Ecuador was the first Latin American country to grant women full voting rights in 1924. Since then, Ecuador has been improving women’s political rights.
After our discussion in class about quotas, I decided to share with the class some advantages that my country has achieved.
In 2000, Ecuador passed a Law binding every political party to include 30% of women in their list. This percentage should increase 5% each election in order to reach 50%, proportion that we already have. The law also requires the political parties to observe the sequence and arrange in order to have: man-woman-man-woman, or woman-man-woman-man in each candidate’s list.
Currently, 33% of the Assembly Members are women, and 5 out of 13 Permanent Committees of the General Assembly are leading by Chairwomen (38.5%).
Since 2008, Ecuador has a new Constitution where we can find rights and principles that involves positive discrimination and positive actions based on gender. Ecuadorian Constitution also stimulates equal participation in all public offices. At the moment, there are 15 women in the President’s Cabinet. In the last Government, they were only 5.
I think that Constitutions and laws allowing quotas are making possible this kind of changes. Even though “quotas” is a hated word, I think it is a mechanism that helps improving women’s political participation.
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2 comments:
Wendy - Very informative post. I wonder if you maybe have any insight into whether or not Ecuador is considered a leader in the region in regards to quotas?
I wonder what kind of lessons the United States can extract from Ecuador's experiences? Could a quota system really work for us?
I personally have a difficult time trying to figure out how it could work on a federal level -- but I can imagine ways it could work on a state or party level. What does everyone else think?
Alex - I am glad you are interested. It is a very controversial theme!
Latin America and Europe are doing great in quotas. In our region, Argentina was the first country passing the law. It is definitely the leader. After that, Mexico and Paraguay were the countries to had quotas. Peru, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Panama, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil and Ecuador followed their example a couple years later.
I think a quota system works when we understand the objective. If the citizens would have information about how many women are running for office and the reasons why is so low, it would help them to understand that something is not working right. The important thing is to generate a debate about quotas and to talk about pros and cons. If you arouse great interest, then it will come the ideas of how this system could or could not work on federal level. I will love to answer that, but I do not understand completely how the federal system works here.
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