EXPLORING THE GENDER GAP IN PORTUGAL : WOMEN ’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN COMPARATIVE P ERSPECTIVE
Presented at the ICS Conference Portugal at the Polls I: 2002 legislative elections Lisbon, Portugal February 27-28, 2003
Michael Baum, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Political Science University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth 285 Old Westport Rd. N. Dartmouth, MA 02747 508-999-8996 Fax: 508-999-8819 Email:
[email protected]
Ana Espírito Santo Instituto de Ciências Sociais Avª das Forças Armadas, Edif. ISCTE, ala sul,1º 1600-083 Lisboa, Portugal 351-21-7995000 Fax: 351- 21 - 7964953 Email:
[email protected]
Notes: The authors wish to thank Dra Maria Graça Archer at STAPE, and Dr. Sergio Faria for providing access to unpublished electoral data.
PORTUGUESE WOMEN THROUGH HISTORY Women don’t know much about the politics of their country but it is crucial that they become more aware of everything that is going on. (…) This revolution will fundamentally alter family lives, and thus by definition the relations between men and women. A revolution, at least the one I am working towards, must certainly lead to a total transformation of life. (Maria Lamas, 1974)1
While Maria Lamas’ wish remains unfulfilled, it is certainly true that Portugal has gone through a remarkable transformation in the last three decades. Even before the revolution took place in 1974, but principally after that, the country’s modernization has been deep and incredibly fast (Barreto 2002: 311). The rapid democratization and modernization of Portugal’s society, economy and politics has allowed it to approach convergence with European standards in a number of areas. However, like elsewhere in Southern Europe, convergence has typically been uneven, partial, and incomplete (Machado and Costa 2000). This is particularly true in regards to Portugal’s level of gender equality, and we argue that this remains an important handicap for the quality of its young democracy. The gender gap is of course not a new issue for political research, but it is striking how the voluminous literature on democratization has, for the most part, only recently begun to devote serious attention to the gendered dimensions of the “quality of democracy”. 2 Whereas economists were quick to develop objective measures of human development that factored in gender differences, i.e. the UNDP’s Gender Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), political science is waking up late to the fact that democracy is poorer when women are not involved. We agree with Jane Jacquette (2001: 111) that women's political behavior, their degree of representation at all levels of government, and their continuing 1
Susana Ruth Vasques, “Maria Lamas: revolução de rosto humano”, in Modas e Bordados, nº3251 de 5 de Junho de 1974, p.2 cited by Gorjão, Vanda, Mulheres em Tempos Sombrios: oposição feminina ao Estado Novo, ICS, Lisboa, 2002. Maria Lamas was an active dissent er during the dictatorship, which lead to her exile in Paris until 1969.
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activism in civil society will affect the quality of democratic leadership, the priorities of policy making, the building of democratic political cultures, and the responsiveness, transparency, and sustainability of democratic institutions . Therefore, this paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of the quality of Portugal’s democracy by focusing on the political representation, behavior, and attitudes of Portuguese women. One of our key goals is to discover the amplitude of the gender gap in various dimensions of political participation and test whether socio -economic, institutional, or cultural/attitudinal explanations best account for the sex differences in participation that we detect.
THE PARADOX OF WO MEN’S PARTICIPATION IN PORTUGAL Several explanations have been offered to account for the continuing lack of women in political leadership: structural or resource factors, including levels of socioeconomic development, the proportion of women in professional and managerial occupations, among others; the impact of political institutions, such as the impact of democratization and the choice of electoral systems; and cultural factors, like the predominance of traditional attitudes toward gender roles (see Norris and Inglehart 2001). If we broaden our focus to political participation writ large, most analyses of the gender gap have suggested that gender differences in resources (education, income, civic skills, marital status and the like) and political culture attitudes (interest in politics, personal efficacy, cognitive mobilization, trust, etc.) explain male-female differences in political participation rates (Welch 1977; Togeby 1994; Schlozman, Burns et al. 1995)
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See for example the Journal of Democracy, Vol. 12 (July), 2001.
