Additional information about gender quotas

In 1998, the Provisional Election Commission adopted a minimum 30% quota for women on every party list. In the 1998 elections this resulted in a dramatic increase in women’s representation at all legislative levels. In 2000, this rule was codified into the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina and applied to all party lists in the 2000 national and municipal elections. However, the electoral law was reformed at the same time to provide an open-list proportional electoral system, which subsequently reduced the impact of legislated candidate quotas (International IDEA 2004: 39). In the 2014 election, "in line with recent amendments to the election law, 42% of candidates were women" (OSCE/ ODIHR Election Observation Mission 2014: 12 ). However, women obtained only 21.4% of the seats, according to IPU (www.ipu.org) up from 17% in the 2010 elections. The changes of the Election Law in
2013 increased the quota from 33% to 40%. Nevertheless, in the 2018 general elections, women candidate registration was considerable, but the percentage of women being elected into the Bosnia and Herzegovina House of Representatives (BiH HoR) remained at 21.4 %, and the share of women elected into the BiH HoR on state level decreased from 23% in the 2014 elections to only 16% (two women) in the 2018 elections (OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission 2018: 2, 14).