safe districts’ (INT G10) and that women still dominate in districts with no chance of winning (ibid.). A CDU representative acknowledges that with the increasing importance of direct mandates for the CDU, the party ‘leadership realizes slowly that we need different measures’ (INT G13) to increase the number of elected women. And a Green spokesperson indicates that the only direct mandate that the Greens historically had—Christian Ströbele held this mandate in Berlin– Kreuzberg from 2002 to 2017—was at times hotly debated because, as per the logic of the Green quota principle, all uneven positions—with direct candidacies by some party members perceived to be a number one—should be occupied by a woman (INT G12).8 By contrast, the quota for list candidates in 2017 was met or exceeded by the major quota parties in nominations and elected. The CDU reached an all-time high of 37.9% women list candidates and a 33.3% women share of all elected via the list. The SPD listed 40.8% women (despite their zipper system9 ) but had 51.1% women elected via list. The Green Party had a share of 51.5% women and a result of 57.6% women elected; an effect of the Greens being almost exclusively elected via lists and with women placed on number one and on all uneven seats. Historically, each of the quota parties focused in their implementation of respective quotas much more on the list candidacies than on the direct candidacies, citing local party independence

6 For

a discussion of electoral designs that would ensure parity in direct candidate elections, see Chap. 7. 7 Bieber (2013) emphasizes also the importance of double candidacies (direct candidacy plus list candidacy) in the German electoral system. She found that women holding double candidacies were even more successful than men holding double candidacies (ibid., p. 219f., p. 227ff.). Women double candidacies, however, only reached in 2009 a similar share as those of women overall (ibid., 216). Moreover, while women double candidacies are quite common for the Greens, the SPD and the Left, the center-right parties CDU, CSU, and FDP had considerably lower shares (ibid., p. 249). 8 After Ströbele retired, the direct Kreuzberg mandate was won by Canan Bayram, a Green woman candidate. 9 Details of how the zipper system is implemented to the disadvantage of women will be discussed below in this chapter.

5.1 The Gendered Effects of Electoral Systems

61

in direct candidacy nominations and thus that it would be impossible to intervene.10 Since in the German MMP system the composition of the Bundestag with its 299 districts depends half on successful direct candidacies and half on lists, a traditional gender bias nestled into the system over time.11 To summarize the German case, several institutional factors contribute to flawed quota implementation and persisting underrepresentation of women. Electoral system effects of the MMP system combined with—as we will show below—suboptimal fine print in the federal party statutes produce persistent gender imbalance in the Bundestag. Overrepresentation of men via the first vote (direct candidates) usually plays out well for SPD and CDU men. The two parties that historically captured most direct seats still tend to give award ‘safe districts’ to male party members, while women more often end up in low-priority districts with fewer chances to win. When, as in 2017, one party (the CDU) wins most districts and their capability to draw from lists is minimized, the list quota effect disappears and the post-quota gender gap widens. Even though there is a strong ‘Left Party’ effect as left and center-left parties (Greens and Left, to a lesser degree Social Democrats) adhere to their quotas, successful conservative direct candidacies with an overall extremely low share of women candidates widen the gender gap in representation. As we previously addressed in Chap. 4, the literature on why women advance much less by way of direct candidacies is extensive. Our interviewees highlighted, in particular, the male incumbency effect (Schwindt-Bayer 2005), an effect that has persisted over time and decreases the chances for women newcomers to challenge long-standing male incumbents. Closed male networks and gatekeepers create other disincentives for women (Davidson-Schmich forthcoming 2020). This is compounded by the socalled ox-tour that challenges women more than men because of constraints on time and different priorities in their family phase (Davidson-Schmich 2016; INT G 9). In effect, the interplay of a strong direct candidacy effect in the electoral system with persisting gender inequality in Germany leads parity advocates to demand changes to the electoral system. We will discuss new policy proposals in the concluding chapter. Despite all of these hurdles, however, the German case fares better than the Austrian case, with its theoretically more gender-favorable electoral system.

5.1.2 Gendered Effects of the Electoral System in Austria Austria has a unified proportional list system that, in theory, should be positive for women’s representation. Why then does Austria not look better than Germany in 10 We

will discuss the impact of party statutes and regulations on list candidacies below. do not consider so-called Überhangmandate (overhang mandates) and Ausgleichsmandate (compensatory mandates) here. Overhang mandates and compensatory mandates that have increased the number of parliamentarians in Germany from 598 to 709 in 2017. Generally, compensatory mandates in parties with quotas would be drawn from respective Länder lists and thus would magnify the quota list effect. A German federal electoral law reform commission has been tasked with finding ways to downsize the parliament. 11 We

62

5 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Federal Level

terms of gender parity? Why did the major quota parties exhibit a sizable post-quota gender gap until 2017? And why did the 2017 elections change this picture? For some time, Austrian election experts contended that ‘it is less the electoral system that has to be blamed for representational deficits than the selection mechanisms of political parties’ (Müller 2005, p. 410). The argument we submit, however, is that Austrian party choices—and particularly how they compose lists—interact with the electoral system in a way that inhibits the successful implementation of party quotas for women. Austria has a three-tiered proportional list voting system that consistently has advanced more men from the bottom-up to the national level and in the process hurts women’s chances to acquire a mandate. The electoral map for the 183 seats of the Austrian Parliament is made up of 39 regional voting district lists, nine Land district lists, and one national list. Austrian voters have one vote which they cast for a party. Parties compose a regional list, a list with Land candidates and a national list. The national list is compiled by the national party leadership, and in some cases the national party leader does have a say in selecting some Land list positions. Müller has described composing these three levels of lists as ‘a kind of ‘art’, since it involves building safety nets for some politicians and providing for some postelectoral flexibility in determining who will take a seat in parliament’ (Müller 2005, p. 409). Parties try to anticipate the distribution of regional seats when they decide on the ranking of the Land candidates, since they want to make sure that their top candidates have good chances to win a Land seat (ibid., p. 405). As parties compose their lists mostly according to inner-party strategic considerations (INT A11), the number of candidates on electoral lists can vary considerably and aspirants can pursue multiple candidacies, primarily on the regional and Land electoral levels: Historically, up to 60% of those elected to the Nationalrat were placed on a regional as well as on a Länder list. Due ‘to the double-candidacies of most politicians […] some of them will be entitled to assume either one or the other type of seat (e.g. a regional or a land seat)’ (Müller 2005, p. 409; see also Dingler and Kroeber 2018, p. 19f.). Since 1993, a triple candidacy on all three tiers is possible. If a candidate who is listed on all three tiers wins on several lists, he or she can choose which list mandate to take, opening up space for the next candidates on the other two lists (INT A11). Even though both the SPÖ and ÖVP since the introduction of quota regulations should have implemented quotas on all three lists, the system tended to catapult mostly men up from the regional levels. On the regional level with its 39 voting districts, SPÖ and ÖVP have traditionally been most successful. In the period between 1992 and 2002, the two parties have won ‘more than 60% of their seats’ on the regional level, while small parties—such as the Greens—only rarely won regional seats (Müller 2005, p. 404f.).12 Hence, for both center parties, the composition of the regional lists is most important. In 2002, the SPÖ won 46 of their overall 69 seats in parliament via the regional tier, and the ÖVP won 59 seats of their 79 seats via this 12 Since the Austrian Greens are running for elections, they only won two regional seats. Data provided to authors by Green party official.

5.1 The Gendered Effects of Electoral Systems

63

first tier (ibid., p. 405). The impact of the regional level only slightly decreased in recent years. In 2017, the SPÖ won 32 out of 54 seats via the regional tier (59.3% of their total party seats), and the ÖVP won 40 of its 69 seats via the regional tier (58% of their seats) (see Table 5.2). Why have the parties’ quota regulations not been effective, despite existing stipulations for list composition and zippers in both center parties? One primary factor is the small size of some regional voting districts. In the 39 districts, between one and nine mandates are up for decision, and SPÖ and ÖVP lists most often start with male candidates. Those regional districts that have only between one and three mandates and starting their list with a male contender will automatically skew representation towards men. Secondly, regional lists are composed on the basis of suggestions of party districts, as several party districts feed into one regional electoral district list. In the negotiations between different party districts to compile the regional list in the SPÖ, for instance, quota regulations are often not taken into account due to difficult bargains between the different SPÖ districts (INT A11). Similarly, ÖVP regional lists are compiled in inner-party primaries for which the quota is not strictly applied. Thus, both SPÖ and ÖVP calculate which regional districts they will win in federal elections and most often men secure the first position on these regional lists (Dingler and Kroeber 2018, p. 19) and at times upend the quota due to accommodating specific districts. The male overrepresentation in the Nationalrat despite quota regulations of the two parties thus becomes an effect of winning seats by way of the regional lists (ibid., p. 19f.; INT A1, A11). 2017 marks a notable year for Austrian women’s representation. Both center parties in 2017 met or exceeded their quota stipulations for candidate nominations as well as for the number of elected women to the Nationalrat. With the advent of Sebastian Kurz as Chancellor candidate of the personalized ‘Liste Sebastian Kurz,’ formerly, and still most commonly, called the ÖVP, the party showcased commitment to parity13 by nominating 50 women and 50 men to their national list. However, as in previous electoral cycles, the regional election list effect skewed parliamentary representation towards men. Even though women made up 51.4% of the regional candidates of the ÖVP, only 30% of those elected via the regional list are women. In contrast, men made up 48.6% on the ÖVP’s regional candidate lists, but 70% of those elected were male. For the SPÖ, the percentage of male candidates on the social democratic regional lists were at 51.4% in 2017 and 55.8% of those elected were men. 48.6% of regional list candidates were women, and 43.4% women were elected on the regional tier. This positive result was the effect of SPÖ women threatening party leadership with bad publicity if women candidacies would be clustered in second, lower, or noncompetitive positions on the regional candidate lists (INT A4). In the aftermath of the 2017 elections, the newly appointed woman party leader urged party districts to fulfill the quota on candidate lists. The Greens missed the 5% cut-off in the elections of 2017 and did not gain parliamentary representation.

13 We

will discuss the strategic dimension fueling this parity commitment below.

81

102

M

W

56.7%

44.3%

59.9%

50.1%

50.0%

50.0%

Fed % of fed. party total

192

172

183

183

184

182

Land abs.

52.7%

47.3%

50.0%

50.0%

50.3%

49.7%

Land % of land party total

261

217

239

253

245

232

Reg. abs.

54.6%

45.4%

48.6%

51.4%

51.4%

48.6%

Reg. % of reg. party total

4

5

2

6

Fed. abs.

Elected

44.4%

55.6%

25.0%

75.0%

Fed % of fed. party total

7.4%

9.3%

2.9%

8.7%

Fed. % of party total

7

6

10

11

Land abs.

53.9%

46.2%

47.6%

52.4%

Land % of Land party total

13.0

11.1

14.5

16.0

Land % of party total

14

18

12

28

Reg. abs.

43.4%

55.8%

30.0%

70.0%

Reg. % of reg. party total

25.9%

33.3%

17.4%

40.6%

Reg. % of party total

46.3%

53.7%

34.8%

65.2%

% of party total

Total elected

Fed = Bundeswahlvorschlag (Federal voting list); Land = Landeswahlvorschlag (Länder voting list); Reg = Regionalparteiliste (Regional voting district list) Sources Bundesministerium für Inneres 2017. https://www.bmi.gv.at/412/Nationalratswahlen/Nationalratswahl_2017/start.aspx#pk_06. Accessed February 11, 2019; Austrian Parliament, https://www.parlament.gv.at/WWER/NR/ABG/index.shtml?jsMode=&xdocumentUri=&filterJq=&view=&GP=XXVI&R_WF=WP& WP=SP%C3%96&R_BW=BL&BL=ALLE&W=W&M=M&listeId=4&LISTE=Anzeigen&FBEZ=FW_004. Accessed February 11, 2019. Double candidacies are reflected in the numbers, therefore no absolute of 100%. Calculation by authors

Green Party

231

230

M

W

50

50

M

W

ÖVP

SPÖ

Fed. abs.

Party lists

Candidates

Table 5.2 Candidates and elected by sex in Austrian federal elections 2017

64 5 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Federal Level

5.1 The Gendered Effects of Electoral Systems

65

Overall, the magnitude of women’s underrepresentation in both Austrian center party caucuses is primarily an effect of electoral outcomes on the regional level. This supports the argument that the major problem in the Austrian three-tiered system is the small size of the regional electoral districts with men inhabiting most of the top positions on safe regional lists of SPÖ and ÖVP. An additional challenge to voluntary party list quotas in the Austrian electoral system is the ‘preference vote’ (Vorzugsstimme). Candidates can run preference vote campaigns, and voters can move candidates to the top of the electoral list on all three tiers. The preference vote is a personalized vote and thus introduces a majoritarian element into the Austrian PR system. A preference vote campaign relies on a candidate’s financial and time resources, both of which tend to privilege men. In addition, mainly already well-known candidates with high recognition value run and win a preference vote campaign in order to consolidate their inner-party standing. On the national lists, the preference vote has catapulted very few candidates from a low position to the top.14 The impact of the preference vote on Land and regional lists, however, is stronger. Meyer and Reidinger (2018) show for Land-level candidacies in the Austrian elections of 2017 that particularly ÖVP male candidates profited from the preference vote.15 Overall, the ÖVP preference vote led to seven changes in regional and Land-level lists, five of which meant that a man took a woman’s seat (ibid.). Only one woman candidate managed to use the preference vote to overtake a male candidate and another woman took a woman’s seat. Therefore, as the preference vote overrules the (gendered and zippered) order of the electoral lists, its impact on women candidates appears to be negative (ibid.; see also Jenny 2018, p. 45). To summarize the Austrian case, we show that specific regulations within the proportional system contribute to undoing zippered lists and in effect fuel continuous women’s underrepresentation. We identified two major quota inhibitors within Austria’s electoral architecture. First, the three-tiered electoral system with its very small-sized lowest level of regional electoral districts means that wherever a regional district only advances the top candidate, it produces similar effects as majoritarian electoral rules, promoting successful male incumbents or male challengers. Moreover, the way in which regional electoral lists are composed (by merging party district lists) tends to inhibit the quota by undoing the zipper. Second, there is evidence that the Austrian preference vote works in favor of male candidates more than in favor of women candidates, putting additional pressure on party list quotas.

14 These

were the SPÖ representative to the Nationalrat Josef Cap in 1983 and the FPÖ representatives Andreas Mölzer 2004 and Heinz-Christian Strache 2019 for European Parliament elections. 15 See also https://derstandard.at/2000066409470/Warum-Frauen-weniger-Vorzugsstimmenbekommen. Accessed 24 April 2019.

66

5 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Federal Level

5.1.3 Comparing the Gendered Effects of Electoral Systems in Germany and Austria This overview of both countries’ electoral systems highlighted institutional challenges to generating greater descriptive parity between women and men. Whereas the German MMP system allows parties to blame the direct election portion of the system for non-compliance with their quotas in Bundestag elections, in the Austrian PR system, the specifics of list generation in small-sized regional voting districts contribute to more men than women moving up to gain a seat in the Nationalrat. A historical male incumbency advantage in both states aggravates the imbalance. In Germany, the more direct seats a party wins, and as the center parties in particular are unwilling to influence district-level candidate selection, the more difficult achieving their self-imposed quota appears to be. In Austria with its small regional districts, often only the first placed candidate is elected, and in the absence of party regulations to guarantee women first place nominations, male candidates have been at an advantage. Preference votes also tend to advance more men than women. Thus, in both electoral systems, parties hide behind seemingly insurmountable challenges posed by election law. German center parties articulate resistance against ‘interfering’ with the voter’s choice of direct candidate selection, while for the most part avoiding debates about inner-party preselection processes that put more men in safe districts. Austrian center parties, in a similar vein, refuse to touch the autonomy of regional-level candidate selection by district party units. Electoral law thus presents a roadblock to parity, and this roadblock is perceived widely to be immovable. The Green parties in both countries have had to face the consequences of these electoral roadblocks to parity much less, since historically they have not done well in either German direct electoral districts or on the Austrian regional level. At the same time, however, the Greens were able to establish and sustain a party culture that advances women’s equality as a core value also in direct candidate selection. This is not the case for the center parties, where engrained gender imbalances are reproduced by way of pointing to the sanctity of electoral law. The Green case shows that, where there is enough will, parties might find a way to balance the effects of the electoral system. In the next section, we will address to what degree the parties under study have tried to align their quota regulations with electoral law in order to generate the best fit for advancing women.

5.2 Party Statutes, Rules, and Regulations for Federal Elections Roadblocks to quota implementation are not just embedded in electoral systems, but also in how parties put quotas in practice. In the absence of a federally regulated legislative quota in both Germany and Austria, parties, once they adopt quotas, are left to devise their own implementation rules. As we have shown in Chap. 3, parties

5.2 Party Statutes, Rules, and Regulations for Federal Elections

67

adopted quotas at different times, in differing ways and with different thresholds. The goal of the following section is to assess the match of inner-party regulations and quota intention on the federal level, in other words how quota rules and regulations are put into practice within the constraints of electoral law in both countries. As previously stated, we focus specifically on the statutes’ provisions for parliamentary candidate selection and not on quota provisions for party functions.

