Gender Quotas, Legislative Resistance and Non-Legislative Reform

For more than 20 years, gender quotas have been adopted and revised in Latin America and the world. This chapter investigates whether the type of authorship of gender quota adoptions/revisions is relevant to the strength of policy designs. The debate is unsettled: while some scholars portray male incumbents as interest-seeking actors, others view state actors as promoters of gender equality. Using a newly developed index of the strength of gender quota designs, I find support for the proposition that non-legislative actors are crucial in strengthening quota policies. I find that policy revisions carried out by non-legislative actors are, on average, stronger than those enacted by legislative actors, and that non-legislative actors respond more rapidly to policy weaknesses than their legislative counterparts.