Women in Motion: Female Representation in the Rio Grande do Sul State Legislative Assembly

Abstract

This article seeks to further the debate on the political participation of women in the framework of a democratic political regime. Foremost, it analyzes women's representation as elected legislators in Brazilian state legislatures. Accordingly, the article draws on the contributions made thus far by some women authors – linked to a theoretical framework that, as the article unfolds, is presented as the feminist theory – as regards the critique of the model of democracy prevailing in Western societies. Next, we present and discuss an array of data on women's inclusion in the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, encompassing all female state representatives elected since 1951, when the first gaúcha, as those born in the state like to call themselves, woman legislator took office. The findings in this article seek to advance knowledge of the history of women's political parliamentary participation, given the scarcity of information on the theme in the context of the aforementioned state legislature, as well as pointing out the main features of female participation in the Rio Grande do Sul State Legislature.

Keywords:
Democracy; Feminist theorists; Women's political participation; Legislative branch

Introduction

The present article aims to contribute to the study of women's participation in political representation bodies, focused on the particular view of the feminist critique of democracy as a regime that reproduces sexual inequalities, among other forms of discrimination. For this purpose, we present an array of reflections which are backed by research conducted in the Rio Grande do Sul State Assembly, based on which some aspects of women's parliamentary participation are perceptible that merit the attention of those interested in the theme.

In the early twentieth century few national States guaranteed political rights to women. With the exception of some federative states of the United States, only New Zealand (1883) and Australia (1901) allowed women to vote (Therborn 2006). Yet, little by little other national states started to allow women to enjoy the right to vote. In Brazil, even though the 1891 Constitution set forth that every literate citizen was entitled to vote, women were only granted the right to vote in 1932, mostly as a result of the struggle of the suffragette movement, which had emerged in the country in the previous decades.

Despite breakthroughs in terms of electoral rights for women, which have been endorsed by all Western democracies, problems still abound regarding women's political representation, as research studies underscore the fact that women are underrepresented in the main local, regional, and local political structures (Álvares 2008; Araújo 2001; Avelar 2001; CEPAL 2007; Htun 2001; Pinto 2010; Prá 1996; Reis 2010; Tabak 2002, among others). Moreover, low percentages in terms of women participation in the body of political representatives eventually contributes “(…) to perpetuate the conditions for keeping them away, thus reaffirming the public sphere – and the political, in particular – as male territory” (Miguel 2010, 28).

In an attempt to contribute to the broader debate on women's political inclusion in Western societies, this article draws on two analytical dimensions. Firstly, we focus on elements surrounding the discussion about democracy by building on some women theorists’ critique of liberal democracy. Secondly, we present data still little disseminated about women representation in the Rio Grande do Sul state legislature in order to illustrate the problem of sexual inequality in the field of legislative politics.

Building on the assumption that women are discriminated against in national parliamentary bodies in several countries, a fact that has been widely demonstrated by the specialized literature, we intend to show how this relation occurs in social spaces that have already been sufficiently investigated, namely the regional legislative level. Based on a research problem driven by an empirical curiosity regarding how sexual inequality is replicated in the various parliamentary spaces, we have found an array of data that illustrate women representation, or rather, women representation deficits in the Rio Grande do Sul state legislature.

In itself the information gathered does not suffice to explain the causal determinants of women's political underrepresentation, an inquiry transcending the purposes of this text, yet it provides a wealth of support material to deepen inquiry into these issues. Furthermore, the data point to differences regarding the election of parliamentarians in the diverse representation bodies, furthering the understanding of the problem as a process where the national parliament is just the tip of a chain reaction that is already present in subnational political arenas. In order to develop this analysis the text is subdivided into three parts. In the first part we approach the main critiques feminist authors make of liberal democracy, assigning special emphasis to the debate on the exclusion of women from the world of politics not only as a result of the institutional organization of modern political life – to which they propose political representation alternatives –, but also stemming from the strengthening of barriers between the public and the private spheres, a phenomenon regarded by many feminist authors as at the core of gender inequality.

In the second part of the text, we make a brief presentation of the national debate on the inclusion of women into politics, highlighting political representation breakthroughs accomplished by the women's movements struggles. In particular, we present data related to women's political representation in Brazil, together with the related available data for the regional and international contexts. Lastly, in the third part of the text we delve into the political participation of women in the Rio Grande do Sul State Legislature, a theme about which we will present an array of elements that are part of the profile of the female state representatives who took office over the 1951-2011 period.

The Feminist Critique of Liberal Democracy

Throughout the 20th century a number of critiques were made of the liberal model of representative democracy, understood as a model of democracy developed within the framework of the capitalist society, in which economic market rules contribute to shape the relations between the citizens and the State, plus influencing political representation indicators.¹

In many western societies, liberal democracy has produced a quasi-insoluble tension between the expansion of individual political liberties and the inequalities spawned within the framework of the capitalist economic market, a fact that has prompted the opening up of significant spaces for debating alternative democratization models, a discussion generally held in terms of a reaction to disparities triggered by the hegemonic political model.

