The preparation of this document was coordinated by Sonia Montaño, Chief of the Women and Development Unit
of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC).
The chapters were written by Sonia Montaño and María Nieves Rico, and Vivian Milosavljevic processed
the statistical data.
Diane Alméras, Jéssica Cuadros, Denisse Lazo, Carlos Maldonado, Marta Panera y Daniela Zapata also
collaborated in the preparation of the document.
Other contributors included Karen Bart- Alexander, Virginia Guzmán, Flavia Marco, Julia Evelin Martínez,
Laura Pautassi, Corina Rodríguez, Silke Staab, Sheila Stuart and Seo Won Lee, and support was provided by the
Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre ( CELADE) - Population Division of ECLAC.
This document includes valuable contributions from ministers and senior officials in charge of mechanisms
for the advancement of women in Latin America and the Caribbean, who decided on its subject matter during the
thirty- ninth meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the
Caribbean ( Mexico City, 11- 12 May 2006); studied the first version of the document during virtual forums ( held in
Spanish in January 2007 and in English in February 2007) and analysed the second draft at three technical meetings
( Guatemala City, 16- 17 May 2007; St. John’s, Antigua and Barbuda, 22- 23 May 2007, and Santiago, Chile, 28- 29
May 2007), and subsequently submitted their written observations. 1
2007- 471
1 Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil,
British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua,
Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, St.
Maarten, Suriname, Turks and Caicos Islands and Uruguay.
LC/ L. 2738( CRM. 10/ 3)
August 2007
iii
CONTENTS
Page
FOREWORD....................................................................................................................... .................... 1
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... .... 3
I. TOWARDS A HORIZON OF PARITY IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN:
THE POLITICAL REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN................................................................... 7
A. Women’s human rights.............................................................................................................. 7
B. The context of gender equality .................................................................................................. 9
C. Democracy or “ the personal is political”................................................................................... 10
D. State and family: equality of form and real inequality .............................................................. 12
E. Equality and affirmative action ................................................................................................. 14
F. Citizenship.................................................................................................................... ............ 15
G. Parity as a democratic objective ................................................................................................ 17
H. The campaign for political representation in the region............................................................ 20
I. Women in power ....................................................................................................................... 39
1. Once in parliament.......................................................................................................... 39
2. From a symbolic presence to parity ................................................................................ 41
II. WOMEN’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE ECONOMY AND SOCIAL PROTECTION,
WITH REFERENCE TO UNPAID WORK..................................................................................... 55
A. Caregiving, unpaid domestic work and gender equality ........................................................... 58
B. International instruments ........................................................................................................... 62
C. Social reproduction work in the constitutional and legal environment of the
region’s countries ...................................................................................................................... 67
D. Legal provisions governing paid domestic work....................................................................... 69
E. Extending the concept of work.................................................................................................. 72
F. Who are the women describing themselves as domestic workers, and what are they
like? “ doubly and domestic” or double- shift carers .................................................................. 75
G. The demand for care.................................................................................................................. 84
H. The transnationalization of care: migrant domestic workers in a globalized world .................. 87
I. Visibility and measurement in the national accounts ................................................................ 90
J. Time- use surveys and their potential policymaking input......................................................... 91
K. Care needs and shared responsibilities. Can policies to “ reconcile” work
and family life provide an answer?............................................................................................ 95
III. TOWARDS A RESEARCH AND POLICY AGENDA................................................................... 107
A. Parity in decision- making processes.......................................................................................... 108
1. Identification of new subjects for research ..................................................................... 108
2. Policy or strategy objectives ........................................................................................... 108
3. Instruments to be developed ........................................................................................... 108
B. The impact of unpaid caregiving on social protection............................................................... 109
1. The identification of new research issues ....................................................................... 109
2. Objectives of the policy or strategy ................................................................................ 109
3. Instruments to be developed ........................................................................................... 110
Appendix....................................................................................................................... ........................... 111
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... ............. 117
1
FOREWORD
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC) has been monitoring progress
of gender- sensitive public policies for more than a decade. Faithful to its mandate, ECLAC has proposed
a rights- based development framework in order to produce positive synergies between economic growth
and social equity in a context of modernization of production processes.
In the last few years, the Commission has drawn attention to the need to upgrade social protection
and ensure universal coverage, the fundamental aim being to establish a fiscal and social covenant which
will allow access to social protection mechanisms underpinned by a solidarity- based system of financing.
Against this background, Women’s contribution to equality in Latin America and the Caribbean
brings to the fore two key issues in the structural pattern of inequality between women and men: first,
political participation and gender parity in decision- making processes at all levels, and, second, women’s
contribution to the economy and social protection, especially in relation to unpaid work.
At the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean,
as an indication of the progress achieved, the issue of parity will be analysed as an achievable democratic
objective. Although there is evidence in all countries of the region of the considerable role played by
women throughout political history and, above all, in the past twenty years, the statistics relating to
female representation in parliament and in the executive point to the challenge that the political elites of
the region must address in order to improve gender balance. The emergence of female leaders within the
region, the increasingly independent electoral behaviour of women and the support received by women
candidates from female voters are part of the new democratic landscape. Parity is one of the symbols of
the new democracies and is presented as an ethical resource for strengthening the legitimacy of
democratic institutions.
Section one of this document shows conclusively that women, while accounting for half of the
population, have very low rates of representation in most parliaments. Similar discrepancies are visible in
the other powers of the State and at decision- making levels as a whole. While the right to vote was won
over a period of three decades, between the 1920s and the 1960s, it took almost fifty years to establish
women’s right to be actually elected and only in the last few years of the twentieth century was there any
significant increase in the number of women elected to public office, mainly thanks to affirmative action,
including quota laws, which fortunately have been gaining ground. All the countries that have adopted
quota laws have had positive results, as proven by the fact that in some of them the proportion of women
elected to public office has increased to around 40%. However, different studies show that, in addition to
electoral system reforms, a number of aspects of the political culture which cause discriminatory biases
need to be changed. These include inequitable access to financing, the unequal influence of social
networks and unfair use of time, which, as shown in the second section of this study, constrains women to
focus on reproductive tasks.
In the region, women’s labour income is equivalent to 70% that of men. Despite this
disadvantage, women’s contribution is fundamental for alleviating poverty, whether they earn a monetary
income or contribute to the home through unremunerated labour; indeed, this contribution becomes a
reproductive tax, permitting savings on health costs, childcare and care for older persons in the family, to
cite just the most obvious examples. As this study demonstrates, this contribution by women to well-being
becomes the source of the disadvantages they suffer when they seek to join the labour force in an
effort to gain economic independence. The situation is even more serious in the case of women with
2
partners and small children to take care of who are forced to put off further training and access to the
labour market and who, as a result, have to do without the social protection that is part and parcel of this
labour market.
The results obtained in five countries of the region demonstrate that men spend almost the same
number of hours on unpaid housework, whether or not there is a “ homemaker”. On the other hand, for the
women of these same households, there is an important difference: the fact that another person carries out
domestic chores reduces substantially the time that they spend on such chores. All women, irrespective of
their employment status, devote a significant amount of time to caregiving, which proves how
inappropriate it is to describe a homemaker as “ non- working”.
The difficulty experienced by women in finding a suitable position in the labour market extends
to their life as citizens and the world of politics in which, as already mentioned, notwithstanding some
advances in the past decade, they have achieved a minority representation in parliament, in the executive
branch and in other powers of the State.
This document highlights the possibilities of generating virtuous circles that favour universal
access to social protection, provided that policies are implemented to promote equality in the labour
market, the family and politics. A number of countries have made commendable efforts in this direction.
According to available information, only measures geared explicitly to achieving equality in the
public and private spheres will be successful in achieving the Millennium Development Goals and
particularly, goal 3, which is to promote gender equality and empower women.
Women’s contribution to equality in Latin America and the Caribbean sets out active policies for
overcoming the obstacles to equitable access to the labour market, especially those arising from the sexual
division of labour which has become established through usage and the frequent discriminatory practices
observed on the labour market. The abundant quantitative evidence collected and analysed points
conclusively to the need for policies that foster shared responsibility between men and women in caring
for members of the household, especially children, as well as for more comprehensive public action ( by
the State and the business sector) to facilitate the work of caring for the sick, older persons and the
disabled.
Lastly, it should be noted that this document is part of a long ECLAC tradition which has sought
to promote genuine gender equality within the framework of its efforts to reduce inequity in the different
spheres of economic, social and political life in our region.
José Luis Machinea
Executive Secretary
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC)
3
INTRODUCTION
The women of Latin America and the Caribbean are at the centre of one of the greatest cultural shifts in
history. In terms of the freedoms that have been won, it may safely be stated today that almost no woman
would want to live the life her grandmother did. Yet equality has advanced more slowly than it might
have done and, despite the drastic and probably irreversible changes that have occurred in the family,
working life and politics, the malaise of women in the region is evidence of the gap between their
contribution to society and the recognition they receive for it. Although women now play increasingly
important roles in decision- making and are a crucial force in the labour market, they are still over-represented
among the poor and under- represented in politics. The key to this lag and to women’s
treatment as a vulnerable minority in public policies lies, to a great extent, in the impossibility of breaking
away from the cultural imperative of domestic work and the absence of men from care activities. Almost
half of all women over the age of 15 have no income of their own, the number of one- parent households
headed by women has increased and only a minority of men are occupied in unpaid work. Although it is
thanks to women’s work that the region’s poverty index has decreased by almost 10 percentage points,
women continue to earn less than men for equivalent work. They have secured the right to vote and to
stand for election, but affirmative action, such as the adoption of quota laws, has been necessary to
increase female occupancy of representative positions to 40% in some countries, while the great majority
of women remain outside the sphere of decision- making.
This document will examine the two themes of the tenth session of the Regional Conference on
Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, women’s contribution to the economy and social protection
— especially as it relates to unpaid labour— and political participation and gender parity in decision-making
at all levels, in the light of two key concepts: discrimination, as defined in the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the sexual division of labour.
The Convention has acquired considerable importance in the region, since it has been ratified by
all the countries and, in some, such as Argentina, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Brazil, it
forms part of the Constitution, together with other human rights instruments. Other countries, such as
Costa Rica and Ecuador, incorporate several of the Convention’s principles into the text of their
Constitution or use its definition of discrimination against women in legislation, as in Costa Rica’s law
7142 of 1990 on promotion of the social equity of women. Hence, this law establishes that
“ discrimination against women” shall denote “ any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis
of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by
women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and
fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field”. A similar
definition is contained in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’s 1990 law on equal opportunities for
women.
This definition of discrimination is based on the concept of universal, indivisible, interdependent
and interrelated human rights. “ The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair
and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national
and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in
mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and
protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.” 2
2 Paragraph 5 of the Vienna Declaration, adopted at the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993.
4
The concept of sexual division of labour contributes to a clearer analysis of social roles clearly
differentiated by sex. This division is considered to be a social construction — and hence changeable—
which determines the main roles individuals must play in society: women supposedly in charge of social
reproduction and men of production work. 3 Above all, however, it sets up hierarchical power relations
that force the majority of women to carry out work that has no visibility or social recognition, and this
cultural matrix is reproduced in the public sphere where women occupy the most precarious and worst-paid
jobs. The vicious cycle of inequality generated by the socially imposed obligation to perform
domestic work, particularly care activities, largely explains women’s absence from politics and decision-making
in general.
