Gender, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

POLITICS-COLOMBIA: Not Enough Just to Be a Woman

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTÁ, Mar 29 2010 (IPS) - Noemí Sanín, the presidential candidate of Colombia’s Conservative Party, who is running second in the polls, has a few advantages over her main rival, the right-wing Juan Manuel Santos, such as extensive experience in foreign relations and in running programmes for poor families and children.

But Santos is seen as better able to resolve the issues seen as most pressing by voters, like the highest unemployment rate in Latin America, the need to improve the health and education systems, and the fight against corruption and the leftist guerrillas.

According to a recent Gallup poll on voter intentions for the May 30 elections, he has 34 percent support, compared to 23 percent for Sanín.

Sanín, a former foreign minister and ambassador, is running for president again, after two unsuccessful attempts in 1998 and 2002.

Santos was minister of foreign trade and finance, but became well-known as defence minister under President Álvaro Uribe between 2006 and 2009.

He is seen as Uribe’s chosen successor, since the Constitutional Court blocked the right-wing president’s chances of running for a third term.

The Gallup poll found that voters saw the female candidate as better prepared in the areas of diplomacy and family and children’s affairs.

Does this reflect a sexist vision of areas in which women are considered to be more qualified? And is Sanín seen as “weaker” than the controversial Santos, who has a reputation of being “tough” on “terrorism”? The answers are still pending.

Olga Amparo Sánchez, director of the Casa de la Mujer women’s centre, says women shouldn’t vote for a candidate just because she is a woman.

“Women should vote and take part in elections as people with rights: for proposals that we feel reflect our concerns and needs, for the candidates’ interpretations of the country, and for the solutions that they propose,” she told IPS.

Nevertheless, “I think it is important that there are women like Noemí Sanín,” she added. “It is positive that they reach these positions, because they gradually build new symbols, and help put women in another place, symbolically.”

Former senator Cecilia López of the opposition Liberal Party does not believe that the conditions are in place for Colombians to elect a woman president.

“When 45 percent of Congress is made up of women, it’s possible for a woman to be president: look at Costa Rica (where Laura Chinchilla was elected on Feb. 7). But when women comprise just eight to 10 percent of the legislature like in Colombia, there is no chance,” she said.

Colombia ranks 111th out of 187 countries worldwide in terms of female representation in Congress. And in Latin America it is in last place, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Although this South American country has a quota law reserving 30 percent of high-ranking public posts for women, it is not enforced, and the outgoing legislature rejected the establishment of a minimum quota for women on parliamentary electoral lists.

The new Congress to be seated in July will include a mere 38 women out of a total of 268 members – 20 in the lower house and 18 in the Senate.

But although there are few women, six of the eight legislators-elect who won the most votes in the Mar. 14 parliamentary elections were women, dubbed “electoral baronesses” by Semana magazine.

This “breaks a cultural pattern,” Sánchez said, although she added that people should keep a close eye on “what kind of society they (the women lawmakers) propose, and how the lives of women would improve as a result. I think that in this respect, we can expect very little from the women who were elected.

“Fewer women committed to improving things for women were elected than before,” only “two or three,” she said.

Among the women who were reelected are Senators Dilian Toro of the governing U Party, and Piedad Córdoba of the Liberal Party, both of whom formed part of a women’s caucus in the outgoing Congress, which was behind the approval of a law against gender violence.

But they achieved very little else. For example, the women’s caucus failed to convince their male colleagues to set a 30 percent quota for parliamentary elections, in compliance with Millennium Development Goal 3, which includes the target of increasing the proportion of legislative seats held by women.

The eight MDGs were adopted by the international community at the United Nations Millennium Summit in the year 2000 in New York.

Senator-elect Gloria Ramírez of the left-wing Alternative Democratic Pole said the small number of female lawmakers contributes to keeping the gender agenda invisible, but added that merely increasing representation of women is no guarantee, because what is needed is “women and men who are committed to the issue.”

Sánchez said some elected women legislators actually have proposals that limit, rather than expand, democracy.

One example is Senator Gilma Jiménez of the Green Party, the female candidate who won the most votes. She proposed holding a referendum on introducing the death penalty for child rapists.

But now the plan is to hold a referendum on the introduction of life imprisonment, which does not currently exist in Colombia.

Other women lawmakers climbed the ranks and won votes following the old patronage system.

And others are the wives or sisters of legislators facing prosecution or in prison in connection with the so-called “parapolitics” scandal in which one-third of the members of Congress have either been arrested or investigated since 2006 for ties to the ultra-right paramilitary militias led by drug lords.

Given that provinces in Colombia tend to be run politically like family fiefdoms, the women “inherited” the votes of male family members who gave up their seats in Congress for prison cells, analysts and women’s rights activists say.

But there are also women who are the power behind the throne.

One case is that of Enilce López, a lottery entrepreneur known as “La Gata” (the cat) who is on trial for murder and money-laundering, and had close ties with Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, one of the leaders of the Medellín cartel, who died in 1989.

López, who was arrested in 2006, has been under house arrest instead of in prison since 2008 because of alleged health problems. But she got four legislators, all men, elected under the controversial National Integration Party (PIN).

According to press reports, López, who is also accused of ties with the paramilitaries, paid 100 dollars for each vote for “her” lawmakers, one of whom is her son, Héctor Julio López.