Gender and Political Parties: Far From Parity

The election of four female presidents in Latin America in recent years has drawn attention to women’s political participation and their access to political decision-making. Despite these encouraging results, statistics reveal that the Latin American region is still far from achieving gender equality in politics. Although women are increasingly involved in politics, they still have limited access to leadership positions in political party contexts.

Researchers from 18 countries provided input to the Gender and Political Parties in Latin America database based on a survey of 94 political parties. This report presents an analysis of database information. The purpose of the report is to provide comparative data on women and men in political parties to inform on the situation and challenges of women’s political participation.

The study looks at the selection processes for leadership and candidacies for public office among political parties including formal and informal rules, and the supply of candidates (how candidates lists are composed and the effect of quotas within parties and electoral systems).

The results of the study show that women’s participation in party structures follows a clearly pyramidal pattern: as power increases, the number of women decreases. Women are found in significant numbers at the bottom of the pyramid, where they constitute, on average, more than 50 percent of party membership, but there are few at the top. Furthermore, they do not hold the highest or most influential positions, which limits their ability to promote gender equality.

Recommendations for strategies to overcome this pattern are directed at both countries and political parties. Many of these strategies include some form of enhanced communication to make improvements in gender equality. For example:

• Promote and advocate well-designed and well-implemented quota systems, and monitor the results, abandoning the concept of women as a minority;
• Provide incentives for better and greater participation by women party members within the organisation including financial resources, opportunities for sharing experiences, training and mentoring; training should also be directed at men, and must include national and international gender equality principles and mandates for men and women;
• Re-organise and revitalise women’s units so they are conceived from the standpoint of equality;
• Seek media strategies to make women and gender issues more visible; take initiative to turn women’s participation and proposals into news events that attract media attention; women should also learn to manage communication tools in every media format;
• Promote opportunities for the exchange of ideas among women party members to empower them to bring about change within parties; inter-party alliances among women's units to share experiences and design strategies and platforms that go beyond ideological differences and lead to greater commitment to gender equality within parties; and
• Create alliances with civil society between women party members and women in civil society, because achieving many of the goals on the women’s gender agenda requires the greatest possible number of committed stakeholders.

Click here to download the English version of this document in PDF format.