Additional information about gender quotas

The first gender quota law was adopted in 1994. Initially, a transitional provision setting a 25 per cent gender-neutral quota on candidate lists for elections at the sub-national level was implemented, in order to give political parties the chance to adapt to the new rules. For the same reason, the law stipulated that the obligation for political parties not to include in their lists more than two-thirds of candidates of the same gender would be applicable from the 1999 elections. Thus, the quota provisions were not implemented in the 1995 federal elections.

Only in the 1999 and 2000 elections was the quota legislation adopted in 1994 used for the elections at all levels, including communal, provincial, regional, federal and European Parliament elections. The law was then revised in 2002 into its current form and applied to the federal elections in 2007 and the regional and European Parliament elections in 2009. The communal and provincial electoral rules are at this stage locally regulated, but largely follow the federal gender-parity legislation (Meier 2008: 43–44).

According to IPU, "Based on the sixth State reform of October 2011, the 71-member Senate, which comprised 40 directly elected members, was transformed into a 60-member indirectly elected body, comprising 50 senators of the federal entities designated by Community and Regional Parliaments and 10 co-opted senators, selected by the 50 senators." (IPU Parline).  Furthermore, "The Senate shall not have more than two thirds of its members of the same sex. It shall therefore be composed of at least 20 men and at least 20 women Senators." (IPU Parline)