Legislative Effectiveness of Women Under Gender Quotas

In the field of politics and gender, political scientists have been keenly interested in legislative gender quotas: how they are adopted, how they place women into positions of power, and whether they change the descriptive, substantive, and formal representation of women. In this paper, I expand upon previous research by assessing the legislative effectiveness of women under gender quotas. I examine the legislative effectiveness of male and female Members of Congress (MCs) in the Argentine Senate and the Chamber of Deputies as defined by their ability to pass legislation both before and after the implementation of a national legislative gender quota. Contrary to much of the previous literature, I find that both before and after gender quota implementation, women MCs appear to surpass male MCs in their legislative effectiveness.