How do Gender Quotas get Subverted? Insights from the Italian 2018 General Elections

In 2018, the Italian Parliament was elected with a new electoral law introducing gender quotas. However, results in terms of gender representation were not as positive as one could expect. What went wrong? Why are women still under-represented? The literature has sometimes reached diverging conclusions on the effects of quotas on gender representation. The present article traces the process from candidate selection to taking office, showing how inequalities interact and compound along the way, and advances our understanding of the elements hindering women representation even in an electoral system providing for mandatory gender quotas.