Throughout this document, two complementary concepts will be used that serve to spotlight some
key aspects of inequality: care work and parity. These two ideas are useful in understanding the
challenges and tensions standing in the way of women’s progress and in steering a course towards the
policies proposed at the end of the document. The individual chapters delve more deeply into both
concepts and demonstrate their analytical value. Here, however, it should be noted that parity is a useful
concept for analysis because it is not simply a matter of a larger quota of posts being reserved for women,
but rather a question of the broadest possible expression of universality. Achieving parity is thus part of a
broader process that includes the use of quotas and other tools. Above all, however, it requires the
recognition of women as citizens with full rights. More than being a quantitative concept, parity manifests
the redistribution of power in three specific spheres: the labour market, decision- making and family life.
The debate on parity makes it clear that citizenship is not neutral inasmuch as it is built on male models
and access to representation occurs in a sexed environment characterized by the exclusion — not
accidental, but structural— of women.
The term “ unpaid care work” will be limited in this document to unpaid activities of caring for
people — sick and healthy alike— to whom the caregiver is bound by family ties and a sense of moral
obligation; it includes both direct personal care and the performance of indirect services that contribute to
well- being and the development of human capacities. It is thus equivalent to domestic work performed
without pay for the benefit of family members. Hence, it excludes unpaid work in family businesses and
voluntary work in the community. There is no parallel between this definition and the one used in the
system of national accounts.
From the point of view of women’s autonomy, care work and looking after others entails a large
degree of sacrifice and may even represent a “ trap”, personally and politically speaking. Over the years it
has been shown that “ care” does not have to be equated with self- sacrifice, however. Gilligan ( 1982)
distinguishes between the feminist ethic of autonomy and the female ethic of self- sacrifice, noting that
they should not form a basis for the creation of two separate spheres, i. e., the public world of personal
autonomy and the private world in which women function.
In this debate, gender is an essential category of analysis for an understanding of inequality in
fields that have been considered neutral, particularly as regards philosophy, political science and the ideas
that inspire democratic principles and governance. In common with many of the concepts set out here,
gender has attracted critical analysis and thought, especially in the light of the countries’ experience with
the implementation of gender policies. One of the most interesting reflections is that, beyond the triumph
of the gender perspective as a compulsory requirement for public policies, its true success lies in the fact
that understanding it implies a conceptual leap: recognizing that male and female behaviours depend
3 See Benería ( 1984) and De Barbieri ( 1996).
5
essentially not on biological facts but, to a great extent, on social constructs. Thus, the notion of the
gender perspective leads back to the core of the feminist discourse ( Lamas, 2006a).
According to Baratta ( 2000), the lowest common denominator that has followed in the wake of
feminist epistemology is the dismantling of the androcentric model of science, which took the male as the
standard. Feminism has criticized the prejudices hidden behind these concepts and has introduced a new
model that includes the necessary consideration of the public and the private, of productive and
reproductive life and of how they interrelate. Nevertheless, the notion persists of politics as a male
domain, and women’s capacity to exercise power and lead nations is still mistrusted. It is therefore
necessary to recognize that the problems are not simply technical, but fundamentally political and social,
and hence call for new “ covenants” ( Pichio, 1999). The analysis of the two subjects explored in this
document thus represents one more attempt to remedy the lack of attention to the inequity suffered by
women in the region.
7
I. TOWARDS A HORIZON OF PARITY IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: THE
POLITICAL REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN
In the last few years there has been a qualitative change in women’s involvement in decision- making.
Female candidates are being put forward in many countries and in some, such as Chile and Jamaica, they
have been elected to the highest echelons of public office. There are more women in parliaments and at
the helm of non- traditional ministries such as those of economic affairs, defence and the interior.
Furthermore, more women are being invited to stand for election and increasing numbers of candidates
are proposing pro- gender- equality agendas. Nevertheless, there is a consensus that progress has been slow
and difficult. The sustainability of the changes that have been made depends on affirmative action applied
to elected and mandated posts and — as noted by the ministers and women’s authorities during the virtual
forum held in January 2007 in preparation for the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in
Latin America and the Caribbean— the strongest resistance is coming from political parties. This section
discusses the concept of parity as a desirable horizon for strengthening democracy. It is suggested that
gender equality in all spheres, particularly politics, must go hand in hand with the changes in the family
and the labour market addressed in part II. Parity is a democratic necessity that calls for the commitment
of all and that forms part of the much- needed renovation of political systems and the political parties
which are their instruments.
Part II takes a thoroughgoing look at the role performed by women in unpaid care work. This sort
of work falls mainly upon the shoulders of women, thus preventing them from acceding to better
positions in the labour market and affecting their participation in decision- making. Although this section
concentrates on the entry of women into the public world of politics, it must be recalled that the deficits
identified in the course of this discussion tie in with the obligatory performance of domestic work and the
lack of policies on shared responsibilities in family life.
A. WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS
“ All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated”.
Paragraph 5 of the Vienna Declaration adopted
at the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women underscores the
fundamental role that the State is called upon to play in promoting true equality, the rights- based
approach that must inspire public policy and the importance of cultural change in consolidating equality
between women and men at all levels. The States parties are responsible for ensuring the enjoyment of
rights on an equal footing and without any form of discrimination. Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention call
upon the States parties to adopt any measures necessary, including prohibiting sex- based discrimination,
to put an end to discriminatory acts that prevent the full enjoyment of rights, in both public and private
sectors ( United Nations Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 28 of 29 March 2000). The
Latin American and Caribbean region was the first in which all States unanimously signed and ratified the
8
Convention, but the process has been slower with respect to the Optional Protocol. 4 By early 2007, it had
been signed by only 20 countries and ratified by 17.5
The Convention is viewed as the international charter for women’s rights and gives legal
expression to the quest for full equality by reformulating the concept of discrimination in an innovative
way. The Convention defines discrimination as “ any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the
basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or
exercise by women… of [ their] human rights” ( article 1). This notion is complemented by the concept of
genuine equality, as distinct from the formal equality which has traditionally been invoked by those
claiming that special measures to combat gender discrimination are irrelevant or unnecessary.
Thus, in Latin America and the Caribbean, it may be assumed that although most of the countries’
constitutions proclaim the equality of men and women and many of them prohibit sex- based
discrimination, it is necessary to change laws whose letter is egalitarian but whose effects, in practice, are
not ( Bareiro, 2006). It is recognized that laws can be discriminatory if they contain provisions that give
rise to social, economic or political inequalities or do not contain provisions to avoid them. In this regard,
it is important to reform the State to strengthen its role as a guarantor of rights and to build up a global
institutional structure to empower multilateralism in order to ensure universal respect for human rights.
The Convention’s adoption by Latin American and Caribbean States implies an acceptance of the
fact that the traditional mechanisms and procedures for guaranteeing human rights fall short of ensuring
genuine equality between women and men. The Convention now forms part of an international human
rights protection system: more frequent and efficient interaction among all the relevant instruments
should endow the countries with the tools they need to enforce justice in a timely and effective manner.
Over the years, the concepts enshrined in the Convention have inspired constitutional and
legislative changes and have served as examples to hasten progress in the recognition of the rights of
other groups in society, such as indigenous populations or those discriminated against on the basis of
sexual orientation. The implications of the Convention thus transcend the specific issue of gender equality
and represent a milestone in the redefinition of the concept of discrimination in a way that benefits many
different groups. By the same token, the Convention has incorporated the experiences of other United
Nations human rights committees.
This framework has helped to secure approval for constitutional and legislative amendments in
many countries. It has also been a useful point of reference for the introduction of new legislation and has
provided arguments to oppose direct and indirect forms of discrimination against women in the
workplace, in politics and in the family. Furthermore, it has served to promote government accountability
and thereby to institutionalize a practice of transparency in public management that allows different
actors, including civil society organizations, to prepare alternative reports to the official ones.
4 The Optional Protocol to the Convention, which entered into force on 22 December 2000, provides a procedure
for individual complaints, whereby individuals or groups may bring complaints before the Committee on the
Elimination of Discrimination against Women regarding violations of the rights recognized by the Convention,
subject to compliance with a series of requirements ( articles 1 through 7).
5 Half ( 17) of the region’s 33 countries have ratified the Optional Protocol: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina,
Belize, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador,
Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Uruguay. Chile, Cuba and El Salvador
signed the Optional Protocol between 1999 and 2001 but have yet to ratify it. The other 15 countries of the
region have neither signed nor ratified the Optional Protocol.
9
The greatest difficulties, however, have arisen with the practical application of this standard.
Unlike other international instruments, the Convention was formulated without any specific enforcement
mechanism. The need for a complaints system was discussed early on, but some countries argued that
discrimination against women did not warrant such a mechanism because it was not considered to be so
serious a violation of human rights at the time.
Thus began a process of discussion which culminated in a new landmark, the Optional Protocol to
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which was adopted in
October 1999 and opened for signature on 10 December 2000. Most countries have opted to ratify the
Optional Protocol. As far back as 1993, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action called upon
States to consider accepting all the available optional communication procedures ( paragraph 90). It also
proposed that other methods should be examined, such as a system of indicators to measure progress in
the materialization of the rights set forth in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, and urged the Commission on the Status of Women and the Committee for the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women to quickly examine the possibility of introducing the right of petition
through the preparation of an optional protocol to the Convention.
The Convention provides sufficient resources to build the concepts of discrimination and genuine
equality into the structural fabric of the labour, penal and civil reforms now taking shape in the region and
thus to contribute to the effort to make this new millennium a fairer and more equitable one. The next step
is to work for the proper implementation of these standards, which entails venturing into the domain of
judicial reform. This is one of the greatest challenges for the region: the need to harmonize the framework
of human rights that the existing institutional reforms have developed so amply over the past decade. The
judicial reforms under way in many countries represent an opportunity to address some of the problems
that have arisen in connection with the application of the Convention, such as a lack of familiarity with it
on the part of lawyers, judges and the general public and the failure to disseminate information about
representative cases in which the Convention has been used to serve the cause of justice. Accordingly, the
Convention and the Optional Protocol thereto, as well as other international treaties in force, need to be
integrated into professional training programmes, the instruction provided in law schools and public
information schemes in order to change not only legal standards and institutions but also the culture and
day- to- day practices as well. National mechanisms for the enforcement of rules must therefore be
improved and authorities’ awareness increased in order to build the Convention and the Optional Protocol
into the overall effort to strengthen human rights legislation.
B. THE CONTEXT OF GENDER EQUALITY
The struggle for equality between women and men is played out in a world context that is being shaped
by complex processes, including a very sharp reduction in poverty in some countries, such as China and
India, which contrasts with rising poverty in dozens of others. This is evidence that, in many parts of the
world, the benefits of economic growth are not being fairly distributed. Threats to peace and security
include not just international war and conflict but civil disturbances, organized crime, terrorism and
weapons of mass destruction. They include, too, poverty, deadly infectious diseases and environmental
degradation, since these phenomena can have equally catastrophic consequences. This has led to an effort
to strengthen international institutions in order to address the challenges on the global agenda: migration,
science and technology, natural disasters, development assistance, HIV/ AIDS, climate change and
environmental sustainability, trade, national debt, education and health, human rights, democracy and the
rule of law. Progress in all of these areas could be furthered by redoubled efforts to build up synergies
10
among development, security and human rights. In this process, gender equality is both a means and an
end, calling for the empowerment of women and a new ethic of shared responsibility in public and private
life ( United Nations, 2005c).
