At the
beginning of March 2015, Germany passed a revolutionary law that is expected to
have a huge difference in both the political and business world for Germans. Currently,
women hold only 20 percent of the seats on corporate boards even though some of
the largest multinational companies are based within the country. Some of these
include Mercedes-Benz, Deutsche Bank, Bayer and Merck, BASF and many more. The
new law will require German companies to give 30 percent of supervisory seats
to women beginning next year. Germany is not the first country to implement a
quota law like this, but rather are following suit from counties such as
Norway. The overall goal of this legislation is to create a larger role for
women on corporate and executive boards of company’s across the globe. Germany,
as well as other European countries have seen this type of legislation make a
splash in recent years and politicians expect to see more of this pressure
continue and spread throughout the world in coming years. A major perpetuator
of the bill in Germany was chancellor Angela Merkell who has been accredited
for her overwhelming support toward gender issues within Germany and across
Europe. This legislation has been known as, “the greatest contribution to
gender equality since women got the vote in Germany in 1918.” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook
executive and author claims that advocates are focusing less on company quotas
but instead, aiming to further promote women and adopt family-friendly policies
companywide. Research supports that although legislative quotas have increased
the motivation of businesses to aim for gender equality within the workplace,
major gender issues regarding pay gap, family-friendly policies, and maternity
leave have made little to no progress.
Quotas have
been used in attempts to create more equality for women and men in all areas of
life, work and politics. An article by Krook and Othello looks specifically at
gender quotas in political systems as an attempt to create more involvement and
participation of women in the political system. Currently, women only make up
19% of parliamentarians in the more than 100 countries that have adopted quota
regulations worldwide. In their research, they find that when gender quotas were
implemented in various government systems, it did no necessary yield the
effects they had hoped for. Additionally, there was cause for even more concern
because overall, they found that there was an incentive for male candidates to
run against a female candidate, especially when incumbency was at risk because
the male candidate held an advantage. Essentially, female quotas, although good
in principle, do not make as stark of a difference as they were hoping.
In an
additional article, also written by Krook, she takes a specific look at gender
and minority quotas and uses 4 specific case studies to illustrate her point.
Different countries have implemented various types of quotas and based on the
type of quota system, with varying amounts of improvement. It appears that
party quotas and legislative quotas are the most effective and usually enacted
by 25-30 percent of countries that implement quotas systems. The biggest issue with
minority quotas, as compared to gender quotas, is that currently, there are various
definitions that would fall under the term minority. The term minority can
apply to a variety of different classifications and therefore reserving seats
or creating a quota for minorities makes it a bit more difficult to control.
Out of her 4 case studies, which include Belgium, India and Iraq, the most
interesting example was that of Rwanda. Rwanda is known for having the most
women in parliament compared to any other country in the world. Krook believes
the reason for this is because of the increase in female participation, not
only in politics, but also in everyday life, which was required during and
after the horrific genocide in 1993. Although the genocide was horrible for the
Rwandan people, this event created a springboard by which women were able to
get more involved in business, family life and eventually politics. Krook
believes that these events allowed for a greater support of the quota system
and more support eventually lead to the increase in female participation.
You may be
asking yourself, so how do corporate board quotas translate into politics? The
New York Times article and the articles written by Krook have more similarities
than you might think. Above is a visual depiction of what social scientists
refer to as the pipeline. This is a step-by-step process that explains how an
average citizen eventually becomes a political figure. Many social scientists
believe that the majority of women are “lost” in this pipeline during the
recruiting phase, which occurs when an eligible becomes an aspirant. Krook
would argue that an attempt to minimize this loss of female candidates is
solved by creating quotas within political systems because it encourages and
even forces party leaders and politicians to recruit a certain number of female
candidate. However, another argument could be made in favor of the effect of
quotas on women in a business or corporate world and how this could affect
women politically. Social scientists suggest that a main reason why women “miss
out” on the recruiting process is because women typically do not interact in
the same social circles that many male eligibles interact in. Therefore,
because of the interaction of male eligibles with other powerful elites or even
party leaders, the likelihood of them becoming aspirants and even candidates is
much higher than women. Perhaps, if more women were given access to these
elite, corporate jobs, they would also, by default, gain access to these social
circles, eventually minimizing the amount of women who are lost through the recruiting
process. Additionally, if women were coming from the same eligibles “pool” as
men, then the results of Krook’s original article would no longer be valid.
Krook found that men, even when running against women in a quota system,
typically still won more often, however perhaps, if the mechanism by which
these women were placed into these races were different and their
qualifications were more similar to their male counter parts, this finding
would no longer exist. The motive behind implementing quotas is always
positive, however by redirecting the intention of the quotas, we could tap into
endless possibilities for future female candidates.
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