Summary
Temporary measures to achieve de facto equality for women may include the use of quotas to ensure their participation or representation.
Obligations
Election Parts
Issues
Quotes
- The States Parties undertake to adopt the special policies and affirmative actions needed to ensure the enjoyment or exercise of rights and fundamental freedoms of persons or groups that are subject to discrimination or intolerance for the purpose of promoting equitable conditions for equal opportunity, inclusion, and progress for such persons or groups.
- The obligation to fulfil requires that States parties take a wide variety of steps to ensure that women and men enjoy equal rights de jure and de facto, including, where appropriate, the adoption of temporary special measures in line with article 4, paragraph 1, of the Convention and general recommendation No. 25 on article 4, paragraph 1, of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, on temporary special measures. This entails obligations of means or conduct and obligations of results. States parties should consider that they have to fulfil their legal obligations to all women through designing public policies, programmes and institutional frameworks that are aimed at fulfilling the specific needs of women leading to the full development of their potential on an equal basis with men.
- Decisions on the choice of electoral systems are important to overcome the traditional gender bias that undermines women’s participation. Substantive progress towards the equal participation of women as candidates and voters as well as the holding of free and fair elections will not be possible unless a number of appropriate measures are taken, including a gender-responsive electoral system and the adoption of temporary special measures to enhance women’s participation as candidates, ensure a proper voter’s registration system and ensure that women voters and female political candidates are not subject to violence either by State or private actors.
- Measures that have been adopted by some political parties include setting aside for women a certain minimum number or percentage of positions on their executive bodies, ensuring that there is a balance between the number of male and female candidates nominated for election, and ensuring that women are not consistently assigned to less favourable constituencies or to the least advantageous positions on a party list. States parties should ensure that such temporary special measures are specifically permitted under anti-discrimination legislation or other constitutional guarantees of equality.
- The Committee recommends that States parties: Ensure that new constitutions provide for temporary special measures, apply to citizens and non-citizens, and guarantee that women’s human rights are not subject to derogation in states of emergency.
- Measures that should be identified, implemented and monitored for effectiveness include, under article 7, paragraph (a), those designed to: (a) Achieve a balance between women and men holding publicly elected positions.
- Where countries have developed effective temporary strategies in an attempt to achieve equality of participation, a wide range of measures has been implemented, including recruiting, financially assisting and training women candidates, amending electoral procedures, developing campaigns directed at equal participation, setting numerical goals and quotas and targeting women for appointment to public positions such as the judiciary or other professional groups that play an essential part in the everyday life of all societies.
- The Committee recommends that States parties: (d) Ensure that electoral reforms incorporate the principle of gender equality, and guarantee women’s equal representation through the adoption of temporary special measures such as quotas, including for disadvantaged groups of women; adopt a proportional representation electoral system; regulate political parties; and mandate electoral management bodies to ensure compliance through sanctions.
- Measures that have been adopted by a number of States parties in order to ensure equal participation by women in senior cabinet and administrative positions and as members of government advisory bodies include: adoption of a rule whereby, when potential appointees are equally qualified, preference will be given to a woman nominee; the adoption of a rule that neither sex should constitute less than 40 per cent of the members of a public body; a quota for women members of cabinet and for appointment to public office; and consultation with women's organizations to ensure that qualified women are nominated for membership in public bodies and offices and the development and maintenance of registers of such women in order to facilitate the nomination of women for appointment to public bodies and posts.
- Temporary special measures must be discontinued when their desired results have been achieved and sustained for a period of time.
- States should foster citizen participation in the electoral process by] introducing in their electoral legislation mechanisms to promote the balanced representation of women and men in elected bodies at all levels as well as encouraging political parties to introduce internal regulations, policies and affirmative action so as to promote the participation and representation of women in politics.
- [Member states should] consider adopting legislative reforms to introduce parity thresholds for candidates in elections at local, regional, national and supra-national levels. Where proportional lists exist, consider the introduction of zipper systems.
- [Member states should] consider adopting legislative reforms to introduce parity thresholds for candidates in elections at local, regional, national and supra-national levels. Where proportional lists exist, consider the introduction of zipper systems.
- Countries with a majoritarian electoral system are recommended to introduce provisions that promote systems whereby each party chooses a candidate from among at least one female and one male nominee in each district, or to find other ways to promote increased representation of women in elected politics.
- Legal rules requiring a minimum percentage of persons of each gender among candidates should not be considered as contrary to the principle of equal suffrage if they have a constitutional basis.
- It should be clear that the electoral system itself is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to ensure women’s representation. Additional measures are needed to encourage the increase in women’s representation. Some measures have been included in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly recommendation 1676 (2004), adopted on 5 October 2004.
- Positive measures such as affirmative action, including quotas for women and other disadvantaged groups, should be adopted as part of intra-party and national electoral systems, and mechanisms put in place to ensure their enforcement.
- Moreover, the scope of these rules depends on the electoral system. In a fixed party list system, parity is imposed if the number of men and women who are eligible is the same. However, if preferential voting or cross-voting is possible, voters will not necessarily choose candidates from both sexes, and this may result in an unbalanced composition of the elected body, chosen by voters.
- If there is a specific constitutional basis, rules could be adopted guaranteeing some degree of balance between the two sexes in elected bodies, or even parity. In the absence of such a constitutional basis, such provisions could be considered contrary to the principle of equality and freedom of association.
- The electoral system can include a component that seeks to address previous imbalances in political representation through the use of quotas or reserved seats to promote the representation of, for example, women and minorities.
- There might be gender quotas for the composition of or the candidacies for Parliament. According to the Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters, legal rules requiring a minimum percentage of persons of each gender among candidates should not be considered as contrary to the principle of equal suffrage (CDL-AD(2002)023rev, I.2.5).
- Best practices do not exclude reasonable quotas or preferences designed to ensure more equitable representation of women or minority groups.
- a. Implementation of the parity principle may lead to admit: 1. Elections by a list system - the obligation to ensure a composition of the candidates' lists alternating men and women; - the refusal to register lists which do not respect such alternating composition. 2. Elections in single-member constituencies - the obligation to ensure a balanced percentage of women and men amongst candidates of the same party. - dissuasive sanctions in case of non-respect of this obligation.
- The Special Rapporteur makes the following recommendations to States: (...) (c) Strengthen the legislative basis for gender parity in all branches and at all levels of government to guarantee women’s full participation in political and public life in compliance with international and regional human rights standards, applying, when necessary, temporary special measures, such as quotas and other measures, to accelerate progress towards the equal participation of women in political life.
- Countries with an electoral system based on proportional representation and party lists may introduce temporary special measures that would promote not only a high proportion of women candidates, but also a rank-order rule, such as a "zipper" system, where male and female candidates alternate, or where one of every three candidates through the list is from the less represented gender. Rank-order rules of this type remove the risk that women will be placed too low on party lists to have a genuine chance of being elected. It is also advisable to promote that if a female candidate withdraws her candidature, she is replaced with another woman.