Summer in the Field: Implementing Political Gender Quotas: Lessons from Mexico
By John Hassett
For decades, a key goal of activists and policymakers has been involving women in politics. Achieving gender parity in the political realm – that is, seeing more women running for and winning political office – is not merely a rhetorical goal. In fact, research has shown that women bring unique perspectives and focuses to lawmaking. A seminal study by Raghabendra Chattopadhyay and Esther Duflo showed that when women are given a seat at the table, they implement policies more relevant to the needs of women generally.
Many countries have implemented targeted electoral laws, known as “gender quotas,” as part of an effort to increase women’s political participation. These laws vary in the size of the quota, whether the quotas are legally enforced, at what stage of the election process they are enforced, which branch of government they are applied to (legislative, executive, judicial) and what level of government they are applied to (local, regional, federal). India reserves a minority of districts for women to lead, while in France, it is mandated in municipal elections that half of the candidates each party nominates must be women. Designing each system requires trade-offs: while a reserved seat system like India’s guarantees that at least some women will be elected, such strict systems could face legal opposition in their implementation.
Mexico’s system of gender quotas is enshrined in its constitution, which in a 2014 amendment requires political parties to adhere to “rules to ensure gender parity in the nomination of candidates in federal and local congressional elections.” While quota systems had existed as part of federal law for decades, the 2014 mandate served to bring these systems to the local level, in many cases for the first time.
Besides being a landmark victory for activists in Mexico, this policy change presents researchers an opportunity to study the effectiveness of the specific implementation of the quotas and their effect on policy outcomes. This past summer, as part of my 2024 Summer in the Field Fellowship, my coauthor Laura Aquino and I set out to ask and answer these questions by collecting detailed data on ballots, election outcomes, local policy initiatives and more from various government agencies in Mexico. While our results are still preliminary, there is undoubtedly an important lesson for policymakers, as well as vindication for scholars who have argued that women bring a unique lens to governing.
Understanding Mexico’s local government structure
Mexican local governments are made up of a legislative body of regidores, as well as an alcalde and a síndico(s), two positions with executive functions somewhat similar to a mayor and vice-mayor(s). Together, these positions make up the cabildo, or the local government. These are all elected positions; however, in elections, voters vote for parties, not candidates. On the ballot, each party lists their candidates for alcalde and síndico, as well as an ordered list of candidates for the regidor positions. Votes for each party are tallied, and the party with the most votes wins the alcalde and síndico positions. The regidor positions are then assigned based on a proportional representation system where the number of regidores from each party represents that party’s share of the vote. For example, if there are 10 regidor positions and two parties, with the first party winning 60 percent of the vote and the second 40 percent, the first party would be assigned six regidores and the second party four. These seats would be filled with the candidates on each party’s ballot, in the order that they are listed.
How does the quota system work?
Adding effective candidate gender quotas to this system is somewhat challenging, yet the basic rule is quite simple: in their list of candidates, parties must alternate between men and women. That is, if the candidate for alcalde is a man, then the candidate for síndico must be a woman, the first listed regidor a man, the second listed regidor a woman and so on.
On the ground, interpretation and implementation was left to state courts, which generally settled on two systems, represented in Figure 1. In the “vertical” system, quotas as described were applied within each municipality. In the “horizontal” system, the same quotas are implemented within each municipality, with the additional requirement that candidates must be balanced across municipalities within that state. If there are 10 municipalities in a state, a party must nominate men for alcalde in five municipalities, and women in the other five. This horizontal system is stronger and directly aims at putting women into positions of executive power.
Figure 1: Quota Systems as Interpreted by Mexico’s State Courts
As our calculations in Figure 2 show, the quotas have resulted in a more than doubling of the number of municipalities with women as alcaldes, a roughly 17 percentage point increase from eight percent to 25 percent.
