There’s an interesting campaign, launched by the European Women’s Lobby, called ‘50/50 No Modern European Democracy Without Gender Equality‘. The idea is to pressure political parties to put forward electoral lists that with a balanced number of male and female candidates for the next European Parliament elections in 2009, and to persuade Governments to correct the gender imbalance when nominating commissioners. The campaign is also aimed at voters, but it correctly points to the fact that political parties and governments are the gatekeepers to Europe’s democratic institutions. You can’t vote for a woman if she’s not on the electoral list presented.
Of course there will be those arguing that voting on gender lines is in itself sexist, and that candidates should be voted for on the basis of their merits. That, though, doesn’t take into account the fact that in countries like Italy the political parties are run, by and large, by men (for men?), who select a majority of male candidates to be presented at the elections. At the very least a 50/50 split should be presented to voters, who can then decide.
It’s interesting, though, to see the high-profile supporters of the campaign. Amongst names like Orhan Pamuk, Mary Robinson, and various European politicans, the Italian supporters listed include former prime-minister Romano Prodi, and current opposition leader Walter Veltroni.
Both Prodi and Veltroni have long-supported gender equality, at least in their public pronouncements. Sadly that support has never translated into deeds. The electoral lists presented by both Prodi and subsequently Veltroni were dominated by men. Prodi’s government managed to appoint 8 women as ministers out of a total of 26. More telling was the fact that only two of these ministers had an actual department under their control (the rest were ministries senza portafoglio).
Walter Veltroni’s innovative setting up of a shadow cabinet (the first time in Italian politics) upped the numbers slightly, with 9 women amonst the 23 positions. Whether the numbers would have been the same had he won the elections is open to debate. He’s also, at the founding of his party, placed women in the majority on the executive with 8 out of the 17 positions going to men. So far so good.
Let’s take a step backwards though. The primaries for Party leader, which Veltroni won, had only one woman candidate out of five. His party went on to present an electoral list promising a 33% presence of women candidates. Italy’s current electoral list does not, however, allow voters to choose specific candidates in order of preference. You cast your vote for a specific party, and the votes elect candidates in order of preference decided by the party when presenting the list. In the end the PD’s had 61 women out of a total of 219 deputies elected to the lower house, and 39 female senators out of a total of 116.
Hardly revolutionary – even if it was more pro-women than Berlusconi’s PDL party. Together these parties ensured that women make up just 21.3% of the Italian parliament.
This monkey honestly believes that both Prodi and Veltroni do genuinely support gender equality in political representation – but there’s no concrete proof on the ground to back that up. Hopefully the Euro elections will give Veltroni a chance to prove this support, and establish a platform where the same initiative can be introduced for the next regional & national elections in Italy. Don’t hold your breath, though.
Meanwhile it’s interesting to note, though, that Italy in 52nd position in terms of female representation in parliament, is still ahead of supposedly more enlightened democracies like the UK and Ireland (59th and 84th place respectively (women in parliament – ipu report).
You can sign up to the 50/50 initiative here, or join their facebook