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Women’s Presence in Parliament and the 2016 General Elections
The Embassy of the Netherlands, the Embassy of Spain and the Embassy of Sweden together with FILIA Centre, CeRe: Resource Centre for Public Participation and the National Agency for Equality of Opportunities between Women and Men (ANES) organized a panelled debate regarding women’s political representation.
Now that the political parties are preparing the lists of candidates for the forthcoming parliamentary elections particiants believed it would be a suitable time to organise a round table on the subject of women’s political representation in Romania.
Representatives of political parties also participated in the meeting hosted by the Swedish Embassy in Bucharest, who acknowledged that in the local elections held in June, the presence of women was low both in the position of candidates and as elected within local authorities.
Of the 267,242 candidacies, only 57,149 were women, while in the case of mayoralties, only 4.55% of the 3,187 mandates were won by women.
A study made by ANES shows that there are two reasons which determine such a low presence of women in political life: prejudices, both of electors and party colleagues, as well as the women’s lack of interest in getting involved in active political life.
Participants in talks agreed that a more active role of civil society, of NGOs is needed to change the Romanians’ mentality about the presence of women in politics.
The conclusion of the meeting mentioned the introduction of a representation system of gender shares both in local and parliamentary elections. The initiative of the National Liberal Party to suggest the introduction of a share of 30% in the election law.
In the Netherlands, 38% of the members of the lower Chamber of Parliament are women and 33% of the Senate. Both Chambers have a female speaker. Most parties strive for gender balance as a principle and some parties introduced a candidates’ list for national elections which respect the principle of alternance (one woman, one man), official from the Dutch Embassy in Bucharest said.
According to HE Ramiro Fernández-Bachiller, Ambassador of Spain to Romania, in Spain, 38.6% of the deputies in the Congress and 38.0% of senators are women. Congress currently has a female speaker. Since the end of the 1980s, most political parties have adopted voluntary quotas which rose gradually to 40%. In 2007, a compulsory quota of 40% of women in party lists at all levels (local, regional and national elections) was introduced by law. Some Spanish regions have adopted legislation providing for electoral lists to be composed of men and women alternatively (so-called “zipper system”) in their respective regional elections. The so-called “Zipper” system, popular in some European countries, requires party candidate lists to alternate between one male and one female candidate or that every three candidates must include one woman.
Also Sweden has one of the world’s highest representations of women in parliament and after the 2014 election, 43.6 per cent (152) of the 349 seats in the one chamber Parliament were taken by women, HE Anneli Lindahl-Kenny, the Swedish Ambassador, said. According to her, one out of three deputy speakers is a woman. Most parties have methods to ensure that women are well represented on their lists of candidates.