For some 20 years now, a consensus has existed in Latin America and the Caribbean that
democracy is the best form of government. The generalized establishment of democratic regimes in the
region has placed societies in a complex situation, in which institutional fragility is juxtaposed with a
citizenry that is ever more aware of its rights. Although there is a consensus among the forces of
democracy regarding the importance of holding regular competitive elections to select those who will
govern and of rejecting the various forms of authoritarianism, there is also agreement on the urgent need
to improve the quality of democracy by overcoming the great social inequalities that exist and generating
more effective mechanisms of citizen participation to enable the population to intervene in public affairs
( ninth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, June 2004).
The political, economic, social and cultural arenas have been transformed over the past two
decades in step with processes of democratic transition, economic restructuring in the context of
globalization and reform aimed at strengthening the market as the main engine of growth. Organized
groups of women in civil society have been among the leading actors in this democratic recovery, and
their mobilization has been instrumental in starting processes of change. Women have been active in the
campaign for human rights, including civil and political rights. In order to recover the historical memory
of women’s contribution to democracy, a long- term view is needed to chronicle their involvement in all
the relevant historic events. This document appeals to that memory and argues that, despite their
contributions, women have yet to achieve a significant presence in decision- making. The challenge of
democracy lies not only in promoting participation by women, but also in recognizing them and
incorporating them into institutions where decisions are made.
Notwithstanding the positive aspects of the generalized consolidation of democratic systems,
many institutions are the object of growing distrust: parliaments and political parties are losing strength as
new political actors and mass- media personalities emerge as intermediaries between society and the State
and, in some cases, as young men and women sharply criticize serious gender inequalities exacerbated by
the unequal distribution of income, power and time use. This tension has translated into situations of
institutional uncertainty, insecurity and political instability. The renewal of political systems and major
institutions, such as political parties and the State, poses challenges which, in some cases, lead to
constitutional changes, political covenants and other reforms of the democratic institutional structure.
Existing institutions have been overwhelmed by the dynamics that have emerged in society, in
both the private and the public spheres, and changes are needed to adapt to the new circumstances. In this
connection, concerns have arisen over the quality of democracy and the provision of opportunities for
participation, apart from electoral processes, in which citizens can make their voices heard in a timely
manner. The demand for greater transparency and accountability on the part of governments reflects a
need that exists in general, but that is particularly pressing in terms of remedying the rights deficits
experienced by women and girls.
C. DEMOCRACY OR “ THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL”
Democracy is a difficult concept to define because it refers both to a political ideal and to a reality: that is,
the imperfect democracy as it has developed historically. It is, however, a necessary concept for
11
normative purposes ( Sartori, 2003). Democracy is, and cannot be delinked from, what democracy should
be. Descriptive democracy refers to democracy as it actually exists, and prescriptive democracy to the
ideal pursued by a society. Throughout history, democracy has invariably been associated with a political
entity — a form of State and government— albeit within the framework of different, more or less liberal
or radical schools of thought. A review of the literature attests to the breadth of the feminist discussion of
the concepts of the individual, citizenship, politics and the State, as well as alignment with different
stances on democracy. What is known as “ liberal” feminism makes a priority of judicial changes, while
more “ radical” feminism maintains a debate on the deconstruction of the assumptions underlying the
notion of democracy. In many countries, women have been involved in social movements which ask for a
more participative democracy. This range shows that, although there is no single feminist definition of
democracy, women and women’s movements are contributing to a broad debate on democracy.
Feminist movements have criticized the limitations of the concepts of democracy. As early as
1791, the French activist Olympia de Gouges wrote the “ Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the
Female Citizen” and presented it before the French National Assembly, for which she was rewarded with
the guillotine. In 1792, the British writer Mary Wollstonecraft published “ A Vindication of the Rights of
Women”, one of the most radical feminist manifestos ever written. Its inspiration was the idea that
women do not exist solely for the pleasure of men, and it proposed that women should receive the same
treatment as men in terms of education, political rights and labour and should be judged by the same
moral standards.
Contemporary feminism has resumed the discussion and has criticized democracy for failing to
devote sufficient attention to laws and institutions ( Betty Friedan). More radically, it has called into
question democracy’s omission of the private dimension. The slogan “ the personal is political” has spread
under the influence of Latin American and Caribbean social movements that have campaigned to change
the status of women in legislation and within the State apparatus. Some theorists, including Carole
Pateman, have gone even further by asserting that, in reality, there is no such thing as democratic theory
because of the patriarchal biases of traditional doctrines; consequently, democratic practice does not exist,
insofar as women have never achieved anything resembling egalitarian power in the family, civil society
or the State. From this perspective, even countries considered to be democratic are seen as being in
transition. They have had to naturalize gender relations and remove the problem of inequality from the
sphere of politics ( Valcárcel, 1997).
The democratic debate in Latin America and the Caribbean has been pursued in a number of
different settings in the last few decades. One such arena has been the summits held under the aegis of the
United Nations. At these summits, civil society organizations have contributed to the adoption of an
agenda in which the struggle for democracy is tied in with efforts to combat poverty, eliminate violence
and uphold reproductive rights. During the first world conferences on women, governments — in many
cases in the hands of dictators— did not have mechanisms for women’s advancement, and the demands of
civil society, sometimes made at great risk, were the main channel for the exercise of democracy.
A second, and enormously important, setting for the democratic debate is the struggle for human
rights. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, the women miners in Bolivia and innumerable
associations of family members of the detained and “ disappeared” came to represent the moral reserve of
a society threatened by the loss of liberties. The third setting emerged with the return of democracy and
the establishment of machineries for women’s advancement, which have become strategic elements that
are often at the vanguard of efforts to secure constitutional reform or the adoption of quota laws, as well
as other changes inspired by the Beijing Platform for Action.
12
Another sphere of democratic debate developed when the debt crisis hit the region in the 1980s.
The countless survival strategies devised at that time by women — mainly from low- income sectors— led
to the formation of new leadership roles. For a long time, the political system and, particularly, political
parties shunned these movements, and this reaction triggered a mass exodus of women from those
institutions.
By the start of the twenty- first century, women had become more closely involved with political
parties within a democratic context. In many countries, female parliamentarians set up cross- party
networks to promote legislative changes in favour of women, such as laws against violence and quota
laws. Despite this, and although an increasing number of studies have scrutinized the political role of
women in Latin America and the Caribbean, their contribution to the construction of democracy,
especially during wartime and in the effort to combat dictatorships and authoritarianism, has not been
sufficiently documented.
The debate on democracy, democratic governance and gender reveals the tensions and bridges
between the usual definitions of democracy — as a political system made up of representative
institutions— and the contributions that feminism makes by questioning dichotomies, redefining the
boundary between the private and the public and extending the notion of democracy into the family. It
also seeks to identify forums for dialogue with public policymakers to facilitate the mainstreaming of
gender analysis.
Viewed from a gender perspective, one of the questions that arises is whether a democracy that is
limited to the electoral process signifies an advance in the status of women. Similarly, it is important to
consider the effects of poverty on equality and freedom of citizenship, the importance of sexual and
reproductive rights, the impact of poverty- alleviation programmes on women, women’s use of time and
their capabilities and freedom to play a role in the spheres of democracy and governance. If women are to
be effectively represented, they must be able to participate in institutional politics untrammelled by
ingrained cultural stereotypes which associate female party members with responsibilities for caregiving
functions.
D. STATE AND FAMILY: EQUALITY OF FORM AND REAL INEQUALITY
The first great dichotomy underlying the theories of the State is between the public and the private,
which, according to Bobbio, 6 spins off into another great dichotomy: that of equals and unequals.
The contemporary debate addresses the subject of the State or the political system indistinctly.
What makes the two concepts interchangeable, according to Bobbio ( 1985), is the pursuit of power in its
various forms. One of the main concerns of the women’s movement has been the mounting debate
regarding the State and the political system, extended into the sphere of the family, which — from other
perspectives— was considered the domain of the non- political, with the public sphere thus exerting
dominance over the private.
From the gender perspective, power does not reside solely in the public sphere, in the political
system; it also exists in the private arena and the family. The concepts of gender and gender relations
6 Norberto Bobbio and Michelangelo Bovero ( 1985) use the term “ dichotomy” to refer to distinctions that divide a
universe into two jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive spheres which together make up a whole.
13
serve to disarticulate power relationships ( Amorós, 2005) and to expose their lack of legitimacy from the
point of view of gender equality.
The failure to identify social relations between men and women as political or power
relationships forms part of the dichotomous construct that excludes the private sphere from power
relations and accounts for the subordination of women in the public sphere ( Scott, 1996). Conversely, the
feminist movement criticizes gender systems as binary arrangements that place men and women, the male
and the female, in opposition, but not necessarily on an equal footing. Politics is about power, and power
— following this line of argument— is present in all relationships. The State has been one of the
institutions most heavily criticized for producing and perpetuating gender discrimination. In formulating
this criticism, the feminist movement has drawn on reflections about sexuality and the cultural
construction of sexual difference.
Increasingly since the 1980s, concomitantly with redemocratization processes in the region, a
notion that has been regaining credence is that the State can also help to change sociocultural patterns and
create the conditions for true and effective equality and equal opportunities for women. In this argument,
tension arises between criticism of androcentrism and demands for redistribution based on considerations
of equality ( Puleo, 2005). This is the tension described by Valcárcel ( 1997, p. 101) between Weberian
politics, as a managerial activity for solving macroproblems, and the influence of a tradition that seeks to
transform power relations. The effort to influence State political reforms managed in a rather Weberian
way, in which politics is defined more narrowly, while reconciling them with a vision of politics and
power as things that must be dismantled, is a constant in the relationship between democratic governance
and gender.
To address the matter of power relationships within the public and private spheres implies the
analysis — and even a redefinition— of what a State may or may not legitimately do. The notion of
sovereignty as referring to the ultimate power of command in a political society ( Matteucci, 1991) ties in
with the concept of State, since the State is sovereign insofar as it makes decisions within the territory in
which it is established. Decisions are taken in accordance with the State’s norms and institutions, but also
in an environment in which a number of coexistent yet disarticulated types of society overlap, thus
creating relationships of domination and hierarchies based on the different cultures and powers with
which they interact ( Zavaleta, 1990).
With the acceleration of globalization, societies are becoming more deeply intermixed in terms of
economics, politics and culture, and new cross- boundary public and institutional problems are emerging
to compound long- standing, unresolved difficulties. In many cases, the exercise of sovereignty, i. e., the
State’s capacity to decide ( in this case in favour of women’s demands) runs counter to efforts to improve
governance, and this situation threatens the universal human rights principles to which women are
appealing.
New means of regulating different spheres of social life — laws, standards and institutional
practices— are debated, negotiated and decided upon not only nationally but also in the international
community. Relationships of force, hierarchies and conflicts operate at the international level, but so do
global consensuses on the rights of citizens that all States must respect.
The inclusion of gender equality, as well as the general issue of human rights, in public and
institutional agendas has challenged the notions of sovereignty that are most closely associated with the
national State framework. Lobbyists for the inclusion of gender equality on such agendas form networks
of actors drawn from civil society, the political system and the State, who transcend national boundaries
14
to articulate their efforts in international forums, particularly those of the United Nations, as well as in
local politics. Hence the importance of action taken at the regional and global levels. Efforts to achieve
quality between women and men require political will, but they also run up against barriers within the
global order which must be taken into account in order to achieve results at the national level.
