the most common are political party quotas legislative quotas and reserved seats political party quotas are usually voluntary partyspecific and put in place to increase the number of women party candidates or elected representatives through setting a percentage of women legislative quotas are binding national policies that are enforced through legislation requiring all political parties to include a certain number of women in their lists of candidates for elections another method is to reserve seats for women in parliament through a national policy which ensures a certain number of female legislators since the beijing world conference states have increasingly adopted quotas to boost womens participation counter discrimination and accelerate the slow pace at which the number of women in politics is rising