Women occupied 10% of positions in Congress in 20 years – 02/11/2023 – Power

In the last 20 years, women have occupied less than 10% of the seats on the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate. Held last week, the election of positions for this biennium elected only deputy Maria do Rosário (PT-RS), who will be the 2nd secretary in the Chamber. In the Senate, no women were elected.

This scenario is not different from the last ten House elections.

Survey of Sheet with official data from Congress points out that of the 121 positions available in the Chamber in the last 20 years, only 10 were occupied by women. In the Senate, they held only 11 of the 121 seats.

No woman in history has been elected president of the House or Senate.

The former senators Rose de Freitas (ES) and Marta Suplicy (SP) reached the highest levels of command in 2011. Rose, at the time a federal deputy, was 1st vice-president of the Chamber. Marta was 1st vice-president of the Senate, but left the position the following year to be Minister of Culture in the Dilma Rousseff (PT) government.

In the Chamber, the biennium with the highest representation of parliamentarians was two years ago, with three women at the Board in 2021: Marília Arraes (2nd secretary), Rose Modesto (3rd secretary) and Rosângela Gomes (4th secretary).

Marília Arraes and Rose Modesto, however, did not finish their period in office because they switched parties and lost their seats. They were replaced by Odair Cunha (PT) and Geovânia de Sá (PSDB), respectively.

In the Senate, 6 of the 11 positions held by women in the period were alternates. The biennium with the highest participation of women was 2011-2012, with three of them: Marta Suplicy (1st vice-president), Maria do Carmo Alves (3rd alternate) and Vanessa Grazziotin (4th alternate).

Although the final decision is in the vote, the appointment of the parliamentarian who will run for office is normally made by the party leader —and in a way that has already been agreed with the other leaders of the House.

The participation of women may still rise slightly this year with the choice of alternates in the Senate, as only the holders have been defined there so far.

For senator Eliziane Gama (PSD-MA), leader of the Senate’s female group, the choice of women for the substitute vacancies does not solve or minimize the problem, since the parliamentarians will only assume the positions if and when the holders are absent .

“I have a lot of conviction today: we will not move forward without going through the quota system, through a more coercive action to occupy spaces of power. [A indicação de mulheres para a Mesa] it will not happen at the whim of the leaders of the National Congress”, he says.

As, according to her, the situation will not change if it depends only on the will of men —who are in a large majority in the Chamber and in the Senate— it is necessary to approve projects such as the PEC (proposed amendment to the Constitution) presented in 2015 by the deputy Luiza Erundina (PSOL-SP).

The text guarantees the proportional representation of women in the composition of the Bureaus and commissions. Eliziane Gama also defends a project of her authorship that establishes that, in each election with two seats for the Senate, one of them is reserved by the ticket for women.

Even with the largest female caucus in the history of the Senate – with 15 of the 81 seats – women also failed to “get there” this year. The lack of representativeness was the reason for complaints during the election of the Board of Directors, after the victory of Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD).

“We are in the 21st century and it is no longer possible, every time there is a process in this House, a senator having to stand up and say: president, we exist!”, protested senator Leila Barros (PDT-DF) in the session of the last day 2.

In response, Pacheco asked leaders to nominate senators for alternate positions. For Leila, the president’s appeal shows that machismo is still rooted in the National Congress —and that the process of change will be arduous.

“Brazil is still far behind in terms of equality between men and women. We are experiencing a process of change that began in 1979, with the inauguration of the first elected senator, Eunice Michiles. Since then, we have conquered spaces, but Brazil it is still a sexist nation”, he says.

The only woman on the Board of Directors of the Chamber for the two-year period, Maria do Rosário says that it is necessary to make legal changes to change this scenario, such as the application of a growing criterion of quotas to achieve gender parity, and that the topic be discussed in society “as constitutive element of democracy”.

She will be the 2nd secretary, responsible for the international relations of the House with the embassies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, assisting in the issuance of diplomatic passports, official passports and visas for official missions granted to parliamentarians and civil servants.

For the parliamentarian, it is necessary to greatly increase the number of women in political representation “so that we are seen as equally capable and reliable for the exercise of positions of power”.

“We see that in the Judiciary, women have made this progress, because access is based on more technical criteria than political and cultural ones. That is why it is necessary to overcome gender views in society itself, electing more women, and joining forces to promote their ascension in these political instances”, he says.

For Flávia Biroli, a professor at the Institute of Political Science at UnB, the underrepresentation of women in positions on the Board of Directors is an effect of their lack of representation in the Houses themselves.

“Women find it difficult to be elected and, once elected, they are kept in peripheral positions from the point of view of the internal hierarchies of the Houses. What is necessary for a woman to occupy a prominent space is not the same as what is necessary for men .”

She claims that this goes through the political parties — and advocates the adoption of a quota mechanism. “If there are no reservations and quotas, the parties follow the same practices. What changes is when there is a regulation”, says Biroli.

Since the 1990s, electoral quotas based on gender and race have emerged in order to increase female and black participation in politics. Despite being a majority in society, they are a minority in the Legislative and Executive branches. In 2022, for example, of the 513 federal deputies elected, 422 were men.