E. EQUALITY AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
The modern notion of equality dating from the eighteenth century originally referred to the rights and
dignity of individuals, although often not everyone was considered apt to be a rights- bearing citizen.
More recently, with the gradual expansion of citizenship and suffrage ( especially for women), equality
has come to be treated as a convention whereby the same value is assigned to the different components of
a society which is diverse in terms of sex, social class, ethnic origin, culture, race, age and other
considerations. Equality is an end, a principle and an objective of the democratic and social State where
the rule of law prevails.
Two meanings of the term “ equality” are often confused: the idea of similitude — two or more
identical things or people— and the notion of justice. The term “ equality” in the singular is useful as a
declaration of principles, as a reference for protest, but when it becomes a signifier in gender policy
proposals, the term should be used only in the plural: “ equalities”.
In many countries, the notion of equality of opportunities masks two heterogeneous concepts.
Citing Flew, Sartori ( 2003) states that equal access for all to everything, based on merit, is one thing, but
that equal starting conditions that give all equal initial capabilities is a completely different matter.
This difference is especially relevant from the standpoint of policies for the provision of equal
opportunities for women, since equality of access refers to the fact that all individuals should have equal
legal standing and receive equal treatment. A policy of equal opportunities must also, however, consider
men’s and women’s starting conditions, which are differentiated as a result of socialization and the
history of male accumulation of power, as well as the maintenance of a sex- based division of labour and
discriminatory sociocultural patterns. As the philosopher Amelia Valcárcel ( 1997) points out, democracy
is not just equality, it is also freedom; most debate, however, has revolved around the former, which is
precisely the idea of equality that underpins the feminist tradition.
Box I. 1
“ Feminism is a political philosophy of equality which, all principles being clear and distinct, simply argues as
follows: if it is accepted that all human beings are equal in the quest for what are considered to be goods, why
should half of the human race, the full collective of women, not have the same recognized rights to such goods as
the entire human collective body?”
Source: Amélia Valcárcel, La política de las mujeres, Women’s Institute of Spain, Madrid, 1997.
15
Affirmative action policies or special temporary measures, as they are termed in the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, are intended to achieve true or
effective equality by employing formulas of statutory inequality to eliminate the negative consequences
of de facto differences. 7
The Convention refers to this type of measure when it establishes, in article 3, that States parties
shall take in all fields, in particular in the political, social, economic and cultural fields, all appropriate
measures, including legislation, to ensure the full development and advancement of women, for the
purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on a
basis of equality with men. In addition, paragraph 1 of article 4 states that adoption by States parties of
temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women shall not be
considered discrimination as defined in the Convention. Rather, it should be construed as a means of
emphasizing that temporary special measures are part of a strategy to be pursued by States parties that is
necessary for the achievement of substantive equality of women with men in the enjoyment of their rights
and freedoms.
In the Spanish Constitution, the reference to sex seeks to put an end to the inferior position
historically attributed to women in the area of employment and working conditions. Thus, measures are
constitutionally legitimate only if they aim to counteract a real initial inequality and systematically
interpret the constitutional precept that prohibits discrimination based on sex in conjunction with other
constitutional precepts, in particular article 9.2, which obliges public authorities to ensure that conditions
of equality between women and men are “ real and effective”. 8 Hence the idea that instead of facilitating
women’s access to the labour market by providing equal opportunities, compensatory measures are
needed to offset the imbalance that developed at a time when the prevailing notion was that the man was
the “ head of the household” and that married women had to be freed from factory work ( STC 19/ 89 of 31
January, f. 5) ( Torrente, 1999). In General Recommendation No. 25 on article 4, paragraph 1, of the
Convention, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women calls upon States parties
to “ analyse the context of women’s situation in all spheres of life, as well as in the specific, targeted area,
when applying temporary special measures” ( paragraph 27).
F. CITIZENSHIP
The debate on women’s citizenship was taken up at the Fourth World Conference on Women, which was
held in Beijing in 1995. The resulting Beijing Platform for Action incorporates various initiatives of the
women’s movement.
Like the ideas of democracy and the State, the idea of women’s citizenship connects up with
discussions in the liberal tradition ( Jelin, 1996), the most radical perspectives that different social groups
have taken on rights ( Bareiro, 1996a) and the extension of rights to encompass human rights, including
reproductive rights. The discussion on citizenship is now part of the debate on “ the right to have rights”
( Bobbio, 1991) and transcends the concepts delimited in legal practice and public policies, whose
application is usually confined to people of a particular age group, with residence in a particular territory
and the ability to vote. Some authors have expanded the concept of citizenship to the point of eliminating
7 General Recommendation No. 25 of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women sets
out the meaning and scope of affirmative action or temporary special measures.
8 Ruling 28/ 92 of the Constitutional Court ( STC) of 9 March 1992.
16
boundaries between human, reproductive, sexual and citizenship rights ( Bermúdez, 1996). This not only
raises methodological and conceptual issues, but also has political implications for the strategies that
women can employ to achieve greater power in society.
There are a number of strains and challenges revolving around the citizenship debate. The most
significant are: the redefinition of the national State, the tension between the particular and the universal,
the tension between the individual and the collective, and the debate on the public and the private, as well
as issues relating to representation, delegation of power and forms of leadership.
Women’s citizenship has been associated mainly with suffrage. The right to vote, entry into the
education system, work and the abolition of the double sexual- moral standard have been the costliest
objectives of suffragism. Gains made by women’s groups in the area of education fuel their demand for
political rights, and it becomes more difficult to justify denial of the right to vote to women as their levels
of education rise. Through gradual achievements and long years of struggle, successive and interrelated
generations of women involved in the suffragist movement in different countries have secured the right to
vote and to receive an education.
The suffragist movement questioned the representativeness of governments and developed a new
style and method of civic campaigning — necessarily, since their political intervention was orchestrated
from a position of exclusion. The effort to secure legal equality and win civil and political rights was, in
turn, a powerful stimulus for women’s individuation and, hence, for their empowerment.
Analysis of the way civic, political and cultural rights are exercised, in combination with the
perspective of women’s human rights, shows a number of points of intersection, including: the right to
vote, participation in civil struggles for democracy, the recovery of human rights, demands for education,
criticisms of excesses or absence of the State and other forms of individual and collective expression by
women regarding local management, the preservation of language, the applicability of traditional systems
of authority and ways of relating to the State, as well as, more recently, reproductive rights. These aspects
are summed up in the concept of the right to have rights.
Nevertheless, Elizabeth Jelin ( 1997) recalls that behind the notion of citizenship is a process of
negotiation in which citizenship refers to a conflictive practice linked to power, which reflects the
struggles about “ who is entitled to say what in the process of defining common problems and [ deciding]
how they are to be faced”. The constitution of the modern imaginary of public and private and the modern
idea of the radical difference between men and women have been crucial to the criteria of inclusion,
exclusion and classification that have underpinned contemporary forms of citizenship. In fact, the modern
State has been based on a clear separation between the public and private spheres and on a hierarchical
order of gender.
The dichotomy between the public and the private institutes two different types of power
( Zincone, 1992). The first is political power, which is exercised among “ equals” and involves a
negotiation of interests and conflicts together with a mutual recognition of the participants’ political
capacities. The second is family power, wielded over “ non- equals” and built on the belief in a natural and
hierarchical order of decision- making power, based on the principle of authority and the assumption of
the natural inequality of the political capacities and social vocations of the participants. Historically,
power has been a male prerogative: men, the members of the community of “ equals”, have exercised their
political powers in the public sphere, and in private they have exercised their authority over “ non- equals”,
including women, children and servants.
17
The persistent symbology of gender and power differences between men and women have given
rise not only to a discriminatory distribution of rights, but also to a serious limitation on the real and
autonomous enjoyment of them.
The emergence of the theoretical and political expressions of the feminist movement has brought
significant pressure to bear for the inclusion of women in the public sphere and for a shift in the
boundaries between the public and the private. Women’s organizations and gender institutions have done
much to bring issues previously considered private, such as domestic violence and the recognition of
sexual and reproductive rights, into the public arena.
The discourse no longer compares men and women and their respective differences and
advantages, but contrasts women’s deprivation of goods and rights with universal declarations ( Valcárcel,
2001, p. 9). Based on a critique of the new sociopolitical paradigm and its inadequacy, the feminist
movement makes a first, sweeping correction in “ enlightened democratism” and, by formulating its
demands in political code, shows how the male concept of citizenship and the definition of femininity
have laid the foundations for an non- inclusive form of democracy.
Gender equality is an indicator of how democratic a political system is. Gender has become a
specific variable in the political arena. Increasingly, mechanisms have been developed to include women
in elected and mandated posts, with the most important compensatory mechanisms being minimum
quotas for representation.
In the last few years, there has been some debate and acceptance of parity democracy, which
consists of a rethinking of the concept of representation as confined to ideological and territorial plurality
alone: since the citizenry is made up of men and women, both should be represented in equal percentages
in the political system. In this sense, parity is not simply a higher quota for women, but the broadest
possible expression of universality.
This is how parity is understood by the Venezuelan women who argued for its inclusion in the
legislation of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Lastly, in order to provide scope for twenty- first
century demands for parity, progress must be made in the realm of theory in order to overcome the
naturalist cultural heritage once and for all and strengthen democracy ( Valcárcel, 2001). Achieving parity
is thus a process that includes recourse to quotas and other tools but that, above all, requires the
recognition of women as full citizens in their own right.
G. PARITY AS A DEMOCRATIC OBJECTIVE
The rights women have secured as citizens and their political representation in the current context provide
grounds for considering parity to be a feasible democratic objective once power- related tensions and
disputes are resolved. The emergence of “ governmentality” does not always coincide with the
devitalization of sovereignty ( Butler, 2006) and it may be that women have to accurately capture the
constellation of stakeholders within which they function in order to make a leap in history.
The parity movement emerged during the 1990s in a context of accelerating globalization and
internal differentiation within increasingly complex societies. Citizenship and the political representation
of diversity becomes a highly relevant issue as globalization deepens and, in the process, States become
18
relatively less powerful, new global institutions arise and large waves of migration move across
continents.
In that context, the parity movement questions the unitary, linear thinking of the past and opens
up the democracy agenda to the need to weave an institutional fabric that represents social diversity and
recognizes new ways for society and the State to relate to one another.
More than other rights, gender equality has been associated with changes in the collective
mentality. As noted by Murillo de la Vega ( 2006), the regulation of private property was accomplished
without the measure being subject to the populace having a clear understanding of the limits imposed by
respect for other people’s belongings. Any attempt to apply the principle of equality, however, prompts a
chorus of female and male voices alike, recommending waiting periods and more gentle changes to avoid
disturbing the social status quo ( Fagoaga and Saavadra, 2006, p. 9).
The campaign for parity in elected and appointed positions at senior levels of government was
initiated in the late 1980s by women in European politics, in response to the poor representation of
women in parliaments — it was surprisingly low in France— and in high government positions. The
concept of parity was proposed in 1989 by the Council of the European Communities. In November 1992,
at the request of the Commission of the European Communities, the European summit “ Women in
Power” was held in Athens, bringing together current and former women ministers, who concluded that
democracy requires parity in the representation and governance of nations. In Latin America and the
Caribbean, these demands arose in the last decades of the twentieth century.
Two traditions may be identified in the campaign for parity: the French tradition, whose
arguments are based on universalism, citizenship, equality and difference; and the tradition of the
American continent, whose rationale is the need for affirmative action to counteract the exclusion of
different groups from the exercise of power.
