Does Description Equal Prescription? A Case for Gender Quotas in Latin America

Extant research demonstrates that gender quotas do increase women’s descriptive representation in national legislatures, including in Latin America (Smith 2016; Mark et al. 2012). However, there has been an evident lack of research conducted to identify the relationship between gender quotas and outcomes of gendered legislation. I argue that gender quotas implemented on the national legislature in Latin America do increase the outcome of gendered legislation. I test my hypothesis by examining the government of Chile to analyze the effects of the augmentation of women in national legislatures. To do so, I use the government’s national legislative database to search for key words that pertain to gendered legislation. Based on my findings, with more women present in the legislature, there is an overall increase in gendered legislation passed