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WOMEN AND POLITICS: THE INEFFECTIVENESS OF ELECTORAL GENDER QUOTAS FOR PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA
Abstract
Like in many other countries, the status of women in Croatian politics is neither satisfactory nor have their political rights been developed to an adequate degree. Croatian women face numerous prejudices and stereotypes and are almost invisible at a high political level. Consequently, the number of Croatian female MPs is small despite the fact that the rules on electoral gender quotas were introduced in 2008. As stipulated by those rules, there shall be at least 40% of women on parliamentary candidate lists. Instead of a rise in the number of female MPs, both the 2015 general election and the 2016 snap election brought a considerable fall of this figure, which causes great concern of the public. For instance, at the last snap election held in 2016, only 19 women (12% of all MPs) got into the Croatian Parliament. This paper provides an overview of the negative trends with respect to the number of women in the Parliament and analyses the reasons for the ineffectiveness of electoral gender quotas, using the Croatian example. The paper also proposes potential measures and redefines the respective sanctions with the aim to change the current situation.
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References17
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