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Ensuring Parliamentary Gender Equality Through a New Zipper Method: An Application to Finland

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  • Blanca Delgado-Márquez
  • Victoriano Ramírez-González
  • Adolfo López-Carmona

Abstract

Gender equality constitutes a crucial objective for a successful societal development. Although research has found that the differences are shrinking, parliamentary composition is not gender balanced in most areas of the world. Henceforth, recent literature has undertaken important efforts aimed at developing different initiatives to promote parity in democratic parliaments, especially through the use of quota systems. Prior initiatives, although leading to an improvement of gender parity, do not manage to ensure an optimal gender-egalitarian parliamentary composition. Thus, this paper presents a method to organize closed and blocked lists of candidates that guarantees the achievement of gender-balanced representation in parliamentary elections. Specifically, parity is sought globally, in each party and also in each electoral constituency. Furthermore, the method is applied to the elections held over the last two decades in Finland. Results reveal that parity in gender representation increases at global, party, and constituency levels throughout all the parliamentary elections in Finland, even approaching optimal numerical parity (i.e. 50 % for each gender) in most of the cases. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Blanca Delgado-Márquez & Victoriano Ramírez-González & Adolfo López-Carmona, 2014. "Ensuring Parliamentary Gender Equality Through a New Zipper Method: An Application to Finland," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 116(2), pages 475-492, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:116:y:2014:i:2:p:475-492
    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-013-0301-3
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    1. Osnat Akirav, 2021. "Women's Leadership in Local Government," Review of European Studies, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 13(1), pages 1-77, March.

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