Analysis: Rousseff’s Mirage, or Why Brazilian Women Are Lacking in Elected Positions

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Brazilian Senate used a Christmas recess to make a small reform of historical significance. When the works were completed, the plenary finally had a women’s bathroom. This was only a few years ago, in 2016.

Until then, the 12 female senators, like all their predecessors, had to use the bathroom in the adjacent restaurant. After years of complaints, the female representatives of popular sovereignty succeeded in having the men’s restroom split in two. The long struggle to secure this restroom in Brasília – with buildings designed by the genius of Oscar Niemeyer as a symbol of modernity – reflects the presence of elected female politicians in Brazilian institutions better than the fact that Brazil had a female president.

How is it possible that a country that has had a 30 percent quota for women for 25 years, has only 15 percent of female legislators?

Yes, Dilma Rousseff made history as tke first female Brazilian head of of state since Princess Isabel, daughter of Emperor Pedro II. But Dilma’s achievement was not a reflection of a significant female presence in the lower echelons of power. In fact, Dilma arrived there by popular vote and by dint of support from Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who placed her on the starting line. Her presidency also failed to produce a significant increase of women in politics.

Now, when Brazil has a President who was condemned for telling a female deputy that she was so ugly that she didn’t deserve to be raped, the circumstances are more adverse. Not that Dilma Rousseff’s Ministries were in parity, but Jair Bolsonaro has only two female Ministers. That is, one fifth as many as the military Ministers. Moreover, the President considers gender equality to be a dangerous communist ideology.

But under this façade, there is a structural problem. Rousseff was largely a mirage, because Brazil is still ranked among the last in the world in terms of female elected officials: deputies, senators, governors, mayors and city councilors. Some civil society initiatives are shaping female candidates for the November municipal elections.

The reality in 2020 is that women account for about 15 percent of all these positions elected at the polls, a proportion similar to that of Bahrain and light-years away from Sweden, but also from Bolivia (53 percent female deputies) and Mexico (48 percent).

“It is a shameful situation that places Brazil among the worst countries in the world when it comes to women’s political involvement and the defense of their rights,” Áurea Carolina de Freitas Silva, 36, a PSOL federal deputy since last year and pre-candidate to the Belo Horizonte mayoralty, said by phone. “Having quotas is not enough,” adds this black woman, who is a real exception in a Congress that has little to do with the diversity that marks Brazil’s populace. White men are the overwhelming majority.

Women conquer political presence and power at a snail’s pace, despite the fact that there have been legal quotas for 25 years to encourage their inclusion in politics. And although 15 percent of female deputies is a small proportion compared to the rest of the world, the truth is that it is a record for Brazil: there have never been this many in the Chamber of Deputies.

Where is the trap?

The brief explanation is that the parties’ resistance – from all of them, though somewhat more from the rightists than the leftists – has been fierce over the years. The white men who rule the parties do not want to give up their power. “The parties use every loophole they find to get around the quotas,” says Hannah Maruci Aflalo, a researcher at the University of São Paulo specializing in female political representation.

“Initially they used the semantic argument, then they came up with the fraudulent candidacies…” says the Professor, whose detailed explanation can be summed up as follows: The parties, with their deeply-rooted macho structures, first argued that the rules only forced them to reserve 30 percent of the candidacies for women, not that they would effectively field and support them. They said they were looking for aspirants, but could not find them. When the rules forced them to have one-third female candidates, fraudulent candidancies flourished.

They placed any female name on their list of candidates, and it mattered little if they got any votes, because they followed the letter of the law. One-third of the female candidacies to the Chamber of Deputies in the last elections were fake, according to a study. Moreover, virtually every party had a candidate who did not get a single vote; in other words, there were female candidates who voted for someone else.

In a perverse twist, parties received money from taxpayers to support women, but they still failed to gain power. That’s how the 2018 reform came about, explains Maruci Aflalo, in which 30 percent of federal electoral funds are allocated to female candidates’ campaigns.

According to the expert, this is a positive shift, because now it’s about funding. “The parties will not want to waste money,” she says. Once again, a number of parties have interpreted this reform in their own way, so as to reduce change as much as possible. Rather than feminizing their lists of candidates, they invested in only one, and suddenly there were more candidates for vice-president in the last elections: vice-president, vice-governor…

Brazilians won the right to vote in 1932, and Dilma Rousseff governed between 2011 and 2016, but today, there is only one woman among the 27 governors – from Lula and Dilma’s Workers’ Party (PT). But this is not the worst. In the Legislative Assembly of Mato Grosso do Sul, there are no women. None at all. The 24 state deputies are men.

Brazilian politics is so masculine that on Sundays the most read newspaper selection of statements of the week rarely includes one said by a woman; this absence contrasts with the marked presence of female analysts in the press and TV, or in command of police investigations.

A Bolsonarist deputy recently introduced a bill to end the 30 percent quota for being, according to her, an “ideological burden”. Conversely, there is another bill that calls for half of the seats to be reserved for women, including 27 percent for black women. Because although black women make up 27 percent of the population, two percent of female deputies is insignificant.

“We had to build exceptional trajectories to be here,” says deputy Áurea Carolina, referring to herself and party colleagues such as the murdered Marielle Franco, a city councilor from Rio, and also deputy Talíria Petrone, black women (and feminists) who before reaching the front line of politics built solid trajectories in social movements or academia.

In the year and a half in which she has been in Congress, Áurea has had to endure discriminatory attitudes and comments. But she does not want to dwell on that. She prefers to highlight her work so that the needs, claims and desires of women and black people, but also of LGBT, disabled or indigenous Brazilians, are heard within the corridors of power.

This leftist deputy says that sometimes, even in such a polarized Brazil, there are moments of sorority, of cumplicity among female deputies, despite the many things that divide them: “These are occasional moments. I remember the day when a PSDB female deputy presided the plenary session and a male deputy made a sexist comment. We all sympathized with the victim,” she said.

If getting there is difficult, remaining in office is too. The fact that Bolsonaro is known for his sexist comments did not stop him from winning among the female electorate. And although the Prosecutor’s Office is investigating him for misogyny, his popularity is breaking records. That provides insight into the environment. Pornographic messages, sexist defamatory campaigns, sexist jokes, threats and criticism of their looks are commonplace in Brazilian politics.

Many supporters of ex-president Dilma see misogynous features in the campaign that led to her impeachment. In addition to “whore,” she often heard “Dilma, go home,” “Dilma, go do the laundry”. The opposition’s war cry now is “Bolsonaro, out”. Significantly, no one tells him to go home or do the laundry.

Source: El País