1  

Women’s representation in the Italian parliament and the role of parties: a

contingent ‘equality’?

Pamela Pansardi, University of Pavia.

Mail: pamela.pansardi@unipv.it

Paper prepared for the ECPR General Conference, Charles University in Prague, 7-10

September 2016

DRAFT – PLEASE DO NOT CITE

Abstract. As a result of the 2013 elections, the rate of women in the Italian parliament reached 31.3%. This result, which has generally been welcomed as a promising step towards greater gender equality in Italian politics, is, however, largely due to the electoral success of the Partito Democratico – the only Italian party to have introduced gender quotas – which currently has 47.6% of the seats in the House of Deputies. Accordingly, the increase in the number of female MPs in the current legislature might not be due to a process towards a general recognition of the value of gender equality in politics, but, on the contrary, may be seen as a contingent result depending on the specific attitudes towards women’s representation of the different parties in the majority. Assuming that parties are the gate-keepers in access to political offices, this paper attempts to compare the behavior of the main Italian parties in the promotion of female candidates. The proportion of women in parties’ electoral lists, however, is not the only, nor the main factor in attesting parties’ attitudes to promoting or limiting women’s representation. This is due to the peculiarity of the Italian electoral system, a PR system with a majority bonus and closed electoral lists. The chance of a candidate gaining a seat in parliament is thus mainly determined by her positioning within the electoral list. This study compares the main Italian parties in terms of patterns of positioning of female candidates within electoral lists in the last three elections (2006; 2008; 2013) and tries to ascertain whether a general trend towards gender equality in politics can be detected or whether any increase in the degree of women’s representation is instead tied to the electoral success of specific parties.

The paper investigates the way in which Italian political parties promote or hinder gender

equality in parliamentary representation by looking at theirs candidate selection

strategies. As a result of the 2013 elections, the rate of women in the Italian parliament

reached 31.3%. This result, which has generally been welcomed as a promising step

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towards greater gender equality in Italian politics, is, however, largely due to the electoral

success of the Partito Democratico (PD) – the only Italian party to have introduced

gender quotas – which currently has the 47.6% of the seats in the House of Deputies.

Accordingly, the increase in the number of female MPs in the current legislature might

not be due to a process towards a general recognition of the value of gender equality in

politics, but, on the contrary, may be seen as a contingent result depending on the specific

attitudes towards women’s representation of the different parties in the majority.

Assuming that parties are the gate-keepers in access to political offices, this paper

attempts to compare the behavior of the main Italian parties in the promotion of female

candidates. The proportion of women in parties’ electoral lists, however, is not the only,

nor the main factor in attesting parties’ attitudes to promoting or limiting women’s

representation. This is due to the peculiarity of the Italian electoral system, a PR system

with a majority bonus and closed electoral lists. The chance of a candidate gaining a seat

in parliament is thus mainly determined by her positioning within the electoral list. This

study compares the main Italian parties in terms of patterns of positioning of female

candidates within electoral lists in the last three elections (2006; 2008; 2013) and tries to

ascertain whether a general trend towards gender equality in politics can be detected or

whether any increase in women’s representation rate is instead tied to the electoral

success of specific parties.

The aim of this paper is accordingly threefold. Firstly, its goal is to propose a

method for the study of the promotion or hindering of gender equality in candidate

selection in PR blocked list systems suitable to be applied to unstable multiparty systems

with high electoral volatility. Secondly, the paper aims at testing the method through the

analysis of the Italian case. Lastly, it aims at providing an analysis of the Italian case able

to give an account of the future perspectives for gender equality in political

representation.

1. Parties’ gatekeeping and gender equality in PR electoral systems

A first way to look at how political parties promote women’s representation is by taking

electoral results. The study of the rate of women over the total of elected candidates is

generally considered as a good measure of parties’ commitment to the promotion of

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women’s representation (Caul 1999; Reynolds 1999; Kunovich and Paxton 2005;

Stockemer 2007). However, the rate of parties’ women who gain a seat in the parliament

may misrepresent the overall party strategy, since it is entirely dependent on the electoral

results of the different parties. In PR systems, a second indicator of a party’s commitment

to gender equality is thus considered the rate of women over the total of candidates that

parties include in the electoral list. In open list PR systems, the election of one candidate

over another is entirely in the hands in the electorate. Accordingly, the rate of female

candidates that gain a seat in the parliament depends on the electors’ preferences, and not

from a specific gate-keeping strategy of the party (Valdini 2012). The rate of female

candidates over the total of candidates in the electoral list is then the only available

measure of the party’s attempt to promote gender equality. In open list PR systems, then,

the study of the rate of women candidates should be considered as a more effective

indicator of a party strategy towards gender equality than it is the mere account of the

parties’ women’s rate in the parliament (Rule 1994; Caul Kittilson 2006).

