Women’s sustainable representation and the spillover effect of electoral gender quotas in South Korea

Abstract

This article explores the indirect impact of gender quota legislation on the election of women to the South Korean national parliament. Although quotas mainly apply to the proportional representation portion of the mixed electoral system, pressures on parties to comply with quotas for single-member districts has brought about a ‘spillover effect’, whereby women elected via proportional representation quotas are later nominated and re-elected to single-member district seats for which parties do not apply quotas. This effect stems from a ‘no re-election’ norm in the proportional representation system that emerged after electoral reform in the 2000s, combined with the fact that being elected through quotas enhances women’s political experience and thus their chances to run for district seats. While the ‘no re-election’ norm initially exerts a negative impact by preventing women from winning the same seat at the next election, it has a positive prolonged impact on women’s sustainable representation by relocating women incumbents to district seats while also continuing to elect women via quotas.