Boosting women?s representation in government means understanding what type of gender discrimination is being practised, say Jay Euijung Lee and Martina Zanella.

More than 130 countries have gender quotas aimed at increasing women's representation in government. But simply implementing quotas is not enough to guarantee meaningful change. Political parties and voters may resist quotas, especially when prejudices about women's competence in politics are deeply entrenched.

Our research shows that even in such settings, quotas can gradually reduce biases - if the arrangements are designed appropriately. The case study we examine is municipal council elections in South Korea. Since they began in the 1990s, these councils have been overwhelmingly male-dominated, with women making up a mere 2% of elected officials. To combat this gender imbalance, a quota was introduced in 2006 along with wider reforms to the electoral rules for these elections. The immediate response from political parties was to seek to circumvent the quota's impact.

Candidates in these elections can be elected in two ways: 80-90% of councillors are elected via a multi-member plurality vote in constituency wards (the "ward arm") while the remainder come from a party-list via proportional representation (the "PR arm"). The quota required that every odd-numbered candidate on the party list for the PR arm be a woman. Since most councillors elected through the PR arm were the number one candidate from their parties - and therefore women - the quota ensured a greater share of women got elected through the PR arm.

But while parties complied with the PR arm quota, they strategically nominated fewer women in the ward arm, where candidates' gender was unregulated, diluting the quota effect. Critically, however, this resistance did not last. Over time, parties began nominating more women in the ward arm, reversing the initial response.

Specifically, municipalities exposed to higher quota intensity - those just above the threshold for an extra seat to be added to the quota-affected PR arm - saw on average 0.41 fewer women ward candidates immediately following the quota's introduction, compared with similar-sized councils just below the threshold. But they saw 1.10 more women ward candidates three elections (12 years) later.

We show that this shift towards more women candidates was due to parties gradually learning that their initial assessment of women as less competent than men was wrong, as the quota forced them to experience more women in action. Central to our study is a distinction between two types of discrimination:

• Taste-based gender discrimination occurs when individuals or parties simply dislike women, such that political parties knowingly compromise the average quality of candidates by selecting less qualified men over more qualified women.


• Statistical discrimination, by contrast, happens when fewer women are nominated than men because women are thought to be less competent or because there is more uncertainty around their competence.

Distinguishing between these two sources of discrimination is important because it influences what kind of policy is needed to address them. If taste-based discrimination is dominant, efforts should target attitudes and cultural norms, perhaps through awareness campaigns or educational initiatives.

But if statistical discrimination is the main issue, interventions can focus on providing concrete information about the true competence levels of men and women, such as performance measures of past men and women councillors.

Our analysis shows how to identify the two types of discrimination. We find that if quotas dismantle statistical discrimination, political parties will increasingly place women in competitive electoral wards where candidate competence is crucial for success. By gaining new information about women’s abilities, parties would realise that women candidates are more competent than previously thought.

As political parties in South Korea experienced more women in action, they realised their error in thinking that women were less competent than men

By contrast, if quotas are primarily reducing taste-based discrimination, we would expect to see more women running in less competitive electoral wards. In this scenario, quotas would not alter perceptions of women's competence but instead foster a recognition that women are simply "not so bad to work with". As a result, parties would nominate more women overall, but the new women would be less competent than the already-selected "top" women and thus placed in lower-stakes races.

We find evidence for the former explanation in South Korea, leading us to conclude that statistical discrimination is the main source of discrimination. Here, the increase in women candidates in response to quotas is more pronounced in municipalities where information was particularly scarce - specifically, municipalities where no women had been elected before the quota.

We also find that the increase in women ward candidates is seen among rookies with zero councillor experience. This demonstrates that experiencing quota women in action triggered parties to reassess the abilities not only of those individual women, but also the abilities of women as a whole.

From a policy perspective, the South Korean case highlights the importance of ensuring that quotas bring in new women and competent women. Quotas that simply regulate the female share of candidates can lead to women being placed far down on the ballot or in unwinnable constituencies, as seen in Spain and France (Bagues and Campa, 2017; Lippmann, 2021), limiting gains in female representation among elected councillors.

In other countries, quotas have been misused to bring unqualified women candidates into office, often through nepotism or patronage. For example, in Argentina, India and Mexico, female family members of male politicians have sometimes filled quota seats, perpetuating existing power structures rather than challenging them (Krook, 2016). In such cases, biased beliefs about women's competence may remain unchanged or even be reinforced, weakening the long-term effectiveness of the policy.

The South Korean experience offers valuable insights into how gender quotas can gradually erode biases, leading to a sustainable increase in women's representation and one that despite initial resistance, could endure even if the quota were later withdrawn.

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20 June 2025     Paper Number CEPCP706

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This CentrePiece article is published under the centre's Labour programme.