One strand of the French school of thought argues that women are not a category of the
population, but rather constitute half of humanity. The duality of sex is thus a difference of universe, not a
category, and that “ mixed- ness” does not run counter to the equality principle but, on the contrary,
represents a necessary translation of it. From this perspective, there must be room in politics for sexual
difference as something that is cross- cutting and inherent to the human genus.
The philosopher Sylviane Agacinski ( 1999) views parity as a new concept of sexual difference
and a new way of conceiving democracy. Parity campaigners reject supposed neutrality and acknowledge
the difference between the sexes without ascribing any hierarchical order, asserting that public
responsibility is the concern of men and women alike. Womanhood is one of the two possible
manifestations of humanness. For Agacinski, women are not in essence different from men but constitute
a distinct social and cultural category, owing to their traditional exclusion from power. As women,
therefore, they require a deliberate effort of inclusion in political affairs. Acceptance of parity enables
more accurate representation of the nation.
Parity is a recent thing and it has developed according to the political traditions of individual
countries, including the influence wielded by the women’s movement. In Latin America, Chile is the only
country to have assumed parity as a programmatic commitment under the government of President
Bachelet. This has led to the appointment of a parity cabinet and has extended to the make- up of under-secretary’s
departments, provincial governor’s offices and other public services. The effort to establish a
gender balance in decision- making has been accompanied by policies with a gender perspective in such
19
areas of social security, labour practice, reproductive health and management. 9 Women have been
appointed in larger numbers than usual in other countries, including Ecuador, where President Correa
appointed seven female government ministers, and Bolivia, where President Morales increased the
number of female cabinet members and where Congress passed an alternation bill that encouraged the
apportionment of 30% of the seats in the Constituent Assembly for women.
Although it is premature to state that these initiatives constitute a range of possible routes to
parity, the measures taken by the president of Chile, the strength of women’s organizations, the support of
women’s machineries in other countries and, no less importantly, a climate of change undoubtedly
exercise a significant impact which is helping to propel women into government cabinets. It must not be
forgotten, however, that women’s presence in cabinets is typically highly volatile and generates a
resistance that forewarns of sanctions for the entire gender should a female governor make a mistake.
Women, even those in power, have not been able to prevent their individual presence from being taken to
represent the entire gender, while men in positions of power have secured recognition as individuals and
the mistakes of the few are not attributed to all men.
One of the first criticisms that both male and female politicians level at the concept of parity is
that it undermines the principle of universality, one of the pillars of modernity and democracy. Refuting
that claim, Françoise Collin, a Belgian feminist philosopher, argues that adherence to the parity principle
does not imply the adoption of a philosophical position ( Collin, 2006). The concept of universality refers
to the whole of humanity, whereas “ parity” operates at the level of the citizen. The category of citizenship
is narrower that than of humanity, since it is always inscribed within the framework of a particular State
and legal system and, hence, cannot be universalistic. Citizenship is circumscribed externally by a
country’s borders and internally by systems of inclusion and exclusion. Women claim their rights — in
this case, to represent their co- citizens— as citizens and as members of one of the two communities that
constitute and reproduce humanity. Accordingly, parity represents a demand made in the realm of
citizenship, not a philosophical stance on the fundamental status of humanity and sex.
Parity reveals what was hidden behind the concept of the individual, built in the image and
likeness of man. By questioning the monism of democratic universalism, the campaign for parity
recognizes many ways of being an individual, of incarnating the universal and the everyday world. In this
sense, parity desexualizes power by extending it to both sexes and thus it may be said to represent true
universalism ( Collin, 2006). Insofar as the concept of the individual citizen is not neutral, but is built on
the male model, access to representation as a human being and an individual occurs in a sexed
environment, characterized by the exclusion — not accidental but structural— of women.
Feminist schools that assert substantive equality between men and women and those that
emphasize the difference put forward different rationales for parity. Those known as universalist
feminists see a flagrant contradiction between the law, which states that all citizens must be represented
independently of their sex, and the reality, insofar as male and female citizens are represented almost
exclusively by men, which evinces profound discrimination. In order to arrive at equality it is necessary
to do away with the artificial differences between men and women, which would disappear if inequality
were overcome. As this school sees it, parity representation does not imply that women speak only for
women: they represent the whole of the population just as men do and can likewise be conduits for the
wider interest in all its forms. Parity requires only that the basic mixed nature of humanity be
represented in assemblies — parliaments, in this case. Notwithstanding their affirmations, the
9 See the gender equity system incorporated in 2002 into the Government of Chile’s administration improvement
programme [ online] http:// www. sernam. cl/ pmg.
20
universalist school’s arguments in support of parity are based on the valuation of the differences
between men and women. They argue that women are better placed to achieve true equality between
the sexes and that they are much more deeply committed than egalitarian men to driving forward
processes conducive to real equality.
Adherents to the school of feminism that emphasizes the difference between women and men
base their arguments on the heterogeneity of the sexes and affirm that difference is about more than
inequality. Women’s involvement in party or community leaderships brings change, because women
bring something different from men, derived from their shared experience of exclusion, which is
expressed in anti- patriarchal reflexes and habits that stand in opposition to the male way of engaging in
politics. Although the acknowledgement of difference and of the diversity of different groups’ interests
has paved the way for the consideration of specific rights and the recognition of different types of public,
it is necessary to be aware of the risk of setting publicly acknowledged differences in stone and treating
them as inalterable. People who take a historical perspective are able to adopt other points of view
nourished by different approaches and histories.
At the political level, feminists’ reservations about parity are based on their scepticism that, by
itself, the entry of women to politics will suffice to desexualize the power of a system that was solidly
structured without them, much less if they lack an understanding of gender inequalities and have not
proposed prior shared objectives to change the system. Feminists argue that the sole fact of being women
does not guarantee representatives the clarity and willpower to uphold the interests of marginalized
members of their sex. They also ask where the real power mechanisms are in contemporary society. This
question is especially important in the context of globalization, with other power spheres emerging in the
economy and politics that transcend national States. These spheres are inhabited largely by men and exert
pressure on national States.
Feminists also question whether women in power and the feminist movement can represent
women as a group. Like the different strands of parity feminism, they signal the risk of falling for the
fiction that women are a homogenous group and challenge the feminist movement’s capacity to represent
them all. The movement can never represent all women or all the elements that may identify them.
Beyond the general observation that women are oppressed, it must be admitted that the female condition
in the singular is a fiction and that women experience multiple social realities. Feminist campaigns have
themselves increased the diversity among women — inevitably, since the collective effort has aimed to
empower women as subjects and free them from the domination of others.
From this perspective, the campaign for parity is one of the forces at work in the reactivation of
democracy and gender equality and it coexists with other campaigns driven by forces within civil society,
the public arena and the State. Parity in political representation has, generally speaking, been coupled
with strategies aimed at generating the conditions for women’s parity participation in all social, private
and public realms. Indeed, the achievement of equality requires social pacts that enable all adult members
of society to interact as equals. This, in turn, cannot happen without equitable distribution of material
resources and the recognition of independence and of the different voices in society.
H. THE CAMPAIGN FOR POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN THE REGION
Latin American women’s campaign for citizenship and political representation has evinced specific
features resulting from the economic, social and institutional characteristics of the countries and their
21
position on the world stage at various times in history. Although women’s movements in the region have
been inspired by different feminist schools in Europe and the United States, their strategies and the
direction of their campaigning have given rise to considerations and thinking that reflect their own
perspective. The struggle has been marked all along by tensions and proposals that have arisen from the
debate between equality and freedom, between political rights and social rights. These proposals, in turn,
have combined women’s pursuit of emancipation with the objectives of democracy, respect for human
rights, social equality and the effort to combat poverty. Although later than elsewhere, the adoption of the
reproductive rights agenda and the extension of the concept of human rights to population policy form
part of this process. Unlike other regions of the world, Latin America and the Caribbean has a strong
tradition of women’s movements from working- class sectors that have been involved in the pro- human-rights
social struggles of trade unions and those against dictatorships and poverty. Alliances of working-and
middle- class women added up to a powerful movement which helped to give strength and legitimacy
to feminist movements. In such culturally diverse countries as those of the region it has been necessary to
recognize the coexistence of different orders of gender, corresponding to the different cultural traditions
and ethnic groups within a given society. The feminist movement has had to attend to the ways in which
the various systems of inequality are interconnected and hierarchically structured, and to the
contradictions between the desire for gender equity and for social equity, or ethnic and gender equity.
Cultural globalization has enabled the region’s feminist movement to be in contact with feminist groups
in other developing countries with different cultural traditions, including India, the Philippines and certain
Arab countries, among others, thereby broadening its frames of reference.
Although in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries only a small minority of women
figured in public affairs and even those who were involved were confined mainly to religious and
charitable organizations, there were a few groups already campaigning for equality at that time. In the
early twentieth century, a number of women entered revolutionary political parties and were involved in
democracy movements opposing dictatorships, as in the case of the Costa Rican feminist league against
the dictatorship of Federico Tinoco in 1920. The Adela Barrios feminist club, formed in the late
nineteenth century in El Salvador, campaigned for women’s suffrage and, in the 1920s, become involved
in reformist and revolutionary movements opposed to the regime of Meléndez- Quiñones.
In 1922, 6,000 women marched in black to symbolize mourning for the death of democracy and
support of the presidential candidate Tomás Molina. The membership of these organizations consisted
mainly of female teachers, who created organizations, clubs and journals as part of their political activity.
These women thus opened up separate political spaces from which to interpret their exclusion and
campaign for recognition as subjects of rights. These organizations were led by exceptional women who
shared a strong political will to combat the subordination of women in the family, the workplace and
education. One such leader was Prudencia Ayala, a Salvadoran of indigenous origin, who in the early
twentieth century wrote in local newspapers in support of Central American union and the cause of César
Sandino in Nicaragua and against the political regimes of the Central American countries. In 1930 she
lobbied the municipal council of San Salvador and the Supreme Court for women’s suffrage and
campaigned to be registered as a candidate for the presidential election. She also set up the Santa Tecla
women’s circle ( Círculo Femenino Tecleño) and the journal Redención femenina.
The suffragist movement took on an international dimension from the outset. Through networks
connecting their organizations in different countries, women’s movements were able to share new ideas,
discourses and arguments in order to demand women’s suffrage simultaneously in different societies.
The suffragist movement emerged mainly in social contexts with favourable cultural and political
conditions, from where it spread to other areas. Feminist discourses started from within broader
22
democratic movements, gradually becoming more independent until they grew into autonomous and
emancipatory movements in their own right and, hence, a political force. Initially, arguments in favour of
education and the right to vote and to work were based on existing gendered role divisions. The
suffragists argued that women who were better educated and more involved in public affairs and the
labour market would be better qualified to fulfil their social roles as wives and mothers. Their discourse
later became more emancipatory, contrasting women’s exclusion with the democratic ideals of equality
and justice. Achievements were made only gradually and the social and political world met each step
forward with huge ideological resistance and, not infrequently, threats to the physical integrity of the
movement’s leaders aimed at forcing them to give up their aspirations and achievements.