If the rate of women over the total of candidates can be considered an appropriate

indicator of a party’s commitment to gender equality in open list PR systems, with

blocked list systems the situation radically changes. While the alternative between a male

and a female candidate, in open list systems, is entirely in the hands of the electors, in

blocked list systems the elector has no choice than to vote for the party and conform to

the ordered candidate list that the party has compiled. The elector does not vote for a

candidate, but for the party, which selects not only who runs for the election, but also the

order in which candidates will have access to a seat in the Parliament.

Closed list systems are generally considered as more effective in the promotion of

women’s representation than open list systems (Matland 2005). While in open list

systems female candidates may be disadvantaged by “cultural gender norms” that shapes

the voters’ perception of women in politics (Valdini 2012: 740; see also Paxton and

Kunovich, 2003; Norris and Lovenduski, 1995; Jacob et al. 2013), evidence shows that

closed list systems offer better results in terms of women’s representation (Matland

2005). However, this does not occur merely in virtue of the list system; along with

variations in cultural and socio-economic conditions that shape the supply of female

candidates, relevant for the increase in female MPs is the effectiveness with which

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legislative or party voluntary quotas can be applied to blocked list systems (Schmidt

2009). In the absence of national laws that provide specific mechanisms in support of

gender equality, then, are the single parties, by deciding on the list order, the sole

responsible for the promotion or inhibition of gender equality in parliamentary

representation.

This paper focuses accordingly on the investigation of Italian parties’ strategies in

promoting or hindering women’s representation. Since in blocked lists PR systems, the

total rate of women in the list counts only to a certain extent, this study will focus on

investigating female candidates placement in the electoral lists. If women are placed in

ineligible positions in the electoral list, their presence cannot be claimed to account for a

commitment to the promotion of women’s representation on the part of the party.

Accordingly, to study parties’ strategies in the promotion/hindering of gender equality in

the parliament, means to provide an accurate measure of the parties’ inclusion of female

candidates in lists positions they expect to win.

2. Women’s representation in the Italian political system

The concern for gender inequalities is an issue that only recently entered the Italian

political debate, and that is, however, still striving to be adequately formulated. The issue

of gender equality in political representation was firstly posed at the beginning of the ’90s

(Gaudagnini 2005), when, after the collapse of the Italian party system that characterized

the so-called First Republic –i.e., the period of time between the first republican election

in 1948 and 1994 (Almagisti et al. 2014) – a general referendum posed the basis for the

introduction of a new electoral law. Feminist and gender equality movements worked

effectively to mobilize parts of the public opinion and succeeded in obtaining the

introduction of a quota law in the electoral systems originated in the 1993 Mattarella law

(Guadagnini 2005; Palici di Suni 2012). The rise in the women’s rate in the House of

Deputies in 1994 is the direct consequence of this law. However, the quota rule was

contested and eventually withdrawn by the Italian Constitutional Court for violating

article 2 of the Italian Constitution that prescribes to avoid any kind of discrimination.

After the withdrawal of the quota rule, the rate of women in the Italian parliament

dropped quite immediately to the levels previous to 1994.

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Overall, the analysis of women’s representation rate in the lower house between

1948 and 2013 shows a positive trend (Figure 1). However, only in the latest election the

rate of women went beyond the 30%, the rate that is generally considered as necessary

for the obtainment of a critical mass (Dahlerup 1988; Studlar and McCallister 2002;

Childs and Krook 2008). An even more interesting result emerges by comparing the rate

of women elected in the House of Deputies with the rate of women candidates for each

election. While, in the first years after the signing of the Italian Republican Constitution

and the granting to women of the right to vote, the rate of women elected in the lower

chamber was higher than the rate of women candidates, in 1968 the trend reversed. The

supply of women candidates was, accordingly, for the large part of the Italian Republican

period, exceeding the demand. A new inversion of the trend appeared only in the latest

election (2013), where women’s representation rate exceeded of 1.9 percentage points the

rate of female candidates over the total candidates of all the parties which took part in the

election (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Female representation and candidate rates (1948-2013)