5.2.1 National Party Statutes, Rules, and Regulations in Germany In Germany, party statutes of the quota parties differ in how they regulate quotas, and, as we will see in the following chapter, these differences become even more pronounced when comparing federal and Land-level regulations. All parties formulate their representative goals as applicable to mandates in general and not only to electoral lists: – “Women shall participate in all party functions of the CDU and all public mandates to a minimum of one third.” (CDU Bundesgeschäftsstelle 2019, §15.2)16 – “According to this statute and the electoral regulation, women and men must be represented in all party functions and mandates to a minimum of 40 percent.” (SPD 2014, §11.2)17 – “One goal of BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN is realizing gender equality and parity participation of women and men in all societal areas.” (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen 2018, §11.3)18 The Green Party has the most comprehensive hard quota, established in the ‘Women’s Statute’ of 1986. The Women’s Statute trumps all other election stipulations by the party, and it can only be amended with a two-thirds majority in the party’s electoral assembly (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen 2018, §2.1). Article 11 of the Women’s Statute stipulates that all Green Party electoral lists need to alternate between the sexes, with a woman always occupying first and all following uneven list positions. Women, moreover, are also allowed to compete for even list (male) positions, and lists compiled solely of women are acceptable. If there is no woman candidate for a list position that is reserved for a woman, or if a woman candidate for such a position is not elected, the electoral assembly decides on how to proceed. All alternative procedures, however, can be vetoed by a collective women’s vote (Frauenvotum) in the respective electoral assembly. 16 Frauen

sollen an Parteiämtern in der CDU und an öffentlichen Mandaten mindestens zu einem Drittel beteiligt sein. 17 In den Funktionen und Mandaten der Partei m¨ ussen nach Maßgabe dieses Statuts und der Wahlordnung Frauen und Männer mindestens zu je 40% vertreten sein. 18 Ein Ziel der Politik von BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN ist es, Gleichberechtigung und paritätische Beteiligung von Frauen und Männern in allen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen zu verwirklichen.

68

5 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Federal Level

In practice, the women’s veto was rarely applied (INT G10). On the federal level, list formation according to this zipper system generally works smoothly (ibid.). Occasionally, however, the party faces challenges to the provisions of the Women’s Statute. In 1998, for example, the state election review committee19 rejected an appeal by two citizens to declare the 1998 elections unconstitutional because of the Green Women’s Statute. The plaintiffs argued that the Women’s Statute amounted to reverse discrimination in that it ‘forces an overrepresentation of women’ and excludes ‘large numbers of men […] from equal opportunity to exert their passive voting rights’ (Deutscher Bundestag 1999, p. 215). The election commission argued in their rejection and in later challenges that the German Constitutional Court had clearly allowed for compensatory action to remedy existing disadvantages in their decision of 1987 (BVerfGE 74, p. 163 (1801)). Thus, the Green Party’s policy has been fortified over time, in effect making the Green Women’s Statute the most salient of all quota provisions by parties under consideration here. Compared to SPD and CDU, the quota regulations of the Green Party display a much higher degree of commitment as they are strictly compulsory and, in case of non-compliance, allow for immediate sanctions by way of the collective women’s veto (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen 2018, §11.5). Interviewees from the Green Party, moreover, point to an inner-party culture that overall discourages the underrepresentation of women as direct candidates (INT G6). If, as in larger cities with multiple districts, the Greens put up several direct candidates, it is ‘totally clear’ that for an example out of four direct candidates in a city, two need to be women: ‘There is no negotiating this’ (INT G5). In the federal elections of 2017, the Greens put up 42% women among their direct candidates. By contrast, the CDU barely reached 22%, and the Bavarian CSU had 17% women direct candidates.20 Until 2010, the Social Democrats employed so-called five pack rules for party lists on the federal level. Within each ‘five pack,’ from the top down, at least two list candidates had to be women. Even though a ‘package’ of five candidates could start with a candidate from either sex, in effect this rule led mostly to a list sequencing of M-F-M-F-M-M-F-M-F-M, etc., thus barely meeting the 33% quota threshold. When the SPD decided in 2010 to introduce zippered lists and abolish the five packs, the next election of 2013 successfully moved the party over the 40% quota. This result in part was facilitated by winning only 56 direct mandates, thus electing most of their MPs via the list.21 The federal SPD party statute of 2014 reiterates the 40% minimum gender quota (women and men) in its election rules for mandates and party functions (SPD 2014, §11.2 organizational statute) and a zipper system for election lists (SPD 2014, §8.2 electoral regulations).22 A man cannot put forth a candidacy for 19 Formally:

The Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity, and the Rules of Procedure, see http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/14/015/1401560.pdf. Accessed June 15, 2019. 20 Authors’ calculation based on Bundeswahlleiter 2017b; also Thillmann 2017. 21 The CDU, in turn, won 236 direct mandates in 2013, thus drawing three quarters of their MPs from direct candidacies: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/verluste-von-spd-und-linke-in-denwahlkreisen-wirklich-stark-nur-mit-direktmandat/8836422.html. Accessed 27 September 2017. 22 The SPD statute was reissued in 2017 but with no change in wording to the quota and parity rules.

5.2 Party Statutes, Rules, and Regulations for Federal Elections

69

a list position that belongs to a woman in the zippered system. If indeed a man would decide to run for such a position, the SPD statutes provide a ‘voting challenge’ option that would lead to a repetition of that particular election (INT G9; SPD 2014, §11 electoral regulations). As lists are compiled on the Land level, the zippered list works well in larger Länder. In smaller Länder, however, where only very few candidates for the Bundestag are elected via the list, the overrepresentation of men is still built into the system as first list place routinely goes to a man (INT G10). The SPD statutes also stipulate that, in case the quota is not met when the list is compiled, the overrepresented sex can only be elected up to a 60% threshold (SPD 2014, §8.2). The underrepresented sex will be elected as long as they reach the same number of votes as the first unelected from the overrepresented sex (ibid.). If this process fails, a second election takes place. Now, only candidates of the underrepresented sex are eligible to be elected with a single majority. Only when there is no candidate left from the underrepresented sex can the assembly elect somebody of the other sex (SPD 2014, §8.3). In effect, the SPD federal statutes make it difficult to upend the zipper system for list candidacies. The SPD pays lip service to parity by, for example, encouraging party officials and members to nominate an equal share of women for direct candidacies. However, the 2014 SPD statute states flatly that for the federal election, ‘the adequate representation of women and men is guaranteed by way of the Land-level list compilation’ (SPD 2014, §4.2). This statement is somewhat hyperbolic in its matter-of-fact tone. As we know (and as party leadership knows) how electoral system and party statutes interact, we also know that Land-level list composition does not at all guarantee adequate representation of women. Given the challenges of few mandates in small Länder and the importance of direct candidacies, there is a certain cognitive dissonance built into §4.2 of the SPD statute. If the party wanted to guarantee adequate representation of men and women, it would need to confront the fact that compiling zippered lists does not suffice under current electoral law. Moreover, as one of our interviewees explained, the SPD does not have a hard quota in a strict sense, because the quota is seen as a gender quota and not a women’s quota. Therefore, seats are not kept open if no woman offers to be a candidate, with the effect that the quota is suspended (INT G9). The CDU statute stipulates that at least one woman should be listed among three consecutive list places and preference should be given to women direct candidates; deviations from the rule need to be justified in the electoral assembly (CDU Bundesgeschäftsstelle 2019, §15.5). The 33% soft quota, however, is formally only applied during the first round of elections for public or inner-party office (CDU Bundesgeschäftsstelle 2019, §15.3). If the quota is not met during this first round of elections, the results are disqualified, not counted, and electoral aspirants enter into a new round of elections without a quota stipulation (ibid; Korte 2009). ‘Aussitzen,’ that is ‘waiting out’ the quota round is thus a practiced and acceptable means to circumvent the quota stipulation when the lists for the Bundestag are drafted by the Länder CDU parties. When party women object to the ‘waiting out’ strategy, they risk being ostracized. In the city-state of Hamburg, for example, nominations for the Bundestag list in 2017 resulted in the first four list positions being occupied by men, with the first woman on list place No. 5. During the nomination congress, the head

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of the CDU Hamburg reprimanded the party’s women’s organization for carrying the gender nomination conflict into the public, as this would hurt the party.23 Thus, in the CDU, women are still shamed into accepting gender imbalances during candidate selection to the Bundestag. The CDU party statute does not provide tools to sanction those who do not adhere to the quorum. Moreover, and just as for the SPD, non-interference in CDU direct candidate selection appears sacrosanct. To summarize this argument, the statutes of both German center parties are not precise enough to guarantee that with respective quotas their parity goal will be met. Both parties settle on a widely popular understanding that, if not enough women put forth a candidacy, a man should be allowed to take a woman’s seat. Even though the Social Democrats make non-compliance with the quota a more difficult institutional process than the Christian Democrats, both parties’ statutes remain weak on sanctions. They do not employ, for example, open-seat policies in which a list position or a direct candidacy stays open if not enough women are up for election. Nor do they put financial burdens on districts in which, over time, considerably more men than women are elected. None of the parties in Germany currently has formal provisions for how to advance more women as direct candidates. Whereas the Greens rely on a culture of parity in selecting both list and direct candidates, members of the CDU and the SPD argue that freedom of the active and passive electorate trumps the norm of stronger gender balance and that interference in district-level candidate nominations would be unconstitutional. Besides trying to adjust party cultures to reflect stronger commitment to parity, none of the parties until 2017 had put forth ideas on how to increase the number of women direct candidates. As we will discuss in Chap. 7, this changed in 2018.

5.2.2 National Party Statutes, Rules, and Regulations in Austria In Austria, just as in Germany, the formal regulation of quotas differs considerably between the SPÖ, ÖVP, and the Greens. However, all party programs stipulate the goal of gender parity in politics (ÖVP 2015b, p. 27; SPÖ 2018, §27; Die Grünen 2017, §7.3). In the Green Party, the gender quota is part of the statutes since the party’s foundation. According to the statutes, parity for all bodies and elected offices on federal and Länder levels must be secured (Die Grünen 2014a, §8.3a, 2014b, §18.1, 2017, §7.3). Further, the federal statute explicitly states that a majority of women presents an acceptable and welcome electoral outcome (Die Grünen 2017, §7.3). Women can therefore always run for an office, but men only if list parity is not challenged (INT A10). Starting with list position two, men can only be elected if this does not push their share of candidates over a 50% margin (Die Grünen 2017, §7.3). All lists have to be confirmed by the women’s party association (ibid.) This 23 https://www.welt.de/regionales/hamburg/article160133480/CDU-Frauen-scheitern-beim-

Parteitag.html. Accessed February 14, 2019.

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‘forced parity’ (ibid.) has resulted in a high number of women running for office and in a party culture that became sensitized to putting women on first list place.24 Since 1998, the federal SPÖ statute stipulates a 40% quota (women and men) for party lists. The revised 2010 federal statute introduced a zipper, mandating that men and women alternate for candidacies on the federal, Länder, and party district level (Niederkofler 2013, p. 100). Federal statutes including quota regulations are by default also implemented at the SPÖ Länder level (see Sect. 6.2). Our interlocutors describe the zipper system as a measure to ensure that women are equally represented, particularly in the best slots (INT A1). A national SPÖ interviewee articulates how important mandatory gender quotas in the party statutes are for electoral lists: ‘Women have something in hand to which they can refer to and call for’ (ibid.). However, aside from setting the zipper as a compulsory measure for list composition, the SPÖ statutes of 2010 did not include any further regulation, for instance that the top position should, or even had to, go to a woman; or, alternatively, if the top position went to a man, the next two positions should be going to women candidates. In effect, the 2010 statute did nothing to prevent male overrepresentation on top positions of regional lists, which in the aggregate contributed to the masculinist electoral system’s effect discussed above. A second roadblock to equal representation in Austria is that the procedures by which party district lists are merged into a regional electoral list are not sensitive to gender. In the process of compiling electoral lists, the SPÖ leadership crafts internal agreements, such as that a party district which nominated a woman will be on the first place of the regional electoral list (INT A1). SPÖ regional election lists for national elections are first composed and put to the vote at party district conferences. These party district lists need to fulfill the quota regulation; thus, on the district party level, the zipper is implemented. But in the process of merging party district lists to one regional electoral list, the quota rule is often not taken into account. Negotiations between party districts involve strategies to compose a winnable list with the most likely candidates to win on top position, and it is still mostly men who are perceived by the party as ‘winning candidates.’ At this stage, then, the SPÖ quota rule is informally, but effectively, suspended (INT A11). In 2014, the SPÖ started debating sanctions in case of non-compliance with the quota as a fallout of a highly visible party decision that overruled the zipper. When the woman President of the Nationalrat, a member of the SPÖ, died unexpectedly, the subsequently listed male SPÖ candidate succeeded the deceased as a member of parliament and not the woman candidate listed below him. While party regulations stipulated to skip the male candidate in order to fulfill the 40% women’s quota, the SPÖ in Upper Austria, which had to decide on the case as the deceased was on their Land list, decided to breach the quota regulation and to support the male candidate, who was a representative of the trade unions.25 Against the backdrop of 24 For the 2019 early elections, the Vienna Greens implemented a new regulation for composing the Land list—the Single-Transferable-Vote system, which is meant to better represent the interests of the electoral assembly on the list (for details see Chap. 6). 25 See Chap. 3 on the influence of the system of social partnership in Austria.

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intense (public and inner-party) debates about the lack of enforcement of the quota, the party convention adopted stricter regulations. Now, the executive committee of the federal party can make adjustments to the candidate list as well as submit it to the federal party council for review (SPÖ 2014, §16.2; INT A1, A5, A8; see also Gresch and Sauer 2015, p. 3). Furthermore, candidate lists on the Land level that do not fulfill the quota are invalid and can be rejected by party leadership. This so-called right to clamp down (Durchgriffsrecht) is part of the SPÖ federal party statute since 2014. However, not all (women) SPÖ members see the 2014 quota regulations as a sign of progress; in fact, a SPÖ interviewee interprets them as a setback (INT A11, see also Ablinger 2014, p. 3). Critics argue that the fine print of the new regulations of 2014 remains ambivalent in terms of gender equality. This is most obvious in the revision of §16. The paragraph states that if a social democratic member of parliament leaves office for any reason, the selection of the successor has to take place according to SPÖ quota regulations. Since 2014, this regulation includes the amendment that in this process the women quota has to be considered in the context of the legal stipulations (SPÖ 2014, §16.6). But, in fact, as of 2019, no such legal stipulations exist. Thus, the new regulation is misleading and could be interpreted as an invitation to overrule the zipper principle. Before the amendment, the Land-level party leadership was able to compensate for all-male first positions on the regional level by introducing a Land list with, for instance, three women on the top three positions. The new regulatory void led, for example, to all men on the SPÖ lists of two regional districts in Upper Austria in the 2017 elections (Hofmann and Striedinger 2018). In effect, current SPÖ regulations, while theoretically giving party leadership power to enforce the quota top-down, have created new uncertainties in the absence of legal provisions. During the most recent statute revision in 2018, a stipulation was added that list composition has to be coordinated with respective women’s organizations (SPÖ 2018, §27.3). While this invites more inner-party scrutiny of lists, it does not close the loophole of missing legal stipulations that could fortify the quota. The ÖVP promoted gender equality in politics by way of anchoring a minimum quorum of at least one-third women on electoral lists in its political program of 1995 (Geisberger 2010, p. 369). It should be noted that, even though the quorum was laid down in the party program, it was not included in the party’s statutes and, hence, was not accompanied by enforceable implementation or sanction mechanisms (Ziegerhofer 2015, p. 75).26 Specific regulations on promoting women as ÖVP candidates were introduced into the party statute only in 2015. Before 2015, at least 30% of candidates needed to be women, but regulations did not indicate which places these women take on an electoral list. ÖVP interviewees pointed to this loophole and underlined the necessity of a zipper system, which was eventually introduced in 2015 (INT A2).

26 The party program of the ÖVP sets out the party’s overall political goals; the quorum was mentioned as a general gender equality goal. By contrast, the party statute specifies binding rules and regulations for inner-party processes. Such rules and regulations did not exist in 1995 for the quorum.