Table I. 1
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN ( 36 COUNTRIES): A TIMELINE SHOWING THE
RECOGNITION OF WOMEN’S RIGHT TO VOTE AND STAND FOR ELECTION
1924 Saint Lucia
1929 Ecuador b
1931 Chile a
1932 Brazil, a Puerto Rico a
1934 Cuba, Brazil, a Uruguay
1936 Puerto Rico b
1939 El Salvador ( right to vote)
1941 Panama a
1942 Dominican Republic
1944 Jamaica
1945 Bolivia, a Guyana ( right to stand for election)
1946 Brazil, b Guatemala, Panama, b Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela ( Bolivarian Republic of)
1947 Argentina, Mexico ( right to vote)
1948 Suriname
1949 Chile, b Costa Rica
1950 Barbados, Haiti a
1951 Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,
Saint Lucia
1952 Bolivia b
1953 Mexico ( right to stand for election), Guyana ( right to vote)
1954 Belize, Colombia
1955 Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru
1957 Haiti b
1961 Bahamas, a El Salvador ( right to stand for election), Paraguay
1964 Bahamas b
Source: Inter- Parliamentary Union, “ Women in Politics” [ online] http:// www. ipu. org/ wmn- e/ suffrage. htm [ date of reference:
14 September 2006]. Karen Bart- Alexander, “ Women’s political participation and gender parity in decision- making at
all levels in the Caribbean” ( SOC/ 2007/ 2), document presented at the Subregional preparatory meeting for South
America for the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, St. John’s,
Antigua and Barbuda, 22 and 23 May 2007, unpublished; responses of the governments of Haiti and Puerto Rico to the
ECLAC questionnaire on unpaid work and political participation sent in September 2006.
a Right subject to conditions or restrictions.
b Restrictions or conditions lifted.
23
Beginning in the 1940s, as a result of modernization processes under way in the countries and the
achievements made in education and political life, women began to be considered for senior posts, albeit a
minority of them, in public administration. This change began slowly, but has gathered strength in recent
decades. Research by Eglé Iturbe de Blanco ( 2003) and Karen Bart- Alexander shows that, between the
1940s and the 1960s, women ministers were appointed for the first time in the following countries:
Ecuador ( 1944), Panama ( 1950), Chile ( 1952), Cuba ( 1952), Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( 1953),
Colombia ( 1954) Costa Rica ( 1958), Trinidad and Tobago ( 1962) and Barbados ( 1966).
With the political democratization processes of the last two decades of the twentieth century, the
men and women of Latin America regained the right to elect their representatives and stand for election.
In Central America, peace agreements paved the way for the creation of new institutions to support
consensuses. In the region as a whole, countries came under pressure to reform their institutions in a
context of increasing globalization and shifts in economic models.
The women’s movement, including feminists, played a crucial role in the recovery of democracy
and peace- building in the wake of armed conflicts. The relationships established among the various
strands ( human rights groups, survivors’ groups in conflict zones and feminist organizations) raised the
profile of the movement and secured it recognition as part of the anti- dictatorial and progressive forces
committed to peace and democracy.
In the last few years, women’s involvement in politics has become an item on the political
agenda, with women’s political participation being promoted through equality strategies implemented by
mechanisms for women’s advancement in most of the countries as part of equal opportunities
programmes. Table I. 2 gives an overview of the recent evolution of government agendas in the region.
First, political participation is universally recognized as a tool for women’s empowerment and
gender equity. As regards electoral affairs, women of all sectors have explicitly expressed an aspiration to
see quota laws enacted in many of the countries where no such legislation yet exists. The positive
discrimination of women within the structure of the State is another recurrent strategy in the region. Some
recent plans also include parity explicitly, not only for the purposes of elections but also within the
structure of government. Notably, Uruguay and Costa Rica have equal opportunities plans in which parity
figures as a goal with a set timescale. Table I. 2 shows government objectives or strategies which, in
combination with other factors, can help achieve positive results. Those other factors include the political
will of governments, the existence of cross- party consensuses on the effective promotion of women’s
political representation and cross- party alliances of women parliamentarians.
Women’s participation is not confined to the national level. The equality policies put in place
have provided momentum for new leaderships in almost all the countries. Although there are no definitive
studies yet, national women’s offices report achievements as regards local and national female leaders’
access to political institutions such as parliament or local government. In many countries strides have also
been made in the judiciary, in business and other important arenas, but comparable and up- to- date
regional information is still lacking. 10
10 The responses of a number of countries to the ECLAC questionnaire indicated that trends at the local level are
similar to those seen at the national level, but it is not yet possible to make categorical statements or to identify
any specific features of those developments.
24
Table I. 2
LATIN AMERICA ( 20 COUNTRIES): NATIONAL PLANS FOR EQUALITY, POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AND PARITY
Country Latest available action plan b
Treats political
participation as
an instrument
of equity
Proposes establishing a
quota law for elections
( in countries without
quota law)
Proposes positive
discrimination or quotas
within the structure of
government
Explicitly treats
parity as an
instrument of
equity
Includes specific
targets or deadlines
for achieving parity
at different levels
Argentina Plan for equal opportunities for women
and men in the labour market ( 1998). c/
X
Bolivia Plan for equal opportunities for women
and men ( 2004- 2006).
X
Brazil National plan of women’s policies
( 2004- 2007).
X
Chile a Equal opportunities plan ( 2000- 2010)
( evaluation of first phase 2000- 2005).
X X
Colombia a National policy on women as peace- and
development- builders, in the framework
of the national agreement for equity
between women and men ( 2003).
X X
Costa Rica National plan for equality and gender
equity ( 2007- 2017).
X X X X
Cuba a National plan of action in follow- up to
the Fourth World Conference on Women
( 1997).
X X
Ecuador Equal opportunities plan ( 2005- 2009).
X X X
El Salvador a National women’s policy ( 2005).
X
Guatemala a National plan for the promotion and
development of Guatemalan women.
Equitable opportunities plan ( 2001-
2006).
X X X
Haiti a Strategic public policies plan ( 2006-
2011).
X X
Honduras National plan for women – first national
equal opportunities plan ( 2002- 2007).
X
México National programme for equality of
opportunities and non- discrimination
against women ( PROEQUIDAD) ( 2001 -
2006).
X X
25
Country Latest available action plan b
Treats political
participation as
an instrument
of equity
Proposes establishing a
quota law for elections
( in countries without
quota law)
Proposes positive
discrimination or quotas
within the structure of
government
Explicitly treats
parity as an
instrument of
equity
Includes specific
targets or deadlines
for achieving parity
at different levels
Nicaragua a National gender equity plan ( 2002- 2006).
X X
Panama Equal opportunities for women plan
( 2002- 2006). National plan against intra-family
violence and policies on civic
coexistence ( 2006).
X
Paraguay Second national plan for equality of
opportunities and rights ( 2003- 2008).
X X
Peru Law and national plan on equality of
opportunities for women and men ( 2006-
2010).
X X
Dominican Republic National gender equity plan ( 2000). X X
Uruguay a First national plan of equality of
opportunities and rights ( 2007- 2011).
X X X X X
Venezuela ( Bolivarian
Republic of ) a
Women’s equality plan ( 2004- 2009). X X X
Source: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC), on the basis of the most recent national equality or gender equity plans published by the
respective countries.
a No quota law applies in the legislative branch.
b Over the last year new governments have taken up office in the region and national women’s plans are under review. In these cases, the most recent official plan published has
been taken as a reference, since the table is intended to show the evolution of government agendas.
c In Argentina, the quota law ( 1991), the decree that regulates it ( 2000) and the plan of equal opportunities in the labour market ( 1998), which has force of law, have been key
instruments forming the basis for policies in more specific areas, including the pension system, as well as notable progress in women’s representation in the legislative branch.
26
In many countries, a new collective subjectivity was built around gender inequalities and new
political fields emerged. Actors in these fields drew attention to the systemic nature of gender inequality
and identified different and sometimes contradictory forms of discrimination within the social and
institutional spheres, that is, in day- to- day interactions, family life, the marketplace, politics and culture.
Unlike the feminist movement in Europe and the United States, the feminist campaign in this region
revolved around development, social equality and poverty.
The effort to develop measures to deliberately increase women’s political representation comes in
response to the slow or almost non- existent growth of their numbers in parliaments, despite improvements
in women’s levels of education, their entry to the labour market and their growing membership of
political parties. Thus, women’s organizations — especially groups of female politicians in cross- party
alliances— are campaigning for affirmative action to counteract the formal or informal barriers
preventing women’s nomination to electoral lists or appointment to designated positions.
Electoral gender quotas, as initially implemented in political parties in the Nordic countries in the
1970s, were intended to guarantee a certain number of women in senior political positions and to create a
“ critical minority” ( 30% to 40%) to counteract their political isolation and channel resources, not only
towards meeting women’s demands, but also into initiatives to change the way political systems worked.
Quota systems may be examined from two angles: first, the source of the quota mandate
( constitution, legislation, political parties) and, second, the stage of the political and electoral process at
which it is enforced. Quotas can be employed at the first stage of the process ( identification of would- be
candidates), at an intermediate stage ( candidate nomination) or the final stage ( by reserving a certain
percentage of seats for women). The double- quota system is one which not only calls for a certain
percentage of women to participate, but also requires them to occupy positions on the electoral lists that
have a good possibility of being elected.
The use of quotas is a matter of considerable debate and resistance in the political system. Some
of those in politics argue that quotas violate the principles of the universality of citizenship and of
competition on an equal footing based on individual merit. They warn of the danger of encouraging the
differentiation of new groups and the corporate representation of group interests. In relation to these
arguments, however, from the point of view of political strategy electoral quotas do not imply the
recognition of any fundamental interpretation of womanhood, but constitute a mechanism to counteract
subordination and improve chances for real equality. Quotas are built upon the concept of affirmative
action concept mentioned earlier.
Affirmative action is associated with programmes to train social and political leaders and with
measures to promote the formation and action of women’s organizations. In a political environment
constructed around gender equity, it is possible to define gender problems and build them into
governments’ institutional agendas; promote legal and constitutional reforms; expand knowledge towards
the State; provide appropriate human- resources training; and support the establishment of arenas in which
pro- gender- equity policies can be coordinated. The world conferences held under the auspices of the
United Nations in the 1990s were highly significant and became major media events that galvanized
public opinion and therefore went a long way towards disseminating and legitimizing issues, proposals
and the resulting agreements. The growing involvement of NGOs in preparatory meetings for
conferences, national committees and delegations, alternative forums and follow- up committees and
conferences provided the feminist movement with new opportunities for political participation at the
global level, as well as channels through which to influence governments. This helps to explain why the
27
agreements adopted at each conference have acted as genuine global agendas guiding the political action
of the forces committed to gender equity in the different countries.
In the 1990s, in this international climate disposed to promote increased gender equity, the Latin
American and Caribbean countries became the stage for a series of demands and negotiations that would
eventually lead to the adoption of quotas for elections to legislative posts. Each country that adopted
quota laws did so in its own particular way, but it was always the culmination of a long process. Women
politicians formed cross- party alliances with the support of the feminist movement and women’s
organizations mobilized to campaign for the adoption of quota laws, identify their main weaknesses,
reform rules and establish sanctions to ensure proper compliance. The existence of State- sponsored
gender mechanisms helped to articulate the various strands of the campaign and to mediate between the
movement and the rest of the State. In all cases, women politicians’ relations with their parties were
conflictive. Political parties were reluctant to adopt affirmative action as a way of promoting women’s
political participation, but ultimately did so in the context of the wider debate on equity within the region.
In the early 1990s, women had very limited access to decision- making and representative bodies.
