ABSTRACT
Gender quotas remain controversial. The specific controversies surrounding gender quotas vary across countries and regions. The type of controversy influences not only the likelihood of gender quotas being adopted, but also the form that these quotas take and the effectiveness of their implementation. The region discussed in this chapter comprises 17 countries — Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States - that are part of what is sometimes, paradoxically, termed the 'West'.' Unlike the other regions discussed in this book, it is a political rather than a geographical region: although located on three different continents, the countries share important commonalities as stable representative democracies in which the socio-economic position of women is relatively high. Democratic institutions, nonetheless, vary widely across these countries and include majoritarian and proportional electoral systems, conflict-and consensus-based party systems, and parliamentary and presidential governments, organized according to unitary and federal principles. Further, despite important gains in women's social and economic status in recent years, individual countries differ dramatically with regard to the percentage of women in parliament, ranging from 11.5 per cent in Italy to 36.7 per cent in the Netherlands.