There is no little criticism against the current concept of liberal democracy, including among authors who embrace the liberal paradigm, notably with regard to the problem of political representation, ranging from the fact that elections are the single form of expression of people's sovereignty, to the influence of money power on electoral campaigns and political corruption, to the reported decreasing electoral turnout, and so forth (Loureiro 2009). Still, not all questions regarding the problems of democracy, and subsequently of political representation, are restricted to the electoral-political realm, as there exist many different approaches to democracy that are focused on different social spheres.

From a radical perspective, a most innovative approach has been advanced by a number of the so-categorized feminist theorists, thinkers whose epistemological core challenges democracy from the prism of gender differences and the sexual exploitation of women (Pateman 1989; Phillips 1993; Mansbridge 1996; Almeida and Martins 2010). Though modern feminist thought is not homogeneous, the fact that some of the questions present in the, indeed controversial, feminist debate depart from the more usual critique of the traditional model of democracy is remarkable. As argued by Anne Phillips,

(…) Liberal democracy, by contrast, does not even inspire us. The prolonged exclusion of women from the most basic right to vote turned out to be the merest tip of the iceberg: a discouraging hint at deeper structures that keep women politically unequal. Whatever its claims in other fields of endeavor, liberal democracy has not served women well. (Phillips 1993, 103)

The main feature of the feminist critique of democracy lies in the fact that these authors analyze the problem of democracy from the prism of diverse projects of society, and not only of political institutions.² That is, these are thinkers who argue that women's political inclusion presupposes deconstructing women's submission to the male world in the various social fields (Bourdieu 1999). That which we may call the feminists’ broad critique of liberal democracy is underpinned mostly on challenging the separation between public space and private space (Groppi 1995), a phenomenon that gains momentum with the development of the association between liberalism and patriarchalism,

In theory, liberalism and patriarchalism stand irrevocably opposed to each other. Liberalism is an individualist, egalitarian, conventionalist doctrine; patriarchalism claims that hierarchical relations of subordination necessarily follow from the natural characteristics of men and women. In fact, the two doctrines were successfully reconciled through the answer given by the contracts theorists in the seventeenth century to the subversive question of who counted as free and equal individuals. (Pateman 1989, 120)

As pointed out by several women authors, the public/private separation is intended to justify men's supremacy in key social control arenas, relegating women to activities that would require sensibility and agility, such as caring for their children or performing household chores. Thus, many of the universal and rational values embedded in an idealized public sphere are based on qualities typically associated with male behavior, whereas those characteristics purportedly associated with the female world, like subjectivity and emotions, are trapped in the realm of the private sphere (Brison 2003; Young 1989).

In the meantime the private sphere is being depoliticized. With the public/private separation incorporated into the everyday of great part of the society, there is a tendency to obscure “(…) the fact that great part of the people's real experience, provided they live in societies structured by gender relations, actually depends on their sex.” (Okin 2008, 309-10). Thus, an illusion is created that the private sphere of life, pervaded with personal issues, is not part of the field of politics, dismissing evidence that the everyday life of women is also conditioned by public issues, by laws regulating the right over their body, as in the case of abortion, legislating the condition of wife or creating homemaking rules (Pateman 1983).

The making of civil society, by way of the social contract, placed sexual inequality at the heart of the liberal society insofar as women were relegated to the condition of wives, mothers and homemakers, thus limiting their actions to the private realm. In the sense advanced by Pateman (1993), the social contract was not just a tool for social organization, since it inexorably brought attached a sexual contract and a slavery contract. Liberal democracy, or contemporary democracy theory as Pateman prefers to call it, has not only denied women political participation, but has also led its advocates to deny the need to develop consistent social bases for sustaining democracy, thereby overlooking the problem of citizen participation in managing democracy (Pateman 1993).

The apolitical character of the private sphere, the home regarded as an eminently female engagement sphere, contrasts with the dynamic style of the public sphere, seen as a policymaking niche, with power relations identified as an essentially male playing field, while the political activity per se is regarded as a profession conceived and organized for the world of men. Moreover, in way of compensation, women who invade the male space of politics are expected to give up their feminine characteristics, to deny their forms of expression, in short, to behave like men (Perrot 1998; Brison 2003). Feminist authors have strongly criticized the liberal political model as based on a purported universal character of the political institutions engendered by modernity,

Liberalism has contributed toward the shaping of universal citizenship as based on the statement that all are born free and equal; yet it has also reduced citizenship to a mere legal status, indicating the rights individuals hold vis-à-vis the State. (…) Notions such as public accountability, civic activity, and political participation in a community of equals are foreign to a majority of liberal thinkers. (…) The distinction public/private, however central it has been in affirming individual freedom, acted, thereby, as a powerful principle of exclusion (…) played an important role in subordinating women. (Mouffe 1999, 119)

As clarified by the Frankfurtian tradition, universalism is a structural legacy of modernity, a heritage linked to mechanisms intended for the domination of the bourgeoisie (Jay 1974, 409-50), a critique further expanded by the feminist perspective by claiming that universalism also tends to conceal the existence of systems of domination based on differences between sexes, justifying a misguided conception that men and women should be submitted to distinct social roles building on elements that would be part of human nature itself. Hence, liberal universalism justified inequality not only on the basis of biological differences, but also from the prism of the existence of gender inequalities (Scott 1990; Okin 2008; Galeotti 1995).

