Women representation without gender quotas : Seventy years of Italian elections

In 1993 gender quota laws were adopted. Two years later, the Italian Constitutional Court declared these laws to be unconstitutional. The Constitution was subsequently reformed to enhance women's political representation. However, quota measures were adopted only for local, (some) regional, and European elections. The literature on gender representation deals mainly with three aspects: electoral quotas, party quotas and reserved seats. No one of these measures was ever systematically and uniformly adopted for Italian general elections. Only the centre-left coalition decided to adopt gender double preference voting in their primaries for 2013 general elections. This paper deals with gender representation under three electoral systems. I will first show the consequences of the preferential voting during the so called “First republic” and the June 1991 referendum on gender representation. I will then analyse how the single-member districts impacted on women presence as candidates and in parliament also comparing it with the proportional quota of the Mattarellum itself. Finally, I will show if and how Porcellum closed lists had an impact on women representation.