A new study from the University of California, Berkeley, found that people overwhelmingly support a balance of gender representation in government — even when quotas are required to achieve parity.
“In the best-case scenario, citizens would prefer a gender balance achieved without quotas,” said political scientist Amanda Clayton, whose research was published in the American Political Science Review.
“But we know from centuries of male dominance that that either doesn’t happen or happens at a glacial pace,” she continued. “So compared to men’s political dominance, women’s inclusion via quotas is perceived as more democratic and more legitimate than women’s exclusion.”
The study polled 17,000 people in a dozen countries across Europe, the Pacific, and the Americas. Even in the United States and the United Kingdom, where quotas are not mandated, a majority of respondents stated that gender-balanced governments lead to fairer and more democratic policies.
Gender quotas emerged roughly 50 years ago, pioneered by Norway and Sweden. Today, more than 130 countries use quotas to drive gender balance in politics.
And, Clayton pointed out, when countries do adopt quotas for gender equality, those policies tend to last.
“What we’ve found is that, typically, once a party has a mechanism to include women, it doesn’t get rid of it,” she explained. “So the quota just becomes sort of part of the electoral environment. People might not even refer to them as quotas anymore. They just expect that women will be equally represented.”
A version of this article was originally published in The 2026 Feminist Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
Header image via Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson (Public Domain)