Hierarchized gender relations also affect the presence of women in political representation spheres and ultimately represent an obstacle to democratizing the public sphere and democracy itself. A number of feminist debates and research studies have demonstrated that the universalist discourse of equality of rights has historically contributed toward the consolidation of forms of citizenship exclusion/inclusion. Hence, “one of the feminist reflections driving studies of the theme is related to an inquiry into the political and symbolical constructions that are instrumental to reinforcing women's stereotypical non citizenship and the masculine identity of power” (Prá 1997, 11).

Citizenship, from the point of view of the hegemonic democratic model, is conceived of as a patriarchal category, inspired by a male image of political action. Women, upon conquering formal citizenship within the liberal democracies, under the auspices of a patriarchal power structure, are constantly under the threat of losing their gender identity because of their undervalued political role in society (Mouffe 1999; Rossi-Doria 1995; Lipszyc 2009). Hence, the adoption of universal citizenship eventually leads to a consideration of the principle of difference as a characteristic harmful to the collective, favoring the exclusion of any social segment that is not part of what is conventionally deemed as being the citizen's universal characteristics (Young 1989).

Broadly, the analysis based on the dichotomy private sphere/public sphere may be considered a major contribution by the feminist perspective to the critique of liberal democracy. Its interest lies in its contribution to understanding women political exclusion as a public matter; that is, as caused by concrete social conditions related to the power relations disseminated in society.

In the case of our research of women representatives in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, such dichotomy is instrumental in helping us account for the reasons why an overwhelmingly smaller number of women are elected to parliament, especially if compared with the number of men who rise to public office through the electoral path. That is, it enables us to assume that we would be before an inequality that does not stem from individual deficiencies, and that, therefore, should not be explained solely with reference to economic, political-ideological or organizational matters.

Without a shadow of a doubt this is not a minor political debate, given the importance of the question of women's political representation in decision-making arenas in a context where no few authors point to the problems of the liberal democratic model while, notably in the realm of feminist thought, efforts are made to devise ways to enhance women's representation in politics.

In a classic work on the concept of political representation, Hanna Pitkin (1985) draws attention to a descriptive conception of representation that is hinged on the idea that a legislature is representative for what it represents by way of its actions and not of its composition. Underlying this understanding of political representation founded on action would be the idea of acting for, a conception that values the fact that constituencies are present through the actions rather than through the characteristics of representatives. This might lead, for example, to the belief that a greater number of women in parliament would not necessarily mean advancing women's agenda in the legislature, since this political function could also be performed by men. Hence, men would be able to represent women's interests or those of any social segment without having to give up the identities that distinguish the male world. This argument is much criticized by the feminist theory, which considers the presence of certain social groups, women especially, to be important for these groups to have their claims met and their needs clarified. According to the feminist view, the way a legislature is composed does affect the way it acts.

This is Jane Mansbridge's idea, for instance, when discussing what she designates as descriptive representation, that is, representation by individuals identified with underprivileged social groups on account of their characteristics or backgrounds, as would be the case of women or African descendants (Mansbridge 1999, 628). Even though acknowledging that this model is far from ideal, the author holds it that moving forward toward descriptive representation yields several positive outcomes by, for instance, helping less favored groups to overcome political communication barriers. Moreover, this is a way of embedding themes in the public debate that are traditionally invisible on the political agendas of the main legislative bodies, such as those related to specific social groups with less access to economic and cultural goods.

Accordingly, descriptive representation would remove barriers hindering political participation, empower broader social groups, and strengthen the political system's legitimacy,

(…) by making citizens, and particularly underrepresented groups, feel as if they themselves were present in the deliberations (…). Seeing women from the U.S. House of Representatives storming the steps of the Senate, for example, made some women feel actively represented in ways that a photograph of male legislators could never have done. (Mansbridge 1999, 650)

Also addressing the theme of political representation, Iris Young emphasizes that in liberal democracies voters are dispensable after the electoral process on the grounds that,

(…) The institutions and culture of some representative democracies do indeed discourage citizens from participating in political discussion and decision-making. (Young 2000, 126)

Therefore, there would exist an excluding character in representation norms, since the people and the social groups would not feel represented in discussion bodies and decision-making processes. The same author proposes, as an alternative to the problems of the traditional representation model, representation as relationship, driven by the belief that, however true it is that a representative cannot represent the thoughts of all at the same time, it is equally correct to acknowledge the possibility of creating relationship arenas to enable constant dialog between representatives and constituents, so that the interests of all may be present. To Iris Young, what is most important is not the building of homogeneities but, rather, the relationship that is established in the face of differences, such that,

Conceptualizing representation in terms of difference means acknowledging and affirming that there is a difference, a separation, between the representative and the constituents. Of course, no person can stand for and speak as a plurality of other persons. The representative function of speaking for should not be confused with an identifying requirement that the representative speak as the constituents would, to try to be present for them in their absence. (Young 2000, 127)

From this prism, political representatives should be committed to strengthening their relation with their constituencies through the various mechanisms intrinsic to representation, such as office accountability, meetings with constituents, direct consultations, or supervision councils. With this proposal the author focuses on the hermetic nature political representation acquires after the elections, underscoring the need to stimulate political integration processes that are hinged on representation of interests, opinions, and perspectives.

