The Argentine law 24,012 or Argentine quota law (Spanish: Ley de cupo) seeks to increase the

number of women in government in Argentina, by setting quotas for the minimum representation of
women an the ballots of each party at the legislative elections. The law was enacted in 1991, during
the presidency of Carlos Menem, and was the first gender quota law to be passed in Latin
America.
[1]
Following Argentina's lead, eleven other Latin American countries have since introduced
gender quotas to increase female representation at the national level.
[1]

Contents
[hide]
1 Description
2 Results
3 See also
4 References
5 Bibliography
6 External links
Description[edit]
The number of female legislators elected in the 1983 general election (the first election after
the National Reorganization Process) was minimal.
[2]
In 1989, legislation to ensure larger
representation of woman was introduced by the Radical Civic Union and supported by women
legislators from other parties. After initial debate in September 1990, in November 1991 the bill was
passed by a large majority of the Chamber of Deputies.
[3]
President Carlos Menem also favored the
proposal.
[1]
It became law as an amendment to the National Electoral Code.
[3]
Initially, only the
women who were not allowed in the party list in the required quota could request in court the
compliance of the law; it was amended later to allow any citizen to denounce parties that did not
follow the quota.
[1]

The law sets a quota of female candidates for each party, which must be both a 30% of the total of
candidates, and at least one for each third name in the rank. The success of the law is caused by the
characteristics of the Argentine electoral system. The parties offer a closed list of candidates, with
fixed ranks, and voters must vote for the whole list of a given party. The large district magnitude
helps as well.
[1]

Results[edit]
The quota law made a huge impact. The Argentine Chamber of Deputies initiated 64 female deputies
in 1995, 76 in 2001, and 93 in 2005. The respective percentages were 24.9%, 30% and 36.2% of the
plenum.
[2]
The law did not initially apply in the Argentine Senate, which worked with indirect elections.
The electoral system for the Senate switched to direct elections in 1995, dramatically raising the
number of female senators, who accounted for 2.8% of the senate in 1995 and 33.3% in 2001.
[4]
By
2007, 33% of deputies and 24% of senators in the Argentine legislature were female.
[1]
Although the
number of women in office has increased, Elisa Maria Carrio (2012) notes that the male politicians
who still dominate Argentina's political parties often place the name of their wives or other female
family members on ballots, with the expectation that they will have control over the women's actions
once they are elected.
[5]

Most provinces of Argentina enacted similar laws for their domestic elections, each one fitting into the
context of their local laws. Each province has a provincial legislature; as of October 2003, female
deputies accounted for 27.9% and female senators accounted for 20.4% of provincial legislatures.
[1]

Following Argentina's lead, eleven other countries in Latin America and South America
(Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Dominican
Republic, Ecuador, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru) adopted similar
gender quota laws during the following decade, with varying effects on women's share of legislative
seats.
[6][7]
A twelfth country, Venezuela, also adopted a quota law, but later rescinded it.
[6]
In the 2006
election, the quota law in Ecuador contributed to increasing the representation of women in the
nation's legislature from 15% to 25%. In Honduras, the institution of a quota law helped increase
women's share of legislative seats to 23% after the 2005 election, having been only 5.5%
previously.
[8]