It turns out to be difficult to draw statistical conclusions about the representation of women in parliaments around the world under MMP vs. FPTP electoral systems. There are relatively few MMP countries, the representation of women varies widely from country to country in both FPTP and MMP countries, and it goes up and down with every election. For MMP countries it goes as high as 32% (New Zealand), and for FPTP as high as 30.4% (Tanzania). Every system has got to do better. On average, MMP is 2 percentage points higher (the exact number depends on the base year and on whose classification of electoral systems is used to determine which countries are MMP) but the difference has low statistical significance. FPTP and MMP have different geographic distributions so are differences caused by factors other than electoral systems?
What most of the countries with a high proportion of women MPs have in common, whether FPTP or MMP, is a quota set in law or by political parties (see quotaproject.org database) to guarantee the proportion of women candidates, or to reserve seats for women. In fact, the presence or absence of quotas is such a good predictor that the difference between the two electoral systems disappears altogether as an explanatory variable.
It seems like a necessary but not sufficient condition that there be more women candidates, and that the MMP system, through the legislation that establishes it, can also impose quotas on the number of women in lists or in candidates proposed by each party. But does such a change increase the number of women elected? There is one instance where a country went from a majoritarian system to MMP and back again, which makes for an interesting experiment. France had a single MMP election in 1986, and switched back again. And in fact the proportion of women candidates doubled in 1986 relative to 1981, and it went down by half again in 1988. But the proportion of women elected budged not at all between the three elections. The big jump in elected women came between 1993 and 1997, with little change in the proportion of women candidates. Contrarian lot, the French.
MMP does allow interesting experiments. Since some of the seats come from FPTP ridings and some from lists, it is possible to determine whether the women being elected come from ridings or from lists. That is to say whether the electorate will resist electing women, or alternatively whether parties will nominate women only in ridings they believe they will lose. At first glance, the proportion of women in list seats should be the the same as the proportion of women in the lists.
It’s very interesting to look at Scotland. If you separate out the percentage of women elected in the constituency seats and in the list seats, it’s very clear that it’s not the party lists that are putting women into parliament, it’s the local ridings. Women comprised 32.7% of candidates standing for constituency seats, but 35.6% of the winners. Women were 38.6% of List candidates, but got only 32.1% of the list seats (statistics from engender.org.uk). Women were more likely than men to win a seat if they were in an FPTP contest, but less likely if they were in the list.
Why is it that there is such a gap between the proportion of women in the lists and the ones that get list seats? One reason may be that the proportion of women is higher for some parties than others, and the ones with higher proportions are not the ones who obtain as many list seats. A second reason may be that women are lower down on the list than men, so are less likely to be selected. The third is a well-meaning strategy that backfires, putting women constituency candidates in the party list as well, to ensure they get a seat. If women win in the constituencies, they are no longer available for the list, which means the selection from the list will skip over the woman to the next available candidate, more likely to be a man.
In Scotland, all but 12 of the elected women are in the opposition. The current government of Scotland is a coalition of the SNP (25% women) and the Green party (0% women).
In Ontario 26% of our MPPs are women, the percentage is higher in government and higher still in Cabinet, while not reaching Quebec’s 50/50 cabinet. In this election 33% of the candidates of the 3 major parties are now women. Since in Ontario the percentage of women elected follows relatively closely the percentage of women candidates, it seems clear that Ontario will have over 30% women in its next parliament, and has a fair shot at outdoing all FPTP and all MMP countries.
The future trend is even higher in Ontario. Liberals have promised that 50% of all new candidates other than incumbents would be women. The NDP that 50% of the total, and the PC party that 33% of the total would be women. No Green party targets were found, and they have 17% women candidates. The NDP and PC parties have not reached their targets in this election, but in subsequent elections it looks like Ontario is headed to over 40% women in parliament. In this jurisdiction, a change in electoral system is unlikely to make a positive difference in this respect.