As can be inferred from these analyses, the current hegemonic political representation model is quite far from both descriptive representation and representation as relationship, proposals that potentially may broaden the inclusion of politically marginalized groups in the liberal democratic model. Ultimately, the case of the presence/absence of Rio Grande do Sul women legislators, this article's theme, is typical in revealing what occurs when women have to perform political activities in a realm that not only is male-hegemonic, but also underpinned on norms and rules that, as demonstrated by the women authors referred to herein, represent a patriarchal way of viewing politics.

Women's Political Representation

The beginning of the twentieth century marks women's slow march into the political action and participation arenas, and toward their attainment of citizenship and electoral suffrage. In the Brazilian case, as the country debuted in World War II in August 1942, women started reorganizing in diverse ways, most notably the Associação das Donas-de-Casa contra a Carestia [Housewives’ Association Against the High Cost of Living], which headed a movement that protested against women's poor living conditions, in addition to, among other demands, claiming for more job opportunities and maternity and child protection.

The coming into power of a string of military dictatorships in Latin America brought women's citizenship rights, however incipient they had been in the region, to a virtual standstill. In spite of that, it was also during this period, but especially as of the 1970s, that a new wave of mobilizations by the Brazilian feminist movement surged, spearheaded by a group of women exiles. Besides having to stand up to the opposition of their male peers in exile, these groupings had to overcome the internal divergences intrinsic to any social movement, given their position of simultaneously struggling against the military regime and denouncing women's situation in society in face of the dominant masculine hegemony. Actions standing out during that period included the important engagement of the feminist movement in the struggle for amnesty for political exiles, for democratic freedoms, and for women's rights (Pinto 2003; Sarti 2004; Tabak 2002).

With the inception of the Brazilian redemocratization process in the 1980s, the feminist movement was marked by a new and different presence of women in the political setting, who were focused on reforming the political parties’ law, the 1982 electoral race and, later on, the need for a National Constituent Assembly (Prá 1997). During this period we witness a process whereby the feminist movement becomes increasingly institutionalized and partisan through the creation of many social organizations. After 1985, with the redemocratization, dialog with the State was reestablished, a most important fact because of its impact in terms of the incorporation of various feminist demands by the public sphere, despite their not always having been considered a priority (Avelar 2001; Costa 2005; Prá 1997).

Thus, with the restoration of democratic life in 1985, significant numbers of Brazilian feminist organizations started to debate women's scarce representation in the institutional-political sphere, protesting against women's low office holding rates in Brazil's executive and legislative branches. Another outstanding theme on the post-1985 agenda of the Brazilian and international feminist movement was women's political participation in the construction of a more just society in terms of gender equity, with consequences not only for feminist scholarly work, but also for the drafting of an array of new government policies (Matos 2010).

Affirmative action or quota policies, aiming to reduce gaps in terms of political representation across sexes, were one of the most significant strategies adopted by national governments, especially in the 1990s. With the search for altering power relations between men and women in the political realm as backdrop, the quota policy was ratified, making a clear statement that the idea of citizenship is not neutral but, rather “[…] built on masculine models and that access to representation takes place in a gender-charged environment, characterized by the – not accidental, but structural – exclusion of women” (CEPAL 2007, 4).

Even today the theme calls for caution when it comes to assessing the results of the quota policy for the political empowerment of women. In special, it is worth underscoring that several related studies have concluded that quotas have affected little the various factors hindering women's inclusion in representative institutions, such as the organization of the electoral/partisan system, prejudice, procedures for candidate recruiting or the lack of internal support to women candidacies in the political parties (Álvares 2008; Araújo 2001; Araújo 2009; Reis 2010, among others).

In the field of study of political representation, several indicators have shown improvements worldwide. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU 2011), women's parliamentary representation worldwide averaged 19.2% in March 2011, up from 11.3% in December 1997. The same trend is seen in Brazil's federal lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, which exhibited a steady rise from 11.7% in 1997 to 19.3% in 2011, and in the Senate, with an impressive rise in women's representation, from 9.8% in 1997 to the current 18.3%.

In Latin America, Cuba ranks fourth with 43.2% of female representation; Argentina ranks 11th with 38.5% of women representation in the Chamber of Deputies and 35.2% of women in the Senate; Ecuador ranks 20^th with 32.3% of women in the National Legislature. Today Brazil occupies the 104th position, with 8.7% of women representation in the Chamber of Deputies, 14.8% in the Senate, 12.9% in State Legislatures, and 12.6% in City Councils (IPU 2011).

