Efforts to understand the political implications of categorical prejudices—like racism and sexism—are complicated by the intersectional nature of social groups. Evaluating attitudes toward members of a single social category (e.g., African-Americans) in isolation can produce misleading conclusions, as racial cues commonly coincide with gender cues and create meaningful subgroups (McConnaughy and White 2014). The idea that different subgroups of women experience distinctive forms of discrimination is reflected in the concept of “double jeopardy.” Double jeopardy suggests that black and Hispanic women experience discrimination differently from white women or men of color because they simultaneously belong to a low-status gender group and a low-status racial/ethnic group (King 1988; Levin et al. 2002; cf. Sidanius and Veniegas 2000). As a result, women who are racial or ethnic minorities face a cumulative discrimination that extends beyond racism or sexism alone (King 1988; Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach 2008).

Extensive public opinion research on gender-related attitudes has focused on identifying and understanding the dynamics of individual gender role attitudes, as well as attitudes toward more explicitly policy-related and political issues broadly related to gender. One stream of research considers egalitarianism in a generic sense as in inquiries about whether men and women should have equal roles in public affairs (e.g., Jennings 2006; Sanbonmatsu 2002, chapter 3) and evaluations of the women's movement (e.g., Huddy, Neely, and Lafay 2000). Another line of research has solicited opinions about specific gender-related policies and issues, including support for the ERA (Mansbridge 1986; Plutzer 1991), abortion (e.g., Bolzendahl and Myers 2004; Wilcox and Carr 2010), gender-based affirmative action (Kane and Whipkey 2009), the suitability of women for political life (Sanbonmatsu 2002, chapter 3), and a variety of other issues and policies often noted as being especially relevant for women (Sapiro and Shames 2010).

When the 113th Congress convened in January 2013, women occupied only 17.9% of the 435 seats in the U.S. House, ranking the United States 80th globally in terms of the percentage of women serving in the lower legislative assembly. The underrepresentation of women is particularly puzzling, as political scientists since the 1990s have consistently shown that women candidates are not of demonstrably less quality than men on average (see Fulton 2012, 2014; Fulton et al. 2006; Lawless and Fox 2010), do not suffer from a gender-related funding disadvantage (Berch 1996; Burrell 2008; Gaddie and Bullock 1995; Fox 2010; Herrick 1995, 1996), and do about as well as men at the polls, accounting for differences in incumbency status (Fox 2010; Smith and Fox 2001).

It is difficult to overestimate the role candidate selection plays in determining the number of women in elected office. While an increasing amount of research has been dedicated to the impact political parties have on women's electoral representation (Caul 1999; Davidson-Schmich 2010; Kittilson 2006; Krook 2009, 2010; Matland and Studlar 1996; Murray, Krook, and Opello, 2012), the relationship between gender and candidate selection remains a relatively understudied area. Ashe and Stewart (2012) and Nieven (1998), however, provide empirical evidence that the majority of the variance in women's underrepresentation can be explained with demand-side factors.

Women are making important strides as presidents in Latin America as of late. This trend became evident in 2006 when Michelle Bachelet gained the Chilean presidency. Cristina Fernández followed shortly thereafter in Argentina. In 2010, Dilma Rousseff (popularly referred to as “Dilma”) joined this small yet growing group of women when she was elected the first female president of Brazil. Dilma's victory was no surprise since she had the support of the very popular outgoing president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. Nevertheless, the fact that Dilma is a woman is noteworthy given that Brazil's political system is overwhelmingly male dominated at all levels of government (Araújo 2010; Bohns 2007; Miguel 2008). Dilma's significance also stems from the fact that, unlike most women national leaders around the world, she occupies a relatively strong presidency, gained office through popular election, and lacked family ties to power (Jalalzai 2013).

