A Brazil legislation handed within the late Nineties requires 30% of legislative candidates to be girls. However a quarter-century later, lower than 20% of seats within the nation’s Congress are held by girls — and Brazil’s gender hole in illustration ranks among the many backside of all Latin American international locations.
So why has the gender quota failed? Brazil native Pedro dos Santos, a political-science professor at School of St. Benedict/St. John’s College, is finding out the difficulty by means of the Fulbright Distinguished Students Program. This summer season, dos Santos was awarded a scholarship for the 2022-23 tutorial 12 months.
This system makes use of federal {dollars} to assist college students, lecturers, artists and professionals foster mutual understanding with different international locations. CSB/SJU has had 15 school who’ve earned Fulbright Scholar awards since 1950 however dos Santos is the one Distinguished Scholar, essentially the most prestigious standing in this system.
As a part of his scholarship, dos Santos hung out in Brazil this summer season and plans to return subsequent 12 months to proceed finding out political-party dynamics and demographic illustration. In a written response to the Star Tribune, dos Santos, 42, talked about his venture. His solutions have been edited for readability and size.
Q: What does your Fulbright venture entail?
A: It focuses on excessive nonviable candidacies. In Brazil’s legislative elections, the variety of candidates could be very excessive and lots of candidates obtain only a few votes, together with some who obtain no votes. My objective is to raised perceive why some candidates obtain so few votes and why events permit such candidates to run. One reply is already considerably established: Brazil has a gender quota for candidates and most of those excessive nonviable candidates are girls. This implies events place girls of their candidate listing with no intention to assist them run a great marketing campaign.
Q: Why is the gender quota legislation flawed?
A: In Brazil, when operating in legislative elections, there aren’t any particular districts. So, for instance, Minnesota would have one election the place all state Home candidates would run for the 134 obtainable seats. This implies Brazil has extra political events — presently over 30 — and people events assist a couple of candidate for every legislative election. The brief reply to why the quota does not work is that this: Political get together leaders designed the gender quota legislation with every kind of loopholes so they may keep away from supporting girls candidates. Most of my printed work emphasizes the truth that the Brazilian political system was created for males by males, so now that girls are in it, we should perceive how legacies of the previous affect the current.
Q: Are you able to apply your analysis to current U.S. politics? Any takeaways?
A: The concept of these excessive nonviable candidates got here from research on sacrificial lambs, or candidates that run with only a few possibilities of successful. Within the U.S., a sacrificial lamb tends to be a candidate from one of many two main events who run figuring out they’ve restricted possibilities of successful given the socio-political make-up of their district. Sooner or later, girls had been overwhelmingly operating as sacrificial lambs in these districts.
Q: What races or initiatives are you watching within the November elections?
A: I’ll first give attention to the Oct. 2 election in Brazil, the place I will watch to see the variety of girls who get elected for legislative positions. In Minnesota, I’m particularly focused on college board elections; there are a number of points which are coming from nationwide debates which will affect these races.
