There are a wide variety of socio-economic, cultural and political factors that can hamper or facilitate women’s access to parliament. Among the institutional factors of politics, both the electoral system and gender quotas can strongly influence women’s parliamentary representation. Compared with many structural and cultural obstacles of women’s representation, the electoral system can be changed more easily, and quota rules can be adopted, if politically wanted. Electoral reforms, thus, offer a viable option for increasing women’s representation (see CDL-AD(2009)029).