Implementation of Quotas: European Experiences

This report examines women's political representation in Europe and announces a surprising problem with gender quotas, which elsewhere in the world have been an important measure for boosting the number of women in legislative bodies. In the newly democratic countries of eastern Europe, however, quotas often are rejected as negative reminders of the hollow declarations of state-sponsored socialism. Eastern and western European countries are compared by detailing quotas studied and implemented in Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovenia.