Taiwan's Reserved-Seat Gender Quota for Local Councils

Taiwan's local government law (currently Article 33 of the Local Government Act) guarantees women a minimum share of seats in multi-member district elections for city, county and township councils: wherever a district elects four or more members, at least one in every four seats is reserved for a woman. If fewer women than required win directly under Taiwan's single non-transferable vote system, the highest-polling female non-winner in that district is added to fill the reserved seat, and the mechanism is administered by Taiwan's Central Election Commission.

41.6% of the Legislative Yuan (47 of 113 seats) were women after the January 2024 election, per Taipei Times reporting corroborated by the Global Taiwan Institute. Local councils stood at about 29.6% women (901 of 3,048 seats) as of the same period. Academic research (Pacific Affairs, UBC) shows the reserved-seat mechanism's own share of women's wins has fallen over time, from about 28% of women legislators entering via reserved seats in early decades to roughly 3% by 2018, as more women win seats outright without needing the guarantee.

The declining share of reserved-seat wins is evidence the quota increasingly acts as a floor rather than the main driver of women's representation. Critics such as legislator Fan Yun have proposed tightening the ratio from one-in-four to one-in-three; others note that around 40 of Taiwan's 135 council districts elect fewer than four members and so have no reserved seat at all, leaving pockets — mostly rural — with no guaranteed representation.