However, if in terms of overall indicators some progress has been made with regard to the political inclusion of women, the available data often convey a partial image of the increase in women's political representation, in that they fail to provide a comparative dimension of the evolution of women/men political inclusion, making it difficult to apprehend the whole dimension of the gap separating the different sexes in terms of political representation. This is a shortcoming that is all the more evident in case studies focused on recent redemocratization experiences, particularly in terms of subnational experiences, as is the case of Rio Grande do Sul.

In Brazil, according to data from multiple sources, from 1932 to 1982 the percentage of women in the Chamber of Deputies increased. Still, over this fifty-year span the number of women deputies grew slightly in spite of the number of candidacies (Avelar 2002). Over the period there is no significant change in female representation in National Congress, according to data provided by Ângela Borba (1998), except for the presence of two elected senators: one in 1979 and another one in 1982.

A more substantial increase in the presence of women in elective offices starts in the 1980s (Prá and Barbosa 2005). To some authors, the turning point was the 1986 elections, the first post-redemocratization electoral races, in which women participation in legislatures rose (Tabak 1987; Avelar 2001). With the country's redemocratization we see a greater presence of women in the political arena: in 1974 the percentage of women representatives in the Chamber of Deputies was 0.32%; in 1978, 1.09%; in 1982, 1.6% and, in 1986, women in the National Chamber reached 5.33%, representing, respectively, one, four, eight, and finally, twenty-six women federal representatives (Pinto 1994).

Similar data was found regarding the presence of women in Brazilian State Legislatures over the 1946–1998 period. As underscored by Avelar (2001), in 1946 there were five state representatives; in 1965 this number had risen to eleven; in 1982, to twenty-eight; and, in 1986, to thirty-one women deputies. Since then this number has never ceased to grow. According to the same source, in the 1998 elections 107 women had already been elected state representatives. This means that the ratio of women representatives in state legislative bodies begins to rise in the 1980s and increases more significantly in the 1990s, a phenomenon similar to that observed in the Chamber of Deputies.

Women in the Male Realm: The Rio Grande do Sul State Legislative Assembly

The history of the Rio Grande do Sul State Assembly has been the subject of many studies (Cánepa 2005; Noll and Trindade 2004; Grohman 2001). However, most of this inquiry, which is important as an overall diagnosis of the state's politics, fails to further refine data on the correlation between men and women in that legislature. Thus, the data presented herein aim to contribute with other research in an attempt to fill this gap in the expert literature.

Furthermore, by relating the information collected with the debates on the feminist critique of liberal democracy, we can conclude that the levels of women political exclusion are even more consistent if evaluated from the perspective of the historical background of institutionalized political arenas at the regional level.

Founded in 1835, the Rio Grande do Sul State Assembly is born in the context of the Revolução Farroupilha [War of the Ragamuffins] and the fight for regional independence, with good part of the legislature's history marked by conflicts with sectors seeking autonomous state development. While woman suffrage was approved in 1932 in Brazil, the first Rio Grande do Sul female state representative was only elected in 1950.

The time gap in terms of parliamentary participation by the state's women can be partly accounted for by the then local society's opposition to the right of women to political participation. Though extensive research on the theme is lacking, the uneasiness with which women's vote was met by the state's society becomes apparent in the articles of one of Rio Grande do Sul's leading newspapers of the 1930s, the Correio do Povo. Illustrative of this argument is an excerpt from an article written by Othelo Rosa published in that newspaper in March1931,

(…) we [Brazilians] are still in the infancy of democracy, as even the male electoral mass is incapable of the normal and regular exercise of the right to vote […] I do not believe in the benefits of this influence as long as we, the citizens, have not the dignity of transforming the electoral voting offices into decent premises, as befits the delicacy and nobility of a lady […] for any of them there is no more important a mission than being a good wife and a good mother […] I am against women's vote and would rather my fellow state women, in keeping with the “potau-feu” French type of woman, continue to be, in our homes, the supreme example of sweetness, virtue and kindness that has become, for Brazil, a standard of honor and moral grandeur (Karawejczyk 2008, 132).

To a certain extent the prejudice expressed in the state's press in the early days of woman suffrage, described in research studies such as that of Karawejczyk (2008), denotes prejudice in relation to the role assigned to an idealized woman –regionally viewed as a prenda –, who in the state's tradition was generally relegated to the care of the farm house and the family, and whose public appearance was not seen with good eyes, thus further strengthening doubts regarding their social inclusion. As Claudia Pereira Dutra explains,

The prenda not only defines a female profile, [that] of the submissive, well-behaved and sociable woman established as social memory, but also eclipses the china [an easy woman], who, despite appearing in traditionalist texts, in accounts of the past and in song lyrics, is not referred to as a “gaúcha” woman. The gaúcha is the prenda, the norm-compliant figure shaped to be worshipped and to set the example (Dutra 2002, 118).

This case renders it clear that the space of women as circumscribed to a private and domestic sphere appears as an obstacle against their recognition as relevant social actors in the political contests taking place in the state. As seen earlier, the opposition public sphere/private sphere reappears whenever the focus is on the public visibility of women's actions.

