The Least That Could Have Been Done? The Ambiguous Effects of Gender Quotas in Polish Parliamentary Elections

Abstract

Gender quotas for political party lists in elections have been legislated in Poland in 2011. The aim was to increase women’s descriptive representation at all levels, from European to local. This has been achieved to an extent: while women made up 20% of Polish parliamentarians in 2009 (before the gender quota law), their number reached 28% after the parliamentary election of 2019. Yet, the level of increase over almost a decade has been disappointing. Why has the gender quota law had mixed results? What role does the discursive framing of (the importance of) gender quotas play in their implementation? The chapter examines the details of the implementation of the gender quota law in Poland and explores the effects of the different approaches that political parties take in implementing the gender quota law. Overall, there is a dearth of literature on gender quotas in Eastern Europe and Poland is a highly relevant case because the right dominates the political scene. Moreover, Polish politics reflects an “aversion” to gender equality mechanisms present in  many post-state socialist states, where such mechanisms are seen as forced emancipation and tokenism. Therefore, I explore the dominant discursive frames to explain how political parties understand gender quotas and, consequently, what effects these frames have for implementation in the Polish context.