Black deputies are the ones that most prioritize proposals in defense of women’s rights in, but they are still almost to impact the approval of these projects, indicates a study by researcher at FGV-SP (Getúlio Vargas Foundation).
In “Who represents us? I study on the presence and performance of deputies and deputies in the federal legislature”, social scientist Juliana Fabbron analyzed 36 years of action of these parliamentarians in Brazil, in the nine terms that occurred between 1987 and 2022.
She filtered and examined 971 bills presented at the House during this period, related to four topics: maternity leave or paternity, violence against women, abortion and reserve of vacancies (quotas) or presence in command positions.
Then she classified these projects as favorable or unfavorable to female rights and also divided them between structural (capable of altering the structure of gender inequality) or incremental (capable of perfecting or harming a female right, but without changing the “status quo”).
The thesis considers favorable, for example, proposals that increase parental license time or include preventing domestic violence in curricula. On the other hand, it sees as unfavorable a text that aggravates the penalty to the woman who makes a false denunciation of aggression or creates a channel to denounce clandestine abortions.
First, the researcher concluded that legislators, in general, are proportionally those that prioritize the most female guidelines. On average, each deputy in the period presented six projects classified as favorable, while among men the relationship is one by deputy.
Fabbron then made the same analysis considering the self-declared color of congressmen, given only available in the last two complete terms, from 2015 to 2022-it is examining the current legislature, which began in 2023, in a new collective research by the FGV-SP Racial and Law Center.
The conclusion of the thesis was that the index between black women is even higher than between white and brown. To each black deputy, three proposals between 2015 and 2018 were presented, for example, while between and brown the relationship was one per parliamentarian.
Black congressmen were also the only ones who did not submit any agenda considered unfavorable to female rights. “As for men’s deputies, their performance was more unfavorable than favorable,” says the text.
Asked, the researcher says that it would be necessary to do a qualitative study to understand why this segment of women stands out.
She points out that women are not a homogeneous group and that the confluence of other characteristics besides the genre, such as color, can impact the legislative acting strategy of deputies.
The study also found differences between left -wing, downtown and right parties. At this point, the ideological classification done by the study differs from the And consider for example, as center acronyms today, only network, PPS and PV.
Overall, who leads the projects considered harmful to female rights are the right -wing men. They were the authors of up to 80% of the propositions in this regard, depending on the legislature, while men’s deputies classified as in the center reached a maximum of 40% and the left to 29%.
The thesis also draws attention to the growth of right -wing deputies in this index: until 2006, they had not proposed any of the unfavorable laws to women. From this year, however, this scenario was changed, and this group was responsible for 31% of unfavorable projects to women presented in the term completed in 2022.
The priority given to each theme also varies according to the ideological spectrum.
Abortion is a subject focused on leftist deputies, while parenting licenses have greater weight among right -wing deputies. Violence against women and the vacancy reserve or command positions is of more balanced importance among the three ideological spectra.
Absence in command positions
Another conclusion of the study is the absence of women in leadership positions in the House. Over the 36 years surveyed, they went from 5.6% to 15% of the total composition of the house. In recent, they reached the mark of 17.7%, 3.1% brown and 2.5% black, still well below the proportions of the population.
In this context, the Board of Directors never had a president, only a single vice president. Permanent committees had more women’s leaders than the proportion of elected, but not those of greater power and prestige, such as the CCJ (Constitution and Justice and Citizenship) and the Finance and Taxation Commission.
The data indicate a “gender sectorization,” says the thesis, where deputies are more present in committees related to social and human rights, while areas such as economics and infrastructure have a very low female representation. Also, when it exists, it is mostly white.
For Fabbron, it is For equality in formal policy, so it is up to them to implement more effective measures. This is because the captions elect their leaders (mostly men), who indicate who will compete for the Board of Directors and who will compose the commissions.
The chances of occupying these positions increase when parliamentarians have uninterrupted political careers or participate in national directories -.
“If women occupy little these political and partisan spaces, a cycle that feeds the male (and white) presence in the legislature is drawn,” the study concludes.
