Activists Call for Reforms to Boost Women's Representation
By Mario Osava

October 8, 2004 - (IPS) Brazil will continue to be a ”hobbled democracy” unless electoral reforms are adopted to increase women's representation in political office, said Almira Rodrigues, co-director of the Feminist Studies and Advisory Centre (CFEMEA).

Rodrigues based her assessment on the results of last Sunday's local elections in this country of 180 million, in which women accounted for only 7.3 percent of the mayors elected, a ”small step forward” compared to the figure of 5.7 percent in the local elections four years ago.

Of the 5,079 mayors elected on Sunday, a mere 404 are women. This number could grow slightly, because there are 37 new mayors who have not reported their gender to the election authorities, the results have yet to be counted in two municipalities, and there will be run-offs in 44 districts with more than 200,000 voters on Oct. 31.

Women's representation in city council positions will be somewhat higher, as they make up 12.6 percent of the total of 51,816 city councillors elected to take office in January. In the 2000 elections, women captured 11.6 percent of these positions.

In absolute terms, there was a decrease in the number of female candidates, from 7,001 four years ago to 6,555 this year. This was due to a decision adopted by the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), which oversees the electoral process in Brazil, to reduce the total number of city council positions by 8,481.

As a result of this reduction, ”women lost 446 candidacies, while men lost over 8,000,” Rodrigues commented.

But the smaller number of positions available made competition even fiercer, she explained, and this was a further disadvantage for female candidates, who tend to have fewer resources and less support from their parties.

The CFEMEA, a non-governmental organisation that monitors legislative and political issues that impact on women, is waiting for more data to complete a detailed report on the local elections.

For example, they are still waiting for statistics on the break-down of the women who were elected, by party and by state, in order to determine the factors that influenced victories and losses, as well as voting trends.

For the moment, ”we can state that we merely managed to hold our ground,” Rodrigues told IPS, adding that the results ”fell far below our expectations and the potential of the women in these elections.”

Brazil's political parties still fail to recognise the importance of women's participation in politics, which they continue to view as a purely masculine domain, she said. Unfortunately, this viewpoint appears to be equally entrenched among Brazilian women, for although they represent the majority of the population, they vote overwhelmingly for men.

The electoral system in Brazil is ”selective and exclusive,” Rodrigues said. ”It favours those who are already in the circles of power, and works against those trying to get in for the first time.” Without a major reform of this system, Brazilian democracy will remain ”hobbled”, she added, because the progress seen in successive elections up until now has been minimal.

If women's representation at the various levels of government in Brazil continues to grow at its current pace, it will take centuries to achieve gender parity, according to the forecasts of various institutions.

Eight years ago, the women's movement in Brazil succeeded in getting a law passed that was aimed at increasing female representation at all levels of government. The law stipulates that at least 30 percent of the candidates fielded by all political parties, in all elections, must be women.

But the law did not establish any penalties for failing to comply or any other mechanisms to enforce it.

As a result, female candidates for city councils in these last local elections represented just 22.14 percent of the total.

In the federal Chamber of Deputies, only 8.2 percent of the 513 lawmakers elected in 2002 were women. But the proportion of seats held in the Senate is even lower, while in the country's state legislative assemblies, it amounts to 12.5 percent.

The women's movement is demanding more effective reforms, such as public funding for election campaigns and closed lists of candidates put forward as a party slate with gender quotas. Measures like these have led to a rapid rise in the number of women in parliament in countries like Argentina and Costa Rica.

To move beyond the current status quo, parties would also have to place priority on women candidates by providing them with more funding, grooming and opportunities for campaign advertising, especially on television, Rodrigues said.

Electoral trends show a marked growth in the proportion of women elected as mayors and town councillors in the poorer regions of Brazil, like the north and northeast, while in the large, wealthy urban centres, power is more fiercely disputed, and women tend to be pushed out of the race, said the activist.

From: http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=25784