Abstract: Legislative gender quotas could contribute to the advancement of women in all spheres of politics. It is believed that quotas affect women’s attitudes about their role in politics, leading to a greater involvement of women in the political process. This paper proposes to expand the knowledge on the effects of legislative quotas on gender differences in political participation by analyzing the within- and across-country effects of quotas. The main argument is that gender quotas act as a symbol that signals to women that their presence in politics is welcome, leading to a subsequent increase in their involvement in political activities. This increase in political behaviour should not be reproduced in men, and thus, when gender quotas are present, the gap between men's and women’s participation narrows. Using the European Values Survey and data from 18 European democracies, this paper demonstrates that this indeed occurs in cases when gender gaps are compared before and after the introduction of quotas within countries. This result, however, is not replicated for across-countries analyses. European countries without legislative gender quotas tend to have smaller gender gaps than countries with them. This result is explained by referring to the context of the adoption of gender quotas. Countries that have adopted legislative quotas tend to have done so in part because women’s involvement in politics in their country lags behind women’s levels of participation in other countries of their region. Draft paper attached.

Katrine Beauregard is a Lecturer in the ANU’s School of Politics & International Relations. Dr Beauregard's work focuses on political behaviour and the factors that explain differences among citizens. After completing a master's thesis in Montréal on gender differences in political interests among teenagers, she moved to Calgary to pursue a Ph.D. Her dissertation investigated how political institutions can provide incentives and barriers that affect citizens' political participation differently according to their gender.