The Impact of Gender Quotas on Women’s Political Empowerment in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

The introduction of gender quotas as a fast solution to the underrepresentation of women has spread in a “quota fever” during last thirty years across the whole world. Whereas the numerical gains of women represented in the parliament have been proven statistically, the qualitative improvements in transformation of gender relations became the subject of recent case-studies. While some conditions led to the success of implemented measures, in other cases gender quotas proved to contribute to the stigmatization or marginalization of women in politics. Kyrgyzstan with the introduction of the affirmative action tool in 2007 was able to significantly increase the number of represented women in the legislative branch. However, the further research of who these women are, what they do and who they represent has been limited. This paper aims to understand the impact of gender quotas on integration of women in political life of Kyrgyzstan. It analyzes and compares the role of quotas in influencing on descriptive and substantial representation of women MPs in last parliamentary cohorts and argues that a range of indicators showed a sign of substantial improvement with the introduction of gender quotas to the electorate code of the country.