In the Rio Grande do Sul State Assembly, albeit the fluctuations in the indicators, women's political participation increased only in the second half of the 1990s, when the percentage of women representatives rose from 3.6% in 1991 to 9% in 1995. It is also worth noting that over the period analyzed the Rio Grande do Sul state's women's political representation ratio is lower than that of other states of the federation, as is the case of Rio de Janeiro, which, in the 1990 elections, had a 12.9 percentage of women elected to its legislature. In 1994, Rio de Janeiro kept this ratio, yet the state was outpaced by Goiás state, where 14.6% of its Legislative Assembly was composed of women. Other states of the federation showed similar figures in that same year: Pará, with 12.2%, and São Paulo, with 11.7% of women's representation (Borba 1998).

The composition of the Rio Grande do Sul State Assembly over the 1951–2011 period, adding up both representatives and alternates who took office, shows that the highest percentage of female representation occurs in the present legislature, with seven women (12.7%) making up the state's women delegation. Over the entire period, if both representatives and alternates are considered, seats in this legislature were taken by a total 5.6% of women. This finding changes if the analysis focuses only on incumbent women representatives, as can be seen in the table below.

According to Table 1, women's representation ratio in the Rio Grande do Sul State Legislature drops from 5.6% to 4.5% of total lawmakers elected. In absolute numbers this means that, out of a total of 880 state representatives elected between 1951 and 2011, only forty were women. Considering, moreover, the number of women representatives reelected, only 29 women ever took a seat in the Rio Grande do Sul State Assembly in the 176 years of the history of this political representation body.

Table 1
Distribution by sex of legislators elected to the Rio Grande do Sul State Assembly from 1951 to 2011

Legislature	Women	(%)	Men	(%)	Total deputies
1951-1955	1	1.8	54	98.2	55
1955-1959	1	1.8	54	98.2	55
1959-1963	1	1.8	54	98.2	55
1963-1967	1	1.8	54	98.2	55
1967-1971	2	3.6	53	96.4	55
1971-1975	1	1.8	54	98.2	55
1975-1979	1	1.8	54	98.2	55
1979-1983	1	1.8	54	98.2	55
1983-1987	2	3.6	53	96.4	55
1987-1991	2	3.6	53	96.4	55
1991-1995	2	3.6	53	96.4	55
1995-1999	5	9	50	91	55
1999-2003	5	9	50	91	55
2003-2007	3	5.4	52	94.6	55
2007-2011	5	9	50	91	55
2011-(2015)	7	12.7	48	87.3	55
Total	40	4.5	840	95.5	880

Source

Therefore, as can be seen in Table 2, most of the state's women lawmakers held office for one or two terms, while women representatives Suely de Oliveira, Jussara Cony and Dercy Furtado stood out with, respectively, six, five and three terms each. This is an interesting theme, for, as pointed by Clara Araújo and José E. A. Alves (2007), reelections could afford a mechanism for affirming women's political participation, considering that presence in the legislative environment leads to the accumulation of political capital, critical in order to remain in parliamentary life. Undeniably, however, the possibility of reelection benefits not only women but all those who already belong to legislative arenas. Enlarging the scope of the problem, reelection ends up favoring those segments already holding a majority in the legislature, thus a “(…) high percentage of reelected candidates tend to maintain the current gender composition and to hamper parliament renewal” (Araújo and Alves 2007, 548).

Table 2
Number of legislative terms of women representatives in the Rio Grande do Sul State Assembly from 1951 to 2011

Number of terms of office	Women representatives
6	Suely de Oliveira
5	Jussara Cony
3	Dercy Furtado
2	Ecléa Fernandes
	Cecilia Hypolito
	Luciana Genro
	Maria do Carmo
	Maria Helena Sartori
	Leila Fetter
	Mirian Marroni
	Silvana Covati
	Stella Farias
	Zilá Breitembach
	Marisa Formolo
1	Zaira Folly
	Maria Iris Pothoff
	Terezinha Irigaray
	Dalila Alves
	Hilda de Souza
	Regina Rossignollo
	Maria Feldman
	Maria do Rosario
	Iara Wortmann
	Gilda Maria Haack
	Adriane Rodrigues
	Floriza dos Santos
	Kelly Moraes
	Stella Farias
	Ana Afonso
	Juliana Brizola

Source

Further enlarging the scope of our analysis, the available data also enable us to show the number of terms of office according to the political party. Over the period analyzed there were at least three major partisan groups. In the period spanning from 1951 to 1965, political parties with women in their delegations were the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB), the Partido Democrata Cristão (PDC) and the Movimento Trabalhista Renovador (MTR). In late 1965 these parties were banned and a bipartisan system is set in place with the Aliança Renovadora Nacional (ARENA) and the Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (MDB). In 1979 another reform takes place, in which bipartisanship gives place to a multi-partisan system with the following parties: Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (PMDB), Partido Democrático Social (PDS), Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), Partido Democrático-Trabalhista (PDT), Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB) and Partido Popular (PP). In addition to these parties, the following parties, only legalized after 1979, also had women delegates: the Partido Comunista do Brasil (PC do B), Partido Progressista Renovador (PPR) and the Partido Socialista Brasileiro (PSB).

