The Political Participation of Women in Brazil: Female Mayors

Abstract

Studies of the political, social, and economic participation of women in Brazil routinely face great difficulty in collecting data. Published statistics about the voting behavior of the population, for example, do not make distinctions by sex, and this information can only be obtained by appealing directly to the Superior Electoral Court. Without such data, an estimate of the number of women elected to political office at the federal, state, and municipal levels becomes a very difficult task. The form in which such data are published reflects the ideological notion that politics is a male realm. Hence, the classification of voters and elected officials by sex is assumed to be unnecessary. By the same token, the assumption that Brazilian women are remote from the political arena prevails, and it makes it arduous for any female to run in an election. In this climate, it is extremely surprising that in the period 1972-76 sixty women were elected mayors in Brazil, a phenomenon which this study aims to explore and explain.