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Structurally, one of the most important phenomena that preceded (but was later accelerated by) Portugal’s democratic revolution was the large-scale entrance of women into the formal labor market. As everywhere else in the world, this led to associated changes in gend er roles and family life that have fundamentally reshaped Portuguese society ever since (Barreto, 2002: 313). Worldwide, there is a clear link between a country's level of socioeconomic development and the proportion of women in its legislature. Scholars have suggested a twophase causal model whereby industrialization first brings women into the paid workforce and thus dramatically reduces fertility rates. During this stage, women make substantial gains in educational opportunities and literacy. These resources are understood to be crucial for political participation. As they earn the formal right to vote they begin to participate in representative government, but they still have far less power than men. The second, postindustrial phase is thought to usher in a shift toward greater gender equality as more progressive attitudes about gender roles take root in the electorate. This attitudinal change is both a cause and an effect of women moving into higher-status economic positions and as they gain greater political influence within elected and appointed bodies (Norris and Inglehart, 2001: 129). However, as we discuss below, women’s political representation in Portugal has, in many areas, lagged behind their socio-economic improvements. In fact, politics is probably nowadays the field where the unbalance between men and women can be felt the most (Gorjão 2002: 273). Institutionally, Portugal’s revolutionary democratic transition introduced, if only partially and somewhat briefly, a radical reordering of women’s daily lives. At the risk of overgeneralization, take for example two snapshots before and after the1974 Revolution. Until the late 1960s, when women in other western industrialized countries were already pushing for full equality with men, Portuguese women still needed their husband’s permission for
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employment, to leave the country, and were prohibited from serving as judges or in the diplomatic corps (Vicente 1993). Many Portuguese women’s public roles, especially in the rural areas, more closely resembled those of women from certain Islamic or Asian societies (see Cutileiro 1971). However, less than ten years later, from 1974-76, working-class women throughout the country were often at the forefront of the social revolution that swept through Portugal. Their activities ranged from grassroots neighborhood organizing, to occupying and managing their own workplaces [see, for example, \Bermeo, 1983 #110; Hammond, 1981 #311; , 1988 #312; Downs, 1989 #208; Ta vares, 2000 #1072], to being elected by their peers (men included) to serve as local trade union and party leaders. Finally, with the passage of the new Constitution in 1976, women enjoyed full political and economic rights at the local and national levels (for local- level case studies, see Ramos 1992; Reed 1995; Baum 1997b; Santo 1999). Clearly, the 1974 Revolution still stands as a sort of B.C. and A.D. watershed for a certain generation of Portuguese women. Thus, we also take a close look at the cohort differences between women. We hypothesize that very strong generational differences will characterize our female sample and that these differences will be in the predicted direction; that is, younger women should possess greater resources that facilitate political participation. We should find evidence of value differences such that their different socialization experiences have created stronger egalitarian values among the younger women, and these attitudinal differences should also facilitate greater involvement in politics.
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At the aggregate level, however, several studies have commented on the apparent disjuncture between women’s relatively high economic and electoral participation rates3 and the persistence of more “traditional” attitudes about gender roles, including an anemic feminist civil society (Ferreira 1998; 1999; Viegas and Faria 2001). 4 Even casual observers of Portuguese politics cannot but help notice the relative absence of any substantive progressive women’s movement in the country. This is evidenced by the failure of women to mobilize around the 1998 national referendum on abortion (Baum and Freire 1999; Leonard 2000; Manya 2000; Freire and Baum 2001a), their general lack of interest in a 1998 governmental proposal that sought to introduce a parity law for national and European Parliament elections (Viegas and Faria 2001)— and which subsequently died in parliament (http://www.db-decision.de/CoRe/Portugal.htm)-and the absence of strong feminist values in either public opinion surveys [Ashford, 1992 #43; Reis, 1993 #986; and Baum, 2002 #1157] or daily discourse (Ferreira 1998: 186). What remains unknown is whether the recent structural transformations in Portuguese society that have been largely favorable to the building of women’s resources—large increases in the numbers of female university graduates, the percentage of women who work outside the home, women’s wage earnings as a percentage of male wage earnings, and improvements in the welfare state—are having any effect at the level of political attitudes, consciousness, participation and representation. Is the gender gap in political participatio n still significant in Portugal? How does it vary with the form of participation considered? Is it even useful to talk about Portuguese women as a whole or are the differences between older and newer cohorts so stark as to make generalization impossible? And finally, in what concerns the gender gap in 3
In Portugal 63% of those women aged 15-64, and 78% of those aged 25 to 49 were active in the labor force in 1999 (EUROSTAT 2001) .
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political participation and involvement, does Portugal differ significantly from the other European countries and from the United States? 5 These are the questions that our paper addresses.
THE GENDER GAP IN PORTUGAL: AGGREGATE DATA Since 1960, as briefly mentioned above, the status of women in Portugal has improved considerably. In what concerns the national parliament, while in 1976 not even 5% of parliamentarians were women, by 1995 that figure rose to 12% (Viegas, 2001: 28) and by 2002 it was 20%. This last value ranked Portugal slightly above not only the EU average of about16%, but the non-Nordic European average of 14% as well. However, it is still well below the levels of the European Nordic countries, where on average 38.8 % of lower-house members are women (see Norris and Inglehart, 2001: 121; Viegas, 2001 #1092 and www.ipu.org]. Another relevant fact is the gap between the proportion of female candidates to the national parliament and the proportion of those who are effectively elected: the first value is always much higher than the second one, since the parties tend to place women lower on the electoral lists, in positions that are less likely to lead to election (Viegas, 2001: 29). Moreover, at the level of representation in government, women’s representation has lagged badly. For example, during the PS- minority government (1995-2002) only 3 of 23 cabinet ministers were women (13%)— and this from the only political party which has a voluntary 25% quota for representation in the parliament (www.db-decision.de/CoRe/Portugal.htm and Faria,
4 Some recent works coming out of the nascent women’s studies literature in Portugal have tried to suggest that such pessimistic views of the Portuguese women’s movement may be overstated {see \Tavares, 2000 #1072; Gorjão, 2002 #1148; Vicente, 1994 #767; and for an overview \Cova, 1999 #1076}. 5 In our analysis we use data from the 2002 Portuguese Electoral Behavior Survey and international data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES).
