Parliament Abolishes Quotas for Women MPs
On April 4, the Parliament of Georgia abolished the mandatory gender quotas in an accelerated manner. 85 MPs voted in favor of abolition, while 22 voted against. Prior to this decision, the Electoral Code of Georgia required that at least one out of every four persons on a party list must be a woman.
The decision follows an agreement between the ruling Georgian Dream and the parliamentary opposition Girchi party under which the Georgian Dream backed Girchi’s proposal to abolish quotas, while in exchange, Girchi is to vote in favor of the GD candidate for the position of Central Electoral Commission (CEC) Chairperson.
In February 2023 the Georgian Parliament extended the period of validity of gender quotas in proportional party lists until 2032. In addition, the amendments stipulated that every fourth person on the proportional party lists for the elections scheduled for October 26, 2024, as well as for the next parliamentary elections scheduled before 2028, should be a woman (not, as it was specified before, “a person of another sex”). Initially, the gender quotas were voted down by the Parliament in 2018. In 2020, the Parliament endorsed the electoral amendments which, among other things, introduced the effective 25% gender quotas for party lists.
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