POLITICS-ARGENTINA: Women’s Presence in Senate Set to Take Off

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 8 2001 (IPS) - The stars of the campaign for next Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Argentina are men and the female candidates enjoy limited name recognition. Nevertheless, the number of women senators is set to increase at least 12-fold.

Although the campaign in this Southern Cone country has been marked by a high level of apathy in the midst of recession and economic crisis, nearly all voters know the names of the male candidates, but not those of the women. However, all political parties are forced by law to head their parliamentary lists in each province with two candidates, a man and a woman.

Women currently hold just 2.8 percent of seats in the Senate (two out of a total of 72). But under the new rules governing Sunday’s elections, decreed by President Fernando de la Rúa, their presence in the upper house of Congress will soar to at least 33.3 percent (24 seats).

The greater female presence in the Senate will not necessarily lead to a drastic change in the treatment of women’s issues, but women’s groups are confident that the upper chamber will no longer be the place where bills benefiting women are systematically shelved.

One of the driving forces behind the movement to boost women’s participation in political activity, María José Lubertino, the head of the Political and Social Institute for Women, could not even recall – when asked by IPS – the name of Mabel Müller, one of the senatorial candidates fielded by the opposition Justice (Peronist) Party for the province of Buenos Aires.

Müller and former presidential candidate and former governor Eduardo Duhalde are running against ex-president Raúl Alfonsín (1983-89) and Diana Conti, the ruling coalition’s candidates, in a close fight for the province of Buenos Aires.

Another of the best-known candidates is Rodolfo Terragno of the governing Alliance, who is competing for a seat representing the city of Buenos Aire alongside Vilma Ibarra.

Ironically, the only female star of the elections, parliamentary Deputy Elisa Carrió, is not even running for a seat in the Senate, despite the fact that she has the best image of any political leader – male or female – according to opinion polls.

However, many voters mistakenly believe they will be able to elect her, although the candidates for her new party, Argentines for a Republic of Equals, are socialist Deputy Alfredo Bravo and tango singer Susana Rinaldi.

Carrió decided not to run for the Senate because she is chairing the Chamber of Deputies commission investigating cases of alleged corruption during the government of Carlos Menem (1989-99). Nevertheless, she has appeared in the campaign backing the candidates fielded by her party, which broke off from the ruling Alliance.

The increase in the number of women senators is a given because the law stipulates that female candidates must hold at least 30 percent of the top positions on the lists for parliamentary elections.

Although the quota law went into effect in 1993, it has only been applied in elections for the lower house of Congress. Sunday will be the first time it will govern elections for the Senate.

Thanks to the new law, the proportion of women in the Chamber of Deputies climbed from four to 28 percent.

In the 257-seat Chamber of Deputies, each province is represented proportionally to its population, and the deputies are elected by direct popular vote. On the other hand, each province has three senators, who in the past were elected by the provincial legislatures.

The provincial legislatures, which are overwhelmingly made up of men, have elected women to the national Senate on very few occasions. When women were chosen, they were usually the wife, mother, daughter or sister of a government official, provincial governor or legislator.

In 1994, a constitutional reform implemented the direct popular election of senators, two for the party which took the most votes in each province, and one for the second-most voted party.

“With the quota law as it stood, women had no chance of making it into the Senate. The men left us out, arguing that there was no way to split two candidacies by 30 percent,” said Lubertino. “So we pressed the executive branch to codify the law specifically for the Senate.”

In consequence, President Fernando de la Rúa issued a decree that one of the two senatorial candidates for each province fielded by each party had to be a woman.

That means that regardless of the results of Sunday’s elections, the proportion of women in the upper house of Congress will rise from 2.8 to 33.3 percent at the very least – “a major quantitative change,” Lubertino told IPS.

“The qualitative aspect of the new female presence will have to be assessed in the long-term,” she added. “But the experience in the lower house indicates that we can expect female lawmakers to be more aware of women’s issues due to their personal experience as women, even if they are not specifically concerned about gender questions.”

In Lubertino’s view, once women hold a greater share of seats in the Senate, bills on reproductive health and assisted fertilisation or sanctions for divorced fathers who fail to pay child support will no longer be systematically blocked in the upper house of Congress.

“Up to now, we had a more progressive lower house that approved bills which were later blocked by the Senate,” said Lubertino. “We hope that will not happen anymore, and that the new gender balance will enable women’s issues to receive similar treatment in both houses of Congress, without delays or setbacks.”