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Study: Adopting gender parity increases women's participation by 40 percent

• Studies carried out by the CIM/OAS and IDEA International point out that gender parity is the policy that has achieved the highest number of women parliamentarians in the region's history
• Despite significant progress, in more than half of the parliaments of the region, the percentage of elected women is less than 30 percent

As a region, the Americas has the second-highest number of most women parliamentarians in the world, with an average of 28.1% of those elected to parliaments, according to a study by the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) of the Organization of American States (OAS) and International IDEA, which attributes this progress to electoral parity policies aimed at increasing the number of women in national parliaments.

Currently, five Latin American countries - Ecuador, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Mexico - have adopted gender parity policies in electoral candidacies, and two more -Panama and Honduras - have instituted such policies in the internal processes of political parties. A total of nine countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guyana, Paraguay and Peru) have instituted gender quotas, although with very different results.

The most recent report of the CIM/OAS and International IDEA includes a regional analysis of the progress of parity in the region. The document reflects that gender parity applied to electoral candidacies is the policy that has worked best to increase the number of women elected in the lower houses. In most of the countries that have adopted regulations on parity between women and men in candidacies for elected positions, the representation of women shows a significant increase, with historic number of women in the parliaments of the region exceeding 40%.

The Executive Secretary of the CIM, Carmen Moreno, explained that "with this study we demonstrate that parity is a policy that works to significantly reduce the inequality between women and men in access to political space; something significant in a context where public discontent over the issue of inequality is affecting levels of support for democracy."

One of the central conclusions of the study is that parity should be approached from a holistic perspective, including the equal access of men and women to all positions of the State and in general to all spaces of public life, and not only to elected offices.

The study also points to important challenges in more than half of the countries in the region, which have a percentage of elected women below 30%, as is the case of Brazil (9.9%); Guatemala (13.9%); Venezuela (14.4%); Paraguay (15%); Chile (15.8%); Uruguay (16.2%); Panama (18.3%); Colombia (19.9%); Dominican Republic (20.8%); and Honduras (25.8%). According to the study, this is fundamentally due to two factors: the existence of gender quotas with deficiencies in regulation or implementation, and the lack of willingness of political parties to adequately apply legal measures.

The Gender Coordinator  for International IDEA, Pilar Tello, said "in the same way that the study of quotas has served to expand legal frameworks, improve their effectiveness in practice and promote their expansion in the region, we need to know more about parity and the effects of its application, and draw lessons to improve existing regulations and promote their adoption in other countries.”

The study also highlights the absence of an approach that addresses the realization of the political rights of women from indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, and stresses that the first obstacle is the lack of official data on political participation disaggregated by ethnicity, race and sex, which would allow for diagnoses that serve as the basis for the definition of policies in this area.

The publication "Parity and Democracy in Latin America: The Cases of Mexico and Nicaragua" continues on from the first study "Banking on Parity. Democratizing the political system in Latin America. The cases of Ecuador, Bolivia and Costa Rica," published in 2013. Both studies seek to document and analyze the key aspects of the processes that led to the adoption of parity laws in each country, as well as to identify useful lessons for the promotion of parity in other countries. The most recent study focuses on Mexico and Nicaragua as the last two countries in the region to incorporate parity into their legislations.

Reference: E-055/17