Sources: For the women’s representation rate: Guadagnini (1993: 189) up to 1992; IPU Historical Archive of Parliamentary Election Results from 1994 to 2013. For the female candidates rates: own calculations based on data from the Historical Archive of Italian Elections – Ministry of Interior 1 (http://elezionistorico.interno.it/)

                                                                                                               1 In the absence of data on the gender of candidates in the original source (http://elezionistorico.interno.it), he gender of candidates has been manually coded and determined on the basis of name, given the Italian customary rules for gendered names. For names of difficult collocation, further research has been made. At the final stage, uncertain gender attributions resulted less than 0,001% of the total (1948-2012). The gender classification on the basis of names presents the problem of treating transgender candidates: however, the

1948   1953   1958   1963   1968   1972   1976   1979   1983   1987   1992   1994   1996   2001   2006   2008   2013  

Cadidates  PR   4.5%   4.9%   3.2%   3.8%   3.2%   5.4%   13.3%   11.5%   12.2%   16.3%   18.2%   40.6%   19.0%   20.3%   23.9%   28.3%   29.5%  

Candidates  SMD   9.2%   9.4%   11.2%  

Elected   7.8%   5.7%   4.1%   4.6%   2.8%   4.1%   8.5%   8.2%   7.9%   12.9%   8.0%   15.1%   11.1%   9.8%   17.3%   21.3%   31.4%  

0.0%  

5.0%  

10.0%  

15.0%  

20.0%  

25.0%  

30.0%  

35.0%  

40.0%  

45.0%  

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The actual Italian electoral system was established in 2005 by the Law Calderoli

(Law 270, 21 December 2005) and consists in a proportional system with majority bonus

(Bellucci 2008: 186). Differently from the pure proportional system in force from 1948 to

1992, which included preference voting, the electoral system originated in the Calderoli

Law presents blocked electoral lists, where the order of candidates is decided by each

party before the elections; in the lower chamber, one for each of the 26 multi-member

constituencies. In general, the selection of candidates is entirely in the hands of political

parties and is highly centralized. Moreover, Italy does not have legislative quotas for

women, and only two of the parties that competed for national elections (PD and SEL)

introduced party quotas for the 2013 elections.

In light of the current electoral system, the way in which parties promote women

candidates cannot be assessed merely on the basis of the rate of women over the total of

candidates contained in each party list. Since the likelihood of electing a candidate

positioned at the end of the electoral list is virtually null, the order in which candidates

are listed in the electoral list counts. Accordingly, to asses the degree in which parties

promote gender equality we cannot only rely on investigating the rate of women present

in each electoral lists, we should rather focus on investigating whether they show specific

pattern of list ordering of male and female candidates. To investigate Italian parties’

strategies in the promotion / hindering of women’s representation, four hypothesis are

proposed.

Firstly, the evidence of a female candidates rate which exceeds the female

representation rate in the lower house in all legislatures from 1968 to 2008 allows us to

assume that political parties tend to reproduce gender inequality by limiting women’s

chances to access to parliamentary seats. The first hypothesis reads:

H1: The gate-keeping hypothesis. Political parties inhibit women’s representation

by placing the majority of female candidates in ineligible positions in the electoral lists.

However, differences are present among political parties in terms of their explicit

or implicit commitment towards gender equality. According to Rule (1987), leftist

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         only known case (Vladimir Luxuria, XXV legislature) has been appropriately classified according to her gender identity regardless of the name.  

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parties, as well as their average electorate, are generally more concerned with women’s

and minority rights and may show more commitment to promoting gender equality in

politics (Lovenduski 1993). Evidence from the Italian case confirms the findings of the

international literature (Caul 1999; Reynolds 1999; Christmans-Best and Kjær 2007;

Wängnerud 2009) of a larger rate of women’s seats in the Lower House for leftist than

for rightist parties (Pansardi and Vercesi 2016). Accordingly, it is reasonable to assume

that this difference is given to a greater effort of leftist parties in promoting women

candidates in top positions in the electoral lists. A second hypothesis is accordingly

proposed:

H2: The party’s ideology hypothesis. Leftist parties are more inclined to promote

women’s representation by placing female candidates in winnable positions in the

electoral lists.

