The stage at which the party gatekeepers actually choose the candidates is perhaps the most crucial stage for getting women into office.

For women to get elected to parliament they need to pass three crucial barriers: first, they need to select themselves to stand for elections; second, they need to get selected as a candidate by the party; and third, they need to get selected by the voters.

Figure 1 indicates the process of choosing members to parliament. While the steps involved in moving from eligible to aspirants to candidates to MPs are the same in most political systems, the actual process varies dramatically from country to country. In particular, party structure, party rules and party norms along with the country's social and political system impact on the recruitment process at different stages.

FIGURE 1. Legislative Recruitment System

Figure 1 is adapted from P. Norris “Legislative Recruitment” in L. Leduc, R. Niemi and P. Norris eds. 1996. Comparing Democracies: Elections and Voting in Global Pespective, London: Sage. p. 196. © INTERNATIONAL IDEA

Selecting Yourself

A women’s movement or organization focusing on women’s issues can substantially increase the number of potential women candidates aspiring for office.

The first stage consists of a person deciding that she wants to run for elected office. The decision to aspire to office is generally seen as being influenced by two factors: personal ambition and opportunities to run for office. For women openly aspiring to run for office is a difficult but necessary step to gaining political representation. A woman's assessment of her chances and therefore her willingness to run will be affected by the number of opportunities to run, how friendly the political environment will be to her candidacy, and an estimation of the resources she can generate to help her campaign if she decides to run.

One of the most important factors that can help increase the number of women seriously considering running for office is the extent to which a country has a women's movement or organizations focusing specifically on women's issues. Women's organizations provide women with experience in public settings, help build their self-confidence, and provide a support base if a woman decides to run for office. A woman who can draw on resources from a woman's organization to help support her campaign is more likely to run and is more likely to be seen as a viable candidate by the party apparatus.

Getting Selected by the Party

Another consideration is to distinguish between systems that are patronage-oriented and those that are bureaucratic.² In a bureaucratic system of candidate selection rules are detailed, explicit, standardized and followed regardless of who is in a position of power. Authority is based on legalistic principles. In a patronage-based system, there are far less likely to be clear rules, and even when they exist there is a distinct possibility that they are not carefully followed. Authority is based on either traditional or charismatic leadership, rather than legal-rational authority. Loyalty to those in power in the party is paramount.

Aspirants’ track record in the party and in the constituency is the most widely valued characteristic in potential candidates.

While these various systems emphasize different factors in choosing candidates, under any system an important consideration for parties is presenting candidates that the party believes will maximize their vote. ³ If certain types of candidates are seen as a liability, gatekeepers will shy away from nominating them. Research reviewing several individual country studies reveals that there is a set of characteristics party selectors look for in possible candidates across all countries. The most widely valued characteristic is an aspirants' track record in the party organization and in the constituency. ⁴ Perhaps the strongest manifestation
of this is the high rate by which incumbents are renominated. Even for new candidates, a past history of party participation and activism is important, although not a requirement. Visibility in the community either through one's profession, holding of public office, or other activity is also highly desirable.

Because incumbents and community leaders are disproportionately male, these criteria can hurt women. While different parties will use different and broader criteria, the stage at which the party gatekeepers actually choose the candidates is perhaps the most crucial stage for getting women into office. Whether party gatekeepers see women as desirable candidates who can help the party win votes will be influenced by a number of factors, including a country's culture as well as its electoral system, as we will discuss later.

Clear, bureaucratic procedures for selecting candidates can have a distinct advantage for women.

Party rules and norms will affect the way in which a party carries out the actual process of nomination. For women, bureaucratically-based systems that have incorporated rules guaranteeing women's representation are a significant advantage. In many of the Nordic countries, parties have explicitly adopted quotas guaranteeing that either 40 per cent or 50 per cent of the party's list will be comprised of women. This has had a dramatic and positive effect on women's representation in the Nordic countries.⁵ Even when there are no explicit rules to guarantee representation, having clear bureaucratic procedures by which candidates are chosen can be a distinct advantage to women. Clear and open rules provide women the opportunity to develop strategies to take advantage of those rules. When the rules are unwritten it becomes much harder to devise a strategy to break into the inner circle of power.

The case of Norway provides one example of how to take advantage of explicit and clear procedures. Norway has a closed list proportional representation system.⁶ Nominating starts with party committees in each county recommending a slate of candidates for the party list.⁷ The committee recommendation is sent to a county-wide nominating convention where it must be approved, position by position. Local party members in local meetings choose the delegates to the nominating convention. With these explicit rules, even before quotas existed, it was possible for women to identify crucial decision points around which they could mobilize to press for their demands. This mobilization was aimed first at the committee recommendation stage, and second at the nominating convention stage. They would start by demanding fair representation from the nominating committee. If the party nominating committee failed to satisfactorily take account of their demands, they would organize local female party members to maximize turnout at the local party organization meetings where delegates were selected. In so doing they could guarantee that delegates who would vote to ensure representation of women were elected to move on to the country convention. Such a procedure could become highly contentious and often merely the threat of mobilization would be sufficient to get party nominating committees to accommodate demands for women's representation in their nominating recommendations, rather than take a chance at having their proposals voted down by the party membership at the nominating convention.

Getting Elected

However, since party officials are convinced that the individual counts, they will continue to carefully choose candidates who they believe will strengthen their party’s chances of winning.

While this is most typical, it is not true in all countries. There are countries where the personal vote for the candidate is important ­ just how important is a matter of considerable debate in the political science field. As researchers have pointed out, however, even if it does not matter how the electorate views individual candidates, since party officials are convinced that it is important, they will continue to carefully choose candidates with an eye to those who they believe will strengthen the parties chances of winning.⁹ Most of the countries where the individual candidate is believed to have some effect are countries with majoritarian, single-member district, electoral systems. Even in these countries, however, there is considerable evidence that female candidates do as well as male candidates when facing the voters directly.¹⁰

Some proportional representation electoral systems utilize an "open list" ballot ­ that is the party nominates many candidates, usually in their preferred order of choice, but the voter has the ability, if she desires, to influence which of the candidates on the party's list should be elected. When voting, the voter first chooses a specific party ticket, but then she has the option of altering the composition of the list by either demoting specific candidates, for example by striking their name, or promoting a candidate by advancing the candidates name to a higher position on the party list (for example a woman may be the tenth candidate on the official party list, but a voter may move the candidate up to first position).¹¹

In such a case, being a woman may be either an advantage or a disadvantage. To the degree that women organize and actively encourage the striking of male names, this procedure can produce a surprisingly strong showing by women. A stark example of this occurred in Norway. Norway does not have an open list voting system for the national parliament, but it does for local elections at the municipality level. In the early 1970s, women were able to organize a campaign to promote women that was remarkably effective. In the 1971 local elections women's representation in several large Norwegian cities rose from being approximately 15­20 per cent of the city council to majorities on the council. This "women's coup" became the source of great surprise and pride at women's abilities to take advantage of the electoral structure. It should be noted, however, that there was a reaction in the following election when many men, who felt that striking male candidates simply because they were men was unfair, went out of their way to strike women candidates. In the following local election and in every local election since, the number of women elected in local elections in Norway has probably been less than it would have been had there been no personal vote.¹²

While this is a cursory look at the barriers facing women as they try to move from merely being in the eligible pool of candidates to actually becoming MPs, it should be clear that among established democracies the crucial points are to convince women to run and to convince the party to choose women as their candidates.