Crítica feminista e a participação das mulheres na política brasileira: democracia paritária de gênero como direito

Abstract

The inequality between men and women in terms of participation in political power and decisionmaking bodies is a historical and global problem that is currently on the international agenda, but shifted to an approach referenced by parity. Women were one of the last categories to conquer their political rights in contemporary democracies, after a long battle, so that the gender bias defines both the construction of citizenship and the democratic institutions of the State. The 1988 Constitution marks the democratic transition and the institutionalization of human rights in Brazil, inaugurating a new constitutional dogmatic that elevates broad and equal political participation to a fundamental right, but Brazilian women, despite being 45.30% of those affiliated to parties and 52.50% of the electorate, only occupy about 15% of political-elective positions. The discrimination that excludes women in the sphere of representative democracy degrades its quality and jeopardizes the principle of equal political participation. The present work intends to contribute with the contemporary feminist criticism to the democratic and constitutional theories that are intended to be neutral but were elaborated in a context of male domination, indicating how a reinterpretation of citizenship in the Brazilian legal system, under a political-legal, interdisciplinary feminist perspective, is necessary to revert the situation of exclusion of women in the institutional spaces of power. For this, bibliographic, doctrinal, legislative and jurisprudential content will be used as research techniques, in addition to analyzing the problems with the current gender quota policy adopted in Brazil and presenting paths taken by other Latin American countries towards gender parity. The research results indicate the relationship of gender inequality in Brazilian political power instances with the exclusion of women from intra-party power spaces, disparities in campaign funding, fraud against gender quotas and gender political violence, always permeated by the standards of race, class and sexuality. The solution to the problem depends on acting on different fronts, social and cultural, but while changes in society cannot promote this egalitarian status on their own, the constitutional order demands a normative change that corrects the democratic deficit of female participation and guarantees equality, guided by the gender parity as paradigm.