In the Caribbean, women accounted for 12% of the two chambers of parliament in 1990 ( Bart- Alexander,
2007), while in Latin America they accounted for about 5% of the members of upper chambers and about
9% of the lower chambers of legislatures ( Bareiro and others, 2004). This was a clear indication that there
were still structural barriers to more egalitarian participation in the exercise of political power.
In 1991 Argentina became the first country to enact a women’s quota law, in response to the
demands of female politicians, who proposed the measure after the main parties refused to establish
quotas within their ranks. In 1989, the female senator for the province of Mendoza submitted an electoral
code reform bill aiming, for the first time, to oblige party- political organizations to include women in
their lists of candidates for legislative posts. In 1990, 15 party organizations set up a network of feminist
politicians, which was to play a crucial role in analysing and adopting the quota law. The fifth National
Women’s Meeting ( 1990), which brought together a wide range of activists, expressed its support for the
quota law in notes sent to the presidents of all political parties and to both chambers of parliament urging
the approval of the quota bills. Other key factors included the support of both the Multisectoral Women’s
Group ( made up of feminists, members of political parties and civil- society representatives) and the
National Women’s Council ( Marx, Borner and Caminotti, 2006). This legislation had a broad impact in
Argentina, where a 30% quota was also adopted for women’s participation in trade unions in 2002,11 and
in other countries.
The first elections held following the enactment of the quota law demonstrated the need for
certain amendments and for strict monitoring to close the loopholes that parties used to get round the
legislation. Legal proceedings brought by female politicians over parties’ failure to comply with the law
placed crucial pressure on parties to accede. The constitutional reform of 1994 provided further political
and legal backing to these demands by recognizing the principle of equality among men and women as
regards access to elective posts and political positions, and by making it unconstitutional for any future
law to reduce the quotas established.
11 Act 25,674.
28
In Costa Rica the quota issue began to be discussed around 1988, after the country ratified the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1984. This led parties
to include mechanisms to promote and guarantee the effective participation of women in the allocation of
posts and in nominations for electoral lists. A broad mobilization took place between 1992 and 1996,
when a quota system was established with the enactment of law 7635. Under this system, parties must
ensure that women represent 40% of both the party structure and candidates included on tickets for
elections. Similar rules apply in local government. The registry office will not register lists that do not
comply with the law. In addition, the law requires women to be candidates for eligible posts and
recommends alternation and observance of the historical average. In 2007, the main lines of action of the
Costa Rican government’s national equality and gender equity policy were to enhance women’s
participation ( line 5), promote care of the family as a social responsibility and assign value to domestic
work ( line 1) and strengthen the pro- equality and pro- gender- equity public institutional structure ( line 6).
Line 5 aims to have established parity political participation in all decision- making spheres in Costa Rica
by 2017.
In Mexico, in 1993, section 3 of article 175 of the Federal Code of Electoral Institutions and
Procedures ( COFIPE) was amended to oblige political parties to promote greater participation by
women in politics. In 1996, it was agreed that the statutes of national political parties should stipulate
that neither sex may represent more than 70% of the candidates for election to parliament and the
senate. In 2002, clauses ( a), ( b) and ( c) of article 175 were approved as follows: neither sex may
represent more than 70% of candidates; the first three segments of every list shall each have a candidate
of a different sex from the others; and any political party or coalition failing to comply with the
provisions of the Federal Council of the Federal Electoral Institute of Mexico will be given 48 hours to
rectify the situation, after which time it will be publicly reprimanded. Repeated non- compliance will
result in denial of registration for the offending party’s candidates. This does not apply to the
candidatures of individuals directly elected by a relative majority ( Reynoso and D’Angelo, 2004).
Cross- party alliances of women politicians have been formed at key moments in Mexico to promote
and campaign for women’s political representation and for larger numbers of women in decision-making.
At one point the “ Plural” group comprised female leaders from the main political parties and,
in the framework of the fiftieth anniversary of women’s suffrage in Mexico, issued a declaration in
support of women’s political participation and representation.
In Brazil, as in other countries, 100 years had to pass between the first extension of the right to
vote ( 1824) and the law that conferred that right upon married women ( providing they had their husband’s
consent) and some single women and widows with income of their own ( 1932). In 1934 some of these
restrictions were lifted and voting was made obligatory for women in remunerated positions in the civil
service. Universal suffrage was instituted in 1946.
The first experience of quotas occurred within the Workers’ Party ( PT), which approved a quota
of 30% for the party leadership. In 1993, the Amalgamated Workers’ Union ( CUT) applied lower and
upper limits of 30% and 70% to both sexes. Lastly, in 1995 following the Campaign “ Women Unafraid of
Power” ( Mulheres sem medo do poder), a quota of 20% was set for lists of candidates for municipal
elections for 1996. The following year, an amendment to the electoral law raised to 25% the minimum
quota of female candidates on lists for legislative positions elected by proportional ballot. The
involvement of the organized women’s movement in debates in Congress was crucial to the law’s
adoption. Members of the movement provided advice and viewpoints during public sessions in the
chamber of deputies and the senate, thus creating an ongoing dialogue between parliament and society.
29
In Bolivia, a quota law introduced in 1997 establishes that female candidates shall make up at
least 30% of the list of candidates for seats in parliament. Owing to the law’s incompatibility with the
electoral system and shortcomings in its formulation, however, women have yet to represent more than
16% of such posts in Bolivia, except in the Constituent Assembly ( 2007), in which 30% of
representatives are women.
In the Dominican Republic the electoral law has been amended twice. First in 1997, to oblige
political institutions to include a proportion of no less than 25% of women in their nominations and
proposals for congressional and municipal positions. Second, in 2002 a new law was passed to increase
the proportion to 33% in provincial governments and municipal departments. In addition, the approval of
Law 13- 2000 on district executive boards ( sindicaturas) provided for the addition of a paragraph to article
5 on municipal organization, stating that all parties must include a women on their electoral ticket for the
election of district executives or deputy district executives.
In Peru, the general elections act of 1997 stipulated a minimum proportion of 25% for either sex
on lists of candidates for congress. This percentage was raised to 30% in 2000. In 2003 a new piece of
legislation made it compulsory for candidate lists for party leadership positions and political groupings to
have a certain quota of men or women. At the local level, candidate lists for municipal councillors have
been required to comply with a gender quota since 1997. In 2002, the quota system became a
constitutional requirement and minimum percentages were stipulated for gender representation in regional
and municipal councils. Lastly, in 2007, the law on equal opportunities for women and men and a decree
on policies with which national government entities are obliged to comply added measures to promote
women’s access to decision- making in society and the public administration.
In Ecuador the broad feminist movement played a prominent role in having provisions included
in the Constitution of 1998, thereby establishing that the State shall promote the equitable participation of
women and men as candidates in election processes, in management and decision- making within public
affairs, in the administration of justice, in oversight bodies and in political parties ( article 102). This
provision has translated into an electoral law under which 23% of legislators elected to the single
legislative chamber are women. In May 2007, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal approved the necessary
regulations for enforcing the quota law. 12
In some countries, major strides are made from one period to the next. This is the case of El
Salvador, where the proportion of women candidates jumped from 16% to 35% in the last administration.
The sustainability of this continues to rely on the individual decisions of political parties, however. After
a decade of campaigning, quota laws have been passed in 14 of the region’s countries ( see table I. 3).
12 Report of the Government of Ecuador presented at the Subregional preparatory meeting for South America for
the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean ( Santiago, Chile,
May 2007).
30
Table I. 3
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN ( 14 COUNTRIES): TIMELINE OF ENACTMENT OF
QUOTA LAWS AND SUBSEQUENT AMENDMENTS
Country Year of enactment of quota
law Amendments
Argentina 1991 1993
Bolivia 1997 2004
Brazil 1995 1997
Colombia 1999 2001- declared unconstitutional
Costa Rica 1996 1999
Ecuador 1997 2000
Haiti a 2005
Honduras 2000
Mexico 1996 2002
Panama 1997
Paraguay 1996
Peru 1997 2001
Dominican Republic 1997 2000
Venezuela ( Bolivarian Rep. of) 1997 2000 - declared unconstitutional b
Source: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC), on the basis of International Institute for
Democracy and Electoral Assistance ( IDEA), “ Global Database of Quotas for Women” [ online]
http:// www. quotaproject. org/ [ date of reference: 16 August 2006]. Responses of the Government of Haiti to the
ECLAC questionnaire on unpaid work and political participation sent in September 2006.
a An article in the most recent electoral decree reduces by two thirds the registration cost for all candidates of parties
presenting electoral lists on which women represent at least 30%.
b On 1 April 2005 the National Electoral Council of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela issued resolution no. 050401- 179,
which requires political organizations to alternate male and female candidates for national, municipal and parochial decision-making
bodies, on a basis of parity.
In Cuba, the only country without a quota law where women participate broadly in political
decision- making, affirmative action procedures have been in place since 2002, in the form of an agreement
with the Organizations of the State Central Administration ( OACE). This consists of a commitment to work
towards the formation of a vacancies roster formed by equal numbers of candidates of each sex and, from
2003 on, to make the final selection of appointees from a shortlist of two equally qualified candidates — a
man and a woman— in order to ensure that decisions are made on a basis of equality.
Guatemala is one of the countries where lack of affirmative action measures has been clearly felt.
Between 1986 and 2003 there were never more than 14 female representatives in the legislature and
Mayan women never had more than a single representative. This exclusion has led to a campaign entitled
“ More women, better politics” ( Más mujeres, mejor política), which is aimed at increasing women’s
participation in decision- making in the 2007 elections, when voting will be held for 3,720 positions in
public office, including members of the Guatemalan and Central American parliaments, mayors and
representatives to municipal corporations. Guatemalan women represent a minority in political parties and
civic committees too. Women make up 51% of the total population, but only 44% of those registered to
vote ( 56% of the electoral roll are men) and an even smaller percentage of actual voters. Female
candidates are also few in number: 2,254 in 2003, compared to 21,451 male candidates. This contrasts
31
with the situation in Costa Rica: although it is in the same region, female candidates there represent
around 40% of the total thanks to the use of quotas.
With the exception of Dominican Republic and Haiti, none of the Caribbean islands have
approved the use of quota laws. They have all, however, adhered to the principle established in the
Santiago Consensus ( 1997) and by the Commonwealth Ministers Responsible for Women’s Affairs that
that 30% of posts should go to women. In 2004, the Commonwealth Ministers restated their commitment
to work to achieve the minimum target of 30% representation in political and corporate decision- making
by 2015. In its programme for 2003- 2008, the Department of Women’s Affairs of Belize made a
commitment to work to achieve a quota of 30% and some of the region’s NGOs have joined the campaign
of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization ( WEDO) aimed at increasing the target to
50% ( Bart- Alexander, 2007).
Quota laws have had positive effects in all the countries that have adopted them, as female
representation has increased, especially in the lower chambers and single chambers. Argentina and Costa
Rica stand out with women representing 35% and 38.6%, respectively, of seats in the legislature ( see
figure I. 1). Cuba, with 36%, constitutes an exception since its political system is different. These three
figure amongst the 10 countries in the world with the highest numbers of women in parliament, together
with Rwanda ( 34%), Sweden ( 47%) and Finland ( 42%). In the Bahamas more than 30% of upper
chamber seats are held by women. However, in most countries female representation remains below the
percentage stipulated in the law.
