On October 2, Brazilians elected the most women to the Chamber of Deputies in the country’s history. Despite this, female representation in the House remains below international averages, and many newly elected female MPs join far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, casting doubt on the ability to advance progressive women’s issues in the coming years.
When the newly elected officials take office in February 2023, women’s representation in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Brazil’s National Congress, will increase from 77 to 91 deputies.
While a notable increase, women will still only make up 18% of the 513-member House, remaining significantly underrepresented in a country where women make up the majority of the population.
Brazil is also behind the international average for female representation in government. Women’s participation in the world’s parliaments averages 26.4%, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IUP), a global organization that collects data from 193 countries.
If this rate were reached in Brazil, the number of female deputies in the Chamber would be 135 – a number that is difficult to conceive in the current political reality, where four of the country’s 27 states do not have a single female deputy.
According to political scientist Graziella Guiotti of Fundação Getúlio Vargas, the country’s leading university, political parties must change the way they manage their resources in order to increase women’s representation in government. There is already a law requiring parties to allocate 30% of their public electoral funds to female candidates, but the law is often abused and resources are squandered through ghost candidates.
Read more: Brazil’s ghost candidates: How politicians abuse a law aimed at encouraging women in politics
“There were situations of women who did not receive the resources that were promised by the parties or even the orange candidates,” said Ms. Guiotti. “Parties win if they have women who vote well, but they are not necessarily willing to invest in these candidates.”
A more conservative Congress
This year’s elections saw a large number of conservative women elected to the Brazilian Congress. The female MP who received the most votes in all of Brazil was Carla Zambelli, a staunch supporter of President Bolsonaro, who received 946,000 votes in São Paulo. Zambelli was re-elected with four times the votes he received in 2018.
Another staunch supporter of the president, Bia Kicis, emerged as the MP with the most votes in the Federal District, home to the country’s capital, Brasilia. She received over 200,000 votes.
For the political scientist Leonardo Barreto, the new formation of the Congress is “more conservative, right-wing and liberal in the economy”.
The Liberal Party (PL), the party of President Bolsonaro, won the largest seat in the Chamber of Deputies in the election. But of the 99 newly elected PL deputies, only 17 are women.
The Workers’ Party (PT), the left-wing party of current presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, saw 68 deputies elected to the chamber. Of them, only 18 are women.
Lula and Bolsonaro will face each other in the run-off election for the presidency on October 30.
The first round of elections was historic, however, as Brazil elected two transgender MPs, the first in the country’s history: Erika Hilton in São Paulo and Duda Salabert in Minas Gerais. (Erika Hilton was among the 10 candidates with the most votes in her state).
Female representation decreases in the Brazilian Senate
If the lower house of Congress saw moderate success in electing female candidates, the opposite happened in the Senate, where the upper house decreased female representation.
Only four women were elected in 27 senatorial races this year in Brazil. Women will make up just 10 seats in the 81-member Senate, down from 12 seats elected in 2018.
Of the four women elected this year, two are former ministers in the Bolsonaro government: Tereza Cristina, former Minister of Agriculture, and Damares Alves, former Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights. Damares is very conservative and close to the Bolsonaro family, especially the first lady.
A third candidate, Dorinha Rezende, also known as Professor Dorinha, was elected to the Senate with the support of President Bolsonaro.
Only one female senator elected this year is a progressive: Teresa Leitão, a member of the Workers’ Party (PT).
According to political analyst Antônio Augusto de Queiroz, the new composition of Brazil’s Congress is “more right-wing than the current one”.
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