CHALLENGES 2005-2006: Women Making Headway in Argentina

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 20 2005 (IPS) - They had been waiting at the starting line for years. Now in little over a year in Argentina, several women have sprinted on to the public scene and have taken possession of positions of responsibility historically occupied by men.

Two women have taken their seats on the Supreme Court, two others battled it out at the polls in the most populous district, and another two have joined the cabinet, given portfolios – Economy and Defence – that have never before gone to women.

What has catapulted these mostly low-profile women to these new heights? Was it a desire to promote equality of opportunity on the part of the centre-left government of Néstor Kirchner, or was it their own merit? Whatever the case, the events are celebrated by many women who believe that there is no going back.

“These appointments have a tremendous effect on young women who are studying, and who see that they can aspire to similar positions,” Natalia Gherardi told IPS. Gherardi is one of the authors of a report on “Women’s participation in public office” (Participación de las mujeres en cargos públicos), published this year by the Latin American Justice and Gender Team.

In Gherardi’s view, the appointment of women to executive and judicial posts arose from the government’s desire to promote capable people, or people who had Kirchner’s confidence, rather than forming part of a specific affirmative action policy.

In fact, no bills aimed at guaranteeing greater access to public office for women have been submitted under the Kirchner administration, she noted.

Gherardi’s study, co-authored by Beatriz Kohen, says the arrival of women to public posts in the last few years has been largely a result of the implementation of a quota law that reserves 30 percent of the top spots on the parliamentary slates for women.

As a result of the quota law, the proportion of women in the national Congress has climbed to 38 percent.

In the October legislative elections, the dispute between two women, each at the heads of their respective lists of candidates, took centre-stage in the eastern province of Buenos Aires. The contenders represented the two sides of a split in the governing Justicialista (Peronist) Party: Kirchner’s wife Cristina Fernández, and Hilda González, the wife of ex-president Eduardo Duhalde (2002-2003).

In contrast to some cases in the past, there were no grounds whatsoever for suspecting that Fernández headed the slate because she was the president’s wife. The first lady, a lawyer, has had an extensive political career since her student days at the state University of La Plata, where she met Kirchner, and indeed was the first of the two to win a national public post when she was elected senator in 1995.

As for González, her personal career had less of an influence than her husband’s clout in the Peronist party in the province, of which Duhalde was the undisputed leader until the elections. However, González’s previous social work in the district and her experience in executive and parliamentary positions she held in the past won her a large number of votes and the second place in the elections.

In national and provincial government circles in Argentina, where positive discrimination rules do not apply, women are still very poorly represented, according to the report by Gherardi and Kohen.

For example, not one of Argentina’s 24 provinces is governed by a woman, and there are only four female vice governors.

Up to a month ago, there was only one woman on the cabinet: Alicia Kirchner, the president’s sister, who served as minister of social action until the end of November, when she resigned to take her seat in the Senate for the province of Santa Cruz. But her portfolio has traditionally been held by women.

However, on Dec. 1 the president did appoint two women to key posts that had previously been out of the reach of women. Felisa Miceli took charge of the Ministry of the Economy, replacing Roberto Lavagna, and Nilda Garré took over the Ministry of Defence from José Pampuro.

Miceli, an economist, had already made it to the presidency of the Banco Nación, the biggest state-owned bank, without the help of any well-placed family member. The same goes for Garré, a lawyer who was a political prisoner during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship and is now defence minister.

Garré is not the first female defence minister in South America. Michelle Bachelet held that post in Chile, as did Marta Lucía Ramírez in Colombia. And lawyer Azucena Berrutti is currently defence minister in Uruguay.

On Dec. 11, Bachelet was the most voted candidate in the first round of presidential elections in Chile, and according to the polls she is heading towards the January runoff with a good chance of succeeding President Ricardo Lagos. Bachelet was the candidate for the centre-left governing coalition.

Gherardi said that when women gain visibility and perform well in their work, their chances of holding onto key posts or gaining access to positions of greater responsibility increase.

“Miceli is a capable woman, with experience in the government, and above all she is independent of the most powerful economic sectors,” Virginia Franganillo commented to IPS. Franganillo, former president of the National Council of Women (1990-1995), is now director of the non-governmental organisation New Citizenship.

But Franganillo, who resigned her job after clashing with the Catholic Church because of her views in favour of decriminalising abortion, noted that “behind every woman who makes it, many others have worked to legitimise her place in the public sphere.”

She added that greater visibility of women in these positions will mean more public confidence in their ability to fill such posts. In fact, when Miceli first took over the Ministry of the Economy there was a certain degree of uncertainty, but this faded away as the minister demonstrated that she was well able to handle the job.

Other women like her will emerge if they are given the chance to show what they can do, said the sources interviewed by IPS.

According to the report by the Latin American Justice and Gender Team, only 18 percent of the posts of secretary and under-secretary in government ministries are held by women, and that average conceals imbalances between ministries, and between districts. In some provinces there are no women at all in these posts.

In addition, only 8.5 percent of mayors in Argentina are women.

In the meantime, the big step forward in the judiciary was a 2003 decree prescribing a new method of selection of magistrates for the nine-member Supreme Court, which never had a female justice, with the sole exception of a judge designated for a brief time by a military dictatorship in the 1960s.

Under the new rules, the candidates’ history and background are taken more closely into account, and gender parity has become a concern.

Two of the four nominees proposed by Kirchner in the past two years – all of whom have been approved – were women: Elena Highton, who joined the Supreme Court in June 2004, and Carmen Argibay, who did so last February.

Both women enjoyed high prestige in the judicial system, Highton as a civil court judge, and Arbigay as a criminal court judge who until her appointment on the Supreme Court was a member of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, at The Hague.

Gherardi felt that this advance in the highest court “was very encouraging.” “They are very different, but both are extremely capable,” she said.

However, she was saddened that the provincial supreme courts are still markedly unbalanced, with women accounting for only 18.7 percent of the members.

Argentina’s foreign service has also been very slow to integrate women. Only 8.7 percent of ambassadors are women, and there is no woman delegate at any international organisation where Argentina has permanent representation. So despite the progress made, there is still a long way to go to ensure equal access to public office.