Thirdly, in the absence of specific legislative norms to promote gender equality

between 2006 and 2013, the rise in the percentage of women’s candidate who gained a

seat in the House of Deputies may reflect a change in the strategy of the different political

parties, pushed by the growing diffusion in the Italian political opinion of a gender

balance norm (Jacob et al. 2013; Valdini 2012). Accordingly, it is reasonable to assume

that rightist parties started to include more women among their candidates as an electoral

strategy to win the support of a larger sphere of the electorate in term of a contagion

effect (Matland and Studlar 1996). A third hypothesis reads:

H3: The contagion hypothesis

From 2006 to 2013, the degree to which women have been nominated for

winnable positions in the electoral list has increased along the entire political spectrum.

Lastly, evidence from international research has shown that new parties (where

newness is defined in terms of the year a party enters the political competition) tend to be

more supportive to women candidacies than other parties (Caul 1999). As highlighted by

Caul (1999: 82), new parties have fewer barriers of entries for minority groups since they

do not present yet “incumbents” that are threated by newcomers. New parties are

accordingly likely to include a higher number of women among their potentially winning

candidates. Accordingly, the last hypothesis is:

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H4: New parties hypothesis. New parties included more women in winnable

positions in the electoral lists.

3. Measuring gender balance in closed lists PR systems: from “safe list positions” to “expected winning positions”.

The literature on women’s representation in PR closed lists systems offers a few attempts

to empirically investigate the way in which political parties promote/hinder gender

equality. In general, the literature takes over a concept that has been used in the

investigation of gender equality in candidate selection in SMD systems, the notion of safe

seat (Norris and Lovenduski 1995; Murray 2010). In SDM systems, a safe seat is

described as a seat in which a particular party is very likely to win in the next election.

Accordingly, a party’s choice to nominate female candidates to run for safe seats tells us

something about the party’s attitude towards gender equality. Hazan and Rahat (2006)

endorsed and operationalized the same concept in terms “safe list positions” for the study

of parties’ candidate selection strategies in PR systems, where for safe list positions they

mean “the number of party seats won in the previous election” (Hazan and Rahat 2006:

376).

Other studies used similar measures to investigate gender equality in candidate

selection in blocked list PR systems. Davidson-Schmich, in her study of party quotas

compliance in the 2009 German parliamentary elections, operationalized the notion of

“winnable list spots” (Davidson-Schmich 2010: 140) by looking at both the previous

election (2005) and the one under scrutiny (2009) and by choosing as threshold the higher

number of seats won by each party among the two elections and then rounding it up to

the nearest number divisible by six. She offers three relevant reasons for her choice of

rounding up (2010: 140). Firstly, rounding up allows for remedying eventual losses in

accuracy given by the frequent inclusion of dual candidacies. Secondly, a large number

of lists would have been excluded from the analysis because less than six candidates were

elected. Lastly, rounding up allows for accounting for the party’s expectations, “their a

priori assessment of safe list places” (2010: 140) rather than for the de facto won seats.

A further contribution that bases the analysis on the operationalization of the

notion of safe list positions is Vassilakis (2013). Vassilakis proposes to classify potential

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winners and losers in a closed lists election on the basis of the results obtained by the

parties in the previous election. Her research strategy is supported by the fact that she is

studying two electoral turnouts which took place at only one month of distance – the

Greek national elections of, respectively, 6th May and 17th June 2012. She accordingly

studies the June election and divides candidates in four categories on the basis of their

position on the list by relying on the number of seats won by the party in the May

election: sure winners, marginal winners, marginal losers and sure losers (p. 26).

The reliance on the notion of “safe position” (Hazan and Rahat 2010; Verge

2010), and its operationalization in terms of “seats the party won in the previous election”

(2006: 376) in order to investigate parties strategies to promote or inhibit women’s

representation is however complicated by a number of factors. In particular, in PR

systems characterized by unstable multi-party systems and electoral volatility (as in the

Italian case, see Chiaramonte and Emanuele 2013), focusing on the count of the seats the

party won in the previous election to investigate its strategy for the future one seems to

run the risk of offering inaccurate results. In addition, the notion of safe positions lists

becomes difficult – or even impossible – to be applied in the investigation of cases where

is present a change in the electoral system (as in the case of Italy, which moved form a

mixed to a PR systems between the 2001 and the 2006 elections), as well as it is unable

to account for new political parties and of the splitting or merging of parties already in

the Parliament.

