The Party of the Brazilian Woman is not actually a women's political party
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Version 0 of 1. In a country with one of the world’s highest levels of violence against women, an average 40% pay gap between the sexes, and a congress in which just one in 10 are female, the foundation of a new political party dedicated to the promotion of women in public life seems like a welcome development. Despite its name, however, the Partido da Mulher Brasileira (PMB), or Party of the Brazilian Woman, is at pains to clarify that it is not a feminist organisation. It is firmly against abortion, and only two of its 20 federal deputies are female. “Obviously we want to attract more women,” said the party’s founder and president, Suêd Haidar, 59. “That’s something we are working really hard to do.” With just 53 women in its 513-seat congress, Brazil ranks 115th in the world in terms of female representation in politics, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, behind numerous nations with a questionable commitment to women’s rights, such as Saudi Arabia and Somalia. In President Dilma Rousseff’s 31-member cabinet, there are only four women, while the president herself, Brazil’s first female head of state, is currently battling impeachment proceedings. Haidar began her political education by following her mother to rallies in the working-class neighbourhoods of São Luís, the capital of the poor north-eastern state of Maranhão. At age 16, she moved to Rio de Janeiro with her new husband and a one-month-old baby, working as a maid, a seamstress and a beautician but always participating in the city’s leftwing politics in her free time. In 2008, she gathered together her three children and her husband to announce plans to sell her five food stores to finance the creation of the PMB. Since then, she has spent seven years travelling the country to gather the 500,000 signatures necessary to register the party. “Brazilian women play an active role in the organization of political parties, but when it comes to deciding who will actually be in power, women are always left out,” Haidar said. As with many Latin American countries, Brazilian party politics uses a system of proportional representation and gender quotas. But Brazil operates an open-list system, in which voters, rather than the party, pick the candidates. As there is no placement mechanism for the candidates, men tend to dominate the top of the list, attracting the lion’s share of campaign funding and, consequently, the electorate’s attention. Argentina, by contrast, uses a closed-list PR system, in which every third candidate must be female. Sanctions against parties that fail to comply with the gender quotas are severe. As a result, around 40% of the Argentine congress is female. Earlier this year, an attempt to establish quotas in parliament passed in Brazil’s senate, where 16% of the chamber is female, but foundered in the lower house. “I think the lack of women in Brazilian politics is representative of the gender inequality as a whole in the country,” said Luciana Ramos, a professor of law at the Fundação Getulio Vargas in São Paulo. “The media gives the impression that the role of Brazilian women in society is improving, but if you look at the details I don’t think that’s true.” A survey published earlier this year by the Washington-based research group Corporate Women Directors International found that women held just 6.3% of the seats on the board of directors of Brazil’s largest companies. Data from IBGE, the government’s official statistics agency, show that Brazilian women earn, on average, 40.5% less than their male counterparts. In the UK, that figure is 19.7%. Brazil is also one of the most dangerous countries in the world for women. The total number of female homicide victims in Brazil increased by 252% between 1980 and 2013. Its murder rate of 4.8 female homicides per 100,000 people is 48 times higher than the US. At present, the PMB’s plans to tackle these issues are somewhat vague, with its website promising an approach “between capitalism and socialism, with a greater tendency towards socialism.” Haidar, who plans to run for congress in 2018, promises further definition in due course. So far, the PMB has attracted a curious mix of evangelicals, security hardliners and old-fashioned leftists disenchanted with their old political parties. Skeptics suggest its new adherents are motivated more by the prospect of campaign financing ahead of next year’s municipal elections or fear of expulsion from their current parties, rather than women’s rights. Earlier this month the party gained its first senator when Hélio José, who was forced out of the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) after being accused of sexually abusing his underage niece, declared his allegiance to the PMB. “What would become of us men,” he asked the senate, “if there were no women by our side, to bring us joy and pleasure?” Still, Ramos thinks the existence of the PMB – Brazil’s 35th party, but already the tenth largest in congress – could have a positive impact on the country’s politics. “At least the PMB has a female president, so it is likely to appoint more women,” she said. “All the other political parties are run by men.” |