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This article seeks to reintroduce discussions on gender relations in politics back into scholarly and political debate. Many countries have adopted gender quotas, but it is unclear whether their implementation has meaningfully changed the prevalent inequalities governing gender relations in politics. This article considers whether the implementation of gender quotas could promote change, and assesses this change with reference to five criteria formerly used to assess the strategy of gender mainstreaming. These are a shift towards a more comprehensive concept of gender equality; the incorporation of a gender perspective intersected with other inequalities in mainstream politics; equal political representation; organizational changes in selection and recruitment mechanisms as well as the functioning of politics; and, finally, the displacement of hierarchies, and the empowerment of subjects. Reflection on and empirical illustrations of gender quotas with regard to these criteria reveal a mixed picture, demonstrating the need to reintroduce discussions about gender equality within politics back into gender quota debates. This discussion will not focus on the legitimacy of or need for gender quotas, but on how their implementation can contribute to the improvement of gender relations in politics beyond a quantitative sense. Approaching gender quotas through the use of criteria devised for assessing the gender mainstreaming strategy is helpful in exploring the potential of gender quotas in the transformation of gender relations.

Authors: Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo.

The Scandinavian countries, i.e. Denmark, Norway and Sweden are often described as European leaders within equal opportunity and diversity. However, in spite of the fact that the Scandinavian countries have implemented policies and initiated programmes to ensure gender diversity in all sectors and levels of society since the mid-1970s and beginning of the 1980s, progress is generally slow. Nonetheless, the three countries differ regarding public and political attention on the issue and hence on policies, intensity of implementation and management of gender equality policies. In this article, we focus on the representation of Scandinavian women in leadership positions in larger companies and academia, and discuss the scope and intensity of gender equality policies and their effects. Finally, we highlight key lessons learned from decades of gender equality work in the three countries.

This article examines the potentially damaging role that gender beliefs can play in hindering women's equal representation in leadership positions. Based on a secondary analysis of a large‐scale EU‐wide survey (Eurobarometer 76.1), the article shows that essentialist gender beliefs lower support for equality interventions such as quotas or targets, particularly among men as leaders. The results show that discriminatory gender beliefs partially mediate this relationship and produce a more negative effect among men leaders. The paper contributes to understanding the role essentialist gender beliefs often lay the groundwork for gender discriminatory beliefs. Those in turn hinder support for effective gender equality measures. Gender essentialist beliefs can be held by everyone but are more prevalent among men leaders. We conclude that greater gender balance in leadership cannot be achieved without tackling underlying gender beliefs, particularly among men leaders since they are called upon to enact change. We thereby argue that simply asking for men to become change agents for gender equality is not an effective strategy if underlying gender beliefs are left unchallenged.

Authors: Humbert, Anne Laure, Elisabeth Kelan, and Marieke Van Den Brink.

Since the 1990s, a growing body of research has sought to quantify the relationship between women’s representation in leadership positions and organizational financial performance. Commonly known as the “business case” for women’s leadership, the idea is that having more women leaders is good for business. Through meta-analysis (k = 78, n = 117,639 organizations) of the direct effects of women’s representation in leadership (as CEOs, on top management teams, and on boards of directors) on financial performance, and tests that proxy theoretical arguments for moderated relationships, we call attention to equivocal findings. Our results suggest women’s leadership may affect firm performance in general and sales performance in particular. And women’s leadership—overall and, specifically, the presence of a female CEO—is more likely to positively relate to firms’ financial performance in more gender egalitarian cultures. Yet taking our findings as a whole, we argue that commonly used methods of testing the business case for women leaders may limit our ability as scholars to understand the value that women bring to leadership positions. We do not advocate that the business case be abandoned altogether but, rather, improved and refined. We name exemplary research studies to show how different perspectives on gender, alternative conceptualizations of value, and the specification of underlying mechanisms linking leadership to performance can generate changes in both the dominant ontology and the epistemology underlying this body of research.