The Islamist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, henceforth AKP) came to power in 2002 with the promise of consolidating democracy and strengthening civil society to further Turkey's bid to join the European Union (EU). To this end, in its first term in the parliament (2002–2007), the AKP implemented a set of political reforms that lifted the restrictions on political and civil rights such as the freedom of assembly, associations, and expression and improved the rule of law (Kubicek 2005; Müftüler-Baç 2005). The AKP, as it has promised in its election campaigns, also engaged civil society into policy-making processes. In the initial years of the AKP, diverse civil society actors gathered on broad civil society platforms and worked with the AKP government to consolidate Turkish democracy (Keyman 2010; Kubicek 2005). Although the Islamist segments of civil society began to integrate into the secular political sphere and to voice their demands more freely, Islamist women's civil society organizations (CSOs) have not fully benefited from this transforming political atmosphere under the AKP.

In convergence with the global norm toward more proportional representative electoral systems, many countries in East Asia have adopted quota strategies to address women's political underrepresentation (Franceschet, Krook, and Piscopo 2012; Krook 2009). Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan provide ideal case studies to investigate the impact of these efforts. While these countries share similar economic development, educational levels, and Confucian communitarian ethos, their experiences and progress on empowering women vary. For example, the level of women's legislative representation in the region ranges from a low of 8.1% in Japan to a high of 33.6% in Taiwan. And while Taiwan and South Korea embarked on constitutional reforms in the 1990s and introduced candidate quotas or reserved seats to guarantee women's legislative representation at all levels, Singapore and Japan have resisted legislating quotas but instead set 30% women parliamentarians as targets of party strategies. This collection of papers explores this intraregional variation with a comparative view on the origins and impact of quotas on women's political life. Specifically, we trace the origins of quota adoption and how they interact with the existing electoral and party institutions to improve women's legislative numbers.

In 2003, Japan's dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) committed to the goal of 30% female representation in management and political positions by 2020 to conform with the international norm to promote women's leadership. This nonbinding commitment received widespread media attention. In 2012, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe reemphasized this goal before the lower house election. Yet, in his first cabinet, Abe appointed only two women. Moreover, in the 2013 upper house election, the LDP fielded only 9 women out of 79 candidates, nowhere near the 30% candidate goal (Torres 2013). In September 2014, Abe appointed five new women in his cabinet reshuffle, two of whom were forced to resign a month later due to scandals. Four women currently sit on the cabinet due to one female replacement (Flackler 2014). Despite Abe's attempts to increase women in his cabinet, most agree that Japan is not on target to meet the 30% benchmark (Gender Equality Bureau 2012).

Gender and politics scholars have demonstrated that the women's movement plays a pivotal role in the adoption of gender quotas and in improving women's political representation (Bauer and Britton 2006; Dahlerup 2006; Krook 2009). They typically argue that domestic political transformations and international pressure help to mobilize the women's movement and demands for more women in elected offices (Huang, this volume; Krook, O'Brian, and Swip 2010). The South Korean case affirms these studies, as women's organizations often take advantage of the local political transformations to push for the gender quota adoption. However, we contend that without political parties' full commitment to implementing gender quotas and supplementing quotas with non-quota measures, efforts that prioritize the descriptive representation of women and formal quota legislation have brought only limited effects on enhancing women's political representation.

Women were severely underrepresented in Singapore's early politics. From 1970 to 1984, not a single female member was found in the Parliament. Unlike the experiences of Taiwan and South Korea in this issue, the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) of Singapore faced no similar pressure from the opposition parties or feminist groups to adopt gender quotas to “fast track” women into politics (Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005). Yet, the total number of women candidates increased from 0 in 1980 to 32 by 2011. And women's legislative representation reached a high of 23% after the 2011 general election.

Two things distinguish Taiwan from other Asian countries regarding women's political representation: a high level of female political representation by Asian standards and an early implementation of quotas by global standards. Women constitute 33.6% in the country's parliament, second in Asia only to East Timor (38.5%). Taiwan has also achieved a higher level of women's parliamentary representation than Japan (8.1%), South Korea (15.7%), and Singapore (23%). Unlike other young democracies that adopted gender quotas in the 1990s or even later, Taiwan has had reserved seats for women since the early 1950s when the country was under authoritarian rule. Quota reforms were later instigated subsequent to Taiwan's democratization.