Analyzing the theme in terms of legislative offices held by women according to the party label by which they were elected (both as representatives and alternates), we can see that the PT, PMDB/MDB and PTB were the parties with the most women representatives in the Rio Grande do Sul Legislative Assembly in the period spanning from 1951 to 2011 (Graph 1). Also worth underscoring is the fact that the PT was only founded in 1980, that is, nearly thirty years after the first woman representative was elected. In percentages these three parties amount to 50% of the women who became state representatives, with the PT accounting for 22%, the PMDB/MDB for 16%, and the PTB for 12%, a partisan predominance already shown in other studies of state legislatures and even in relation to Brazil's National Congress (Araújo 2001; Alves et al. 2007; Miguel, S. 2001; Miguel 2001; Nóbrega and Lopes s/d; Reis 2010).

Graph 1
Party distribution of women representatives elected to the Rio Grande do Sul State Assembly from 1951 to 2011

This information could be supplemented by grouping women's terms of office by historical periods. In this regard, even if the reference is number of years in office, we can still see a significant growth in women's political representation, in terms of the case studied, taking place as from the 1985 redemocratization (Graph 2).

Graph 2
Distribution of women representatives by political party and period^* in the Rio Grande do Sul State Legislative Assembly

A possible explanation for these findings can be found in the work of Lucia Avelar (2011), who argues that it is not fortuitous that more women are elected by progressive parties because, with the 1979 electoral reform, leftist parties and their constituencies begin to grow, especially as social movements emerge and civil society organizes, and to call for alternatives to traditional politics. Besides, according to the same author, leftist parties would be more sensitive to the demands of social movements, as is the case of the feminists. It could be further added here that, rather than leftist parties, women representatives have tended to affiliate with party organizations that, at given moments, embraced an anti-conservative political discourse.

Still, when it comes to the main power structure in the assembly's plenary, few women took a seat from 1951 to 2011 at the Directing Board, the governing body of the Rio Grande do Sul Legislative Assembly, regardless of party adherence. Overall, seven women (2%) took seats in the different arrangements of the house's governing body, with the exclusion of the offices of president, 1st secretary and 4th secretary, which thus far have not been held by any woman, much in the same way as the findings provided by other state- and national-level studies (Araújo 2001; Alves et al. 2007; Miguel, S. 2001; Miguel, L. 2001; Nóbrega and Lopes s/d; Reis 2010).

Lastly, another important element in analyzing the theme of women in the Rio Grande do Sul legislature regards the profession of the lawmakers. As explained by Marenco and Serna (2007), a lawmaker's profession is a source of social stratification, contributing toward the formation of social capital. Moreover, professional status is a driver for the legitimation of power relations that, in their foundations, are anchored on networks that transcend the legislature and are interconnected with the problem of social inequality.

In the case of the Rio Grande do Sul legislature, 73% of the state's women representatives have identified themselves professionally as teachers.³ This finding is most interesting particularly if analyzed from the perspective that considers teaching a main arena for women's empowerment in the twentieth century (Ferreira 2008), as since the 19th century a schoolteacher's career for a woman has been a main bridge for enabling women's passage from the private to the public sphere.

In general, findings like the ones presented herein denote a host of deficiencies that have accompanied women inclusion in the representative system embedded in democratic institutions, as is the case of the Rio Grande do Sul State Assembly. Even agreeing that democracy's main accomplishment throughout the 19^th and 20th centuries was the broadening of citizenship by knocking down “(…) one after the other, all those barriers excluding women, people of the wrong religion, the wrong color of skin, or just holding fewer possessions” (Phillips 2001, 278), we can ill afford not to recognize that, in light of the findings of the research specializing in the theme, such breakthroughs have been modest.

Final Considerations

Several authors have reviewed the etymological concept of the word democracy by building on the assumption that, at least over the last millennia, it is identified as government of the people. Still, such definition is rife with problems, among which are the debates related to the notion of people, the form of participation, the concept of government, the way the government acts, and to obedience and sovereignty (Held 2006; Sartori 1994; Bobbio 2000). What becomes clear in the controversy surrounding these concepts and definitions is the struggle to determine whether democracy means a type of people's power, construed as a form of life in which citizens participate in the political system through societal self-management and self-regulation or, rather, a form whereby a contribution is made to the State's decision-making process that relies on the election of representatives in elections recognized by society (Held 2006).

Despite the divergences, questions like these are virtually embedded in the contemporary debates on the theme of democracy. However, these discussions become increasingly more complex when the problem of participation is focused on gender and when political inclusion becomes entangled in a web of relations seeking the deconstruction of gender gaps. As stressed by Carole Pateman (1993, 340-41),

When the silenced history of political origins is brought to the surface of the political setting, this will never be the same. Nature, sex, masculinity and femininity, the private, marriage and prostitution will turn into political problems; similarly, the well-known patriarchal understanding of labor and citizenship. New anti-patriarchal roads must be trailed to reach democracy, socialism, and freedom.