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73

According to the ÖVP party statute, the Land-level party organizations are in charge of compiling regional lists. Since 1994, the ÖVP regional electoral candidacy lists have to be submitted to a vote at a regional-level election convent that resembles an inner-party primary (Ziegerhofer 2015, p. 76; also INT A9).27 Primaries are organized by the Land-level party organizations in the 39 regional voting districts. Candidates do not necessarily have to be ÖVP members (i.e., members of one of the ÖVP associations). Nomination and sequencing of candidates for the Land-level lists are decided by the Land-level party executive. However, since 2017, the national party leader can veto Land lists that do not confirm to party regulations. Compiling the federal list is currently solely the prerogative of the national party leader (ÖVP 2017, §48.1). The ÖVP federal party statute since 2015 specifies a share of at least 40% women candidates in elected offices (ÖVP 2015a, §41.2) as well as the alternating zipper principle on electoral lists for parliamentary elections (ibid., §48.7). Similar to the SPÖ, top list positions tend to go to men. The ÖVP statute of 2017 clarifies in §48.8 that for subnational elections ‘sequencing, if possible, has to take into account the zipper system’ and goes on to state in §48.9 that the most general principles that need to be applied in candidate selection are ‘professional and political qualifications’ (ÖVP 2017, §48). In sum, the ÖVP has provided party officials with a substantial number of loopholes that can negatively impact quota implementation. It was the 2017 snap elections that brought major changes with respect to the party’s quota implementation. In his function as party leader, Chancellor candidate Sebastian Kurz changed the party statutes, strengthening the power of the chairperson’s office before the 2017 elections (Bonavida und Ettinger 2017). Whereas the zipper system for compiling party lists was not put into question, the chairperson now has the right to singlehandedly compile federal party lists and also to veto the Land lists (ÖVP 2017, §48.1). Kurz presented a national electoral list for the ÖVP with a 50% zippered gender quota. The primary intention of that move was to break up the traditional networks of established ÖVP functionaries and to attract women voters in competition with the right-wing FPÖ. In his strategy to re-invent the party as a kind of movement, gender balance was a calculated secondary motive. In order to push long-established, and mostly male, ÖVP MPs out, Kurz advanced substantially more ÖVP women to the Nationalrat. In the process, he publicly reinforced the zipper system to place more, and younger, women on ÖVP electoral lists. Moreover, under the leadership of Kurz, the minimum threshold for a successful preference vote to change the order of an electoral list was cut into half, from 14 to 7% of the party’s vote on all three levels (Meyer and Reidinger 2018; Jenny 2018, p. 45). Candidates must now conform to these new modalities and potentially renounce their (higher) position on the respective electoral list if a candidate at a lower position on this list wins a preference vote campaign. In fact, this modification was primarily geared towards promoting personalization in the electoral system, again privileging mostly men over women. We thus concur with Jenny’s assessment that ‘lower hurdles 27 These

primaries are called Vorwahlregulativ (Ziegerhofer 2015, p. 76).

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for list changes through preferential votes […] weakened the gender zipper system’s effect on actual seat allocation’ (Jenny 2018, p. 45; see also Meyer and Reidinger 2018). Showcasing a utilitarian approach to gender equality, the Liste Kurz/ÖVP was successful in the 2017 election with respect to both, boosting women and fulfilling the ÖVP quota, but also winning the popular vote. It remains unsettled, however, if Kurz’ strategy was a one-time calculated move to limit competition, or if he is willing to continue on the path of stricter enforcement of the zipper.

5.2.3 Comparing the Gendered Effects of Party Regulations in Germany and Austria Summarizing how quota regulations are put into practice within the parameters of electoral laws on the federal level in Germany and Austria, we conclude that overall they are too unspecific and advance notions of gender equality that are not tested in terms of their compatibility with respective electoral systems. Only the Green Parties in Germany and Austria have quota regulations that combine clear and binding procedures with enforceable sanctions. It might be fair to argue that the Green Parties’ regulations have not been fully put to the test, as they have, as of 2019, not won a sizable number of federal direct mandates in Germany and only two regional mandates in Austria. However, there is evidence that both Green Parties have developed parity cultures that would challenge electoral outcomes that stray too much from genderequal representation. The four center parties under investigation, however, each in their own way neglect serious engagement with how to implement their quotas within their respective electoral systems. The German SPD and CDU cite freedom of active and passive voter choice while abnegating any influence over candidate selection in voting districts for the direct election of MPs. Neither the SPÖ nor the ÖVP have precise regulations that spell out which gender should be on first position of an electoral list, nor have they fortified their quota regulations with serious sanctions in case the quota regulations are breached. The Austrian preference vote, moreover, favors male incumbents and men more generally, putting different norms of democracy at odds with each other: individual voter choice vs. parity as a representational principle. Even if there might not be a clear-cut answer to this dilemma, a more pronounced and public debate seems warranted. Center parties, however, seem to have comfortably settled in a gray zone where what they stipulate, a quota or a zipper, clashes with respective electoral laws.

5.3 Summary This chapter explained that, contrary to general assumptions about a best fit of women’s representation with proportional electoral systems, we need to assess the

5.3 Summary

75

mechanics of specific electoral architectures in more detail to affirm this fit. Moreover, the intersection of electoral laws and party regulations for voluntary quotas needs more attention than generally granted. Germany with its MMP system on the federal level did overall better in the past 30 years in terms of women’s representation than Austria with its PR system.The widely accepted notion that quotas work better in PR systems than in FPTP systems does not match our cases. For center parties in both countries, in particular, fulfilling their respective women or gender quotas appeared to be quite difficult in the period under investigation. Overall, the German SPD did somewhat better in meeting their quota than the Austrian SPÖ, whereas the Austrian ÖVP met their quota more consistently than the German CDU. In this chapter, we pointed towards intervening factors that impact quota implementation and ultimately stronger women’s representation. We showcased how women’s representation is shaped by both the fine print of the electoral architecture, and how parties design quotas within electoral law. In Germany, the proportional element of the electoral system drives the increase in women’s mandates via party lists, whereas the FPTP element of direct district election still privileges men and male incumbents in particular. The post-quota gender gap is large for the CDU, which chooses neither to influence direct candidacies, nor to enforce the quorum with hard stipulations. The Social Democrats as well have built-in loopholes in their party statutes that counteract successful quota implementation. While the SPD statutes state that equal representation is guaranteed by way of zippered lists, the ‘white elephant’ of direct candidacies is avoided. There are neither open-seat policies nor financial sanctions in place if Land-level lists to federal elections are not strictly zippered. In Austria, the three-tiered electoral architecture with rather small regional electoral districts and small numbers of electable seats, in effect, represents a bottom-up cascade that advances more men than women. Quota implementation is frequently derailed or rendered ineffective if only the first one or three candidates with a man on first place advance (in effect making it two successful men and one successful woman), explaining parties’ failure to properly implement the voluntary party quota in the Austrian proportional system. In conclusion, the center parties in both countries only reluctantly fortified their quota regulations since the 1980s and appeared for most of this period particularly blind towards strengthening provisions that would allow for a better fit of party quota systems and electoral laws. This lack of commitment accounts for lingering post-quota gender gaps in both countries. Only the Green Parties have established mechanisms that secure a minimum of 50% women on electoral lists combined with a political culture that would reliably sanction the overrepresentation of men in direct candidacies. Therefore, scrutinizing the intersection of electoral law and quota regulations provides important insights into the persistent underrepresentation of women in the German and Austrian Federal Parliaments. In the next chapter, we will address to what degree these insights also hold on the subnational Land level of parliamentary representation.

Chapter 6

Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Land Level

Subnational innovation capacity is often cited as a gender-friendly feature of federal systems (Lang and Sauer 2013; Vickers 2013; Publius 2013). As Länder experiment and innovate in policy areas that are in their purview, policy success in one Land might produce incentives for other Länder to follow. At the same time, policy failure can potentially be compensated more easily as adjustments can be made at lower costs. On the other hand, subnational politics can remain stagnant or bound by path dependencies, in effect resisting change. Historically, our cases show that in Germany, the representation of women was higher on the national level than in the Länder. Thus, engrained cultures and Land-specific traditions might make transformation towards more gender-sensitive representation and parity potentially more challenging on the subnational level than attempting broad nation-level reforms (Laskowski 2018). However, the reverse is true for Austria, where until federal elections in 2017, Länder representation of women was higher than on the national level. Generally, quota parties did better in meeting their representational goals for women on the German national and the Austrian subnational levels. In this chapter, we ask to what degree Land-level electoral systems as well as subnational party provisions act as quota inhibitors or enablers in Germany and Austria. The case studies presented here are drawn from field research conducted between 2015 and 2019 in the German Länder Baden-Württemberg and Berlin and the Austrian Länder Upper Austria and Vienna.1 Perhaps the most surprising initial finding is that, since the introduction of quotas, women’s representation in the two Austrian Länder is overall considerably higher than in the German Länder. This comparative result is particularly constant since the turn of the century, and even the rural state of Upper Austria scores overall higher on women’s legislative representation than Berlin, the socially progressive center of German women’s activism (see Fig. 6.1).

1 For

details on case selection, see the introduction.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. Ahrens et al., Gender Equality in Politics, SpringerBriefs in Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34895-3_6

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6 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Land Level

Fig. 6.1 Women’s parliamentary representation in the four Länder Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Upper Austria, and Vienna 1983–2016 (To be able to provide a chronological overview of our four cases, we had to harmonize data for Fig. 6.1. We excluded the Berlin 1999 elections (women’s proportion 34.3%) and kept the Berlin elections of 1995 and 2001 instead; for Upper Austria, we added for 2005–6—due to its long election cycle of six years—an assumed women’s share in parliament similar to the result in 2003–37.5%.). Source Data provided to authors by Landeswahlleiter Baden-Württemberg, Landeswahlleiterin Berlin, Magistratsabteilung Stadt Wien, Landtagsdirektion Oberösterreich. Calculation and figure design by authors

Baden-Württemberg is the outlier among the four Länder with strikingly low numbers of women parliamentarians. However, the data for Berlin shows that only twice in almost forty years did women’s representation reach 40% in the Landtag, and after 2010 it has leveled off at 30–35%. The fact that German Länder do worse than Austrian Länder in women’s legislative representation is in large part due to how quota policies intersect with respective Land-level electoral laws. More specifically, the Land-level cases highlight how variations in electoral systems both within and between countries strongly influence voluntary party quota implementation. In Austria, the PR system on the Land-level works for quota enforcement even in rural and culturally conservative Länder such as Upper Austria. In the German territorial state of Baden-Württemberg, by contrast, the electoral tilt towards direct elections with small district size has become a massive inhibitor for gender equal representation. Overall, the diversity of subnational electoral systems in Germany leads to stronger representational inequality across the country than in Austria. Before we focus on electoral laws and quota party statutes of the four Länder selected for this study to situate our cases, we will assess parliamentary representation of women on the subnational Land level in Germany and Austria more generally and establish the degree of post-quota gender gaps for our cases.

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6.1 The Gendered Effects of Land-Level Electoral and Party Regulations in Germany Women’s representation in the German Länder legislatures in 2019 ranged between 40.6% (Thuringia) and 24.5% (Baden-Württemberg) (see Table 6.1). It speaks to the influence of electoral law on implementing quotas that both the Länder with the strongest and the weakest women’s representation are governed by coalitions led by left parties that operate with a formal 50% gender quota. In Thuringia, the Left Party has formed a coalition with the two other left quota parties SPD and the Greens; in Baden-Württemberg, the Greens and their governor are leading a coalition with the conservative CDU. Thus, as we have indicated in Chap. 5, left party presence matters, but it is crucial how left party quotas ‘sit’ with electoral law. The BadenWürttemberg Greens are, unlike their national-level counterparts in the last chapter, more challenged with fitting party quota commitment to electoral context, and, since they are in a coalition government, lack the power to initiate the revision of the Land’s electoral law so that quotas could be implemented properly. In Germany, unlike Austria, Länder crafted differing electoral regulations after 1949, resulting in an even greater variety of stipulations altering the national MMP Table 6.1 Women’s representation Länder level Germany May 2019 Länder

Number of MPs

Number of female MPs

Female MP share in %

Baden-Württemberg

143

35

24.5

71

18

25.3

Lower Saxony

137

36

26.3

Saxony-Anhalt

87

23

26.4

Bavaria

205

55

26.8

North Rhine-Westphalia

199

54

27.1

Mecklenburg- Western Pomerania

Schleswig-Holstein

73

22

30.1

Saxony

126

40

31.7

Berlin

160

53

33.1

Hesse

137

46

33.6

Bremen

87

28

33.7

Saarland

51

18

35.3

101

36

35.6

88

32

36.4

Hamburg

121

45

37.2

Thuringia

91

37

40.6

Rhineland Palatinate Brandenburg

Source https://www.lpb-bw.de/frauenanteil_Länderparlamenten.html. Accessed May 28, 2019

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6 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Land Level

Post-Quota Gender Gap in percentage points

40.0 34.6

35.0 30.0

30.0

29.7

29.5

23.6

25.0

22.9

21.1

20.0 15.0 10.0

19.4

17.8

17.1 13.2

10.0

17.1 13.3 10.0

14.7

19.7 16.3

15.6

11.1 5.3

5.0 0.0 -5.0

Greens SPD CDU/CSU

1988 10.0 21.1 30.0

1992 34.6 17.8 23.6

1996 13.2 29.7 17.1

2001 10.0 13.3 17.1

2006 14.7 11.1 15.6

2011 19.4 22.9 19.7

2016 5.3 29.5 16.3

Fig. 6.2 Post-Quota gender gap in the Landtag Baden-Württemberg 1988–2016. Source Data provided to authors by Landeswahlleiter Baden-Württemberg. Calculation and figure design by authors

electoral system.2 Here, our focus is on the gendered effects of these different subnational electoral systems for German Land-level representation as well as on parties’ attempts to adapt party regulations in order to enforce their quotas on the subnational level. Even Länder such as Thuringia and Berlin that generally feature the same mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system as the federal level3 and therefore face a similar ‘direct candidacy challenge’ as we discussed for the Bundestag elections, showcase different representational outcomes (see Table 6.1), further suggesting that the intersection of subnational electoral law and party quota regulations needs scrutiny. Baden-Württemberg has an electoral system that of all German Länder most systematically undermines voluntary party quotas. Just as on the federal level, several parties, in both German Länder we investigated, exhibit sizable post-quota gender gaps for a number of electoral cycles since they introduced their respective quotas. To remind the reader: By measuring the post-quota gender gap, we do not assess commitment to gender parity as such. The post-quota

2 See for details of the subnational election law, the so-called Landeswahlordnungen https://www. bpb.de/politik/wahlen/wahlen-in-deutschland/249561/wahlsysteme. Accessed May 27, 2019. 3 With smaller variations in terms of at which level (district or Land) parties compile their electoral lists.

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81

gender gap measures simply the discrepancy between quota stipulation and factual representation of women in a party in a parliamentary caucus (see Fig. 6.2). All quota parties under investigation in Baden-Württemberg exhibit large postquota gender gaps over time. The Green Party in 2011 had almost a 20% post-quota gender gap. The Social Democrats since 2016 had a 29.5% post-quota gender gap, with barely 10% women representatives despite a 40% quota. The CDU, likewise, has never fulfilled its quorum, and the 2016 election cycle produced barely half as many women representatives than the quorum stipulates. In Berlin, the SPD and the Greens in fact mostly surpass their women’s quota, signaling that the electoral law overall might be better suited to integrate a strong quota than in Baden-Württemberg. The CDU, however, contstantly misses its quorum, indicating that the particular intersection of state-party regulations and electoral law does not present a good fit for women’s representation. Consistently, high CDU post-quota gender gap scores help depress women’s participation in the Berlin Parliament to a lower level than in most Austrian Länder (see Fig. 6.3). The key to understanding why the CDU, in particular, does not meet its quota lies in the way that the party organizes list composition in Berlin, as explained below.

Fig. 6.3 Post-Quota gender gap in the Abgeordnetenhaus Berlin 1985–2016. Source Data provided to authors by Landeswahlleiterin Berlin. Calculation and figure design by authors

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6 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Land Level

The following sections will showcase in more detail how the interaction of Landlevel electoral law with party regulations affects the implementation of the quota and thus the quest for parity.

6.1.1 Electoral Regulations in German Länder Comparing German Land-level electoral laws, the three major issues that influence quota implementation are (1) if Land districts feature single or multiple direct seats; (2) if a Land uses open or closed party lists; and (3) the ratio between the number of direct and list seats in the ultimate makeup of a Land parliament. Three of the German Länder (Bavaria, Bremen, and Hamburg) allow for some form of multiple direct candidacy votes combined with preferential voting. In these Länder, multiple candidates can enter parliament via their district list. In theory, being able to vote for multiple direct candidates in larger districts is considered a positive incentive to make room for women candidates (Matland 1993; Thames 2017). If, however, as for an example in Bremen, voters can cumulate their preference votes onto candidates from a party list as well as across parties, this positive effect might disappear. Since adopting its new multiple direct candidacy law, the share of women in the Bremen Parliament fell from 42% in 2007 to 34% in 2015 and increased only slightly to 39% in 2019. Even though some argue that the downsizing of women’s representation is primarily due to increases in AfD, CDU, and FDP representation, looking at the 2011 SPD results in Bremen (before the AfD even entered the Bürgerschaft, the Bremen Parliament) provides evidence of the masculinist effects of multiple direct candidacies. Voters changed the first ten seats on the Bremen SPD list in a way that massively upended the SPD quota. Originally, the party’s male– female lineup of M-F-M-F-M-M-F-M-F-M met the 40% minimum standard. By way of cumulating their personal preferences, voters turned this list into M-M-F-M-MM-M-M-M-M-F, that is a list of nine men and one woman on the first ten positions (Probst and Gattig 2012, p. 60f.), making the zippered list obsolete. In Bavaria, each voter has two direct votes, one for the voting district and one for the electoral district,4 thus in effect separating two levels of direct candidacies as opposed to allowing for multiple direct candidacy votes. The effects on the chances of women candidates are negative. Bavarian voters elect proportionally more men in the electoral districts than the parties have assembled as candidates (Ahrens and Lang 2019). Twelve of the German Länder utilize MMP electoral systems that feature both direct candidacies in districts and closed party lists. These closed lists decide the percentage of party seats as well as the order of parliamentary members who are elected via the list. Closed party lists are considered to be the only viable way for quota parties that utilize a zipper system. It has also been established that any kind 4 Bavaria

has seven Wahlkreise (election districts) and 91 Stimmkreise (voting districts). Beyond the directly elected candidates for the Stimmkreise, voters can choose additional candidates from their respective Wahlkreis list.

