Brazil has struggled to elect women to political office. Upcoming elections could change that.
| Rio de Janeiro
On a sunny September morning, Joyce Trindade works her way around the stalls of a secondhand clothing market here, distributing hugs and political pamphlets in equal measure. A candidate in this weekend鈥檚 Rio de Janeiro city council elections, she鈥檚 in the bustling commercial neighborhood to show that a woman鈥檚 place is in politics, she tells the vendors, all of whom are women.
This is the first time that Ms. Trindade, in her late 20s, is running for a seat on Rio鈥檚 city council. She鈥檚 one of 158,000 female candidates participating in nationwide local elections, and seeking to break into the overwhelmingly male world of electoral politics.
Despite electing a woman president in 2010, Brazil has one of the lowest levels of female political representation in Latin America, ranking almost dead last. Women hold just 17.5% of seats in the lower house of Congress, and are similarly absent from state and municipal bodies, even after more than two decades of legislative and grassroots efforts to increase their presence. As many Latin American countries have reached political parity 鈥� a benchmark associated with policies that often 鈥� Brazilian political parties have found ways to work around the law, and cultural stereotypes about women are widespread, experts say.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onMany Latin American countries have reached gender parity in politics, but powerhouse Brazil still lags far behind. Could grassroots efforts, combined with recent court rulings and social shifts, start to change that?
But the sorry numbers don鈥檛 tell the whole story: Twenty years after Brazil鈥檚 quota law was first passed in 1997, the number of women in the federal lower house doubled. The overall number of women winning office has continued to gradually increase , as affirmative action laws are strengthened, voters become more aware of the glaring gender disparities in politics, and more female candidates enter races.
鈥淭here is growing awareness among women [that] they can be part of this change,鈥� says D茅bora Thom茅, a political scientist at the Funda莽茫o Get煤lio Vargas university in S茫o Paulo and author of on female candidates. It鈥檚 a slow process, but there are signs that Brazilian society wants this change, she says.
鈥淚f you invest in women, you transform society,鈥� says Ms. Trindade, who served as Rio鈥檚 youngest secretary for women under Mayor Eduardo Paes. She decided to run for office after realizing 鈥渉ow necessary it is to have more women, especially Black women, on the council鈥� to help shape everyday policies in a field that has historically been hostile to Black Brazilians and women.
Why politics?
Across the Guanabara Bay in S茫o Gon莽alo, a poor city on the outskirts of Rio, Luana Mota is on her third electoral campaign in four years. She arrives late for canvassing on a recent Friday because she was looking after her daughter. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the same old, outdated crowd [in power]; we need renewal,鈥� she tells three potential voters, sympathizing with their concerns about child care and public transport. 鈥淲e women know firsthand what the problems are,鈥� she says, to a chorus of assent.
Women are dominant in a number of ways in Brazil: They make up 52% of the electorate, serve as primary breadwinners in over half the country鈥檚 households (50.9%), and make up 52.2% of the workforce. They have more formal education than men do and increasingly occupy leadership positions in the private sector.
鈥淎nd yet in this specific space that is electoral politics, we aren鈥檛 breaking in,鈥� says Jacqueline Pitanguy, a sociologist and political scientist who fought to get women into the constituent assembly of 1988, responsible for drafting the current Brazilian Constitution. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a discrepancy that鈥檚 hard to make sense of.鈥�
Many point to Brazil鈥檚 patriarchal society and deeply ingrained sexism. 鈥淕ender-based violence starts at birth,鈥� says Th芒nisia Cruz of #ElasNoPoder, a nongovernmental organization committed to increasing female representation. 鈥淕ender-based political violence begins when you tell a girl she isn鈥檛 capable of accessing positions of power.鈥�
Brazil has a broad understanding of gender-based political violence that goes beyond physical aggression and includes any action or behavior that might limit women鈥檚 political rights. A law making this a crime was passed in 2021, but 58% of the country鈥檚 female mayors still suffer from gender-based political violence such as online hate speech, fake news, and verbal aggression, according to , another organization working to help women break into public office.
Brazil鈥檚 lack of political representation can鈥檛 be explained simply by sexism. Countries with similar cultures of听尘补肠丑颈蝉尘辞, such as Mexico or Bolivia, have achieved gender parity in Congress through laws requiring 50-50 representation on political ballots. Yet in Brazil, a 1997 law requiring a 30% gender quota on party lists for legislative elections at local, state, and national level has largely failed to get more women into office.
In the last municipal elections, four years ago, nearly a fifth of Brazil鈥檚 municipalities failed to elect even one woman to their local council.
Part of the problem lies with the electoral system: Imposing quotas on parties鈥� electoral lists does not guarantee the same gender division among elected representatives. 鈥淏razil has an open-list system, where people vote for a specific person. ... Quotas work much better in closed-list systems,鈥� says Dr. Thom茅.
For years, political parties simply ignored the quota law. That was made harder by a 2009 electoral reform, but it鈥檚 still common for parties to circumvent the system by nominating uncompetitive female candidates who have little chance of winning. They鈥檝e also made a practice of giving women fewer resources to run their campaigns.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a situation in which various women give up,鈥� says Ms. Pitanguy.
鈥淏ring other women with us鈥�
The general election of 2018 was a turning point for Brazilian women, analysts say. That year, the Supreme Court ruled that female candidates must receive at least 30% of TV advertising airtime and, crucially, of the money in a public electoral fund, which the state provides following a ban on corporate donations. The number of women elected jumped to reach 290 women at the federal and state levels.
Other key events brought women out onto the street that year and got them talking about their treatment in society in new ways, says Dr. Thom茅. Then-far right candidate Jair Bolsonaro鈥檚 derogatory attitude towards women triggered concerns for the future of hard-fought rights. And the brazen murder of Marielle Franco, a Black, lesbian city councilwoman and human rights activist in Rio,聽sparked a movement to carry on her legacy.
This year, a record of registered candidates are women 鈥� with over half of them Black like Ms. Trindade and Ms. Mota.
The real challenge is turning more of those candidacies into electoral victories, researchers and candidates say. That won鈥檛 happen without parties investing in women鈥檚 political careers over the long term.
鈥淲e really need to rethink how political parties operate, because basically politics is made of white men who control the whole financial structure,鈥� says Ms. Mota. She wants to see more women in strategic positions, like treasurer or president, within party leadership.
鈥淭here鈥檚 still a lot to be done,鈥� adds Ms. Trindade, as a nearby car equipped with a sound system blasts out her electoral jingle. 鈥淚 hope we can pull together to bring other women with us.鈥�
