Electoral quotas and female under-representation in Brazilian municipal elections in 2012 and 2016

Abstract

 Currently, in Brazil, women occupy low percentages in the elective offices despite representing more than half of the population and the electorate. One of the solutions found was the creation of laws that guarantee quotas to encourage female participation in electoral processes. However, the literature constantly questions these mechanisms' effectiveness. With the political reform debate, the gender parity issues in elections emerged again, and the 2015 mini-electoral reform revised the law provisions with intent to reduce the female under-representation. The present work aims to comparatively analyze the electoral data of the 2012 and 2016 municipal elections and assess whether the changes promoted by the mini-electoral reform had any effectiveness in increasing the number of female candidates. The work presents a review of the electoral legislation about the quota law and its changes over time until the 2015 reform and contextualization of the 2012 and 2016 municipal elections. The data about the two elections will be presented to comparatively analyze whether there has been an improvement in performance and an increase in the number of candidates based on data from the Superior Electoral Court. In conclusion, we discuss the points of effectiveness and failure of the quota law in Brazil