LESSONS ON GENDER EQUALITY AND WOMEN’S POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT prescribed numbers of seats in the legislature; because the other two models apply the quotas at the nomination stage, there is no guarantee that a woman will actually win the seat in question. Constitutionality of Quotas Despite the fact that the constitutions of many countries guarantee gender equality and that those same countries have made international commitments to the principle of women’s equal political participation, courts have had to grapple with questions over the constitutionality of gender quotas. For example, courts in Spain, France and Germany have considered challenges to the constitutionality of gender quotas in their respective countries. In Spain, the Constitutional Court upheld the constitutionality of the quotas after their introduction in 2007, concluding that they serve a legitimate purpose of ensuring equal participation based in the context of a lingering culture of sexism. However, the court also recommended that the legislature review the quotas’ efficacy and reassess the need for them once the goal has been achieved. 16 On the other hand, in France in 1999, the Constitutional Council overturned an electoral law outlining a new model of electing counselors in the Corsican Assembly, which intended to introduce the obligation that each electoral list ensure the equality of women and men, effectively instituting a gender quota. 17 The council issued a holding that it was unconstitutional to require gender parity under the Electoral Code because “citizenship confers the right to vote and stand for election on identical terms for all who have not been excluded on grounds of age, incapacity or nationality . . . . and no distinctions may be made between voters and candidates on grounds of gender.” 18 It was not until the adoption of constitutional amendments and a new electoral law the following year that quotas were put in place. In Germany, recent decisions by state-level constitutional courts in Thuringia and Brandenburg overturned new laws introducing quota requirements. At the same time, the Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court rejected a complaint protesting the current election law. In its ruling, however, the Federal Constitutional Court noted the low number of women representatives in the Bundestag and was critical of “the lack of laws requiring parties to have equal representation on state lists and constituency candidacies” but indicated that clear legal obligations for parity in the federal legislature would be necessary to implement quotas. 19 The Federal Constitutional Court did not rule on whether an electoral law based on gender parity would be consistent with the equality mandate in the German Constitution, noting that this is the purview of the legislature. 20 16 B.J.C., Feb. 13, 2009 (R.J. No. 38, p. 136) (Spain), https://electionjudgments.org/en/entity/a3sv54ah3bk 17 Conseil constitutionnel [CC] [Constitutional Court] decision no. 98-407DC, Jan. 14, 1999 (Fr.), https://electionjudgments.org/en/entity/d3oyce7ime7 18 Id. at 2. 19 Toni Spangenberg, Germany mulls gender equality law for politicians, Berlin-Zeitung (Feb. 2, 2021), https://www.berliner- zeitung.de/en/germany-mulls-electoral-gender-equality-law-li.138445 20 Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany in the revised version published in the Federal Law Gazette Part III, classification number 100- 1, as last amended by Article 1 of the Act of 29 September 2020, Article 3, Section 2, (Federal Law Gazette I p. 2048) (“Men and women shall have equal rights. The state shall promote the actual implementation of equal rights for women and men and take steps to eliminate disadvantages that now exist.”), https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html 8