Guatemalan women fight for right to political participation.

AutorReynolds, Louisa

"More women, better politics" is the slogan of a publicity campaign, launched in July this year by a group of female academics and journalists, to raise awareness of the absence of female participation in politics.

With a US$6,750 donation from the UN Population Fund (UNPF), they placed 20 billboards in different locations in Guatemala City with a series of statistics that speak for themselves: in this country there are 138 men and 20 women in Congress, 12 of 13 Corte Suprema de Justicia (CSJ) judges are male, not a single Cabinet member is female, and 327 of 333 mayors are male.

During the 2007 elections, of a total 29,821 candidates for both national and local offices, 87.3% were male and only 12.6% were female.

Ana Silvia Monzon, coordinator of the gender program at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), attributes this huge disparity to three major factors: first, a lack of financial resources to fund a costly political campaign; second, less access to education for women, particularly in rural areas; and third, the prevalence of chauvinist and discriminatory cultural stereotypes, according to which women should be confined to the home.

Marielos Monzon, a columnist for daily newspaper Prensa Libre, believes that the problem can only be tackled by imposing compulsory quotas for female participation.

A bill that intends to impose lists of candidates that include an equal number of male and female candidates in all political parties has already been given the go ahead by the Comision de Asuntos Electorales in Congress, which means that it could shortly be put up for debate.

The activists behind the More-women-better-politics campaign argue that similar laws have already been approved in other countries in the region, such as Costa Rica, with impressive results.

However, some female politicians do not entirely agree with affirmative action as it could lead critics to point out, fairly or unfairly, that women have been given jobs in politics as part of a compulsory diversity program and not based on merit. "My advice is that we should continue to educate ourselves as this is what will help us gain more spaces in politics," says Laura Reyes, an indigenous lawyer running for vice president with the center-right Compromiso, Renovacion y Orden (CREO) party.

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