Even though changes did occur in terms of the parliamentary inclusion of women throughout the 20th century, these are still modest in terms of a consolidated democratic society, where democratic is not in formal, procedural terms, given that the contemporary model of democracy seems to function well in this respect, but rather in terms of gender relations. In other words, in terms of political equity between men and women, as an indicator for assessing how much a society is actually democratic, as proposed by a well-known ECLAC report (CEPAL 2007).

It is worth stressing this point because, if we think about the theme from the point of view of the formal inclusion of women in contemporary democracy, we cannot deny that constitutionally they are considered citizens and have the right to participate in political life, like men, in the arenas provided by the model, especially the electoral. The findings presented throughout this article seem to provide enough information showing that increasingly more women are being elected to the various legislatures.

However, as recalled by Therborn (2006), the question is that, quite often, formal, legal shifts find no expression in social relations, since they find no equivalent in the world of life, where, traditionally, patriarchal practices still outweigh civil rights, thus hampering effective participation in the realm of politics.

In the case in question, the study of the women lawmakers of the Rio Grande do Sul state legislature, our insight is that differences between men and women, even in the more formal sphere of the democratic realm – the system of legislative institutions –, are still huge. Accordingly, even with all the progress made in the field of political representation, the number of women representatives elected was puny over the period studied; successful women candidacies were monopolized by few political parties, while elected women representatives have been excluded from holding positions in the legislatures’ governing bodies.

From the prism of the feminist theory we have drawn on in this article, this inequality could be accounted for by building on the opposition between the masculinized public sphere and the feminized private sphere, that is, the realm of politics seen as an environment of men, who, as the Greeks, the inventors of democracy, had already done, are excused from their private duties for the purpose of performing public activities. However, at the current stage of our research, many doubts still remain that call for answers, most importantly those related to the nature of women's representation in the Rio Grande do Sul legislature, namely, whether there actually is a differentiated political activity legitimating or demonstrating the idea, embedded in the essentialist perspective, that women always represent best the interests of women themselves. And also, that women, even with the passing of time, enter the public arena to continue to play the gender role that is expected from them in a given historical period.

Accordingly, herein we have focused primarily on demonstrating the size of the gap separating men and women in terms of political representation in a state legislature. In a forthcoming text, our proposal will be to investigate, this time by relying mostly on qualitative analysis tools, the content of the bills submitted and speeches delivered by the Rio Grande do Sul women representatives.

Lastly, it is our view that inequality between men and women, also present in parliamentary structures, legitimizes the critique made by feminist theorists that liberal democracy, however significant the women movement's accomplishments may have been, faces huge challenges to incorporate social segments considered subalternate. The depth of the polemic triggered by such perspective lies not only in the claim that political institutions, in spite of the legal breakthroughs, are still exclusive; more importantly, they lie in the fact stressed by feminist theorists that the root of such inequality can be found in the invention of politics itself, in the construction of gender subordination, and the contamination of the various social spaces by patriarchalism.

• 1
  Based mostly on the text by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Leonardo Avritzer (2002), several authors have opted to use the expression hegemonic model when referring to the characteristics of contemporary democracies. We have opted for using the adjective liberal to modify democracy because we believe it clarifies the present-day ties between democracy and capitalism. Yet, throughout the text we will use both characterizations because we do not consider them to be mutually exclusive.
• 2
  An 18th century pioneer in challenging women's exclusion from the public sphere, Mary Wollstonecraft (1998) wrote a most striking critique stating that men/women relations were rooted in unjustified assumptions (natural differences) and unfair institutions (from the matrimonial contract to a complete absence of female representation in the State). To her there exist deep linkages between the public and private spheres, while significant political changes would be made impossible if not preceded by the restructuring of relations between sexes in the family and the home, which would entail mostly a revision of the kind of differentiated education women receive in relation to men (Rossi-Doria 1995). Even though these ideas did not resonate with the thinkers that followed her, her pioneering role in addressing the problem of women exclusion is undeniable from the perspective of the public sphere/private sphere division. In addition to the work of Wollstonecraft, also important in the origin of the modern struggle against women oppression are the pioneer writings of the Marquis of Condorcet, On the admission of women to the rights of citizenship (1790) and the work by Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791).
• 3
  We have no data for our particular case with regard to the proportion of men teachers elected but, just to have an idea, in a comparative study of the Pará and Rio Grande do Sul state legislatures, Igor Grill (2008) showed that, out of a total 200 state representatives whose professional profile was examined, 30 of them had worked as teachers prior to the election, the equivalent to 15% of the representatives. On the national level, Leôncio Martins Rodrigues (2002) found out that teachers accounted for15.8% of the professions held by the representatives elected to the federal Chamber of Deputies in 1998.
• *
  The criterion for classifying a period as democratic or authoritarian is the woman representative's first year in office.
• Revised by Robert Stuart

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  27 Oct 2023
• Date of issue
  2012

History

• Received
  Sept 2011
• Accepted
  May 2012