Achieving more seats, greater political participation, is the objective of the women candidates for the Congress of the Republic, not only those from Antioquia, but those from all over Colombia, who hope that this year the number achieved in 2018 will be exceeded, lower than 2014 in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
According to UN Women, the participation of women in this important instance had been growing since 2006, when only 10.4% of elected congresswomen were women, until 2014, when they reached 20.9%. But in 2018, the curve stopped growing and the number of women there fell to just 19.7%: 21.3% in the Senate and 18.7% in the House of Representatives.
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In the 2018 electoral contest, of the 192 candidates for the Chamber for Antioquia, 71 were women, that is, 37%. The department obtained 17 seats, of which only three were women, that is, 17.6%. This taking into account that for the period 2018-2022, the departments of Antioquia and Valle, together with the district of Bogotá, were the constituencies with the most seats to be assigned, so they were in turn the territories that elected the largest number of women. (Antioquia 3, Bogotá 5 and Valle 3), according to UN Women.
In the case of Antioquia and in view of the elections for the House of Representatives on March 13, of the 146 candidates that make up the 10 registered lists, only 58 are women and of these, only the Green Party list has as head list a woman: Ana Carolina Arboleda.
In at least seven of them, the second on the lists are women, as they are in the Partido de la U, Mary Luz Muñuz; Radical Change Coalition – Free Fair Colombia – Mira, Adriana Maria Salas; Green Alliance Party, Margarita María Vanegas; Historical Pact, Susana Gómez (known as Susana Boreal); Conservative Party, Hilda Luz Jara Vélez; Comunes, Gloria Emilse Padierna and at the Esperanza Cecilia Estella Murillo Center.
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David Alejandro Toro, head of the Historical Pact list for the Chamber, indicated that, in his case, the party created joint zipper-type lists. “We are the only coalition, political group, the pact, that compulsorily put that there be parity lists of zipper, that is to say that it ensures that half of the congressmen and women are women, before we thought that there would be a real participation and not subjective view of women,” he said.
A majority list of women to the Senate
In the opposite case, the political movement We Are Ready seeks to reach the Senate of the Republic with a closed list in which the majority are women (11 of the 16 candidates). The list is made up of women from departments such as Cundinamarca, Boyacá, Atlántico, San Andrés, Quindío, Caquetá, Antioquia and Santander.
The head of the list is Paisa Elizabeth Giraldo Giraldo, but she also has representation from women from three underrepresented departments, that is, from parts of the country that do not have representation in the Senate with legislative initiatives. Women from Afro, Black, Raizal or Palenquera communities and from the LB population (lesbians and bisexuals) are also part of it.
Although it emerged in Medellin and managed to reach this instance in the capital of Antioquia with a collective council headed by Dora Saldarriaga, it expanded its scope nationwide to achieve legal status, which is why its commitment is to the Senate and not to the Chamber. , as Giraldo explained.
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“We have the horizon of gaining legal status, to be able to give the country the first political party of feminist women. We do not start from the same elements as traditional politics, but we are ready for power, to govern. Colombia is full of women who can occupy these spaces of power, we need collective strength to achieve it, because through the traditional channels and parties it is not going to be, it is not being; time has already shown it, ”she said in dialogue with EL TIEMPO.
Although the quota law arose to guarantee greater participation of women, it also applies in this case, which is why 30% are men, which this movement calls allies for this legal requirement.
Missing guarantees?
Inés Elena Montoya González, professor of constitutional rights at the University of Medellín, explained that the quota law is a mechanism in itself that aims to achieve greater participation of women, admitting in itself a historical debt with this gender.
For the expert, the problem lies in the conviction of the citizen to give the vote to the candidates and of the political parties themselves to value and promote women in politics.
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“It is important because the norm intends to comply with and have an effective participation of the female gender in all branches of public power, but to what extent is it possible or feasible to comply with that 30% in the quotas, but at the moment of the exercise Constitutional is where the parties and movements comply with having candidates who aspire to meet that quota, but since it is the people who make the decision, they do not always have that power or that guarantee,” Montoya pointed out.
MELISSA ALVAREZ CORREA
TIME CORRESPONDENT
MEDELLIN
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