In order to assess the degree to which women are promoted or limited in the

access to parliamentary seats a new measure is accordingly needed. Instead of relying on

the notion of “safe position”, then, this work relies on the more careful notion of

“expected winning position”. The formulation of this notion is based on the assumption

that political parties compile their electoral lists in a way to maximize the probability that

favored candidates get elected, and that, in doing so, they take into account their realistic

perspectives of winning by estimating the current political climate. Accordingly, the

analysis of electoral polls offers political parties an indication of their potential success or

failure, and allows them to “secure” their favorite candidates in positions that are more

likely to succeed. “Expected winning positions” are thus those positions in the electoral

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lists that the party expects to win in light of the assessment of the electorate’s attitudes at

the time of compiling the electoral lists.

A possible measure of a party’s commitment to gender equality can thus be

assessed by focusing on the investigation of the inclusion of female candidates in the

count of the seats that the party “expects” to win in light of recent electoral polls. A

similar method has been applied by Luhiste (2015) in her investigation of female

candidate selection in closed list systems in 2009 EP elections. Luhiste offers a measure

of a “candidate party-determined viability” (Luhiste 2015). A candidate viability consists

in the candidate’s position of the list in light of the potential number of seats won by the

party, where the potential number of seats of each party is assessed on the basis of a study

that relies on polls in developing a statistical model for the prediction of the 2009 EP

elections (Hix, Marsh and Vivyan 2009).

This study will accordingly rely on electoral polls to determine parties’

expectations in terms of potentially winning seats, following Davidson-Schmich’s

assumption that what matters in list ordering is the party’s “a priori assessment of safe

list places” (2010: 140). The paper thus focuses on the investigation of parties’ strategies

in promoting or hindering gender equality in terms of the inclusion of female candidates

in list positions that can be regarded as “expected winning positions”.

4. Findings The researched focused on the analysis of the electoral lists (one for each of the 26

districts) of the major political parties that competed in the 2006, 2008 and 2013 Italian

elections, which are the three elections held with PR blocked list system. All the parties

included in the study gained seats in the parliament in the respective election, and the

criterion for their selection was based on size: they must have achieved more than 4% of

votes – as 4% is the electoral threshold established by the Calderoli law for securing

representation in the parliament2. The criterion supports the inclusion of Alleanza

Nazionale (AN), Forza Italia (FI), l’Ulivo, Rifondazione Comunista (RC) for the 2006

elections, of Unione Democratici di Centro (UDC) for the 2006 and 2008 elections, of

                                                                                                               2 For parties which are not linked to a pre-electoral coalition. For parties that run as part of a pre-electoral coalition, the threshold moves to 2%.

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Partito Democratico (PD) and Popolo della Libertà (PDL) for the 2008 and the 2013

elections, of Lega Nord for all the three elections, and of Movimento 5 Stelle and Scelta

Civica (SC) for the 2013 elections (Giannetti and De Giorgi 2006; Bellucci 2008; Bull

and Newell 2009; Di Virgilio and Giannetti 2014; Di Virgilio et al. 2015). However, two

more cases are included: that of Unione Democratici di Centro (UDC) and of Sinistra

Ecologia e Libertà (SEL) for the 2013 elections. The inclusion in the analysis of UDC for

the 2013 election is explained on the basis of reasons of continuity: together with Lega

Nord, is the only party that competed and gained seats in all the three elections under

scrutiny. SEL, on the other hand, is included because it is the only leftist party to have

gained seats in the parliament in the 2013 elections. In the 2008 election, no leftist party

obtained seats in the parliament.

Data for all parties (with the exception of AN and M5S in the 2006 and the 2013

elections respectively) show a rate of female candidates higher than the rate of female

MPs (Table 1).

Table 1. Rate of women over the total of candidates and elected

2006 2008 2013 Candidates

% Elected

% Candidates

% Elected

% Candidates

% Elected

% AN 21.6 22.9 FI 19.7 10.7 PDL 21.4 17.7 27.9 25.5 L’ULIVO 29.9 19.1 PD 42.6 28.4 43.5 37 LN 19.4 7.7 33.8 16.7 37.8 0 RC 37.3 14.3 SEL 42.7 21.6 SC 32.1 21.6 M5S 15.3 33 UDC 17.1 7.7 15.9 2.8 32.1 12.5 Sources: own calculations based on data from the Historical Archive of Italian Elections – Ministry of Interior3 (http://elezionistorico.interno.it/)

For a first assessment of the role of Italian political parties in promoting or hindering

women’s representation in the House of Deputies, it seems relevant to look at the

positions in the electoral lists where women were placed. Women candidates occupied                                                                                                                3 See Fn. 1.  

