Electoral legal framework restricts women's equity

SANTO DOMINGO. The Dominican legal electoral framework, as well as the ideological resistance within the State, the parties and, to a lesser extent, sectors of society itself, restrict the equal participation of women in decision-making spaces.

The statement is one of the main conclusions of the analysis "Women, participation and citizenship in the Dominican Republic. Achievements, challenges and bets " who presented the Center for Gender Studies Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (CEG-INTEC), on the occasion of commemorating this March 8 on International Women's Day.

The document describes an overview of the situation of Dominican women in the social, political and economic sphere, placing the progress made in terms of participation and rights of women, but emphasizing the deficits that persist and that are evidenced as pending priority attention.

The CEG-INTEC presents the situation of Dominican women according to the three areas of autonomy proposed by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC): autonomy in decision-making, economic autonomy and physical autonomy.

Autonomy in decision making

Some of the most relevant obstacles to raising the level of political participation of Dominican women in relation to the national electoral legal framework and the socio-economic and cultural sphere are:

• The law does not regulate the order of placement of women on the lists of candidates, allowing the parties to place them in the last positions, difficult to win. This practice, coupled with the provision of inserting one woman for every two men, is unfavorable for women since national electoral districts are mostly bi-nominal, and do not allow for a third position.

• The provision that establishes the alternation by sex in the high positions of the mayoralties does not oblige the parties to guarantee 33% for women in the specific case of the syndicates, encouraging the parties to relegate women to the vice-syndicates.

• There are barriers in the family-personal environment in terms of lack of family support or opposition from the couples of the women candidates.

• Availability of few financial resources on the part of women candidates and difficulties in accessing financial support to sustain their candidacies.

• The exclusive responsibility of women in caring for the home and raising children, which makes it difficult to reconcile reproductive and labor roles, social participation and political activism.

The text indicates that as a result of the indicated barriers, the balance of female participation in decision-making spaces is unfavorable for women in the following aspects:

• In terms of the number of women in ministerial positions, the Dominican Republic has four ministers (18%) of the total of 22 existing ministries, placing in the penultimate rank among the countries with the lowest number of women in the direction of State ministries.

• In the Chamber of Deputies the country has only 39 deputies of a total of 190 deputies (20%). In the Senate it has only four Senators, out of a total of 32 Senators.

• At the local government level, there are 15 trustees (10%) of 155 sindicaturas. The country has 382 regidoras (33%) of a total of 1,149 regidurías.

• In the country's highest courts of justice, women represent only 29.4% of all existing judges, which shows the under-representation of women in an additional space of national political life not subject to election by citizen vote. 

"The levels of female under-representation to more than 15 years of promulgated the first law of quotas in the country show that this is not met even in its expected minimum of 33%. It also highlights the unwillingness of the political sectors to define complementary or compensatory regulations that are truly effective, the document indicates.

In this sense, it raises the convenience of the approval of a Law of Political Parties that contains clear and effective regulations that promote the equitable political participation of women within political parties.

Economic autonomy

The document “Woman and Citizen Participation in the DR. Achievements, challenges and bets ”of the CEG-INTEC refers that recent statistics indicate that the female poverty rate is 28% higher than that of men, and that women have the highest unemployment rate of the total economically active population at the level. national (23.1% in 2014), which places them well above the male unemployment rate (8.7%).

In 2013, 32.9% of women worked in the informal market. According to the analysis of the CEG-INTEC, the informality of employment has as a consequence the lack of protection of women in aspects such as social security, as well as in the absence of labor rights such as paid vacations, royalties, maternity benefits, liquidation due to dismissal and work contract.

In this sense, the CEG-INTEC proposes the inclusion in the new Labor Code of the joint gender proposals made by the Intersectoral Board of governmental and non-governmental organizations and institutions in the area of ​​women, related to domestic work, reconciliation of responsibilities and family obligations and gender equality and non-discrimination at work.

Physical autonomy

On this aspect, the document points out that gender violence, in its multiple manifestations, remains a problem of epidemic dimension in the country. Data from the Center for Social and Demographic Studies (CESDEM) of the year 2013 indicate that an 26% of women between 15 and 49 years suffered physical violence at some point in their life and in 7% of cases experienced it during pregnancy. Also, that one in ten Dominican women has been the victim of sexual violence 

It is said that teenage pregnancy constitutes another serious problem in the country. According to ENDESA 2013, for that year one out of every five women aged 15-19 had already had children or had been pregnant, while comprehensive sexuality education coverage was minimal.

The CEG-INTEC highlights as a national achievement the promulgation (December 2014) of Law 550-14 on the Penal Code regarding the decriminalization of therapeutic abortion, in the event of pregnancies resulting from rape, in the face of danger of the life of the mother or when the embryo presents malformations incompatible with life. However, it warns that the drafting of the specific regulations in this regard is pending in the 2015 legislature.

Photo: External source.