Lessons from the Fast Track to Women’s Inclusion in Europe: When and How Quotas Lead to Policy Change

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courtesy Ana Catalano Weeks

A close-up of Ana Catalano Weeks.

Ana Catalano Weeks

media release: 2024 International Women’s Day Lecture: Ana Catalano Weeks, “Lessons from the Fast Track to Women’s Inclusion in Europe: When and How Quotas Lead to Policy Change”

Gender quota laws – policies that mandate women’s inclusion on parties’ candidate slates – have been adopted by over sixty countries worldwide. Quotas work as a “fast track” to increase women’s political representation, but do they also affect policy outcomes? In this talk, Dr. Ana Catalano Weeks uses evidence from the implementation of gender quotas in Europe to shed new light on the questions of when and how gender quota laws impact policy. Catalano Weeks argues that quotas lead to policy change on issues that unite women across the political spectrum. She focuses on one such issue: work-family balance. Across high-income democracies, questions like, ‘a preschool child will suffer if his or her mother works’ are marked by large gender gaps, with women significantly more likely to disagree than men. These gender gaps persist within parties, dividing men and women within the left and right. After a quota law, she finds that parties increase the attention they give to policies that help mothers stay in the labour force (childcare, parental leave) and decrease attention to policies that do not, like cash transfers that encourage women to stay at home. These agenda shifts are linked to real policy change, including more weeks of paid parental and paternity leave in countries that adopt quota laws. Quotas make gender more salient by giving women louder voices within parties (across left and right), providing access to powerful ministerial roles, and encouraging male party leaders to compete on previously marginalized issues. She concludes by discussing lessons we can learn in the US, where national paid family leave remains elusive despite wide public support.

Ana Catalano Weeks is senior lecturer in comparative politics in the Department of Politics, Languages, & International Studies at the University of Bath. Before joining Bath, she was a college fellow in the Department of Government at Harvard University and a research fellow in the Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP) at the Harvard Kennedy School. Ana’s research interests include gender and politics, political representation, and political parties, with a regional concentration in Western Europe. Her book, Making Gender Salient: From Gender Quota Laws to Policy, was published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press. Ana has a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University, an MS.c. in comparative politics (Europe) from the LSE, and an A.B. in government from Dartmouth College.

Opportunities for networking and light reception to follow. Free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the UW European Studies Department. Co-sponsored by the Jean Monnet European Union Center of Excellence for Populism and Political Economy, the Center for European Studies, and Zonta Club of Madison, with support from UW-Madison PAVE.