Getting around the Rules

One method through which Mexico's political parties lessen the impact of the gender quotas (40 percent of legislative candidates must be women) is by running female candidates, then removing them for their male alternates if they win. We have eight such cases this year, four of them alone from the Green Party, which represents almost 20 percent of their total contingent. Despite the quota, women remain underrepresented in the lower house, with (by my surely faulty count) only about a quarter of the seats.