  12  

the first position in the list only 3 times in 2006 (1.9%), 8 in 2008 (8.9%) and 45 in 2013

(24.7%). Moreover, regardless of party affiliation, in each election women were

nominated for positions in the bottom 50% positions of each list in a rate which ranges

between the 52.6% (RC, 2006) and the 67.7% (FI, 2006) over the total of women

candidates for each party, with the exception of M5S and SEL, which show, respectively

a rate of 28.8% and 47.8% percent of women nominated on the bottom of the list (Table

2). On the other hand, women were nominated for positions in the top 25 percent

positions of each list in a rate that varies between the 8.2% (UDC, 2008) and the 22.7%

(SEL, 2013). Again, the M5S stands apart with the 45% of female its candidates

nominated for the top 25% positions in the list (Table 2).

Table 2. Distribution of women in the list positions (%)

Position on the lists 0%-25% 25%-50% 50%-75% 75%-100%

2006 AN 13.0 31.6 22.6 30.8 FI 14.0 18.2 35.5 32.2 L'ULIVO 15.2 19.0 21.7 44.0 LN 11.8 21.8 28.6 37.8 RC 17.5 29.8 28.9 23.7 UDC 14.3 29.5 29.5 26.7

2008 PDL 12.1 28.0 22.0 37.9 LEGA NORD 8.9 27.7 30.4 33.0 PD 15.3 19.5 30.2 35.1 UDC 8.2 33.0 34.0 24.7

2013 PDL 19.3 23.0 25.5 32.3 LEGA NORD 13.1 26.6 28.5 31.8 M5S 45.0 26.3 17.5 11.3 PD 18.4 24.7 26.7 30.2 SCELTA CIVICA 16.1 25.9 29.3 28.7 SEL 22.7 29.4 23.5 24.3 UDC 14.4 21.3 27.7 36.7

Sources: see Table 1

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The mere position of a female candidate on the electoral list, however, does not account

for the party’s perspectives of winning, and accordingly, may misrepresent a party’s

commitment to gender equality in representation. As parties, in compiling the electoral

lists, takes into account their realistic perspective of success, relevant for a more precise

understanding of their promotion of women’s representation is the investigation of the

inclusion of women in the party’s “expected winning positions”. Expected winning list

positions are calculated on the basis of the three official opinion polls4 (one for each year)

published by the most read Italian newspaper (La Repubblica) between 7 to 9 weeks

before the election, i.e., the period of time in which political parties are expected to be

compiling the electoral lists, which are mandatory due 4 weeks before the elections.

Results for the three elections under study offer confirmation of the gate-keeping

hypothesis: the rate of women included in the positions that parties expect to win goes

beyond the 20% in only four cases (Table 3): PD in 2008 and 2013, and M5S and PDL in

2013.

Table 3. Percentage of women over the total of candidates in “expected winning positions”

Polls results Total of candidates in “expected winning positions”

Women’s rate

2006 ULIVO 32% 184 18.5% RC 6.5% 25 8.0% FI 20.5% 113 9.7% AN 12% 61 11.5% UDC 5.5% 21 4.8% LN 4.5% 12 8.3%

2008 PDL 37% 217 16.1% LN 6% 12 0.0% PD 29% 165 27.9% UDC 4.5% 10 0.0%

2013

                                                                                                               4 All polls conducted by IPR Marketing for La Repubblica and published on 08/02/2006; 14/02/2008; 07/01/2013. http://sondaggipoliticoelettorali.it/asp/visualizza_sondaggio.asp?idsondaggio=1717; http://sondaggielettorali.it/asp/visualizza_sondaggio.asp?idsondaggio=2726; http://www.sondaggipoliticoelettorali.it/GestioneSondaggio.aspx (accessed 16 August, 2016).

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PD 31% 168 36.3% SEL 5% 19 15.8% M5S 13% 55 41.8% UDC 4% 10 10.0% SC 10% 43 18.6% LN 5% 17 17.6% PDL 17% 82 29.3%

Sources: see Table 1

The party’s ideology hypothesis, however, can be only partially confirmed5.

