ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: Moderate Stride Forward for Women

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 10 2002 (IPS) - Women won 10 seats in the Senate and 43 in the Chamber of Deputies in Sunday’s elections in Brazil – a big stride forward, even though women’s political representation remains limited.

But another group, indigenous people, did not fare so well. Not one of the 21 Indian candidates to the national and state legislatures was elected.

The number of women doubled in the upper house, where they now hold 12..3 percent of 81 seats. In the lower house, female deputies now represent 8.4 percent of a total of 513 seats – all of which were up for renewal, compared to two-thirds of the Senate.

The figures could shift slightly, because the vote-count that ended Wednesday remains subject to review at the request of political parties, sociologist Almira Rodrigues, one of the directors of the Feminist Centre of Studies and Advice (CFEMEA), told IPS.

She also noted that the gender of some of the winning candidates could not be identified with 100 percent certainty just by their names.

CFEMEA, a non-governmental organisation based in Brasilia, the capital, monitors political questions of interest to women, including the progress and fate of draft laws in Congress.

Female candidates made a better showing Sunday than in the last elections. In 1998, only 29 women were elected to the Chamber of Deputies, compared to 43 this time around – a 48.3 percent increase.

But over the past four years, the number of women in the lower house of Congress had already grown to 33, as female alternates replaced male lawmakers who moved on to elected posts like mayorships or were appointed as government ministers.

The political force that contributed the most to the advance of women in parliament was the Workers’ Party (PT), which tripled its number of women deputies thanks to the election of 15 female PT candidates.

The leap in the PT’s representation of women formed part of the unexpectedly strong electoral performance of the country’s leading leftist party, largely due to the charisma and leadership of its presidential candidate, former metalworker and trade unionist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Lula, who garnered by far the largest number of votes – 48.4 percent – will dispute the Oct 27 run-off with his closest rival, social democratic candidate José Serra, a former health minister, who took 23.2 percent.

The growth in women’s share of seats in the national legislature was seen almost exclusively in the parties that have been in the opposition under the government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. That means a majority of the female lawmakers to assume their posts in the Chamber of Deputies in February are on the left, Rodrigues pointed out.

Another noteworthy outcome was that in eight of the country’s 27 districts – 26 states and a federal district – the most-voted candidate to the Chamber of Deputies was a woman.

In addition, 11 parties saw their female candidates to the lower house of Congress elected, compared to just seven in 1998.

Thus, advances were seen in the total number of female parliamentarians; the large number of votes obtained by several women candidates; and the expansion of female representation in terms of both party affiliation and geographic spread, as the number of parties and states with female deputies and senators increased, Rodrigues noted.

Nevertheless, the CFEMEA activist said that while the results were excellent, Brazil is still far from the agreed target of at least 30 percent female representation in Congress.

By law, the political parties must reserve 30 percent of their parliamentary candidacies for women. But no party has ever complied with the quota, which was adopted in 1996.

In addition, female candidates receive less funding for their campaigns than men, which Rodrigues likened to ”beginning a race from far behind the starting-line.”

She said ”more affirmative action” would be needed to meet the 30 percent target, as well as special treatment, training courses, and greater investment by parties in their female candidates.

Brazil’s indigenous people, meanwhile, performed far worse than women in the elections, as not a single one of the 21 Indian candidates running for the national or state legislatures was elected.

But José Adalberto da Silva, a candidate in the northern Amazon jungle state of Roraima, fell just a few votes shy of being elected to the Chamber of Deputies.

Just when he appeared to be the second indigenous person ever elected to the national Congress, the tallying of the votes from the last three ballot boxes showed he was just 74 votes short.

Da Silva, a leader of the Macuxi indigenous community who ran for the Communist Party of Brazil, backed by a broader leftist coalition, told IPS that he still had a faint hope of securing the necessary votes once the recount of ballot boxes that face legal challenges is completed, a process that should take around two weeks.

In Congress, da Silva planned to advocate agricultural development programmes, more education, and support for indigenous groups in both rural and urban areas. But ”The fight is not over. There will be new elections in the future,” he said.

Da Silva is now the first alternate to a woman deputy for Roraima who was also backed by the leftist coalition.

Another indigenous man, Antonio Ferreira da Silva, of the Apurinam ethnic group, is the second alternate to Senator Marina Silva, representing another Amazon jungle state, Acre. But it is unlikely that either of the two Indian candidates will have a chance to sit in Congress.

Only one indigenous representative has ever been elected to Brazil’s national legislature: Mario Juruna, a Xavante Indian, who was elected in 1982 for the state of Rio de Janeiro. However, he failed his bid for reelection. He died early this year in Brasilia.

Brazil, a country of 170 million, is home to around 350,000 Indians, compared to an estimated five million when the Portuguese first arrived in 1500.

ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: Moderate Stride Forward for Women

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 10 2002 (IPS) - Women won 10 seats in the Senate and 43 in the Chamber of Deputies in Sunday’s elections in Brazil — a big stride forward, even though women’s political representation remains limited.
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