6.1 The Gendered Effects of Land-Level Electoral …

83

of ‘tampering’ with the zipper, for an example allowing some seats to stay ‘nongendered’ or ‘open’ to candidates of either sex, will skew the quota towards male overrepresentation (Ahrens and Meier 2019). Thus, Länder that include closed party lists in their electoral schemes are in a favorable position if parties have adopted strictly zippered lists. Länder that employ both direct candidacies and party lists still differ in how they validate and design voting procedures. While in most German Länder half of the seats are allocated via direct mandate and half via party list (similar to the federal electoral system; see Chap. 5), in North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, two-thirds of seats are allocated via direct mandate. In Lower Saxony, 65% of seats are decided via direct candidacy districts. We have argued that this has a negative effect on women’s representation as single-member direct candidacies are still strongly favoring male candidates (see Chap. 5). In sum, the more Länder rely on direct candidacies, the less quota regulations ‘stick’; Länder with stronger reliance on closed lists are generally better positioned to meet their voluntary party quotas.

6.1.2 German Länder Party Statutes SPD, CDU, and the Greens differ considerably in how they regulate quotas in their party statutes, and this discrepancy is even more pronounced when comparing federal and regional regulations (see also Chap. 5). In the SPD, the regional party organizations of Baden-Württemberg and Berlin both refer to the federal party statute and state that they apply it directly to their Land-level elections (SPD Baden-Württemberg 2016; SPD Landesverband Berlin 2014). The SPD Berlin additionally allows for a debate and for men and women meeting separately in case the quota is not met during nomination processes (SPD Landesverband Berlin 2014, §7.3). As we elaborated in Chap. 5, the 2014 federal SPD party statute stipulates in its election rules for mandates and party functions a 40% quota (women and men), alternating on the federal election lists. For elections, the SPD strictly enforces the 40% list quota, while an aspirational 50% rule is included in the statute as a ‘should’-provision (SPD 2014, §3.5). In case the 40% quota is not met, the overrepresented sex can only be elected to a 60% threshold; the underrepresented sex will be elected as long as they reach the same number of votes as the first unelected candidate from the overrepresented sex. In a second election, only candidates from the underrepresented sex are eligible to be elected with single majority. Only if there are no candidates left from the underrepresented sex, can the other sex be elected, opening the door for lower list positions being skewed towards men. The quota rules apply also for substitutes and successors. These principles, so the SPD Land-level statutes suggest, apply to all Länder in their entirety—a premise we will question below. When comparing the CDU party statutes in Berlin and Baden-Württemberg with the federal statutes and with each other, we find differences in both respects. As we discussed earlier, the CDU 33% soft quota is formally only applied during the first round of elections for public office (CDU Bundesgeschäftsstelle 2019). The party

84

6 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Land Level

statute in Baden-Württemberg, however, not even mentions this first-round quorum and solely states a more general goal of ‘representing women adequately’ without defining what ‘adequate’ means (CDU Baden-Württemberg 2018, §9.1f). The Berlin party statute is somewhat more precise. It stipulates the obligation to promote ‘real’ gender equality and defines a minimum one-third quorum that should be implemented by suggesting at least one woman among three consecutive list slots (CDU Berlin 2017, §44a). This, as we have discussed previously, allows the party to place the woman in the third slot with less of a chance to being elected. Compared to SPD and CDU, the quota regulations of the Green Party are far more compulsory and allow for immediate sanctions. As in the SPD, the Green Party federal-level regulations are also enforced on Länder and regional levels.5 The party statutes prescribe a zipper system with women placed on all uneven list positions; even list positions may be taken up by men or women alike and lists solely composed of women are allowed. In case not enough women run for the uneven seats, the party nomination caucus decides on ad hoc additional procedures while giving women party members a suspending veto in the caucus (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen Baden-Württemberg n.d., p. 11; Bündnis 90/Die Grünen Landesverband Berlin 2014, §21). In effect, the Green Party with its Women’s Statute has the most compulsory quota rules for both Land- and national-level list compositions. However, knowledge about the Women’s Statute among party members in districts is limited, and therefore, there might be room for stretching or bending the quota informally. A 2015 survey among party districts by Green Party leadership showed that only 38% of respondents thought that the Women’s Statute was followed in all elections (Agena 2015). 8% responded that it was ‘rarely’ used, and 1% thought it was never used. 8% of Green Party members surveyed did either not know the Women’s Statute or did not know it well (ibid.).

6.1.3 How Electoral Law and Quotas Intersect in Baden-Württemberg and Berlin Baden-Württemberg and Berlin represent two cases at the extremes of women’s representation: Berlin with its urban culture has a tradition of feminist activism, a highly visible and well-endowed women’s policy agency, as well as—particularly since unification—a center-left footprint in government. Baden-Württemberg, on the other hand, is an economic powerhouse centered around the automobile industry, with a historically conservative political culture. Only in recent decades has this mixed 5 On the national and state level, the Greens have also historically instituted ‘dual leadership,’ a quota

for party head positions and therefore, one would assume, also for leading candidate roles. However, in Baden-Württemberg the attempt to institute dual leadership in 2010 and not just having a man, Winfried Kretschmann, as the main party candidate failed (INT G2). Instead, the party decided to have a ‘core leadership team’ of four, two of them women, with the result that only Kretschmann gained visibility and the other three are mostly ignored by media (ibid.).

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85

Table 6.2 Women and men among candidates and elected first and second mandates in Land election Baden-Württemberg 2016 Candidates

Elected

Total

Candidates (absolute)

Candidates (% of party total)

Direct mandates (absolute)

First mandates (% of party total)

Second mandates (absolute)

List mandates (% of party total)

Mandates in % of party total

Men

55

78.6

19

86.4

15

75.0

81.0

Women

15

21.4

3

13.6

5

25.0

19.0

Men

53

75.7

0

–

17

89.5

89.5

Women

17

24.3

0

–

2

10.5

10.5

CDU

SPD

Green Party Men

38

54.3

26

56.5

0

0

55.3

Women

32

45.7

20

43.5

1

100.0

44.7

Source Data provided to authors by ‘Statistische Berichte Baden-Württemberg. Artikel-Nr. 4232 16001’ and http://www.landtagswahl-bw.de/fileadmin/landtagswahl-bw/pdf/LTW2016_Wahlvorschlaege_nach_ Wahlkreisen.pdf. Accessed May 30, 2019. Calculation by authors

with green ideology, driven by urban elites, resulting in the ascendancy of the Green Party. Since the 2016 elections, the Greens are the senior and CDU the junior partner in a coalition government; in the previous legislative period, the Greens served as senior member in a coalition with the SPD. As a consequence, we would expect increasing shares of women MPs. Comparing these two Länder, we will highlight how the interplay of the electoral system and party quota regulations to different degrees and in different ways derails the implementation of voluntary party quotas on the subnational level. Baden-Württemberg Until the mid-1980s, women made up only roughly 6% of the Landtag in this Southern state. Since then, the number of women representatives has slowly risen, to 24.5% in the 2016 elections.6 This ‘success’, however, is solely carried by the Green Party. Social Democratic and Conservative women candidates have profited only minimally from the quota regulations of their parties (see Table B.2 in Appendix B). As Table 6.2 illustrates, in 2016 none of the parties reached their quota commitment; even the Green Party put up only 45.7% women candidates. The CDU fell short of its 33% quorum with a share of 21.4% women candidates and a much higher likelihood of male candidates landing a direct mandate, and women MPs more likely to enter the Landtag via additional seat distribution. The Social Democratic lineup of women candidates and elected representatives, however, is even more instructive. The share of women candidates at 24.3% is far below the SPD 40% quota. None of these women—in fact no SPD direct candidate in the state—was directly 6 Baden-Württemberg is currently the only Bundesland where the proportion of women in the Land

parliament never got above 25%.

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6 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Land Level

elected. The workings of the electoral system increased the gender gap, because overall votes for candidates lifted more SPD men into the Landtag than SPD women and thus increased the effect of an already imbalanced candidate lineup. In effect, the number of Social Democratic women in Baden-Württemberg’s most recent 2016 election dropped dramatically from 17.9% in 2011 to 10.5% in 2016. Systemic mismatch between a formal quota stipulation and election regulations in Baden-Württemberg accounts for most of why all parties underperformed in terms of their quota—albeit the Greens much less so than both the center parties. BadenWürttemberg’s Landtag with its 120–150 mandates is the only Land that runs elections without electoral lists and also makes vote-splitting between parties impossible (Trefs 2003, 2008). The Land in fact does have a MMP system that combines direct candidate election with a Land-wide party vote; however, voters have only one vote. Voters decide with this one vote simultaneously who is (1) directly elected in one of the 70 electoral districts, (2) the proportional share of party seats in parliament, and (3) which other candidates are successful next to the directly elected (Trefs 2008). For the 70 candidates nominated on the electoral district level, the party has, according to an SPD member of parliament, ‘naturally no influence on who is being elected as candidate’ (INT G1). This, however, does not address the fact that 75.7% of SPD candidates were men. How many other candidates, besides those directly elected, enter parliament depends on a complicated mechanism (Trefs 2003, 2008). All votes for a party are cumulated and when they pass the 5% threshold, define a party’s share of the minimum 120 parliamentary seats. The 120 seats are equally distributed across four administrative governance districts (comprising different electoral districts), and in each administrative district, the party’s Land-wide share applies. In case a party in Baden-Württemberg wins fewer direct mandates than it would receive according to its overall proportional share, the party can delegate additional candidates. These ‘second mandates’ (up to 80) depend on the absolute number of votes a candidate received and not the relative success in a district. Hence, voters have limited and parties have no influence over who receives a second mandate (Trefs 2008). The problem of the election architecture in Baden-Württemberg for quota implementation is that the state-level party has no influence over which candidates will enter the Landtag via these proportional allocations. Not having electoral lists means not being able to employ a zipper or a quota. Thus, the Baden-Württemberg Landlevel parties, even if they pay lip service to their federal party statutes, have no way to systematically apply them under current electoral law. The mismatch of voluntary party quota regulations and electoral law prevents effective nesting of gender quotas in Baden-Württemberg. The election results illustrate historical path dependencies in which a male incumbency advantage in direct district-level elections reproduces representational inequalities that not even the Greens can fully escape.7

7 Lack

of commitment to gender equality also translates to the municipal level in BadenWürttemberg. Here, in 2013 a paragraph was introduced into communal electoral law that stipulates that men and women should be equally considered during candidate selection. This can take the form of zippered lists, but the law distinctly says that the two stipulations are not a necessary prerequisite for electoral lists being lawful (Municipal electoral law Baden-Württemberg, § 9.6, op. cit Landesfrauenrat Baden-Württemberg (2014), p. 6).

6.1 The Gendered Effects of Land-Level Electoral …

87

When the Green Party came to power in 2011 and entered in a coalition with the Social Democrats, they promised an electoral reform that would increase the percentage of women in parliament, which had dropped from 24% in the previous legislative period down to 18%. The Social Democratic head of caucus declared publicly that the goal was ‘to get more women into Parliament’ (Ruf 2011). The Green-Red government established a commission to study different models of electoral reform. The model preferred by the Greens was to establish party lists mirroring the electoral process on the national level and many other Länder, where the parties could introduce quotas on the lists (INT G2). The Green Party was quite clear that ‘this would mean that we would have immediately 50 percent women in parliament’ (ibid.). Even though the Social Democratic women’s association and also some SPD men were ready to tackle reform, the SPD caucus in the Baden-Württemberg Landtag ultimately was not (INT G5). Baden-Württemberg’s most prominent election researcher, Joachim Behnke, agreed that only a state-wide party list could increase the representation of women (Behnke, op. cit Agrachtrup 2016). The Social Democrats supported a reform initiative by their former Secretary of the Interior, suggesting to add a socalled small list to the Landtag. The ‘small list’ would consist of 20–30 seats on top of the current 120 seats and would be an all-women list where mandates were to be awarded according to proportional electoral party success as well as to accommodate overhang mandates (Wieselmann 2016; Soldt 2015). The proposal went nowhere, as changes to electoral law required approval from the CDU. Objections to both the idea of a second vote for party lists as well as the ‘small list’ solution were vehement among the center parties. Introduction of a list vote ‘would have cost many men their mandate, and therefore there was only minimal buy-in from men across all parties’ (INT G1). ‘As long as those who would be negatively affected by them decide on these reforms, we won’t be getting them’ (INT G2). Attempts to circumvent the prisoner’s dilemma by way of drafting an electoral reform that would only go into effect two legislative periods later, that is a decade onwards (ibid.), stalled. Other reform initiatives that were debated never took off. Experts suggested that parties themselves could decide on a compulsory inner-party process with the goal to get women nominated in half of the districts. Another option would be to join two districts and stipulate that each party would nominate one woman and one man as direct candidates for two available mandates (Behnke 2014). The inter-caucus commission to study electoral reforms also reminded parties that they could stipulate that only those districts get financial means from the party that nominates women and men equally over time. Without consensus within and among parties, however, these ideas got buried. When the Greens entered a coalition with the CDU in 2016, they explicitly made electoral reform a part of the joint coalition agreement. In 2017, a commission of the two-party caucuses tried to find common ground for reform—to no avail. Again, CDU caucus members blocked the introduction of party lists and a second vote for voters in Baden-Württemberg. A compromise proposed by the Greens to allow only candidates on party lists who had already been nominated in their voting districts also failed. The CDU-led Ministries of Interior and Justice argued that party lists assembled in such a mode amounted to a limitation of party freedom and of the

88

6 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Land Level

general electoral law guidelines of the Land.8 Despite even the conservative Women’s Union in Baden-Württemberg strongly urging its party to offer alternative election modalities, the CDU caucus voted to reject the Green attempt and in fact buried the proposal. As of 2019, Baden-Württemberg remains at the low end of women’s representation in German Länder. The fact that its electoral law is incompatible with any current party quota provision is well known among party officials, but remains unaddressed. Public discourse, while taking note of women’s associations’ mobilization for a change of electoral law, appears to hold on to a status quo of systematic overrepresentation of men. Berlin Women’s representation in Berlin is overall higher than in Baden-Württemberg, driven to some degree by Green and Left Party women legislators, but also by a stronger match between electoral system and quotas. Before parties adopted quotas, the share of women in the Berlin Land parliament was 16% (1985), then almost doubled to 29.9% in 1990, and since then fluctuates between 35 and 40% (see Fig. 6.1). After the Land election of 2016, the percentage of women legislators was at 33.1% (see Table 6.3).9 Among the parties under investigation in this study, the percentage of women among the Greens is currently at 55.6%, among the SPD it is 39.5%, and among the CDU 12.9%. In other words, the Green Party and the SPD in 2016 met their quotas, while the CDU dramatically missed their quorum with only 12.9% women MPs elected (see Table 6.3). The Land Berlin uses the blueprint of the national MMP electoral system. Voters have two votes, one for a direct candidate, one for a party, electing a parliament with a minimum of 130 seats.10 78 mandates are awarded in Berlin’s twelve city municipalities (Stadtbezirke), each with five to nine electoral districts via FPTP direct candidacies. A minimum of another 52 mandates are distributed via closed party lists that parties can choose to run Berlin-wide (Landesliste) or separately in twelve city districts (Bezirksliste). Analyzing the 2016 electoral quota dynamics, we find that the SPD with 44.7% exceeded its quota for list candidates and with 38.5% almost met its quota for the share of direct mandates. Among the candidates of the Green Party, women were

8 https://www.stimme.de/suedwesten/nachrichten/pl/Landtag-Wahlrecht-Baden-Württemberg-

Gruene-Kompromissvorschlag-zum-Wahlrecht-ist-gangbar;art19070,3998334. Accessed May 31, 2019. 9 This represents a decrease for the second consecutive electoral cycle, from 39.6% in 2006 to 34.9% in 2011 (Gender Datenreport Berlin 2017, p. VI_2, VI_4), due in large part to the re-entry of the Liberals into Parliament in 2016 as well as to the rise of the AfD. Majorities in both these parties are not only strongly opposed to voluntary party quotas, but also feature the lowest numbers of women parliamentarians. 10 The number of seats might increase due to so-called Überhangmandate (overhang mandates) or Ausgleichsmandate (compensatory mandates) (see also Chap. 5). The current Berlin Parliament has 160 seats.

