Policies for women participation in politics: how to assess gender equilibrium?

The paper addresses the issue of gender equilibrium in politics and how the outcomes of electoral mechanisms may be assessed. It relies on data and results of an evaluation of the effects produced by regulatory measures introduced in recent years for gender rebalancing in the elective offices. Women still encounter huge difficulties in being included in political decision-making. Even when they have the chance of participating to political competition as candidates, this is not a guarantee that they are elected and assigned to important political positions. The effectiveness of electoral mechanisms may vary a lot, because they need to be well designed and implemented to achieve good results. Also, effectiveness is conditioned by general electoral rules. The paper will discuss the "dynamic equality index", able to better assess the impact of measures, also considering a great heterogeneity in starting conditions. This newly developed indicator will be applied in the empirical part of the paper. Although a statistical recognition of gender shares among candidates and elected representatives is possible for all institutions in Italy, the impact evaluation is limited to the case of municipalities. In the other cases, the lack of a credible counterfactual forces us to limit to statistical analysis of observed change.