Elections test Spain's new gender-parity law
Sunday's elections are expected to bring 7,000 women into local and regional offices, where they currently hold less than a third of the seats.
from the May 25, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
That's key for Spain, says Maribel Montaño, Secretary of Equality for the Socialist Party, who acknowledges that the law won't solve everything. "The law by itself isn't going to change mentalities," she says. "We've lived with machismo for so many centuries that we're not going to get rid of it quickly. But if we don't begin by changing the law, it will take a lot longer to change people's attitudes."
Ms. Montaño also predicts public services will improve. "Women are going to bring new political agendas with them," she says, "like better protection for caregivers, or urban development that takes into account the needs of families."
Not everyone is happy about the law. The opposition Popular Party declared it unconstitutional. And on websites like discriminacionpositiva.com, men have complained about the quota as "Taliban feminism."
One of the groups least happy with the new law is the Popular Party's electoral slate for the Canary Islands town of Garachico. All of the candidates on the list are female, but because the legislation says that no gender can hold more than 60 percent of the spots, the Garachico slate looks to be illegal. Pilar Merino, who heads the list, is outraged.
"The Law of Equality has good points, but in our case, its effect is totally reversed," she says. "Citizens should be able to vote for whom they want, based on the candidate's talent. Merit is the true arbiter of equality."
The Socialists allege that the all-woman Garachico list is a Popular Party ploy to undermine the law (a charge Merino adamantly refutes), and both sides are awaiting the final Constitutional Court ruling on its legality. In other cases, parties have taken matters into their own hands. One party, for example, promised slots to 10 men, then added women to the list to comply with the law.
But the Socialists are confident that gender equity is not far off. "One day, this law won't be necessary," Montaño says.
• Susan Sachs contributed reporting from Paris.
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