The segregation of women in politics could gender quotas break the glass ceiling?

Women’s participation in politics has increased significantly over the past 100 years. Indeed, in 1890 women did not have the right to vote anywhere in the world, while nowadays 81% of the world's countries have at least 10% of women in their Parliaments. Although women have made remarkable inroads into traditionally male occupations (and higher education), the political sphere remains an area where women still have far to go (Paxton and Hughes, 2017). In other words, politics remains an area dominated by men. In an effort to change this trend, many countries have adopted gender quotas mechanisms (reserved seats, party quotas, legislative quotas) in order to increase women’s representation (Schwindt-Bayer, 2009:5; Krook 2005; Norris 2004; Dahlerup, 2006). Generally speaking, in relation to the presence of women in politics, there is a common factor that can be found in virtually every country, i.e., gender horizontal segregation, and gender vertical segregation. Concerning horizontal segregation, defined as the over- or under-representation of a certain social group in specific occupations or sectors, which is not supported by any factual criterion (Bettio and Verashchagina, 2009; Regini, 2007), it is considered as a constant in the labour market in all Western countries (Rubery and Fagan, 1993; Anker, 1998) and it is also deeply rooted in history. As for horizontal segregation, the distribution of women and men ministers by type of portfolio indicates that men continue to hold most of the key positions, such as economics and finance, foreign and international affairs and defense. On the contrary, women continue to hold the so-called “soft” portfolios with socio-cultural functions. On the other hand, vertical segregation occurs when the opportunities for career developments within a sector are severely reduced or denied to a given group (Bettio and Verashchagina, 2009:32). As a result, vertical segregation tends to keep women out of the top positions in private and public organisations (Maron and Meulders, 2008) as well in politics (Reskin, 2000). Closure connected to the concept of vertical segregation is glass ceiling, defined as an invisible barrier which prevents women to achieve the highest positions of power. This last form of underrepresentation, that of women in electoral bodies, will be the focus of this study. The main motivation for specifically dealing with the domain of politics, in relation to the scarce presence of women, is that politics is the crucial arena, where rules are set and decisions taken that concern both genders – but actually and unfortunately without enough active participation and contribution of women. The main questions around which the present study revolves are the following: is there any means to overcome the vertical segregation of women in politics, or the glass ceiling? Are gender quotas such a means? And, at all events, do women really make a difference in the political arena? If so, to what extent and in what terms? Do we need women to be represented in the public sphere because they can take care of their own interests better than men, or because they work for the good of the entire society? Ultimately, all these questions amount to one: why should we care for women to be equally represented in the political sphere? Apart from considerations of social justice and equal rights – that have a worth in themselves, of course – can we single out any further reason that would backup the claims for equal representation? After all – although indeed history does not say this is the case – men could be capable of taking care of everybody’s interest, irrespective of his/her gender. Why do we need women in politics? Evidently, the latter question is rhetorical; but is it really so, after all? Research evidence coming from seventy countries shows that men are more oriented towards individualistic values, competitiveness, power and success in life, while women privilege universalistic and communitarian values (Schwartz and Rubel, 2005). Does this make any difference, when it comes to politics? In the Italian context, the glass ceiling in politics confines women to position of lesser power than those held by men; hence, it is worth asking whether the above-mentioned findings also hold when we get to the highest level of political representation, namely, the Italian Parliament: do women make a difference? Do more women mean a better politics for a better society? The dissertation will seek at addressing these issues by combining the vast body of knowledge on the topic of women and politics, with an approach borrowed from economics, that is, treating the Italian Parliament as if it were a corporation, and measuring the effectiveness of a condition (ie., the presence or absence of women in the Parliament) on the output of the ‘company’, namely the kind and number of bills proposed by parliamentarians in the legislatures from 2001 to 2018. Italy has been taken as a case study, since in 2008 the Democratic Party voluntarily introduced gender quotas in its statute, being the only Italian party (back then and until present days) to do so. However, the approach and methodology I propose can be easily generalized to other countries and periods, while the Italian case can be interesting per se, given the sharp resurgence of sexism and male chauvinism this country witnessed from the first Berlusconi government on, starting in 1995 (Volpato, 2013), well represented by the proudly masculine and genuinely sexist character of parties like the Lega Nord (Baroncelli, 2006; Caputo, 2012). Moving on to the specific focus of this research, there were four main aspects taken into consideration. First of all, the analysis concentrated on the effectiveness of voluntarily gender quotas adopted by the Italian Democratic Party in its electoral lists. In order to determine whether gender quotas have to an increase in the number of women elected in the Chamber of Deputies, we considered the two legislatures prior to the introduction of quotas, and the two legislatures that followed (from the XIV to the XVII legislature, from 2001 to 2018). By considering different control variables, such as age and education level, social status in connection with a deputy’s career and the geographical area of the electoral district in which she or he was elected, and by means of binomial logit regressions, the hypothesis has been confirmed. Secondly, it was important to test the hypothesis that whether an increased number of female representatives, elected mainly thanks to the quota mechanism, has led to an increased focus on issues concerning women's interests (i.e., women’s rights, violence, sexual harassment), by representatives of both genders. In other words, I wanted to test the existence of substantive representation, i.e, speaking for and acting to support women’s issues such as violence against women, sexual harassment and so on (Krook, 2007; Dalehrup, 2006) by both women and men. Indeed, several studies show that an increased number of elected women leads to greater attention to women’s issues in the policy making process (Krook and Zetterberg, 2016). The results of the second hypothesis confirm previous studies (see for example Krook, 2007; Dalehrup, 2006; Krook and Zetterberg, 2016). Thirdly, I sought to verify whether women representatives elected in the Democratic Party, more than their male colleagues, tend to propose bills in women's interest. The results show that this is indeed true, thus bringing the following question: if female elected officials better represent women's interests, as shown by the changes that have occurred after the introduction of gender quotas, then who had been representing women's interest in the past? Finally, I considered whether the women elected with the Democratic Party after the introduction of quotas have proposed more bills not only concerning women's interests, but also in other fields such as children and family, health, education, welfare policies and environment, as domains of common interest for the society as a whole. Results indicate that Democratic women deputies, elected after quotas were established, are indeed more active than their male counterparts in proposing bills in all the above-listed fields, not only in those directly connected with women's interests and rights.