The legislative process to fight violence against women

_This article was written by Ilana Trombka, Director-General of the Brazilian Federal Senate and Henrique Salles Pinto, Legislative Advisor of the Brazilian Federal Senate _

• The problem: While violence against women increases, gender representation in parliaments remains low in many countries.
• Why it matters: Low female representation in parliaments is a hindrance to address violence against women appropriately.
• The solution: Equity groups can be important to assist female parliamentarians in the process to formulate public policies of their interest.

Context

Acts of violence towards women is an unfortunate reality in many countries and does not conform to ethnicity, religious belief or social class. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is estimated that 35% of women of all nationalities have already suffered some type of physical violence by an intimate partner or by a non-partner at some point in their lives.

In Brazil, the fight against gender violence showed more effective results after the approval of the Law 11.340/2006. Also known as the 'Maria da Penha' Law, this normative diploma, according to its first article, “creates mechanisms to curb and prevent domestic and family violence against women […]; provides for the creation of Courts to Fight Domestic Violence Against Women; and lays down assistance measures and protection of women in situations of domestic and family violence”.

It is worth noting the importance of the Brazilian National Congress not only to create the aforementioned law, but also to improve it and establish complementary measures to fight violence against women. Such measures are necessary and urgent, since, according to the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook (2019), more than 1,200 women were victims of femicide in Brazil in 2019, 4% more than the percentage of 2017.

What happened/What should happen

We carried out research to better understand the legislative process related to specific public policies that aim to fight violence against women in the Brazilian National Congress, whose Houses traditionally have low gender representation. For the 56th Legislature, only 11 senators and 77 federal deputies were women, which corresponds to 13.58% and 15.01% of the mandates of the Federal Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies respectively. Based on data obtained from the two parliamentary houses, it was possible to identify two activities of the process in question: 1) the projects in progress that have the objective to fight violence against women; and 2) the reports of these projects.

The methodology of the research considered all law projects (PL) and complementary law projects (PLP) filed over the three early years of the 56th Legislature (2019 to 2021) that aim to fight violence against women and that were not attached to other bills. The following tables present the results obtained.

Table 1: Authorship of projects to fight violence against women presented between 2019 and 2021 (projects in progress in the Chamber of Deputies in February 2022)

Source: Made by the authors based on data obtained from the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies.

Table 2: Authorship of projects to fight violence against women presented between 2019 and 2021 (projects in progress in the Federal Senate in February 2022)

Source: Made by the authors based on data obtained from the Brazilian Federal Senate.

The research carried out also aimed to understand the participation of women and men in the reports of these projects, specifically the projects submitted between 2019 and 2021 that were not attached to any other project and for which it had been assigned at least a report over its process. Based on this methodology, 94 projects were found in the Chamber of Deputies and 7 projects were found in the Federal Senate. The Graphics 1 and 2 summarise the profile of the current rapporteurs^[1] of these projects.

Graphic 1: Profile of the current or last rapporteur of projects to fight violence against women presented between 2019 and 2021 (projects in progress in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies in February 2022)

Source: Made by the authors based on data obtained from the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies.

Graphic 2: Profile of the current or last rapporteur of projects to fight violence against women presented between 2019 and 2021 (projects in progress in the Brazilian Federal Senate in February 2022)

Source: Made by the authors based on data obtained from the Brazilian Federal Senate.

The result of the research shows that female parliamentarians are more active than male parliamentarians in the Brazilian National Congress when they act to fight violence against women.

Main takeaway

According to Meyer (2003), there is a greater permeability of issues linked to the regulation of Gender equity issues in parties that present more progressive platforms, like the well-known leftist parties. That question seems to reproduce itself the same way in Brazil today–it is expected that left-wing parties in the country will be able to maintain their affiliates engaged in greater quantity and quality (ALMEIDA, 2015; PINTO; SILVEIRA, 2018).

Meyer's (2003) analysis of the German Bundestag demonstrates that the participation of female parliamentarians was also important to reverberate positions of feminist groups from outside the parliament. According to Meyer (2003), therefore, it is important that the political parties take real actions to encourage women's political participation, which contributes to increases in the number of women in parliament and political parties.

When Höhmann (2020) analysed the German parliament, specifically between 1998 and 2013, it was possible to validate the hypothesis which is related to the parliamentarian performance based on gender interests. Indeed, the author claims that male parliamentarians tend to reduce the intensity of their support to women’s interests if the proportion of women in parliament is high.

In Brazil, male parliamentarians tend to reduce the intensity of their support to women’s interests even if the proportion of women in parliament is low. Considering the hypotheses presented by Höhmann (2020), the Brazilian case would be closer to the one according to which male parliamentarians would feel threatened by the women's engagement in the legislative process and, for that reason, do not support them or support them little in the topics of their interest, with fear of losing space in parliament.

The motivations for this significant engagement, even in a context of underrepresentation, can be understood through the analysis of Meyer (2003), according to which female parliamentarians, supported by other groups of women, tend to enhance their performance in the process to formulate public policies of their interest. The Brazilian case is emblematic in this sense, with several institutional measures to fight violence against women. In the National Congress, for example, it is important to consider the activities of the Joint Permanent Commission to Fight Violence against Women (CMCVM), the Special Attorney’s Office for Women,and the Permanent Committee for the Promotion of Equality of Gender and Race of the Brazilian Federal Senate, among other institutions.

If Höhmann (2020) proposes the hypothesis of a “positive spillover” in the parliamentarian perspective–according to which, as women put gender issues on the parliamentarian agenda, men come to support these issues, and act more often to promote women’s interests, then it is also possible to formulate this hypothesis considering an extra-parliamentarian perspective. This would be based on the Brazilian example, since the strategies of equity carried out by civil servants and political parties that present more progressive platforms can boost the performance of the majority underrepresented in parliaments. The test of this hypothesis can be carried out in future research.

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