WOMEN/POLITICS-BRAZIL: Quota Law Falls Short

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 27 2000 (IPS) - Women account for just 19.14 percent of the candidates for Sunday’s municipal elections in Brazil, despite a law requiring political parties to reserve 30 percent of their electoral lists for women.

Of a total of 367,879 candidates running for more than 57,000 public posts in 5,656 municipalities, only 70,422 are women.

Women are at an even greater disadvantage in the race for mayorships, with 1,139 female candidates compared to 13,893 male, because no quota is possible due to the fact that each party fields a single candidate in each municipality.

Nevertheless, the figures represent a stride forward from 1996, when a mere 10.87 percent of those running for town councils were women, and when the new law — which at that time set a quota of 20 percent — was first applied.

But the goal of doubling the 6,536 female town councillors and 303 women mayors elected four years ago — 11.2 and 5.5 percent of the total, respectively — looks remote, admitted Almira Rodrigues, the director of the Women’s Centre for Studies and Advice (Cfemea), a Brasilia-based non-governmental organisation dedicated to studying policies and legislation on women’s issues.

Besides falling short of the quota, the parties have devoted less funding and TV publicity time to their women candidates, complained Rodrigues, a sociologist.

Women’s level of representation in elected posts is growing slower in Brazil than in other countries like Argentina, which also adopted a quota system.

The measure has proven to be less effective in Brazil due to the characteristics of its party list system, in which the candidates who take the most votes — regardless of their position on the list — win the seats.

In other words, the inclusion of female candidates on the lists does not necessarily mean they will be elected, because they would have to be among those who personally took the greatest number of votes.

The system also leads parties to channel their resources predominantly to candidates who are already well-known, and who can thus draw more votes than people lacking name-recognition.

Another hurdle for female candidates is that they tend to have less time available for planning their election campaigns, due to their domestic duties, added Rodrigues.

A study by Sonia Malheiros, a Cfemea technical adviser, found that 40 percent of the women elected in 1996 were single, widows or divorceés, compared to 25 percent of the men.

That figure indicates that “the conventional family structure and the duties it generates put obstacles in the way of political participation by women,” said Malheiros.

For example, Wilma Faria, whose re-election as mayor looks assured in Natal, capital of the state of Rio Grande do Norte, said that to continue with her political career, she had “broken two marriages,” one of them with a husband who wanted her to be home by a specific time — a sort of “curfew.”

Faria is one of the five women candidates who are favourites in races for the mayor’s office in state capitals. Another is Marta Suplicy, who the polls cast as future mayor of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city — population 10 million — and its “economic capital.”

Despite the continuing difficulties, activists and female candidates see Sunday’s elections as a positive moment for women. Opinion polls indicate that voters today have more confidence in women politicians, who are generally perceived as less corrupt and more efficient, said Rodrigues.

The numerous corruption scandals that spattered politicians in Brazil in the 1990s, in which men held the starring roles, have helped boost women’s credibility among voters, she said.

The limited presence of women at all levels of power has bolstered the view that they are less apt to become embroiled in corruption scandals, said Rodrigues, who argued that at any rate, “women tend to lead more honest careers, not because they are women, but because the very difficulty in reaching a prominent position leads them to take better care of their image.”

Town councils are the best route for political ascent for women, who are seen as particularly in touch with local and social questions and needs.

Today, 11.2 percent of the members of town councils are women, compared to 10 percent of the members of state legislatures, and just six percent of the members of the national Congress.

Futhermore, the educational level of the women elected to town councils and seats in state and national parliaments tends to be higher than that of men, Malheiros pointed out.

The women’s movement has staked out two overlying objectives for Sunday’s elections: to broaden women’s participation in town councils and mayor’s offices, and to take advantage of the campaign to broadcast the demands of women, including issues that are not limited to the local realm.

Women are calling for more childcare centres, police precincts and shelters attending victims of violence and domestic abuse, the decriminalisation of abortion, non-discriminatory sex education, the right to DNA exams to determine paternity, and improved medical care to drive down Brazil’s high maternal mortality rate.