Women in Latin America and the Caribbean - Cepal

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agreements adopted at each conference have acted as genuine global agendas guiding the political action
of the forces committed to gender equity in the different countries.
In the 1990s, in this international climate disposed to promote increased gender equity, the Latin
American and Caribbean countries became the stage for a series of demands and negotiations that would
eventually lead to the adoption of quotas for elections to legislative posts. Each country that adopted
quota laws did so in its own particular way, but it was always the culmination of a long process. Women
politicians formed cross-party alliances with the support of the feminist movement and women’s
organizations mobilized to campaign for the adoption of quota laws, identify their main weaknesses,
reform rules and establish sanctions to ensure proper compliance. The existence of State-sponsored
gender mechanisms helped to articulate the various strands of the campaign and to mediate between the
movement and the rest of the State. In all cases, women politicians’ relations with their parties were
conflictive. Political parties were reluctant to adopt affirmative action as a way of promoting women’s
political participation, but ultimately did so in the context of the wider debate on equity within the region.
In the early 1990s, women had very limited access to decision-making and representative bodies.
In the Caribbean, women accounted for 12% of the two chambers of parliament in 1990 (Bart-Alexander,
2007), while in Latin America they accounted for about 5% of the members of upper chambers and about
9% of the lower chambers of legislatures (Bareiro and others, 2004). This was a clear indication that there
were still structural barriers to more egalitarian participation in the exercise of political power.
In 1991 Argentina became the first country to enact a women’s quota law, in response to the
demands of female politicians, who proposed the measure after the main parties refused to establish
quotas within their ranks. In 1989, the female senator for the province of Mendoza submitted an electoral
code reform bill aiming, for the first time, to oblige party-political organizations to include women in
their lists of candidates for legislative posts. In 1990, 15 party organizations set up a network of feminist
politicians, which was to play a crucial role in analysing and adopting the quota law. The fifth National
Women’s Meeting (1990), which brought together a wide range of activists, expressed its support for the
quota law in notes sent to the presidents of all political parties and to both chambers of parliament urging
the approval of the quota bills. Other key factors included the support of both the Multisectoral Women’s
Group (made up of feminists, members of political parties and civil-society representatives) and the
National Women’s Council (Marx, Borner and Caminotti, 2006). This legislation had a broad impact in
Argentina, where a 30% quota was also adopted for women’s participation in trade unions in 2002, 11 and
in other countries.
The first elections held following the enactment of the quota law demonstrated the need for
certain amendments and for strict monitoring to close the loopholes that parties used to get round the
legislation. Legal proceedings brought by female politicians over parties’ failure to comply with the law
placed crucial pressure on parties to accede. The constitutional reform of 1994 provided further political
and legal backing to these demands by recognizing the principle of equality among men and women as
regards access to elective posts and political positions, and by making it unconstitutional for any future
law to reduce the quotas established.
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Act 25,674.