Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T13:43:42.488Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Quota Problems: Combating the Dangers of Essentialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2006

Jane Mansbridge
Jane Mansbridge
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

As I write, descriptive representation by gender improves substantive outcomes for women in every polity for which we have a measure. And as I write, significant representation by gender cannot be achieved in any existing polity without some form of quota. At this historical moment, therefore, quotas play an important democratic role in increasing gender equality. Yet because quotas potentially produce institutional rigidity and their need should decrease as structural and cultural conditions improve, it is best to institute them in their most flexible form. Because quotas also encourage essentialism, it is best to institute them in conjunction with major efforts to define in nonessentialist ways the reasons for their institution. Although quotas will inevitably increase essentialist beliefs, a conscious, concerted campaign could mitigate the most destructive effects of this tendency.Many thanks to Lisa Baldez for help in editing these thoughts. Comments welcome: jane_mansbridge@harvard.edu.

Type
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER AND POLITICS
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , December 2005 , pp. 622 - 638
Copyright
© 2005 The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agacinski, Sylviane. 2003. “The Turning Point of Feminism: Against the Effacement of Women.” Trans. Mary Schwartz. In Beyond French Feminisms: Debates of Women, Politics, and Culture in France, 1981–2001, ed. Roger Célestin, Eliane DalMolin, and Isabelle de Courtivron. London: Palgrave, 17–22.
Baldez, Lisa. Forthcoming. “The Pros and Cons of Gender Quota Laws: What Happens When You Kick Men Out and Let Women In?” Politics & Gender 2 (1).
Banaji, Mahzarin R. 2001. “Implicit Attitudes Can be Measured.” In The Nature of Remembering, ed. H. L. Roediqer, I. N. Nairne, and A. M. Suprenant. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 117–50.
Banaji, Mahzarin, Max H. Bazerman, and Dolly Chugh. 2003. “How (Un)ethical Are You?” Harvard Business Review 81 (12): 56–64.Google Scholar
Bartlett, Katharine T. 1990. “Feminist Legal Methods,” Harvard Law Review 103 (4): 829–88.Google Scholar
Burden, Barry C. 2005. Personal Roots of Representation. Unpublished book manuscript ().
Carter, Stephen L. 1994. “Forward.” In Lani Guinier, The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy. New York: Free Press.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black Feminist Thought. London: Allen and Unwin.
Combahee River Collective. [1977] 1983. “The Combahee River Collective Statement.” In Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, ed. Barbara Smith. New York: Women of Color/Kitchen Table Press, 272–82.
Cott, Nancy. 1987. The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1991. “‘Mapping the Margins’: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women.” Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–99.Google Scholar
Darcy, Robert, Charles D. Hadley, and Jason F. Kirksey. 1993. “Election Systems and the Representation of Black Women in American State Legislatures.” Women & Politics 13 (2): 73–89.Google Scholar
Davis, Angela. 1983. Women, Race, and Class. New York: Vintage Books.
Dovi, Suzanne. 2002. “Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Will Just Every Woman, Black, and Latino Do?” American Political Science Review 96 (4): 729–43.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Michaele. 2003. “Sharing and Sharing Alike: Political Unity in Deeply Diverse Democracies.” Ph.D. diss. Harvard University.
Gaspard, Françoise. 1994. “De la parité: genèse d'un concept, naissance d'un mouvement.” Nouvelles Questions Féministes 15 (4): 42.Google Scholar
Gay, Claudine. 2001. “The Effect of Black Congressional Representation on Political Participation.” American Political Science Review 95 (3): 589–602.Google Scholar
Gay, Claudine. 2002. “Spirals of Trust? The Effect of Descriptive Representation on the Relationship Between Citizens and Their Government.” American Journal of Political Science 46 (6): 717–33.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Joshua S. 2001. War and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gould, Carol. 1996. “Diversity and Democracy: Representing Differences.” In Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Griffiths, A. Phillips, and Richard Wollheim. 1960. “How Can One Person Represent Another?” Aristotelian Society, Supplement 34: 182–208.Google Scholar