Figure 2: Proportion of women alcaldes
More impressively, Figure 3 shows that parity has been reached or nearly reached for síndicos, regidores and the cabildo overall. As such the effect of the quotas could be described as mixed. Parity in the lower-ranked political positions, as well as the large jump in female alcaldes, is a huge step forward for women in Mexican politics. Yet, parity in the highest leadership role has unfortunately not been attained.
Figure 3: Proportion of women in other cabildo positions
A gap remains between lower- and higher-ranked positions
So, why is it that parity is reached for the lower-ranked positions but not the higher-ranked positions? A large part of the answer lies in the difference between the horizontal and vertical systems. Under the vertical system, party leaders have no requirement to run female candidates for alcalde – remember, the vertical system just requires alternating gender from top to bottom ranked positions on the party ticket.
A regression analysis of the results of the election cycle immediately after the reform confirm that in fact there was no increased likelihood of electing female alcaldes in states with the vertical system, while there was an 18-percentage point increase in states with the horizontal system. That is, nearly all of the increase in female alcaldes came from states with the horizontal system. Party leaders in vertical system states had no incentive to nominate more female alcaldes, and they did not.
On the other hand, the vertical system is a smaller step forward in that it does force more down-ballot parity. While a party choosing only men for alcalde is undoubtedly a failure of the system, that same choice forces the party to nominate only women for the top síndico positions. This is reflected in Figure 3, where the dotted blue line for síndicos very quickly jumps after the reform and actually lies above parity in 2021, with nearly 60 percent of in-office síndicos being women. (Eagle-eyed readers may wonder why the proportion of female síndicos is not equal to one minus the proportion of female alcaldes – this is because some municipalities have multiple síndicos.)
All evidence points to the horizontal system as the better of the two for including women in the highest leadership roles. However, the horizontal system itself has not been completely successful. While the overall increase is driven by the states with horizontal systems, among those states the proportion of alcaldes who are women was still less than 40 percent in 2021. How could this be? The answer, our research suggests, is that political parties have responded to the quota rules in ways that disadvantage female candidates.
The double-edged sword of Mexico’s quota system
Party strategy reduces the effectiveness of the quotas mainly because parties are placing their female candidates in losing districts, i.e. districts where the party is unlikely to win. If all parties do this, it is possible to follow the horizontal quota system perfectly and still have an outcome where all alcaldes are men. Another way that parties have responded to the quotas is by more frequently joining coalitions when the coalition’s candidate for alcalde is a woman. Regression analysis shows that female alcaldes were 15 percentage points more likely to be part of a coalition after the reform. This is a similar response to entering a female candidate in a losing district, without the need to find and fund a candidate.
On the other side of the coin, analysis also suggests that women who win the alcalde position after the reform do so in districts that are safer, i.e. districts where their party had a relatively higher margin of victory in the previous election. Said another way, it appears that parties place their female candidates in either losing districts or very safe districts, and their male candidates in closer districts. This suggests that voter preferences are playing a role in party strategy – if some percentage of voters will not vote for a woman otherwise identical to a man, or if parties are more certain about voter turnout with male candidates, then this pattern of candidate assignment follows directly.
This conclusion is by no means a way of claiming that parties are blameless. When party leaders assign female candidates to losing districts, they are actively fighting progress in parity. Yet, an acknowledgement that parties are in some ways responding to voter preferences is critical for comparing the successes and failures of different quota systems around the world. In India’s system of reserving districts for women, counter-productive party strategizing is not possible, as voters must choose between only female candidates in at least the reserved districts.
Despite the apparent flaws of Mexico’s quota system, it has created real change, and not just in terms of representation. Spurred by the quotas, women have brought the unique focus that Chattopadhyay and Duflo documented 20 years ago into Mexican local governance. Indeed, our preliminary results suggest female alcaldes introduce significantly more health-, education- and gender-related initiatives than their male colleagues since the reforms. While imperfect, the system provides guidance for the future; hopefully, other countries can learn and build on the lessons learned in Mexico.
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