Women

Women

82.0

38.5

61.5

18.0

89

55

68

40

Women

56.2

43.8

20

24

69.0

54.6

45.4

44.7

55.3

31.0

7

5

9

19

3

18

Source Data provided to authors by Landeswahlleiterin Berlin. Calculation by authors

41

32

Men

Green Party (direct candidates not in all districts)

48

30

Men

SPD

64

14

Men

CDU

Direct mandates (number)

List candidates (% of party total)

Elected

List candidates (number)

Direct candidates (number)

Direct candidates (% of party total)

Candidates

58.3

41.7

32.1

67.9

14.3

85.7

Direct mandates (% of party total)

8

7

6

4

1

9

List mandates (number)

Table 6.3 Women and men among candidates and elected for direct and list mandates in Land election Berlin 2016

53.3

46.7

60.0

40.0

10.0

90.0

List mandates (% of party total)

55.6

44.4

39.5

60.5

12.9

87.1

Mandates in % of party total

Total

6.1 The Gendered Effects of Land-Level Electoral … 89

90

6 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Land Level

also underrepresented as direct candidates and overrepresented on lists. Green Party women, however, won considerably more direct mandates than SPD women, resulting in a majority of women MPs for the Greens. The CDU did not meet its quorum for either list candidacies (31% women) or for direct candidacies (18% women). Moreover, when comparing women CDU candidates with those elected, the women’s share drops even further for both direct mandates (14.3%) and list mandates (10%). As on the federal level, the ‘safe seat tradition,’ reproducing longstanding and engrained allegiances in winner-takes-all small districts, upended the quota policies of the CDU. As Table 6.3 illustrates, the Green candidates and those elected follow roughly the expectations for their quota implementation. Even though fewer women stand as direct candidates, more get elected; women hold a higher share of list candidacies than men and receive mandates primarily via lists. The evidence for successful quota implementation is less clear for the CDU and the SPD. The CDU almost fulfilled its quorum for women list candidates but failed to get these elected. Likewise, we would have expected the SPD to have 50% women candidates on their lists due to the zipper principle. Why these different trajectories and outcomes? First, both SPD and CDU, similarly to the federal level, suffer the inherent problem in MMP systems with party influence over direct candidacies (see Chap. 5). Unlike the Green Party leaders who, per Women’s Statute, exert influence over parity in direct candidacies, the CDU in particular does not visibly steer districts towards women frontrunners. Second, party leadership either gains or forfeits additional leverage by way of deciding at which level to set up party lists. CDU and SPD opt for twelve district-level party lists, whereas the Greens compile a Berlin-wide party list that, in turn, allows party leadership more influence over list composition. The impact of these decisions becomes clear when looking at the overall number of candidacies: While direct candidacies are almost the same for all three parties (see Table 6.3; CDU: 78 (64M + 14W); SPD 78 (48M + 30W); Greens 73 (41M + 32W)), the number of list candidates differs significantly. The CDU had 139 list candidates (89 men, 40 women), the SPD 123 list candidates (68 men, 55 women), and the Greens only 44 (20 men, 24 women). Given that only the list candidates placed on number one or two within the district can ultimately make it to parliament, CDU women candidates most likely were not among the first two. The only successful woman as direct candidate was also party leader and first on her district list. In two more districts, two men were elected via list and in another four, one man each. In effect, even if the CDU meets its women’s quorum overall, the combination of district-level lists and disadvantageous list positions for women—most likely as number three, six, and so on—upends the quorum. The SPD, by contrast, showcases that even within given district-level list composition, attention to gender pays off. The Berlin SPD strictly zippered their lists, and each time two candidates were elected via district party list—it was a woman and a man. If only one person got elected, it was a woman.11 11 The data does not allow judgment on whether the outcome was by chance. This might occur when

SPD male direct candidates were also put on top of the electoral list and—by winning their direct mandate—made room for the candidate placed in the second position, which, due to the zipper, had to be women.

6.1 The Gendered Effects of Land-Level Electoral …

91

Interview data supports the notion that in Berlin, women party members are well aware of the apparent incompatibility of quotas with the direct election portion of the MMP system. The CDU women we interviewed point to the contradictions of engaging politically for CDU goals while being rejected as politicians on the basis of sex. The CDU, they argue, officially wants to attract women candidates, but it does not do enough to support them. Not even coming close to meeting their voluntary party quota is evidence of such neglect. Women CDU interviewees stated that they entered politics with the conviction that gender does not matter and got disillusioned as they found out that, in fact, it does (INT G15). Women SPD and Green interviewees on the Berlin Land level, by contrast, articulated different party cultures. They expect their gender to play a role in the political process, and they utilize gender and the quota to advance within the party (INT G13, G14). In sum, roadblocks to quota implementation in Berlin, while less severe than in Baden-Württemberg, do exist as well. Berlin showcases an iteration of an inherent problem in MMP systems with party influence over direct candidacies, compounded by small-sized districts. If parties do not intervene to generate parity of candidates in and among districts, they in fact uphold legacies of male incumbency. Having small districts allows for a personalized element in the electoral process. If, however, as is the case with the CDU in Berlin, (1) party regulations stipulate district-level lists; (2) the probability of winning a first seat is small since in small districts only the first, or first two or three list candidates might be successful; and (3) there is no zipper but only a 33% quorum, chances that women’s representation increases are slim.

6.2 The Gendered Effects of Land-Level Electoral and Party Regulations in Austria In Austria’s weak federalism, Land-level electoral regulations after 1949 were based on national electoral law with its overall focus on proportional representation with party lists and preference vote options.12 At first sight, Austrian Länder exhibit an overall similar range of women’s underrepresentation compared to German Länder, with Burgenland in 2019, like Baden-Württemberg, being in the 25% range, and Vienna on top with 37% (see Table 6.4). Some of the parliamentary underrepresentation of women in Austrian Länder is driven by the ascendency of the right-wing populist FPÖ. In the context of our study, however, we focus on Austrian Land-level parties’ ability to meet their quotas. Even though the quota parties do not consistently meet their respective quota stipulations, the post-quota gender gap in our comparative cases Upper Austria and Vienna is overall less pronounced than in Baden-Württemberg and Berlin (see Fig. 6.4).

12 Länder

electoral laws only differ in provisions that are not directly relevant to our investigation, such as 4 or 5% clauses.

92 Table 6.4 Women’s representation Länder level Austria 2019

6 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Land Level Länder

Number of MPs

Number of female MPs

Female MP share in %

Vienna

100

37

37

Upper Austria

56

20

35.7

Lower Austria

56

15

26.8

Styria

48

17

35.4

Salzburg

36

14

38.9

Tyrol

36

12

33.3

Vorarlberg

36

12

33.3

Carinthia

36

10

27.8

Burgenland

36

9

25.0

Source Calculation by authors based on homepages of Länder parliaments. Accessed April 9, 2019

In the conservative territorial Land Upper Austria, the past two decades showcase only the ÖVP missing its quota in three of the four electoral cycles. Parties miss their quota, however, on a considerably smaller scale than in Baden-Württemberg. For Vienna,13 the post-quota gender gap is overall smaller than for the quota parties in Berlin, with the ÖVP in the recent Land elections of 2015 turning around a historically salient post-quota gap into exceeding their quorum by a sizable margin (see Fig. 6.5). Even though the overall share of women in the two Länder parliaments is not at parity level, the three Austrian quota parties perform better on the Land than on the federal level (see Chap. 5) and better than the German Länder parties. We argue that in Austrian Länder, the intersection between electoral regulations and party statutes opens up overall fewer opportunities to undo zippered lists than on the federal level and thus ‘protects’ the quota better than do either the German MMP variations of electoral law or the national Austrian electoral law. Comparing Landlevel implementation, the major issues that quota parties confront in meeting their quota are: (1) the size of regional electoral districts, (2) how electoral law converts votes into mandates, and (3) how parties compose lists.

6.2.1 Electoral Regulations in Austrian Länder The lower post-quota gender gap by quota parties on the Austrian Land level can be attributed to a better fit of electoral law and party quota regulations. All Austrian Länder apply the same PR system as well as the overall principles of how to convert votes into mandates as we have explained for the national level (see Chap. 5). However, Land-level electoral laws differ from national law in how mandates are 13 As Vienna is a Land as well as a municipality, the members of the Vienna Municipal Council are at the same time the members of the Vienna parliament.

6.2 The Gendered Effects of Land-Level Electoral …

93

Fig. 6.4 Post-Quota gender gap in the Landtag Upper Austria 1985–2015. Source Data provided to authors by Landtagsdirektion Oberösterreich. Calculation and figure design by authors

aggregated. Different from the national three-tiered electoral system, which, as we have shown, drives the post-quota gender gap in the Nationalrat, Austrian Länder all operate with a two-tiered electoral system and thus showcase less variance than the German Land-level electoral laws. The allocation of mandates is determined in two steps. Initially, candidates receive regional or basic mandates (Regional- or Grundmandate) via their party’s electoral district list according to their overall proportion of votes in the Land. Remaining mandates, so-called Restmandate, are distributed in a Land-level procedure.14 Parties calculate if and how many basic mandates they will win in a district and thus how many list candidates will secure mandates. For the 14 In Upper Austria, the number of votes cast in each electoral district is divided by the number of overall mandates in that district. This quotient is called the electoral number (Wahlzahl). In Vienna, the electoral number is determined by the number of party votes in a district as divided by the number of overall mandates plus one. In both Länder, each party wins as many mandates as their votes divided by the electoral number (Landtagswahlordnung Oberösterreich 2016, §66; Wiener Gemeindewahlordnung 2016; §83). The remaining mandates (Restmandate) are distributed in a Land-wide distributive process. The Länder established specific thresholds for parties to participate in both proceedings. In Vienna, parties must at least win one initial mandate or 5% of votes to be considered for Land-level vote distribution (Wiener Gemeindewahlordnung 2016, §87.4). In Upper Austria, this threshold is 4% (Landtagswahlordnung 2016, §65).

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Fig. 6.5 Post-Quota gender gap in the Landtag Vienna 1987–2015. Source Data provided to authors by Rathaus-Klub ÖVP and Magistratsabteilung Stadt Wien. Additional data from http:// www.demokratiezentrum.org/fileadmin/media/data/wr_landtag_geschlechter.pdf. Accessed June 28, 2019. Calculation and figure design by authors

past Landtag elections in the nine Austrian Bundesländer, the number of mandates varied between 15 in an electoral district in Styria and one in a couple of districts in Lower Austria and Vienna. In Vienna, electoral districts have between one and eight basic mandates to distribute. In Upper Austria, this range varies between nine and 14 mandates. Therefore, the probability of winning initial mandates as well as district party-list composition, including quota stipulations, is central for women’s representation. Likewise, voluntary party quota stipulations are central to the distribution of remaining mandates via Land-level party lists. As in Germany, first list positions are much desired and still primarily go to men. In Austrian Länder, preference votes are allowed, but vary from Land to Land. In Vienna and Upper Austria, for an example, voters can cast three preference votes for candidates on the party list they vote for. Preference votes, however, have less of an impact on the Länder level, as most candidates who engage in a preference vote campaign are already well-known politicians who are among the top list candidates and use their campaign more as a reputational engagement with voters and their constituency than to advance from lower list position to the top. An exception was

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the Viennese election of 2015, when two women made it into parliament through preference votes despite their low ranking on the ÖVP list.15 Overall, the Austrian Land-level electoral laws rely considerably more on proportionality than the three-tiered national electoral laws or German Land-level electoral laws, in effect providing a better fit with party quota stipulations.

6.2.2 Austrian Länder Party Statutes All three parties we studied implement their national statutes on the Land levels, including their quota stipulations. Hence, we observe no major differences in the respective quota stipulations between the national and the Land level. The regional SPÖ party organizations of Vienna and Upper Austria both refer to the federal party statute of the SPÖ. The statute of the Vienna SPÖ stipulates: ‘In all elections to political bodies and on candidate lists the provisions of the Federal Party Statute that relates to the quota have to be applied’ (SPÖ 2016, §1.5). The SPÖ allows some exceptions on the Land level to the fixed zipper system articulated in paragraph 16 of the federal statute. Paragraph 49.3 of the SPÖ Vienna statute stipulates that in reasonable and exceptional circumstances, which have to be submitted to the party leadership, it is possible to apply a double zipper system (Doppelreißverschlussprinzip), i.e., the listing of two people of the same sex in succession. However, this regulation can only be applied if the expected mandates for the SPÖ will not fall below 40% for candidates of either sex (SPÖ 2016, §49.3). ÖVP candidate selection on the Land level, likewise, is linked to the party’s federal regulations. In 2015, the party adopted a 40% quota (Ziegerhofer 2015, p. 77); since 2016, lists must alternate between women and men. The ÖVP regulations, however, prescribe no set order (ÖVP 2017, §48.7). Similar to changes on the federal level, the ÖVP has also lowered the threshold for preference votes on the Länder level. Before the election in Upper Austria in 2015, the party agreed that the candidate with the most votes in an electoral district will automatically move to position one of her or his district list. In Vienna, candidates must receive only one-tenth of the votes legally needed to win a preference vote mandate; thus, in effect making it easier for candidates to advance from lower positions.16 In 2015, two ÖVP women candidates in Upper Austria and in Vienna successfully made use of this newly established party internal stipulation.17 15 https://derstandard.at/2000023646413/Vorzugsstimmen-Bei-Wiener-SPOe-punkteten-

Migranten. Accessed June 30, 2019. 16 https://derstandard.at/2000023646413/Vorzugsstimmen-Bei-Wiener-SPOe-punktetenMigranten. Accessed June 30, 2019. 17 https://ooe.orf.at/v2/news/stories/2734235/ and https://www.kleinezeitung.at/politik/ innenpolitik/4813633/WienWahl_Korosec-legt-sich-via-Vorzugsstimmen-mit-der-OeVPSpitze-an and https://derstandard.at/2000023646413/Vorzugsstimmen-Bei-Wiener-SPOe-punktetenMigranten. Accessed June 30, 2019.

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The Green Party statutes in Vienna and Upper Austria also reiterate federal statutes with their 50% quota. Beyond quota regulations, the composition of electoral lists for the Viennese parliament by the Green elective assembly had until 2018 a selection mode based on a point system (Wahlordnung der Landesversammlung der Grünen 2013). This electoral mode was introduced to combine interests of the electoral assembly with parity stipulations. The Vienna party statute in 2018 introduced the single transferable vote system (STV), which is supposed to better represent the votes of the elective assembly.18 Its effects on gender parity have not been tested. According to the electoral stipulations of the Greens in Upper Austria, women can be candidates for any list position, but men only if the women quota is not affected (Die Grünen 2014b, p. 19). In contrast to the single transferable vote system in Vienna, the composition of the Land list in Upper Austria is based on primaries in each electoral district with each district nominating up to four candidates for the Land lists. The final Land list and the ranking of the candidates are determined at a Land-wide party assembly. While the top positions are voted on individually, the remaining list positions are allocated based on the district primaries, ranked by an executive team and decreed by the Land executive board of the party. The highest ranked candidate of each district on the Land list is automatically the frontrunner on the electoral district lists. All other positions of the district lists are elected at an electoral district assembly (ibid., p. 17f.). In sum, quota parties in Austrian Länder implement their quota regulations more concisely, with stronger language and with fewer procedural loopholes than German Land level parties. The PR system overall and larger district magnitude allow parties more influence over candidate lists for the basic mandates. Parties can and do also influence the Land-level lists for the remaining mandates such that the quota is met.

6.2.3 How Electoral Law and Quotas Intersect in Vienna and Upper Austria In order to illustrate the ‘better fit’ argument for Austrian Land-level quotas, we will take a closer look at how electoral law and quotas intersect in Vienna and Upper Austria. Vienna is divided into 18 electoral districts (Wahlkreise), and Upper Austria has five electoral districts. 18 www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20181201_OTS0035/80-landesversammlung-der-gruenenwien-neue-wahlordnung-fuer-listenwahl-beschlossen. Accessed April 27, 2019. This regulation was first used for the Land list composition for the Nationalrat elections in 2019. The STV does not upend the statute’s provisions that after each electoral step in the list composition (except the first position of the list) at least half of the positions have to be held by women (Die Grünen 2018, §9.5). With STV, voters can rank candidates according to their preferences, and at the same time, votes do not get lost. Elected is who reaches a certain vote threshold: if one person is elected, their second listed vote preference is ‘transferred’ to the remaining candidates and/or the second listed vote preference of the candidate with the least votes is transferred; the procedure continues until all seats are filled (Gallagher 2017, p. 177, 179).

