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ELECTIONS-BRAZIL: Women Want to Change Rules of the Game

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 26 2006 (IPS) - Activists and lawmakers fighting for equal opportunities for women in Brazil and for the political reforms that would make this possible are already prepared for frustration, as the lists of candidates make it clear that Sunday’s general elections will not bring about any major change in women’s limited representation in politics.

A quota law has been in effect in Brazil since1997, stipulating that at least 30 percent of each party’s candidates for Congress must be women. But only 14 percent of the current 19,166 candidates for the Chamber of Deputies are women, according to electoral court statistics.

Although not a single party has fulfilled the quota, they will face no consequences, since the law has no teeth. And even if the parties did respect the quotas, activists say the results would not differ significantly. The measure has fallen short, according to the women’s movement, as demonstrated by the slow rise in women’s representation in Congress, which seems to be leveling out.

On Sunday, voters in Brazil will choose a president, state governors and legislators, and 513 national parliamentary deputies as well as 27 of the 81 members of the Senate.

In the current legislature, women only hold nine seats in the Senate and 42 in the Chamber of Deputies.

In a list of 168 countries classified by the Inter-Parliamentary Union according to the proportion of women in the legislature, Brazil ranks 122nd, with the lowest proportion in Latin America – 9.1 percent – similar to Haiti and far outstripped by Cuba and Argentina, which lead the region with 36 and 33.6 percent, respectively.

“The objective conditions are lacking” in terms of political training, funding, and publicity that would enable women to compete in equal conditions with men, said Luiza Erundina, a parliamentary deputy with the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB).

The quotas are merely a “formal recommendation,” she told IPS.

Nor do women have the “autonomy to boost their candidacies,” because they depend on the party leadership, which is almost always dominated by “sexist men,” she added.

In an attempt to reduce the disadvantages faced by women, Erundina submitted a bill in 2002 to earmark 30 percent of party funds for measures aimed at expanding women’s representation in political institutions and guaranteeing that women candidates receive 30 percent of the advertising space that radio and TV stations must reserve for political parties during campaigns.

But the decisive reform needed to expand women’s representation in Congress is the adoption of a closed-list system in which voters vote for party lists, rather than for individual candidates, and parties determine the placement of candidates on their lists. In this kind of system, similar to those of Argentina and Uruguay, the candidates towards the top of the list are elected.

In Brazil, by contrast, voters cast their ballots for individual candidates, which means that even if parties nominate 30 percent women candidates, it is up to voters to decide how many women are elected. According to critics, this fosters political infighting and weakens party unity, while making it difficult for newcomers, like many of the women, to break into the system.

The women’s movement also argues that on the closed lists, women candidates must be placed in electable positions – for instance, in every second place on the list – in order to raise the proportion of women in the lower house of Congress to 50 percent.

And if that recommendation runs into resistance, women could be put in every third place on the list, which would ensure that women win one-third of the seats, and would bring about a gradual increase in representation for women, said Erundina, who served as mayor of Sao Paulo – Brazil’s biggest city – from 1989 to 1992.

The electoral reforms advocated by women’s activists and by the women deputies and senators in the current legislature, who vote as a bloc on women’s issues, would also include public financing for election campaigns while eliminating the private contributions that candidates have traditionally depended on in Brazil.

Campaigns financed by private funds represent “the privatisation of politics,” fuel corruption, strengthen the influence of economic elites and vested interests, and favour candidates who are able to attract funds, usually because they defend the interests of their donors, argues the Feminist Centre for Studies and Advisory Services (CFEMEA) in a pamphlet on “the feminist point of view on the political reforms”.

The Brasilia-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), which backs bills of interest to women in Congress, defends “affirmative action,” such as that proposed by Erundina, in order to ensure 50 percent participation of women in the Chamber of Deputies.

Women have formed a majority of voters in Brazil since 2002, currently making up 51.5 percent of the country’s 125.9 voters, which accentuates the gender imbalance in the legislature.

The quota law “was a positive step,” and has helped expand women’s presence in the legislature and in the leadership of political parties, but “we are far from our goal of parity,” said Sonia Wright, a political scientist with the Woman and Democracy project carried out by three NGOs in Recife, the capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, with the aim of increasing women’s participation in politics.

One of the factors contributing to the underrepresentation of women is feminism itself, “which has not fought hard enough for representative democracy” because it has put the priority on “participative democracy, confusing the women’s movement with the left,” she told IPS.

The unity of women lawmakers in what has been pejoratively dubbed “the lipstick caucus” only exists in the national Congress, and does not extend to the state and municipal levels, said Wright.

Women in politics today are still somewhat isolated from one another, and more dialogue is needed between female city councilors, state legislative assembly members, national legislators and executive branch officials, and with the various councils on the rights of women, she maintained.

Women’s political representation is limited at all levels. Only four female ministers sit on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s cabinet, comprising just 11 percent of the total. And just two of Brazil’s 27 states and 7.5 percent of all towns and cities are governed by women, while less than 13 percent of the country’s city councilors and the members of state legislative assemblies are women.

The string of corruption scandals that have dealt a blow to the credibility of all politicians – especially legislators – across the spectrum since last year have created conditions favourable to political reform, according to both Erundina and Wright.

The time is ripe to fight for rules that are less disadvantageous to women, even though the resistance from the sexist male-dominated parties is strong, said Erundina, who pointed to the hurdles faced by the proposals she has presented in parliament.

“Women who want to be active in politics face a triple and sometimes quadruple workday,” she said.