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2002). The current figure for the new PSD and CDS-PP center-right coalition government is even worse; as only 2 of the 18 ministers are women (11.1%) 6 . At the sub-national level the picture is substantially worse. Despite one of the world’s most advanced constitutions (in terms of legal protections regarding equality in all spheres of life), only 10.4% of the members of Portugal’s various municipal governance structures 7 were women in 1997 (see Table 1), and the percentage of women mayors (the highest level of representation at the local level) was only 4% in 2002 (see Table 2). These percentages varied significantly by region and thus may be related to strong north/south and rural/urban ideological and cultural cleavages that are filtered through Portugal’s national party system. Insert Table 1 about here Insert Table 2 about here Alongside this mixed picture for political representation, Portuguese women occupy an equally paradoxical position in regards to their economic situation. Portugal has one of the world’s highest rates of female employment, and surprisingly high rates of female university graduates. In 1995, 63% of university graduates under the age of 30 were women, and they were a majority in all courses except the technical/scientific fields, where they averaged in the 30-40% range [see \ Ferreira, 1999 #1056; Ferreira, n.d. #1075]. Ferreira and others have been quick to point out, however, that the other side of the equation is the terrible legacy of nearly 50 years of an intensely patriarchal dictatorship. Portuguese women have, on average, very few educational and material resources to draw upon in order to advance their levels of political participation. Portugal has the lowest percentage in
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However, it must be said that Dra. Manuela Ferreira Leite is the first woman appointed to head the Finance Ministry and she serves as something of a “super-minister”, sharing duties as the head of the Ministry of State with Dr. Paulo Portas (PP).
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the EU of women aged 25 to 59 having completed at least upper secondary education, 23.5% compared to the EU average of 58.7% (EUROSTAT 2001) and the highest female illiteracy rate in Europe— 11% of those age 15 and above in 1998 (Program- UNDP 2001). Only 5% of Portugal’s top 100 companies have at least one woman as a member of their board of directors (conselhos de administração), compared to 87% with at least one woman in the top 500 U.S. companies (Diario de Noticias 7/15/2002: 9). The workday is also longer in Portugal than in any other EU country and part-time employment for women is mostly concentrated in the poorly-paid agricultural and precarious informal sectors (Ferreira, 2001: 3). Furthermore, despite the existence of highly successful “alibi women” 8 as Ferreira describes them, the salary ratio between women and men has widened slightly in recent years. For example, in a recent study by Eurostat that focused on the gender gap in earnings in the industrial and service sectors, Portugal’s gender gap was the largest of all the EU member states, with women earning only 67% of male earnings. The EU average was 75% (Clarke, 2001). Moreover, Portugal was one of the only states that saw the gender gap in earnings actually get worse from 1990 to 1998. With this brief background on Portuguese women’s relative political and economic participation rates, let us now turn to an empirical analysis of the individual-level data as evidenced by responses to the 2002 Portuguese Electoral Behavior Survey.
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Camaras Municipais, Assembleias Municipais, e Juntas de Freguesias. This refers to the few highly successful women in the media and in certain unexpected fields, such as the hard sciences, who give the impression that women are much further advanced in Portugal than is really the case. 8
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THE GENDER GAP IN PORTUGAL: INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL ANALYSIS The level of political participation is, in general, quite lo w among the Portuguese. On the one hand, as happens in many western democracies, voting turnout is decreasing. But, on the other hand, the Portuguese population does not seem to fit the syndrome presented by Inglehart which states that in the post-industrial societies, the masses tend to develop more autonomous forms of political participation (Freire, 2003). The results of the 2002 Portuguese post-election survey tend to confirm this assessment. Actually, except for voting, all the other forms of participation (included in the survey) are far from being done by the majority of the Portuguese. But let us go straight to our point: are there any significant differences between men and women in what concerns political participation? Based upon simple comparisons of means we see that there are. In order to explore these differences more easily, we have aggregated the different forms of political participation into two categories: the well-known distinction between conventional and “unconventional” forms of political participation (Kaase & Marsh, 1979; Opp, Burow-Affarth, et al., 1981).
Conventional participation Several empirical studies of participation have shown that sex differences in conventional political participation are diminishing worldwide [for an overview, see /Christy, 1987 #167]. As table 3 shows, the same is true in Portugal for the majority of the forms of political participation that we have considered to be “conventional”. For example, as has been suggested by other studies of voter turnout in western industrialized nations (Burns, Schlozman et al. 2001; Conway 2001; Franklin 2001), Portuguese women are no more likely to go to the polls than men (legislative 1999 & 2002 and local 2001).
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Comment: Ana check the numbers on the tables and correct. You have tables numbered 1 -9 in Tables and Figures. Should this be Table 3 here?
Comment: Insert in bib, I don’t have it.
Unsurprisingly (see Conway, 1997 ; Burns, 2001), in what concerns other forms of political participation (beyond voting), gender differences are clearer. While 8% of the Portuguese men have contacted a member of Parliament in any way during the past twelve months, only 4,8% of the women did the same. Although significant (p