Women

Women

Women

57

54.2

46.8

49.5

50.5

43

150

132

130

150

50

50.4

49.6

50

0

1

2

14

25

0

33.3

66.7

35.9

64.1

0

0

Basic mandates (% of party total)

5

2

3

3

4

3

Remaining mandates (number)

71.4

28.6

50

50

57.1

42.9

Remaining mandates (% of party total)

60.0

40.0

37.8

62.2

57.1

42.9

Mandates in % of party total

Total

Source Data provided to authors by parties and https://www.wien.gv.at/advuew/internet/AdvPrSrv.asp?Layout=stelle&Type=K&stellecd=1997031808262998& STELLE=Y; https://www.wien.gv.at/advuew/internet/AdvPrSrv.asp?Layout=histpolsuche&Type=R&Hlayout=histpolsuche&ICD=2011021810192827& PLT=histpolsuche&HP=Y&RF=02&text=&wahlper=02%2F20. Accessed June 11, 2019; Amtsblatt der Stadt Wien No. 40A 2015. Candidacies in multiple districts and on Land lists lead to multiple counts. Small deviations to data used in other chapters are due to when the data was collected by provider, for instance, beginning or end of legislature. Calculation by authors. a Data for the ÖVP Land list was not accessible to authors. The list had a male front runner and at least the first seven list positions were compiled considering the zipper system

106

123

Men

Green Party

144

141

Men

SPÖ

137

103

Men

ÖVPa

Land list candidates (% of party total)

Basic mandates (number)

Land list candidates (number)

Electoral district lists candidates (number)

Electoral district lists candidates (% of party total)

Elected

Candidates

Table 6.5 Women and men among candidates and elected for basic mandates and remaining mandates in Land election Vienna 2015

6.2 The Gendered Effects of Land-Level Electoral … 97

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6 Institutional Quota Roadblocks on the Land Level

Table 6.5 shows the percentage of candidates by party and sex compared to the percentage of elected MPs for election to the Viennese Landtag in 2015. The SPÖ won about two-thirds of its mandates via district lists. The party did remarkably well in their nominations, with 49.5% women candidates on electoral district lists. The Land list was evenly split by sex, but started with a male frontrunner. However, as the distribution of the basic mandates shows, the number of elected women does not mirror nominations. Even though the party fulfills its self-imposed quota of at least 40% women on both electoral lists and can advance women candidates via the (double) zipper system, a nearly equal share of female and male candidates does not turn out an equal share of elected representatives. We will explain these dynamics below for the 2015 election in more detail. For the ÖVP, however, the share of women candidates is lower than the number of women MPs. While in 2015 only 43% of all candidates on electoral district lists were women, the share of ÖVP women in the current Landtag is at 57.2%. This is due to the fact that the ÖVP did not win a single basic mandate in Vienna and therefore drew their seven mandates completely from the zippered Land-level party list. Two women ÖVP candidates, moreover, won a mandate via preference vote, and thus, the list was rearranged in women’s favor. As already documented for the federal level, the Greens are the only Austrian party that consistently fulfills or even exceeds its quota stipulation of 50%, with one small dip in 2010 when the share of women representatives went down to 45.5%. In 2005, by contrast, the share of women among the Green members of the Vienna Landtag was at an all-time high of 71.4%. We might explain this by the gains in the regional districts with Green women on top of the lists. In the 2015 election, the Green Party proposed more female than male candidates on both lists. However, the 50.4% women candidates on electoral district lists are not reflected in the distribution of basic mandates. Two of the three Green mandates are held by men. One of the mandates was won in a district with a male frontrunner, the second mandate in a district where the woman frontrunner took up her mandate via the Land list and thus the second listed male candidate succeeded. The party won 60% of its mandates via the second proceeding. The zippered Land list started with a woman frontrunner. 50.4% women candidates turned into 71.4% women MPs by way of an overall small number of mandates. Data for the 2015 Land-level elections in Upper Austria appears similar to Vienna. All parties meet their quota regulations for electoral lists as well as for elected representatives (see Table 6.6). The SPÖ put almost 50% women candidates to the vote and received a share of 45.5% women in the Landtag. The ÖVP showcases 38.1% women representatives after promoting 31.2% women via electoral district lists and 48.2% on the Land list. In the Green Party, women made up 50% of electoral lists and gained 50% of Green Landtag seats. Overall, Austrian quota parties fare much better on the Land level in meeting their quotas than their neighbors in Germany. The more straightforward Länder PR system generally allows stronger influence of party leadership on how lists are composed, leading to a less pronounced post-quota gender gap. Existing difficulties to meet the quota can be explained by assessing the interplay of party statues and electoral law.

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Table 6.6 Women and Men among district and Land list candidacies and mandates in Land election Upper Austria 2015a Candidates Electoral district lists candidates (number)

Total Electoral district lists candidates (% of party total)

Land list candidates (number)

Land list candidates (% of party total)

Mandates in % of party total

ÖVP Men

76

67.9

29

51.8

61.9

Women

36

32.1

27

48.2

38.1

SPÖ Men

57

50.9

58

51.8

54.5

Women

55

49.1

54

48.2

45.5

Green Party Men

56

50.0

56

50.0

50.0

Women

56

50.0

56

50.0

50.0

Source Data provided to authors by parties. Calculation by authors. a In Upper Austria the distribution of basic and remaining mandates by party and sex was not accessible for the authors

The allocation of mandates for the Viennese Landtag in 2015 varied between three winnable mandates in four districts and eleven in one district. Two districts each had ten mandates to allocate.19 Likewise, in Upper Austria the allocation of the 56 Landtag seats in the election of 2015 varied between nine and 14 mandates (Amt der Oberösterreichischen Landesregierung 2015, p. 5), making list composition in districts central to applying a quota. Compared to Berlin where by way of electoral district-level lists usually only between one and three mandates are in play and list quotas have overall limited impact, in Vienna and Upper Austria they are highly relevant for ensuring women’s representation. In the Vienna Land election of 2015, 70 basic mandates were allocated via electoral district lists and 30 remaining mandates via the Land lists.20 The SPÖ won 39 basic mandates. Only 14, however, went to women candidates, despite the fact that the party had almost 50% women on their electoral list. Only five of the 18 lists had women as frontrunners, echoing the top-position problem that we had discussed for center party lists in Germany. For their remaining mandates, however, the SPÖ enforced their quota. Here, three of the six mandates were allocated to women, due to the zippered Land list that started with a man, but overall alternated between women and men. 19 https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/themen/leben_in_oesterreich/wahlen/4/11/Seite.320435.html.

Accessed June 5, 2019. 20 The calculation of the allocation of mandates is based on data provided by the city of Vienna. The

data shows the share of mandates for the current representatives and not for the whole legislative period: https://www.wien.gv.at/advuew/internet/AdvPrSrv.asp?Layout=histpolsuche&Type= S&Hlayout=histpolsuche&HP=Y&RF=02&ICD=2011021810192827. Accessed June 16, 2019.

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The high share of women representatives among the ÖVP can be explained by a similar tendency. In the election of 2015, the ÖVP won all of its seven mandates by way of the second-level procedure of distributing remaining mandates via the partly zippered Land-level list21 and two women, moreover, benefited from the party’s internal preference vote regulations. Position one and two were awarded to these women, and the following mandates were allocated according to the zippered order of the list. If the party had succeeded in the first proceeding on the regional level, the situation would have looked differently: Only five of the 18 lists that the ÖVP generated for basic mandates had 50% women candidates, five lists had male candidates on position one, and two lists featured men on the first three positions. Reconciling the allocation of basic mandates and remaining Land-level list mandates with their parity goal even poses a challenge for the Green Party. In 2015, the party won three basic mandates, one of them in a district where the party list started with a man, one in a district where the woman frontrunner received a mandate via the second proceeding, and the third one in a district with a party list led by a woman, adding up to two men and one women representative via the first level election. Overall, ten of the 18 electoral district lists had a woman frontrunner and all lists showcased 50% or more women candidates. Despite the lopsided basic mandate outcome, party leadership ensured a 50% share of woman in the Viennese Landtag by way of the Land-level list. On the Green Land list, 132 out of 262 candidates were women. As the party won seven additional mandates, it compensated for women’s underrepresentation in basic mandates by electing five women and two men from the list.22 In the 2015 election in Upper Austria, the 56 Landtag mandates were split into 45 basic mandates and eleven remaining mandates. The SPÖ won nine of the party’s eleven seats via the district-level basic mandate. The Land list featured a male frontrunner, and almost the first half of the list was zippered. Hence, the list had a share of 48.2% women in total. Even though all five SPÖ electoral district lists met or exceeded the party’s 40% quota, three of five lists were headed by a male candidate. One district, however, had three women on the first three list positions. Similar to the SPÖ, the Upper Austrian ÖVP in 2015 won the majority of its Landtag seats via basic mandates in the districts, overall securing 18 basic mandates and three remaining Land-level list mandates. Even though the ÖVP Land list was not zippered and started with male candidates on positions one and two, the overall share of women in the ÖVP caucus was at 49.1%. On the electoral district level, the situation looked more bleak: Only one list was headed by a woman, one list had a male frontrunner followed by a woman candidate, the other lists had men on positions one and two, and in one case, on the first three positions. The smallest number of women candidates, in the Upper Austrian district Innviertel, spotted only four women candidates among 18 overall. The Greens in 2015 won four of their six mandates in Upper Austria via the first proceeding, and thus just as the other parties relied heavily on basic mandates. The 21 We

were not able to acquire information below list position seven. provided to authors by Austrian parties 2019. Calculation by authors.

22 Data

6.2 The Gendered Effects of Land-Level Electoral …

101

Green Land list was zippered but started with a male candidate. The electoral district lists were not all zippered, but overall fulfilled the goal of gender parity. Three out of the five lists started with a male frontrunner.23 We conclude that Austrian Land-level electoral law, while exposing much less structural resistance towards quota implementation than German Land-level electoral laws, still is not altogether parity-oriented. What is at stake in particular is the allocation of top positions for basic mandates on the district level. We can in fact take the ÖVP 2015 electoral performance as a counterfactual, as 70% of all mandates for the Viennese Landtag in 2015 were distributed as basic mandates. The relatively low post-quota gender gap of the ÖVP can be explained precisely because the party did not win any basic mandates and party leadership exerted their power to enforce a zippered Land-level list. Newly established lower hurdles for preference votes, moreover, allowed two ÖVP women candidates to move to the top and thus generate an overall share in the Landtag of 57.1% women. If the ÖVP had won mandates via the first tier of district-level elections (the basic mandate), the outcome would be different, since the electoral district lists had fewer women candidates in general and on top positions than the zippered Land list.

6.3 Summary Our comparison of two German and two Austrian Länder shows that variation in subnational electoral systems and party regulations—particularly in the German Länder, but also in Vienna—can have wildly divergent effects for quota implementation. On the upside, the analysis supports the notion that Land-level innovation might be the key to more parity-centered electoral reform on the national level. Debates in BadenWürttemberg on how to limit the effects of direct candidacies on gender composition have, at least in the public arena, led to calls for all-women’s shortlists or for lowering the number of districts and then having gender-equal party duos run for office. On the downside, however, we acknowledge that overall, such debates are rare, and that the common denominator, particularly among center parties, is to not rock the boat of Land-level electoral systems. We have found that, overall, the Austrian simplified PR system on the Land level allows parties more influence over list composition, and therefore, they can meet their quota stipulations better. In Germany, by contrast, we have an electoral systems’ landscape with different electoral regulations from Land to Land, requiring from Land-level party leadership more attention as to how to adapt quota stipulations to their specific election procedures. Changing Land-level electoral law requires a party consensus that in center-right governed Länder is not easy to achieve—even if, as is the case in Baden-Württemberg, the CDU is a minority partner in a coalition with the Greens.

23 Calculation

by authors, data provided by parties.

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German Land-level parties expose a considerably larger post-quota gender gap than Austrian Länder parties. As German Länder tend to validate the direct election portion of the MMP system even more than the federal electoral system, with allocating more than 50% of seats via direct mandate, perceived lack of party influence over direct mandates has negative effects for parity. The Green Party, however, provides a counterfactual. The Greens—by way of a gender-sensitive party culture and determined party leadership—manage even under adversarial Land-level electoral law like in Baden-Württemberg to (almost) meet their quota. On the Austrian Land level, the Greens showcase a similar determination to advance women. In Vienna, the Greens are successfully implementing their quota. Granted that they do not win as many basic mandates as the SPÖ, party members are trained to scrutinize all top positions in terms of parity concerns, and consequently, zipper their lists. The Viennese Greens in government, moreover, changed electoral laws for district elections to include financial incentives for putting more women on electoral lists. Thus, commitment by parties, particularly parties in power, to align party regulations with electoral law or, alternatively, change electoral law, is a key to the quest for Land-level parity in political representation. Direct candidacy electoral modes in all four of our cases turn out to be generally disadvantageous for women. Women find themselves less in top positions (Vienna and Upper Austria) and considerably fewer are put up as direct candidates in Berlin and Baden-Württemberg. While we acknowledge the influence of factors such as care duties discussed in Chap. 3, we posit, and the Green example shows, that parties can steer even direct candidacies with an eye on parity concerns. When assessing list composition, our four cases show that zippered lists in and of themselves are important, but not sufficient to guarantee parity. What is important, first, is on which level of the Land a list is compiled and, second, how small or large a district is and, related to this, how many mandates are awarded in a district. We saw that in Berlin, where small district magnitude means that generally only position one to three are in play for mandates, the decision to put a man on the top position fuels gender imbalance more than, for example, in Upper Austria where up to 14 mandates are in play in a given district. In sum, we find that Austrian Länder with their simpler electoral process compared to the national level, allow parties to implement quotas more effectively than for Nationalrat elections. Likewise, the Land-level intersection of quota laws and electoral system is less fragile than in Germany, where Länder electoral laws showcase much variety, and compatibility issues of electoral law and party quotas are not much addressed.

Chapter 7

Conclusion: The Long Road to Parity in Politics

This study examined the persistent underrepresentation of women and overrepresentation of men in German and Austrian legislatures. 100 years after universal suffrage and despite commitment to equal representation and the adoption of voluntary party quotas in major parties in both countries, the message being sent empirically from legislatures seems to be loud and clear: 30% parliamentary representation of women is the new normal, 40% is unusual, and parity is nowhere on the horizon. Not only do rising ultra-right parties such as the AfD and the FPÖ shun the idea of better women’s representation in their ranks, but most parties that have quota regulations often do not fulfill them. Missing the quota has been normalized in the center parties in particular, leading parity advocates to question if voluntary party quotas are the right answer to persistent women’s underrepresentation in Germany and Austria. We have argued in this book that in order to provide an informed answer to this larger question, we need to understand why parties with quotas do not fulfill their self-set goals. Why do quota parties not draft stronger policies that entice party rank and file to comply? Or, alternatively, why have they for thirty years not productively addressed cases of apparent incompatibility of respective electoral systems with their parity goals? In other words, why have many parties continued to send mixed signals to women and failed to implement electoral laws that would allow voluntary party quotas to stick. Our analyses show that quota implementation in both Germany and Austria is fraught with institutionalized roadblocks, and their removal would mean that parties address mismatch between quota regulations and electoral laws. In the absence of serious will by parties to be doing just that, a second, more far-reaching proposition is gaining traction. If voluntary party quotas are a limiting strategy, then it might be time for legal or constitutional policies in order to reach gender equality in legislative representation. We will address this larger issue in the second half of this chapter.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. Ahrens et al., Gender Equality in Politics, SpringerBriefs in Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34895-3_7

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Our overall conclusion is that in order to attain credible levels of gender parity in party democracies, focusing on quota adoption is not sufficient. We argue that it is just as crucial to analyze how well parties implement quotas. In order to capture the difference between ‘quota on paper’ and actual success of quotas in practice, we introduced the concept of the post-quota gender gap. The post-quota gender gap measures neither women’s representation overall nor general party commitment to parity, but the difference between quota party intent and output. High post-quota gender gaps, we argue, have been a central, but largely understudied piece of the puzzle of continuous underrepresentation of women. Standard factors that have been shown to impact implementation are important to consider, but they do not tell the whole story of continued women’s underrepresentation. Surely quotas are still not socially accepted across parties and particularly in increasingly strong right-wing reactionary parts of society. Male party networks as well as persisting gender images and gendered practices in parties make it difficult for parity activists to insist on adequate women’s representation, leading at times to women not even throwing their hat in the ring. Women candidates, moreover, still have fewer resources at their disposal and are more often than men faced with questions about how to reconcile political activity with family responsibilities and professional employment. This book is not invalidating these arguments, but supplementing them by pointing towards more systemic institutional roadblocks that need to be addressed if party quotas are meant to succeed. Explaining the post-quota gender gap in Germany and Austria puts the spotlight squarely on the question if, and under what conditions, party quota designs and electoral laws work well together. These questions are illuminated by our comparisons of how differences and similarities between the two states at both national and Land levels bear on the post-quota gender gap. Our goal was twofold: first, to tease out the ‘fine print’ of electoral laws and party quota regulations in a way that highlights where problems arise; and second, to understand better how parties engage with these implementation problems, and if and how they try to fix a potential mismatch between quota design and electoral stipulations. In the process, we also assessed if and how parties fortified their women’s or gender quotas over time, for example, by establishing compensatory measures for non-compliance within respective party statutes. The study used a most similar case approach to capture how German and Austrian quota parties put their women or gender quotas into practice, and if these quotas have had the desired effect, namely advancing parity in political representation. With many features being equal, German and Austrian party democracies expose one stark difference, namely their respective electoral systems. Working off the widely shared assumption that proportional systems overall produce a stronger quota effect than first-past-the-post systems, we had expected that quota implementation and overall women’s representation would be more advanced in Austria than in Germany. This assumption, however, was not supported empirically. Germany on the federal level had historically stronger women’s representation than Austria, and in terms of quota implementation, the Austrian PR system as such did not on the whole do better than the German MMP system. However, within these institutional constraints,

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differences in party commitments do matter. Since they established their respective quotas, the German SPD came closer to fulfilling theirs than the Austrian SPÖ, while the Austrian ÖVP was more successful in reaching their quota than the German CDU. On the subnational level, this picture is even more complex, as German quota parties do worse in our subnational sample than Austrian quota parties, and overall city-states fare better than territorial states. Only the Greens generally displayed enough commitment to their quota goals to make them work within different electoral constraints. As in both countries the Greens, social democratic, and conservative center parties adopted similar quotas across a similar time span, the differences in outcomes call for stronger attention to how quota policies were put into practice cross-nationally and on subnational Land levels. Our study suggests that an institutional perspective on quota policies in practice adds nuance to the task of investigating implementation. We found that as electoral systems hold relevant cues for how quotas are being implemented, it is particularly the intersection between electoral law and party quota regulation that is central to explaining the post-quota gender gap in representation. Examining this intersection, we identified three factors that substantially impact quota implementation: left parties, district magnitude, as well as preference votes. Left parties, represented by the Greens in our sample, have by now longestablished parity cultures that successfully disincentivize male overrepresentation. District magnitude is central in both countries on national as well as on subnational levels, as a FPTP system with a single direct mandate in small districts (Germany’s direct election component) or small district size with very few mandates (Austria), both tend to disadvantage women as most often men hold the top list positions. In Austria, moreover, the preference vote plays an ambiguous role in advancing women. Whereas in the urban context of Vienna, we found evidence that larger district size can push women up, the rural district we examined advanced more men by way of preferential voting. On the national level, preference votes in recent elections have favored men. Even though none of the German cases in this study uses preference votes, we have evidence from other German Länder that changes to stronger open list preferential voting upended the quota effect and tended to help men more than women (Ahrens and Lang 2019). We will now summarize our findings by way of two levels of comparison: (1) between countries on the national level, and (2) between and within countries on subnational levels. In the final section of this conclusion, we will engage with current debates on electoral systems changes that would increase compatibility of quotas and electoral choice, as well as more ‘radical’ propositions in both countries to switch from voluntary party quotas to legislative or constitutional quotas. The call for such alternatives, usually discussed under the header of ‘parity law,’ have gained momentum in recent years and, as of this book going into print, the German Länder Brandenburg and Thuringia have legislated a parity law.