While center-left l’ULIVO and its successor, the PD, always attests themselves as the

parties which score the higher (or in the case of 2013, the second higher) rate of women

included in expected winning positions, the two leftist parties, RC and SEL, performed

quite poorly in the promotion of gender equality also in comparison to rightist parties.

Only the centrist catholic party, the UDC, perform worse than RC and SEL in the

respective elections. An exceptional case is the M5S, that while presenting the lowest rate

of female candidates overall (only the 15.3% over the total of candidates, see Table 1),

positions the 41% of them in the top 13% positions of its electoral lists. The ideology

hypothesis, accordingly, cannot be confirmed.

The reliance on the notion of “expected winning positions” also allows us to

assess whether the promotion of gender equality recently spread along the entire political

spectrum more carefully than the mere reliance on the measure of the overall rate of

female candidates.

                                                                                                               5 For parties’ placement on the right-left continuum, see Pansardi and Vercesi (2016: 12).

  15  

Figure 2. Rate of female candidates in the electoral lists by party (2006; 2008; 2013)

Sources: see Table 1

Figure 3. Rate of female candidates in the expected winning positions by party (2006; 2008; 2013)

Sources: see Table 1

Overall, between 2006 and 2013, all parties which run in all the three elections increased

both in the rate of female candidates and the rate of women included in expected winning

positions – with the relevant exception of UDC and LN, that, in the 2008 election, did not

ULIVO-­‐PD,  43.5  

FI-­‐AN-­‐PDL,  27.9  

LEGA  NORD,  37.8  

UDC,  32.1  

SEL,  42.7  

SC,  32.1  

M5S,  15.3  

0  

5  

10  

15  

20  

25  

30  

35  

40  

45  

50  

2006   2008   2013  

ULIVO-­‐PD,  36.3  

FI-­‐AN-­‐PDL,  29.3  

LEGA  NORD,  17.6  

UDC,  10  

SEL,  15.8  

SC,  18.6  

M5S,  41.8  

0  

5  

10  

15  

20  

25  

30  

35  

40  

45  

2006   2008   2013  

  16  

include any female candidate in expected winning positions. However, the comparison

between the rate of female candidates in the lists and the rate of female candidates

included in expected winning positions allows us to draw two different conclusions. First,

while all parties in the 2013 election (with the exception of M5S) included a rate of

female candidates close to the 30% or higher, only PD and M5S included a rate of female

candidates in expected winning positions that goes beyond the 30%. However, the PDL,

which, after the M5S, is the one which score worst in terms of rate of overall female

candidates in the 2013 election (27.9%), shows a 29.3% rate of female candidate included

in expected winning positions, with an increase of 13.2 percentage points between 2008

and 2013. Secondly, the parties which score better in terms of the rate of female

candidates in the lists are not those which score better in terms of the inclusion of female

candidates in expected winning positions. In the 2013 election, only the M5S and PDL

show a rate of inclusion of female candidates in expected winning positions higher

(respectively of 26.5 and 1.4 percentage points) than the rate of overall female

candidates. The other parties present a rate of inclusion in expected winning positions

that ranges between the 7.2 (PD) and the 20 (UDC) percentage points lower than their

overall rate of female candidates.

The overall increase in both the rate of female candidates in the electoral lists and

the rate of inclusions of female candidate in expected winning positions seems thus to

confirm the contagion hypothesis. However, a caveat is needed here. While the overall

increase in the female candidate rate in the lists may be seen as a clear attempt to provide

“ticket balancing” (Valdini 2012) in terms of electoral strategy, only the increase in the

rate of female candidates in the expected winning positions can be seen as a real strategy

to promote gender equality in representation. Accordingly, only three parties (M5S, PD

and PDL) seem to endorse strategies aiming at actually promoting women’s

representation.

As for the parties which run in the 2013, two of them can be considered as new

parties: the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S), lead by television personality Beppe Grillo, and

Scelta Civica (SC), led by the incumbent Prime Minister and life-tenured senator Mario

Monti. Their results in terms of women’s promotion to political offices, however, greatly

diverges. SC shows a rate of overall female candidates of 32.1% and a rate of inclusion in

  17  

expected winning positions of 18.6%. On the contrary, the M5S presents a very low rate

of female candidates in the lists (15.3%) while scoring the highest rate in terms of

inclusion of female candidates in expected winning positions (41.8). The data offer thus

an interesting scenery: SC seems to overall reproduce the same strategy of other center-

right parties (see UDC and LN) in promoting women more in terms of electoral strategy

than effective equality in representation, while M5S, against a small rate of female

candidates – that may be attributed to reasons of supply –, pushes them to list positions

that may secure them a seat in the parliament. Accordingly, the new party hypothesis is

confirmed only for what concerns the M5S.

