UNDP and Plataforma Telar presented studies on the impact of parity in the Constitutional Convention
The presentation ceremony, "Parity does matter", was held at the central house of the P. Universidad Católica de Chile.
July, 2022.- In the framework of the closing of the constituent process, Plataforma Telar, an initiative of the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data along with the United Nations Development Program, two studies were published that address different milestones before and during operation of the Constitutional Convention.
The presentation ceremony, “Parity does matter”, was held at the main house of the P. Universidad Católica de Chile and included the participation of Magdalena Saldaña, IMFD researcher and academic PUC Communications Faculty and member of the gender commission from high school; Silvana Zanlungo, Director of Gender Equality of the PUC Academic Vice Rector; the conventional Yarela Gómez; Georgiana Braga-Orillard, UNDP Resident Representative in Chile; the Minister for Women and Gender Equality, Antonia Orellana Guarello and Jennifer Piscopo, Director of the Department of Political Science at the Occidental College University of the United States.
The first investigates the motivations, barriers and opportunities that the candidates for the constituent body experienced during this process, in a unique electoral context in the country’s political history, with changes in electoral rules and in the midst of a global pandemic associated with the Coronavirus; while the second analysis shows that gender parity not only influenced during the period of installation and formulation of the regulations of the Constitutional Convention, but also had an impact in the stage of deliberation of norms, in the results of some key votes on issues historically with less presence in the public debate and/or where no progress has been made in far-reaching reforms.
The path of women towards the Constitutional Convention
The first of the studies, entitled “The path of women towards the Constitutional Convention: Gender parity and descriptive representation of women in the election of Constituent Convention Members”, was carried out based on in-depth interviews with 22 women candidates for the Convention. Constitutional Convention between March and May 2021, and in a database with all the candidacies for the Constitutional Convention.
The document shows that, although gender parity forced political organizations to nominate an equal number of women and men as candidates for the Constitutional Convention, informal discriminatory practices and rules against women in electoral processes continue to be observed.
Based on the collection and analysis of data, both qualitative and quantitative, the report shows mainly three groups of findings:
The introduction of gender parity in the competition and result of the Constituent Conventional election allowed women to be nominated in equal numbers as men, not only at the list level as established by law, but also at the level of political organizations that had historically nominated few women in elections.
However, despite these advances, discriminatory practices and informal rules against women in electoral processes continue to be observed. Among them, sexist questions stand out, both from political organizations and from the electorate, to the capacities of the candidates to successfully face the candidacy and the position for which they are applying; difficulties to reconcile campaign activities and care responsibilities that fall mainly on them.
Although the institutional mechanisms of gender parity are necessary to advance in greater political representation of women, these are not enough when it comes to eliminating other discriminatory practices that hinder the political participation of women in positions of popular representation in particular and in the public sphere in general.
Impact of gender parity on the results of the voting in the Constitutional Convention
The second publication, entitled “Gender parity and substantive representation of women: Analysis of the impact of gender parity on the results of the votes in the Constitutional Convention”, analyzed the 3,363 votes on constitutional norms that were carried out in the Plenary session of the Convention between January and May 2022. Each of these votes was manually categorized according to the substantive issue it dealt with. Based on this categorization, the similarities and differences in the way in which conventional men and women voted on these issues were analyzed, and a statistical simulation of the probability of approval and rejection of the different indications was carried out if the Constitutional Convention were approved, would have composed without gender parity, following the composition by sex of the current Chamber of Deputies (35% women in the period 2022-2026).
Among its main findings, the study shows that gender parity not only had an impact during the period of installation and formulation of the regulations of the Constitutional Convention, but it has also had an impact in the stage of deliberation of norms, in the results of some key votes on issues historically with less presence in the public debate and/or where no progress has been made in deep reforms, such as gender equality, the environment, popular participation and decentralization, and which allow progress towards a more inclusive democracy.
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