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7.1 The National Post-Quota Gender Gap in Germany and Austria From the time they launched women’s quotas until 2017, both center parties in Germany and Austria exhibited great difficulty meeting them, resulting in a consistent and sizable post-quota gender gap overall. Only the Greens had managed by the midto late-1990s to fulfill their quotas in both countries. In the case of Germany, electoral system effects of the MMP system challenge particularly the way that the two center parties CDU and SPD implement their respective quotas. As both these parties have historically won most direct mandates, they have not developed adequate strategies to put more women into winnable districts. Federal party statutes, moreover, might enable ‘working around’ quotas, an example being the CDU provision to suspend the quota in party nomination voting procedures if in the first round not enough women candidates have been identified. The Greens, by contrast, are better positioned to meet their quota on three accounts. One, the Green Party has established a political and inner-party culture in which gender parity is, for the most part, not contested. Two, party regulations and a separate Women’s Statute interact such that the Women’s Statute provisions always trump other statutes or regulations. Three, the Greens have been historically spared the direct candidacy effects of the electoral system by not ever winning more than one direct mandate on the federal level. For both SPD and CDU, winning direct mandates, in the absence of strategies to advance women in safe districts, tends to counteract the positive list quota effect. As both parties still give ‘safe districts’ mostly to men, the gender gap in representation persists. For the past 30 years, however, neither party has attempted to remedy the apparent lack of influence over direct candidate choice in voter districts. The Greens, by contrast, have proven that strong commitment to parity can alter political culture in districts and in effect overcome institutional handicaps. CDU party women activists, in particular, perceive altering their political culture and clamping down to make party statutes more effective as too far-fetched a goal. Even when the country had both a woman Chancellor and a woman party leader, the CDU substantially increased its post-quota gender gap between the elections of 2013 and 2017. Thus, within the party, the call for a parity law has become louder, to be discussed below. The Social Democrats, while faring better than the CDU, reduced the gendered impact of direct mandates by not winning a significant number of them. At the same time SPD women party activists, as in the CDU, increasingly put their hopes on a national parity law instead of reformed electoral laws and tighter party statutes for parity. Austrian parties, despite operating under a proportional electoral list system that in theory should favor women’s representation, do not consistently fare better in fulfilling their quotas, particularly at the national level. We have shown how the Austrian proportional system systematically unravels zippered lists as they are aggregated in the three-tiered electoral system of regional, Land, and national lists. District magnitude adds additional momentum to the reversed male cascade in Austrian elections, as the small-sized lowest level of regional electoral districts tend to advance male

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incumbents. Additionally, preference vote campaigns, while in select cases also being positive for women, overall show men to be more successful than women in advancing from lower list positions. In effect, the magnitude of the post-quota gender gap in both Austrian center party caucuses can be primarily attributed to electoral outcomes on the regional level. Not even the Austrian Greens are immune to the electoral system upending their party list quotas, as evidenced in the elections of 2002, 2006, and 2013. Thus, each country faces electoral system challenges to stronger parity that the quota parties have not been able or willing to address. In Germany, the direct election portion of the system serves as a welcome scapegoat for the post-quota gender gap. In Austria, the way lists are generated in small-sized regional voting districts has become a steady but unaddressed quota roadblock. In both electoral systems, parties’ primary reflex is to point to the election law as a (sacred) culprit instead of either adapting party statutes and changing party cultures in a way that would compensate for negative gender effects of election law or changing the electoral law altogether. Party statutes analyzed in this book differ considerably as to their level of engagement with putting quotas into practice. Again, the Greens in both countries display the strongest language, having established concise and compulsory quota procedures with enforceable sanctions. While we concede that, as of 2019, the Greens had neither won a sizable number of federal direct mandates in Germany nor many regional mandates in Austria, our interviews provided strong evidence for the salience of Green Party parity cultures that would publicly challenge electoral outcomes if they would upend parity. To varying degrees, the four center parties under investigation avoid facing the fact that their respective quotas sit uneasily with electoral law and that, therefore, stronger party regulations might be in order. We found evidence that parties can and will utilize quota provisions more actively if it serves exogenous purposes. The example of Austrian ÖVP Party leader Sebastian Kurz in 2017 decreeing a 50% quota for the party’s national candidate list shows that even in conservative contexts, quotas can be ‘enforced’ top down. We have argued that Sebastian Kurz pursued at a minimum a dual strategy with this decree: In addition to sponsoring newcomer women, he successfully sidelined older male incumbents who stood in the way of party modernization as well as his ascendency to power. Motive notwithstanding, the party leader’s actions showed that top-down enforcement of the zipper system does work if the party leadership really wants it to succeed. Neither SPD nor CDU, however, engage federal statutes in ways that affect the direct candidate selection of MPs. Moreover, none of the four center parties addresses the gendered effects of small district magnitude on list-based electoral modes. For example, none has provisions that would give women first position on electoral lists if they are underrepresented. Also, none has effective sanction mechanisms in case their quotas are not met. The preference vote in Austria (and in some German Länder not considered in this study), works more strongly in favor of men. The tension that is embedded in pitting individual voter choice against gender parity by way of preferential voting components warrants, we submit, more public articulation from parity activists within parties and beyond.

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7.2 The Subnational Post-Quota Gender Gap in Germany and Austria For this study, we compared four states in the two federations that exhibit crossnational similarities as well as domestic differences. We assessed quota implementation since the 1980s in two gender-progressive city-states (Berlin and Vienna) and two historically more gender-traditional and conservative territorial states (BadenWürttemberg and Upper Austria). Overall, the Austrian Länder parties complied with their voluntary party quotas more consistently than the German Land-level parties we investigated. We have stipulated that this first and foremost is due to different outcomes as particular party quota policies intersect with Land-level electoral systems. Although by no means perfect, we found a smoother fit between electoral law and quotas in the Austrian context. It is this intersection that explains the overall smaller post-quota gender gap in Austrian Länder compared to German Länder, and, more specifically, the extreme gap in the case of Baden-Württemberg. In Austria, subnational electoral laws, just as federal law, award seats according to the PR system. Parties get electoral representation by way of a two-level process: They first try to gain proportionally assigned seats on the district level in the Land, the so-called basic mandates, and, secondly, they are awarded additional seats via Landlevel lists. Deviation from party quotas thus can occur even when parties fulfill their quota on respective candidate lists, but do not put women in top positions. The option of candidates to succeed in jumping the list by way of a preferential voting campaign tends to favor male incumbents. While there is variation in subnational electoral law, particularly in terms of how preferential votes come to bear, the principle of proportionality means that quota parties manage not to stray too far from their quota targets. In Germany, by comparison, electoral laws differ drastically among Länder and between federal and subnational levels. This makes it considerably more difficult to implement a quota in Baden-Württemberg than in Berlin. Even though the parties we assess in this study all talk about applying the federal quota on the Land level, the interactions among party commitment, quota provisions, and Länder electoral law produce a wide variation in outcomes. Comparing Vienna and Berlin, we found that the overall larger scale of the postquota gender gap in Berlin is driven almost exclusively by the CDU, which has consistently, and by a large margin, missed its quotas since 1998. The CDU’s postquota gender gap is compensated for to some degree by the Greens and Social Democrats who regularly come out ahead of their quota in the Land elections. In Vienna, by contrast, quota non-compliance by the Conservatives in particular, with a few outliers, is overall smaller. The 2015 election, moreover, added momentum to the cause of parity in the Viennese ÖVP. As the party ranked very low in pre-election opinion polls, the new Vienna party leader publicly committed to increasing women’s representation. In effect, the Land ÖVP elected four women and three men to the Viennese legislature. The SPÖ exceeded their quota target consistently since 2001. In Berlin, besides being awarded directly elected mandates, both CDU and SPD

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compile electoral lists on the district level, but with very different intentions and outcomes. Whereas the Social Democrats make sure that women hold a substantial number of first positions on lists and strictly enforce their zipper on the district level, the Conservatives tend to put women on position three, six, and so on of their lists and thus, in combining district lists, end up with a massive post-quota gender gap in representation. In 2016, 90% of all list mandates went to men and only 10% of the Berlin CDU to women. As both Länder have historically strong women’s movements and inner-party women’s activists pushing for inclusion, the analysis provided evidence that other factors impacts variation in quota implementation across these two city-states. Just like on the national level, it is the interface of subnational electoral laws and party regulations that impacts the size of post-quota gender gaps. The role of the electoral law is most prominently visible when comparing the territorial states of Baden-Württemberg and Upper Austria. As we showed in Chap. 6, Baden-Württemberg’s quota parties in the Landtag all operate below their respective quota target. To recapitulate one particularly striking figure: As a result of the last Landtag election of 2016, the Social Democrats had only 10.5% women in their caucus, in effect missing their quota by 29.5%. The CDU missed its quota by 14% and even the Greens have 5.3% fewer women caucus members than their quota stipulates. The overall post-quota gender gap in the Baden-Württemberg Landtag was even higher after the elections of 2011. In fact, since 1988, none of the parties under consideration ever met their quota. In Upper Austria, by contrast, the postquota gender gap of all parties is considerably smaller. In the past three election cycles, only the ÖVP fell short of their quota twice—however, by a much smaller margin than the German CDU in Baden-Württemberg. When, as in the Baden-Württemberg state elections, there are no lists and only directly elected candidates and runner-ups with the most votes, parties would have to find other ways to engineer quotas. Neither party, however, addresses this implementation gap in their Land-level party statutes. Attempts to change the electoral law have been stymied, most recently by the CDU not even agreeing to commissioning a study or a public hearing to advance the issue. This, to remind the reader, takes place in a situation where the Land Baden-Württemberg is governed by a GreenCDU coalition under a Green Party governor. The level of resistance among CDU parliamentarians is high, leaving their Green coalition partner between a rock and a hard place: Either putting the coalition in jeopardy or appeasing the CDU by delaying action on reforming the electoral law. Would it help if the federal party would provide stronger input, or sanctions, if Land parties would or could not fulfill their quota? ÖVP Party leader Kurz’ intervention into the latest federal elections shows that top-down pressure is effective, even if Kurz’ motives might not have been exactly what feminist activists had in mind. The fact that in Germany, subnational party units of the center parties can miss their quotas by a large margin without needing to fear any repercussions, be it shaming or sanctions, speaks to pervasive inertia regarding adequate gender representation in legislatures.

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Land-level party women’s organizations of Conservatives and Social Democrats in both countries know that party discipline means adjusting expectations to what realistically appears feasible within given party structures and under existing electoral laws. Nonetheless, they have been increasingly vocal in admonishing their parties that the current state of gender equality in representation is not tenable and that young women voters, in particular, expect action. Austrian women’s party organizations rallied successfully to change the party statutes in the SPÖ and ÖVP in order to fortify the quota. In the Austrian Green Party, the Viennese party chapter is more advanced in securing the quota on electoral lists than even the federal party level. In Germany, center party women across the majority of German Länder support stricter sanctions in case of non-compliance with the quota. There is, however, doubt that stronger party compliance with quotas in and of itself will be sufficient. Organizations from all six parties in the two countries we studied have initiated debate over the right modes of advancing women within their party. To sum up Land-level results, this study highlighted that (1) on the subnational level, variations in electoral systems influence parties’ attempts to meet their quota and that the strong diversity of subnational electoral systems within Germany, in particular, leads to dramatically different representational inequalities across Länder; (2) in Austria, the PR system enables considerably better quota implementation even in conservative territorial Länder with rural heritage than in Germany, where, for example, in Baden-Württemberg, the electoral tilt towards direct elections has become a serious inhibitor for gender equal representation; (3) small district magnitude with single mandates, even on the Austrian Land level with its overall more quota-friendly PR system, negatively impacts quotas; (4) preferential voting tends to advance men on a larger scale than women candidates. Some party members and outside activists in both countries who are aware of these factors have launched initiatives either to alter specific party parity provisions (e.g., via all-women-lists) or to more formally institutionalize quotas via legal provisions. In this debate, women’s advocates in the parties and beyond have become increasingly frustrated with the myriad ways in which inner-party dynamics stifle progress. Therefore, current debates focus on replacing voluntary party quotas with legislative or constitutional quotas.

7.3 New Debates: From Voluntary Party Quotas to Legislated Quotas? As we discussed throughout the book, voluntary party quotas have obvious limitations for those who advocate for parity in gender representation. First off, not all parties employ them, in fact the rising ultra-right-wing parties across Europe oppose gender quotas with vigor. Secondly, if parties stipulate a quota, they generally differ in their quota targets and how efficiently and effectively they put them in practice. Thirdly, systemic mismatch between quotas and electoral laws often renders implementation

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ineffective. As a consequence, current debates on how to fortify quotas are becoming louder in our two countries as well as across Europe (i.e., Deutscher Frauenrat 2019; Mayr and Mittelstaedt 2017; European Women’s Lobby 2019). In Germany and Austria, proposals and actions taken to address the post-quota gender gap and, more generally, underrepresentation of women range from minor fixes on the party level to electoral reform as well as constitutionally ensured parity in political representation. On the individual party level, women party activists have in recent years become better organized and their proposals have gained weight. The German Association of Social Democratic Women ASF (2010, p. 85) already a decade ago drafted party reform legislation that ultimately was intended to promote a parity law modeled after the French Parity Law. The ASF asked its own party to spearhead a parity initiative by making the SPD quota more compatible with the MMP electoral system. The ASF proposal for a federal Parity Law included provisions to zipper all lists and to strictly reject lists if they did not adhere to the zipper. These provisions were later adopted by the party. Even more important, however, was a provision to employ quotas for direct candidacies with a minimum of 49/51%. Moreover, should a party display less than 49% or more than 51% of one gender, the ASF asked the federal government to reduce party funding by 1% for every 1% of deviance from the 49/51% direct candidacy rule. The proposal was adopted by the party congress but never pursued. Austrian SPÖ interviewees also supported using financial incentives for party quota compliance, citing discussions about linking the amount of party funding to the share of women in party offices (INT A1). With the support of the Greens, the SPÖ proposed to change the federal party law, threatening reduced party funding if the proportion of women candidates in any party falls below 30 or 40%. A central driver of the Austrian initiatives is the Viennese local government, whose Social Democratic–Green coalition as early as 2012 linked party funding on district level to a gender quota system. According to a decision of the Municipal Council of Vienna parties get funds to promote women in politics if at least one-third of their caucus members are women (Klubförderung 2012, p. 2). The Greens in both countries, while having the least parity deficit, overall showcase the most innovative ways to combine personalized voting with the goal to enhance women’s representation. The Viennese Greens have in 2018 switched to a single transferable vote (STV) system for Land party lists for Land and federal elections (see Chaps. 5 and 6) in order to accommodate personalized voting within the proportional electoral system. They combine STV, however, with the Green 2017 Statute’s provision that, starting with list position two, men can only be elected if this does not increase their share of candidates over a 50% margin (see Chap. 5). As generally exhibited in the Green Party, parity provisions trump other innovations. In parties where quotas are more controversial than they are among the Greens, however, inner-party innovation is often stifled and the parity goal remains merely election-relevant lip service. Frustration with the slow advances have in recent years led parity activists in both countries to demand full-blown electoral reforms by either changing electoral law or pointing towards the option to fortify the parity goal via more stringent constitutional provisions.