Figure I. 1
LATIN AMERICA ( 10 COUNTRIES): RESULTS OF THE QUOTA SYSTEM
( Percentages)
Source: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC), on the basis of Inter- Parliamentary Union,
“ Women in National Parliaments” [ online] http:// www. ipu. org/ wmn- e/ world- arc. htm [ date of reference: 30 April
2007].
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Paraguay
Brazil
Bolivia
Mexico
Dominican
Republic
Argentina
Bolivia
Mexico
Paraguay
Argentina
Panama
Ecuador
Peru
Costa Rica
Lower chamber Upper chamber Single chamber
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
After quota law Before quota law
32
The differences between the results prior to quota laws and the latest election results are even
larger, especially in Argentina, where representation increased from 6% to 36.2%; Costa Rica ( from
15.8% to 38.6%); Honduras ( from 5.5% to 23.4%); Peru ( from 10.8% to 29.2%); Mexico ( from 8.8% to
22.4% in the lower chamber); and Ecuador ( from 3.7% to 16%) ( see figure I. 2).
Figure I. 2
LATIN AMERICA ( 11 COUNTRIES): DIFFERENCES IN FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN
PARLIAMENT ( LOWER OR SINGLE CHAMBER) BETWEEN THE ELECTIONS
PRIOR TO QUOTA LAWS AND THE MOST RECENT ELECTIONS
( Percentage points)
Source: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC), on the basis of Inter- Parliamentary Union,
“ Women in National Parliaments” [ online] http:// www. ipu. org/ wmn- e/ world- arc. htm [ date of reference: 16 August
2006].
Countries in which female representation exceeded 30% in the most recent elections, especially
Argentina, Costa Rica and Peru, display a systematic, upward trend in such representation. Figure I. 3
shows that the countries in which women achieved less than 20% of seats in the last election show a less
rapid and more unstable pattern of growth. Lastly, women’s representation shows no significant growth in
Brazil or Paraguay. Women are capable of forming a critical mass that reinforces the achievements made
and provides a platform for advancing towards parity. In Argentina, Costa Rica and Peru, the three
countries that met the target, this achievement was aided by broad cross- party alliances, intensive work
within the parties, support for women’s advancement mechanisms, the decisive leadership of the
women’s movement and democratic conditions that allowed the adoption of quota laws as a means of
moving towards equality.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Before the quota law After the quota law
Before the quota law 6.6 16.1 11.5 2.5 9.7 8.8 3.7 5.5 10.8 17.3 6
After the quota law 8.6 19.7 16.9 8.8 16.7 22.4 16 23.4 29.2 38.6 36.2
Brazil
Dominican
Republic
Bolivia Paraguay Panama Mexico Ecuador Honduras Peru Costa Rica Argentina
33
Figure I. 3
LATIN AMERICA ( 11 COUNTRIES): INCREASE IN THE PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN
PARLIAMENT ( LOWER OR SINGLE CHAMBERS), UNDER THE EFFECTS OF
THE QUOTA LAW
( Percentages)
Source: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC), on the basis of Inter- Parliamentary Union,
“ Women in National Parliaments” [ online] http:// www. ipu. org/ wmn- e/ world- arc. htm [ date of reference: 10 December
2006].
Brazil is an interesting case, as there was no significant increase in female participation, despite
the fact that conditions appeared conducive to the adoption of a quota law: a strong feminist movement, a
large group of women lobbying for the adoption of the 1988 Constitution, the coordinating role played by
the First National Women’s Council and the early adoption of a 30% quota by the Workers’ Party ( PT)
for either sex in its governing bodies. The lack of increase is attributable in part to political factors and the
nature of the electoral system. Some studies have found that increasing women’s numbers in the
legislative power through affirmative action was not one of female politicians’ main concerns in Brazil
( Miguel, 2002; Marx, Borner and Caminotti, 2006). Furthermore, the proposal came up against an
electoral system that was not conducive to the use of quotas. This shows how important it is bring about a
combination of propitious factors — a firm political will, a suitable electoral system and an active force in
society— in order to achieve progress in women’s political representation.
The countries that have adopted a quota law yield better results that those that have not ( see figure
I. 4). This is especially true for the legislative branches in Argentina, Costa Rica, Honduras and Peru.
High growth
Argentina
ArgentinaArgentina
Argentina
Argentina
Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Honduras Honduras
Honduras
Honduras
Mexico
Mexico
Mexico
Peru
Peru
Peru
Peru
0
10
20
30
40
50
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008
Medium growth
Ecuador
Ecuador Ecuador
Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia Bolivia
Panama Panama
Panama
Dominican
Republic
Dominican
Republic
Dominican
Republic
Dominican
Republic
0
10
20
30
40
50
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008
Low growth
Paraguay Paraguay
Brazil Brazil
Brazil Paraguay
0
10
20
30
40
50
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008
34
Figure I. 4
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN ( 33 COUNTRIES): PROPORTION OF WOMEN IN
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH ( LOWER AND SINGLE CHAMBERS)
( Percentages)
Source: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC), on the basis of Inter- Parliamentary Union,
“ Women in National Parliaments” [ online] http:// www. ipu. org/ wmn- e/ world- arc. htm [ date of reference: 10 December
2006].
a Elections: Argentina ( 1989), Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( 1988), Bolivia, ( 1989), Brazil ( 1990), Chile ( 1989),
Colombia ( 1994), Costa Rica ( 1990), Dominican Republic ( 1994), Ecuador ( 1992), El Salvador ( 1991), Guatemala ( 1994),
Honduras ( 1993), Mexico ( 1994), Nicaragua ( 1990), Panama ( 1994), Paraguay ( 1993), Peru ( 1990) and Uruguay ( 1994).
Female representation has also risen in countries that do not have quotas, although more slowly
and les steadily, since in these cases the presence of women representatives depends more on political
will than on statutory requirements ( see figure I. 5).
The percentage of women in Latin American parliaments has been quite uneven between
countries and unstable from one period to the next, which makes it difficult to categorize countries by any
particular pattern. In Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and El Salvador, for example, the trends are fairly
erratic, with sharp increases and decreases between periods. In Colombia, women’s representation has
dropped sharply in the most recent period, after remaining stable for some time, whereas in Guatemala it
remains below the more advantageous level of 1995.
- 10
- 5
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Colombia
Haiti
Guatemala
Brazil
Dominica
Belize
Uruguay
Nicaragua
Antigua and Barbuda
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
El Salvador
Saint Lucia
Trinidad and Tobago
Jamaica
Grenada
Panama
Paraguay
Dominican Republic
Venezuela ( Bolivarian Rep. of)
Guyana
Chile
Barbados
Bolivia
Ecuador
Bahamas
Cuba
Mexico
Honduras
Suriname
Peru
Costa Rica
Argentina
Difference between periods 1990 a/ 2006
35
Figure I. 5
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN ( 7 COUNTRIES): WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN
PARLIAMENT IN COUNTRIES WITH NO QUOTA LEGISLATION
( LOWER OR SINGLE CHAMBERS)
( Percentages)
Source: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC), on the basis of Inter- Parliamentary Union,
“ Women in National Parliaments” [ online] http:// www. ipu. org/ wmn- e/ world- arc. htm [ date of reference: 10 December
2006].
The information provided by governments in response to the ECLAC survey suffers from
shortfalls that prevent accurate comparisons between the situation in Latin America and in the Caribbean.
It is thus not possible to follow the patterns in women’s representation in the lower chambers of
parliament in the last three periods in any comparable manner, although there appears to be a slight
increase between the first and the third periods ( see figure I. 6). The data supplied by the Government of
the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico show a volatile situation with regard to women’s participation,
varying from 17.6% in 1996 to 13.7% in 2000 and 15.7% in 2004.
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
1993
1997
2001
2005
1994
1998
2002
2006
1994
1997
2000
2003
2006
1995
1999
2003
1996
2001
2006
1994
1999
2004
1993
1998
2000
2005
Chile Colombia El Salvador Guatemala Nicaragua Uruguay Venezuela
( Bol. Rep.
of)
36
Figure I. 6
CARIBBEAN ( 11 COUNTRIES): WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN PARLIAMENT IN COUNTRIES
WITH NO QUOTA LAW ( LOWER OR SINGLE CHAMBERS), 1995 AND 2005
( Percentages)
Source: Karen Bart- Alexander, “ Women’s political participation and gender parity in decision- making at all levels in the
Caribbean” ( SOC/ 2007/ 2), document presented at the Subregional preparatory meeting for South America for the tenth
session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, St. John’s, Antigua and Barbuda,
22 and 23 May 2007, unpublished.
Figure I. 7
LATIN AMERICA ( 9 COUNTRIES): REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN THE SENATE, 2006
( Percentages)
Source: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC), on the basis of Inter- Parliamentary Union,
“ Women in National Parliaments” [ online] http:// www. ipu. org/ wmn- e/ world- arc. htm [ date of reference: 10 December
2006].
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
1995
2005
1995
2005
1995
2005
1995
2005
1995
2005
1995
2005
1995
2005
1995
2005
1995
2005
1995
2005
1995
2005
Cuba Saint
Vincent and
the
Grenadines
Bahamas Saint Lucia Guyana Dominica Belize Barbados Trinidad
and
Tobago
Jamaica Saint
Kitts
and
Nevis
42%
22%
12%
12%
10%
9%
4%
4%
3%
45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%
Argentina
Mexico
Brazil
Colombia
Uruguay
Paraguay
Chile
Bolivia
Dominican
Republic
Over
30%
Between
20%
and
29%
Between 10%
and 19%
Less than 10%
37
The data for 2006 show that less progress has been made at the level of the senate than in
chambers of deputies in Latin America: Argentina and Mexico are the only countries where women
represent over 20% of senators. This situation makes it difficult to mobilize collective action to form a
critical mass large enough to institute changes. In the Caribbean, by contrast, women represent a higher
proportion of senators than of deputies ( see figure I. 8), partly owing to the fact that women are appointed
to the Senate.
Figure I. 8
CARIBBEAN ( 9 COUNTRIES): REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN THE SENATE, 2006
( Percentages)
Source: United Nations Development Programme ( UNDP), Human Development Report, 1999, 2000 and 2006, New York,
Oxford University Press.
The greatest differences between the two chambers are seen in Saint Lucia, Bahamas and
Guyana, with disparities of 31, 23 and 19 percentage points, respectively. The smallest disparities were
registered in Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda and Grenada, with 8, 7 and 4 percentage points, respectively.
As a result of the selection process, the 30% target for women’s representation in upper chambers has
been attained or surpassed in several countries: the Bahamas ( 43.8%), Trinidad and Tobago ( 32.3%),
Saint Lucia ( 36.4%) and Grenada ( 30.8%). The information received from the Government of the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico shows more uneven women’s participation in the senate, with the figure
moving from 22.2% in 1996 to 25.9% in 2004, after just falling short of the target in 2000 ( 29.6%).
In the lower chambers, only Cuba and Guyana have reached the target of 30%, with women
representing 36% and 30.8% of deputies, respectively, in the two countries. These are closely followed by
Grenada ( 28.7%), Suriname ( 25.5%) and the Bahamas ( 20%). Saint Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda have
made least progress in this respect, with 5.6% and 10.5%, respectively. In Saint Kitts and Nevis, there are
no women in parliament except the speaker ( Bart- Alexander, 2007).
43.8
36.4
32.3
30.8
25
23.8
19
17.6
0
50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0
Bahamas
Saint Lucia
Trinidad and Tobago
Grenada
Belize
Barbados
Jamaica
Antigua and Barbuda
Saint Kitts