Harris, Angela. 1990. “Race and Essentialism in Legal Theory.” Stanford Law Review 42 (3): 581–616.Google Scholar
Hyde, Janet Shibley. 1990. “Meta-Analysis and the Psychology of Gender Differences.” Signs 16 (1): 5–73.Google Scholar
Inglehart, Ronald, and Pippa Norris. 2003. Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Katznelson, Ira. 2005. When Affirmative Action Was White. New York: W. W. Norton.
Kraditor, Aileen S. 1965. The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lawless, Jennifer L., and Richard L. Fox. 2005. It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Political Office. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Maccoby, Eleanor E. 1998. The Two Sexes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Maccoby, Eleanor E., and Carol Nagy Jacklin. 1978. The Psychology of Sex Differences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Mansbridge, Jane. 1980. Beyond Adversary Democracy. New York: Basic Books.
Mansbridge, Jane. 1993. “Feminism and Democratic Community.” In Democratic Community: NOMOS XXXV, ed. John W. Chapman and Ian Shapiro. New York: New York University Press, 339–95.
Mansbridge, Jane. 1999. “Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent ‘Yes’” Journal of Politics 61 (3): 628–57.Google Scholar
Marilley, Suzanne M. 1996. Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States 1820–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Matland, Richard E., and David C. King. 2002. “Women as Candidates in Congressional Elections.” In Women Transforming Congress, ed. Cindy S. Rosenthal. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 119–45.
Mendelberg, Tali, and Christopher Karpowitz. Forthcoming. “How People Deliberate About Justice.” In Can the People Decide? Theory and Empirical Research on Democratic Deliberation, ed. Shawn W. Rosenberg.
Morone, James A., and Theodore R. Marmor. 1981. “Representing Consumer Institutions: The Case of American Health Planning.” Ethics 91 (3): 431–50.Google Scholar
National Opinion Research Center. General Social Surveys, 1972–1982: Cumulative Codebook. Chicago: National Opinion Research Center. http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS/.
Pennock, J. Roland. 1979. Democratic Political Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Phillips, Anne. 1995. The Politics of Presence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scott, Joan W. 1997. “‘La Querelle des Femmes’ in the Late Twentieth Century.” New Left Review 226: 3–19.Google Scholar
Strauss, Julie Etta. 1998. “Women in Congress: The Difference They Make.” Ph.D. diss. Northwestern University.
Sunstein, Cass R. 2002. “The Law of Group Polarization.” Journal of Political Philosophy 10 (2): 175–95.Google Scholar
Swers, Michele L. 2002. The Difference Women Make: The Policy Impact of Women in Congress. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Thomas, Sue. 1994. How Women Legislate. New York: Oxford University Press.
Turner, John C. 1987. Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
Welch, Susan. 1990. “The Impact of At-Large Elections on the Representation of Blacks and Hispanics.” Journal of Politics 52 (4): 1050–76.Google Scholar
Welch, Susan, and Donley T. Studlar. 1990. “Multi-member Districts and the Representation of Women: Evidence from Britain and the United States.” Journal of Politics 52 (2): 391–412.Google Scholar
Weldon, S. Laurel. 2006. “Inclusion, Solidarity and Social Movements: The Global Movement Against Gender Violence.” Perspectives on Politics 4 (March): 55–74.Google Scholar
Williams, Melissa. 1998. Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Young, Iris Marion. 1994. “Gender as Seriality: Thinking About Women as a Social Collective.” Signs 19 (3): 713–38.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 1997. “Deferring Group Representation.” In Nomos XXXIX: Ethnicity and Group Rights, ed. Ian Shapiro and Will Kymlicka. New York: New York University, 349–76.
Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zerilli, Linda. 1998. “Doing Without Knowing: Feminism's Politics of the Ordinary.” Political Theory 24 (4): 435–58.Google Scholar