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The possibility of changing electoral law in the German context occurred when the President of the German Bundestag, CDU politician Wolfgang Schäuble, announced in May 2018 that he would push—for reasons not related to women’s underrepresentation—for electoral law reform ahead of the next parliamentary elections in 2021.1 Women’s activists from center-left parties were eager to use this opening for parity-relevant changes to German electoral law. Then federal SPD Justice Minister Katharina Barley took up the initiative for a parity law within this electoral reform initiative of the German Bundestag. She specifically invited conservative women to join such an initiative and the newly elected leader of the Christian Democrats, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, signaled cooperation,2 as did the Chairwoman of the CDU Women’s Union, Annette Widmann-Mauz, who stated in fall of 2018: ‘I say this unequivocally, the topic of parity has to be part of this electoral reform’.3 Schäuble, however, declared that he would keep the reform commission focused on its goal of reducing the number of members of the Bundestag and not take up the women’s quest for inclusion of parity-relevant measures. The reform, moreover, failed in April 2019 as the Bundestag caucuses rejected the commissions’ proposals. This leaves parity advocates contemplating anew how to advance a parity law on the federal level. What is also at stake is whether a radical reform initiative will gain public support. As we have argued in this book, forcing parties to adopt a certain percentage of women on their lists or even to zipper lists will be a big step in particular for the Liberals and the AfD. Moreover, it will not address the direct candidacy challenge within the German MMP electoral system that has stifled parity efforts in center parties. Therefore, women’s activists from inside and outside parties argue for following the model of the French parity reform. This would mean increasing the size of electoral districts so that each district would have at least two direct mandates. Women and men could be elected on separate ballots to ensure that one woman and one man become both direct representatives of a district, or women and men could run as ‘duos’.

1 The

19. German Bundestag has 709 members instead of the regular 598. It is perceived to be too large and financially unsound. The relevance of the second vote in the German MMP system is exacerbated by so-called Überhangmandate (excess or overhang mandates) that are awarded if a party receives more direct candidacy seats than their percentage of the overall vote allows for. In the aftermath of a Constitutional Court ruling in 2012, these excess mandates need to be employed in a way that does not just benefit the party who receives them, but utilizes an equalizing mechanism that currently draws from the party candidate lists of all other parties. Since this technical equalizer increased the number of parliamentary seats in the elections of 2017 to 709, representing an increase of 111 seats from the previous election, Schäuble’s key concern was to reduce the number of parliamentary seats. This, parity activists assumed, would in all likelihood involve a reassessment of electoral districts and procedures. 2 Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer: Durch Wahlrechtsreform mehr Frauen in Parlamente. In: Der Tagesspiegel, 31 January,31, 2019. At https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/annegret-krampkarrenbauer-cdu-chefin-durch-wahlrechtsreform-mehr-frauen-in-parlamente/23933252.html. Accessed 3 February 2019. 3 FAZ 15 September 2018 ‘SPD liebäugelt mit Frauenquote für den Bundestag’ at http://www. faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/mehr-wirtschaft/spd-liebaeugelt-mit-frauenquote-fuer-den-bundestag15789547.html. Accessed 30 September 2018.

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In part success and in part a case in point for limited reform are recent laws in Brandenburg and Thuringia. In Brandenburg, a Social Democratic and Left Party government coalition in January 2019 adopted the first Parity Law of Germany (Brandenburg Landtag 2019); Thuringia’s government coalition, led by the Left Party and including the SPD and the Greens, passed a similar Parity Law in July 2019 (Thüringen Landtag 2019). Both parity laws require parties to craft zippered lists for Land-level elections, but do not specify the gender of the top list candidate. The Brandenburg law stipulates that, in case there are no more candidates from one gender to feed the zipper, only one more list candidate of the opposite gender can be nominated—thus precluding the common problem that list positions are filled with men because there supposedly were no women candidates to be found. The Thuringia Parity Law states that a list will be rejected as soon as it breaks the zipper. Both laws, in fact, put pressure on parties to make sure that an adequate number of women will run for list positions. Contrary to the Brandenburg law that works with a binary identifier of sex, the Thuringia law allows for candidates registered as ‘diverse’ citizens to run on either a woman’s or a man’s slot (ibid.). Neither law, however, does engage with direct mandates. In Brandenburg, an earlier proposal by the Land-level Green Party opposition had asked for just that. The Greens suggested cutting the number of electoral districts in the Land by half from 44 to 22 districts, and allowing voters to elect one woman and one man in each district. This would have required parties to nominate a duo of a man and a woman in districts, while voters would have had the choice to vote for either the party’s duo or for a woman from party X and a man from party Y for the direct nominations in a district (Brandenburg Landtag 2018). Parliamentary resistance against increasing district magnitude was massive, and this particular provision ultimately was not taken up in the Brandenburg Parity Law. Since it was passed, the law received a lot of public attention: It has been challenged by both the Pirate Party and the FDP as unconstitutional for upending the principle of organizational autonomy of German parties, and it is under review at the German Constitutional Court. The ultra-rightwing AfD in Brandenburg has already submitted a law to repeal the Parity Law. Constitutional experts arrive at diametrically opposing conclusions when assessing the constitutionality of the law (see Wersig 2018; Gärditz 2018). At the center of these disputes is, on the one hand, the constitutionally protected right to free party assembly, as well as the constitutional principle that parties per se represent all people.4 On the other hand, the law’s proponents argue that the German Basic Law in 1994 awarded the government an active duty to enact equality between the sexes via Art.3(2) of the Constitution (Laskowski 2018). The Brandenburg Parity Law thus will be a test case for how much active government engineering of parity in political representation the German Constitutional Court deems allowable and justified. Parity activists argue that if measures to increase the number of women in legislatures will be declared unconstitutional by the courts, then changing constitutions on the federal and Land levels will be the logical next step. 4 Article

21(1) and Article 38(1) German Basic Law.

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Since the Brandenburg law focuses only on the list proportion of the MMP system but does not address direct candidacies, it will be less effective than the original Green proposal would have been. Beyond Brandenburg and Thuringia, there are currently initiatives by left parties or center-left coalitions underway in 12 of the 16 German Länder to enact variations of a parity law (Deutscher Frauenrat 2019). Baden-Württemberg, however, as we discussed in Chap. 6, remains an outlier, as electoral law reform appears to be stuck. Initiatives for a parity law are also being debated in Austria. In 2017, when the Austrian Parliament discussed electoral law reform, women’s activists from the major parties demanded the inclusion of quota provisions. The SPÖ advocated for a constitutional provision that would stipulate a minimum 35% quota for all parties in the Austrian Nationalrat.5 In case of non-compliance, funding for parties would be reduced. Whereas at the time ÖVP quota activists preferred positive incentives over sanctions, they also advanced the notion that a party’s electoral list on the federal level be only accepted if the share of women and men is equal. At the time, however, there was no trans-party consensus and the initiative was buried. This changed in 2019, when, as part of preparing for the elections in fall 2019, FPÖ and SPÖ reached an agreement to use the public party financing system to award parties up to 3% more funding if the share of women in their party caucus is more than 40%.6 On the Austrian Land level, it is primarily the Viennese center-left parties that advance the parity debate in politics. While the city already implemented party funding regulations that promote women in politics, a new quota model has been suggested by the Greens and discussed by the local Viennese Social DemocraticGreen coalition. This model stipulates the legal integration of a gender quota in the city constitution. However, since constitutional change is only permissible with a two-third majority, the initiative stalled.

7.4 The Way Forward The current state of women’s representation in Germany and Austria can be summed up with the infamous ‘glass half full/half empty’ metaphor. While it is obvious that women have made substantial strides both in national and Land-level representation since quotas have been adopted by major parties, the current stage of inclusion in politics is by all measures not good enough even by most party standards. The ‘long durée’ view exposes the fact that advances seem to have slowed down at roughly a third women representatives in most national and subnational legislatures, with a few outliers hovering at 20%. Are we looking at a new glass ceiling? Do most party activists (and possibly larger publics) consider one-third women in representative bodies just alright? 5 Op.

cit. Federal Women’s Minister Sabine Oberhauser in: Der Standard, February, 7, 2017, at: https://derstandard.at/2000052260722/Parlament-SPOe-fuer-verpflichtende-Frauenquote. Accessed 8 June 2019. 6 SPÖ, ÖVP und JETZT einig bei Reform, in: Der Standard, 30 June 2019, at: https://www. derstandard.at/story/2000105681266/parteifinanzen-spoe-fpoe-und-jetzt-einigen-sich-auf-reform. Accessed 1 July 2019.

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We have demonstrated here that roadblocks to quota implementation via voluntary party quotas lie at the intersection of electoral law and party regulations. Both, and particularly in combination, are important filters for how effective and efficient quotas are implemented. Electoral law provisions can systematically undermine quotas by, for example, upending zippered party lists. Party regulations that ignore mismatch with the electoral system are less likely to meet a quota. Party statutes that leave too much room for interpretation, or that do not have formal rules intended to prevent bypassing of quota stipulations, will most likely be undermined. Liberal and ultraright-wing parties, moreover, actively oppose quotas. Therefore, the study lends support to the arguments by parity activists that incremental changes to voluntary party quotas from within parties are unlikely to be sufficient to reach gender parity in representation. Electoral reform thus is paramount. For Germany, we have made the case that: (1) larger district magnitude combined with (2) strict rules for two direct candidates of opposite sex, and (3) requiring zippered lists would all advance parity within the MMP system. Numerous studies have shown that women’s representation correlates positively with the number of seats available in an electoral district (see Magin 2010, p. 276; Meier 2004). In other words: Small electoral districts with only one directly elected candidate inhibit women’s chances to win seats. If there would be more than one direct candidate in German districts, electoral parity laws like in France with quasi separate lists for women and men, or the British All-WomenLists could be engineered to effectively secure parity. And if all parties would be required to submit zippered candidate lists for distribution of remaining mandates, the German Bundestag would finally fulfill its constitutional task to reach parity. Increasing district magnitude with a male/female duo of candidates from all parties would also substantially increase women’s representation on the Land level. For Austria, we have argued that not only strictly zippered lists on all three levels of the federal election process, but also an equal number of women top list candidates are key to parity in the Austrian PR system. As in Germany, sanctioning non-compliance with loss of party funds is the obvious means to enforce new electoral laws in systems with public financing of elections. However, these financial sanctions need to be painful, otherwise parties will happily pay for non-compliance. Broadening our perspective on gender equality in political representation, we had at the beginning of this book referenced GEPP, the international ‘Gender Equality Policy in Practice’ project. GEPP defines equal descriptive representation as the basis not just for women’s empowerment but also for gender transformation, and argues with Htun and Weldon that gender equality ultimately means systematically dismantling ‘hierarchies of power that privilege men and the masculine, a sexual division of labor that devalues women and the feminine, and the institutionalization of normative heterosexuality’ (Htun and Weldon 2010, p. 208). Gender parity in political representation will not guarantee gender transformation, but it will be an important and necessary step forward to address the deficits in inclusive political perspective that overwhelmingly men-driven governments have left us with.

Appendix A

Interviews

Germany INT G1 INT G2 INT G3 INT G4 INT G5 INT G6 INT G7 INT G8 INT G9 INT G10 INT G11 INT G12 INT G13 INT G14

Parliament Baden-Württemberg, Gender Expert Social Democratic Party (16/12/2015) Parliament Baden-Württemberg, Gender Expert Green Party (16/12/2015) Parliament Baden-Württemberg, Gender Expert Christian Democratic Party (16/12/2015) Parliament Baden-Württemberg, Gender Expert Christian Democratic Party (12/12/2017) Parliament Baden-Württemberg, Gender Expert and Legal Counsel Green Party (12/12/2017) Parliament Baden-Württemberg, Gender Expert, Green Party (12/13/2017) Parliament Baden-Württemberg, Gender Expert Social Democratic Party (12/13/2017) Federal Parliament, Gender Expert and Representative Women’s Association Social Democratic Party (12/7/2017) Federal Parliament, Party Executive Social Democratic Party (27/7/2017) Federal Parliament, Party Executive and Gender Expert Green Party (16/3/2017) Federal Parliament, Party Member Christian Democratic Party (17/3/2017) Federal Parliament, Representative Women’s Association Christian Democratic Party (19/12/18) Parliament Berlin, Gender Expert Social Democratic Party (30/3/2017) Parliament Berlin, Gender Expert Green Party (15/2/2017)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. Ahrens et al., Gender Equality in Politics, SpringerBriefs in Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34895-3

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INT G15 Parliament Berlin, Party Member Christian Democratic Party (16/2/2017) INT G16 Federal Parliament, Party Executive Christian Democratic Party (19/12/2018)

Austria INT A1 INT A2 INT A3 INT A4 INT A5 INT A6 INT A7 INT A8 INT A9 INT A10 INT A11 INT A12 INT A13 INT A14 INT A15 INT A16 INT A17 INT A18 INT A19

National Parliament, Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs Social Democratic Party Austria (16/2/2016) National Parliament, Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs Austrian People’s Party (23/2/2016) National Parliament, Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs The Greens (25/2/2016) National Parliament former Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs Social Democratic Party Austria (24/2/2016) Parliament Vienna, member of Vienna’s municipal council Social Democratic Party Austria (2/5/2016) Parliament Vienna, Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs Austrian People’s Party (23/2/2016) Parliament Vienna, Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs The Greens (21/4/2016) Parliament Upper Austria, Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs Social Democratic Party Austria (1/3/2016) Parliament Upper Austria, Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs Austrian People’s Party (16/2/2016) Parliament Upper Austria, Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs. The Greens (22/2/2016) Representative of the Women’s Section of the Social Democratic Academy (12/11/2018) Subject Specialist for The Greens, Vienna (8/5/2018) ÖVP former Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs of ÖVP on the federal level (7/5/2018) Member of the Supervisory Commission of SPÖ on the federal level (19/4/2018) Former General Secretary of SPÖ on the federal level (22/3/2018) Former Women’s General Secretary of SPÖ on the federal level (7/5/2018) General Secretary of Greens Upper Austria (11/4/2018) General Secretary of ÖVP Upper Austria (11/4/2018) Chairperson of the Women’s Organization of ÖVP Upper Austria (13/4/2018)

Appendix B

Supplemental Data

See Tables B.1, B.2, Fig. B.1

Table B.1 Gender quotas in EU member states and women’s representation in Parliament (June 2019) Women share in Parliament

Legislative quotas

Party quotas

No quotas

≤20%

Greece

Cyprus, Hungary, Malta, Slovakia

>20–35%

Croatia, Ireland, Poland, Slovenia

Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Romania, United Kingdom

Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia

>35%

Belgium, France, Portugal

Austria, Italy

Denmark

>45%

Spain

Sweden

Finland

Source Source for quota type: European Institute for Gender Equality, 2016, Gleichstellung von Männern und Frauen in Entscheidungsprozessen. https://eige.europa.eu/sites/default/files/ documents/2016.1523_mh0116064den_pdfweb_20170511095719.pdf. Accessed November 5, 2019. Source women’s representation: www.ipu.org. Accessed June 16, 2019. Compilation by authors

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. Ahrens et al., Gender Equality in Politics, SpringerBriefs in Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34895-3

119

35

16.7% F

%

13.3%

%

No

52

No

17.4%

%

15.9%

57

%

No

53

15.9%

No

58

%

9.4% F

%

No

58

No

3.0% F

%

7

8

12

10

11

6

10.5% F

17

17.1%

29

28.9%

27

26.7%

33

10.3%

35

15.2% F

39

11.9% F

37

M

F 2

M

64

No

F

2

6

11

12

4

7

5

46.8% F

25

30.6%

25

35.3%

11

40.0%

6

36.8%

12

15.4% F

11

40.0% F

6

M

The Greens F

22

11

6

4

7

2

4

8.3% F

11

0.0%

7

26.7%

11

20.0%

8

14.3%

12

0.0% F

8

0.0% F

7

M

FDP F

1

0

4

2

2

0

0

Source Data provided to authors by Landeswahlleiter Baden-Württemberg. Table design by authors. Please note that in each legislature additional smaller parties or independent MPs were present; they were excluded to simplify the table

2016

2011

2006

2001

1996

1992

1988

SPD

CDU

Table B.2 Share of women in Landtag Baden-Württemberg caucuses (1988–2016)

120 Appendix B: Supplemental Data

Appendix B: Supplemental Data

121

Fig. B.1 Party membership, candidates and elected—CDU women, 1946–2017. Source Data from Bundeswahlleiter (2017b, c), and Niedermayer (2017). Calculation and figure design by authors

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