Suchergebnisse

As quotas spread across parties in the 1980s and 1990s, the number of women in the Bundestag rapidly increased. During the past decade, however, the percentage of female MdBs has stagnated at approximately a rate of one third. Using the Federal Election Office's (Bundeswahlleiter) data on candidates for the 2009 Federal Election, we investigate whether this stagnation is due to a lack of quota implementation or to incomplete quota adoption. Although German parties' quotas are voluntary mechanisms with no official sanctions for violations, parties complied with their quotas in terms of promising places on the 2009 electoral lists. The limited number of women in the Bundestag can be attributed to the fact that some parties have not adopted quotas, and hence send few women to the Bundestag, and to the fact that even parties with quotas for party lists do not nominate many women for their constituency seats, which are not subject to gender quotas. To increase the number of women in the Bundestag, then, quota-less parties would likely need to adopt quotas and all parties would need to nominate more female candidates for promising direct mandates. Adapted from the source document.