Additional information about gender quotas

According to the African Union observation mission to Mali in 2013 for the legislative elections, they observed a substantial representation of women among election workers and in political delegations. They also noted that great numbers of women voted on the day of the election. Despite these positive observations, they noted that this was not the case for female political candidates, where only 156 out of 1141 valid candidates were women (African Union 2013).  

In 2015, the National Assembly adopted a gender quota bill, requiring that at least 30 per cent of elected/appointed officials be women. The results from the 2013 elections, where only 14 women were elected/appointed out of the total 147 seats, has been described as a wake up call for Malians that sparked the activism and advocacy leading up to Parliaments passing of the gender quota bill with overwhelming majority (NDI 2017). The electoral law, last amended in 2016 contains legal provisions stating that no more than 70 % of candidates in the candidates list submitted for national elections may be women or men (see box above).

It is important to point that the Elections were planned to be hold in June 2019. However, there were not any elections and the Law No. 2019-23/AN-RM adopted by the National Assembly extended the elections to 2nd May 2020.