Conclusions

The aim of this paper was threefold. Firstly, its objective was to propose a method for the

study of the promotion or hindering of gender equality in candidate selection in PR

blocked list systems able to avoid the problems related to the operationalization of the

notion of “safe list positions” (Hazan and Rahat 2006). The measure proposed does not

rely on the count of the seats a party won in the previous election, but is rather based on

the study of the party’s expectations of success in the current election at the moment of

compiling the electoral list. The method accordingly relies on national opinion polls to

delimit the threshold of positions in the electoral lists that each party can consider as

“expected winning positions”. This method undoubtedly loses some of the accuracy of

the “safe list positions” method because it does not allow to differentiate among different

electoral districts, unless polls at the subnational level are available. However, it gains in

accuracy by taking into account the overall political climate at the time in which the lists

are compiled, which is relevant when studying unstable multi-party systems with high

electoral volatility. Moreover, it is suitable to be applied to cases in which the method of

the “safe list positions” cannot be used: in presence of changes in the electoral system –

in the Italian case, for example, in the passage from a mixed to a PR system between the

2001 and the 2006 elections –, and in the case of newly established parties for which data

on the previous elections are just not available.

Secondly, the paper aimed at testing the method through the analysis of the Italian

case. Evidence from the Italian case tends to confirm the hypothesis that parties function

  18  

as gate-keepers for women’s access to parliamentary seats, by placing the most of their

female candidates in list positions that are not “expected to win”. Moreover, the

hypothesis of more gender equality in candidate selection for positions that are expected

to be winning for leftist parties finds only partial confirmation. While it is true that the

center-left parties (l’ULIVO and its successor, the PD) are those which score best in the

inclusion of female candidates in “expected winning positions” in all three elections, the

two parties which are located at the left (RC in 2006 and SEL in 2013) are among those

which score the worst. Moreover, the hypothesis of a contagion effect among the

different parties is confirmed by both an increase in the rate of overall female candidates

in the parties’ lists and an increase in the rate of female candidates in the “expected

winning positions” for all parties that run in the three elections. However, while all

parties that run in the three elections reached a rate of overall female candidates close or

higher to the 30%, only PD (36.3%) and PDL (29.3%) approached the 30% rate of

inclusion in “expected winning positions”. Lastly, the hypothesis that new parties tend to

be more inclined to promote women’s representation can only be confirmed in the case of

the M5S, that, despite an overall female candidates rate of only 15.3%, shows a rate of

inclusion of female candidates in “expected winning position” of 41.8%. SC, the other

new party taken into account, reproduces the same pattern of other center right parties in

placing the great majority of women in list positions that are not expected to win a seat in

the parliament.

A third and last aim of this paper was to provide an analysis of the Italian case

able to give an account of the future perspectives for gender equality in political

representation. In particular, we wanted to ascertain whether the actual rate of women’s

representation in the Italian parliament, that overrides the 30% threshold (Dahlerup 1988;

Studlar and McAllister 2002), was specifically tied to the center-left majority actually in

the government: if the PD, which actually occupies the 47.6% of seats in the Parliament

(in virtue of the majority bonus and of numerous cases of party-switching of current MPs

in and out of the PD), was the only party scoring more than the 30% in the inclusion of

female candidates in expected winning positions, we should have expected a decrease in

female representation in the case of a change of color of the government in the next

election. However, the data allow us to offer positive conclusions. Between the 2006 and

  19  

the 2013 elections, all parties increased in the rate of female candidates. Moreover, the

rate of inclusion of women in “expected winning positions” also increased. In particular,

the two bigger actual competitors of the PD, PDL and M5S, which are those who share

the highest chances to keep winning a large number of seats in the next election, are those

that in 2013 have shown the best results in terms of women’s inclusion in “expected

winning positions”: respectively, the 29.3% and the 41.8%. Accordingly, whatever will

be the color of the next government, the obtainment of women’s representation rate in the

Italian parliament does not seems the product of contingent factors, but rather a general

movement, across the political spectrum, towards the acknowledgment of the value of

gender equality in politics.

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