An apparent bottleneck exists in women’s participation in politics: the number of female party members exceeds the number of female candidates, which in turn is almost double the number of women elected, who, on average, account for less than one-fifth of all winners at the polls. This is shown by a survey conducted by Valor based on data from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).
This pattern, repeated in every election, is not restricted to a particular ideology. It occurs in parties on both the right and the left and is unrelated to party size; from the largest to the smallest, the funnel phenomenon remains.
To become a candidate, a woman must first be a party member. Gender inequality in politics begins there. Women account for an average of 46.4% of party members—a figure that may seem high but does not reflect the reality of Brazil’s population. According to the 2022 Demographic Census, 51.5% of the population is female.
Only three parties have more women than men among their members: the Brazilian Women’s Party (PMB), with 53.6%; the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), with 51.9%; and the Republicans, with 50.1%. While one leans progressive, the other two are more conservative.
At the opposite end, two parties have percentages of female members well below the average: the New Party (Novo), with 27.8%, and the Workers’ Cause Party (PCO), with 35.4%. One is on the right, the other on the left.
Yet, regardless of party membership composition, most parties field only slightly more than the legal minimum of 30% female candidates in elections. In last year’s municipal elections, only three parties exceeded this level: the Popular Unity Party (UP), with 53.2%; the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), with 40.8%; and the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), with 40.4%. In the 2022 general elections, the number of parties above this threshold was even lower: only UP, with 63.2%, and PCdoB, with 45.3%.
All other parties had between 30.6% and 39.9% female candidates in the last two elections.
The real bottleneck comes at the ballot box: on average, only about half of female candidates are elected. In 2024, 34.3% of candidates were women, but just 17.9% of those elected were female. In 2022, the picture was similar: 33.8% of candidates were women, yet only 18.4% won. In both elections, the share of women elected did not even reach one-fifth of the total.
For Rio de Janeiro regional electoral prosecutor Neide Cardoso de Oliveira, the reason for the narrow share of women elected lies in the lack of genuine commitment from parties to include women in politics. Parties often circumvent electoral legislation, either by launching fictitious candidacies—known as “orange candidates”—or by failing to provide any support to women who genuinely want to run.
“Initially, all parties put forward the required 30%. Then, what often happens is that within that 30%, there are fictitious candidates who are used to fill the quota. And how do we know they are fictitious? They don’t really engage in the campaign because their accountability is zero or, as we call it, standardized; it’s the same for everyone,” the prosecutor explains.
“There are also women who genuinely want to run, but then receive no support from the party. They get no campaign money, no incentives,” she continues.
In such cases, Ms. Oliveira says, women campaign on their own through social media, friends, and acquaintances. When the votes are counted, the total is not enough to secure the election.
“Any campaign run at their own expense, by people with no financial resources, gets only a small number of votes. They get votes from friends and family, but that will never be enough to get elected,” the prosecutor says.
Ms. Oliveira adds, “From city councilor to senator, there is no way a person can be elected without money. There is no campaign without money, without paying for promotion on social media, without appearing on television, without a company managing social media, without taking to the streets and marching, without distributing material. It doesn’t exist.”
“Expecting women to enter an election campaign without any political or financial support amounts to nothing. You’ll be breaking the law anyway,” Ms. Oliveira points out.
Asked about the low number of female members in its ranks, the Novo Party stated that in 2023, it created the Women for Novo movement to strengthen women’s participation within the party. “Since then, we have increased the presence of women in our ranks, with significant advances in the 2024 municipal elections, when the party elected 47 councilwomen, three mayors, and nine deputy mayors throughout Brazil,” the party stated in a press release.
The PCO also said in a statement that it has recently recruited more women than at any other time in its history: “In the last 12 months, according to the TSE itself, the party has affiliated more women than in the period from 1 to 5 years ago, both in absolute and percentage terms. The same applies to the period from 5 to 10 years ago.”
As for the fact that more than half of its members are women, PSOL President Paula Coradi said the party “embraced the cause of women and became a major reference in the feminist movement and the fight for their rights.” She added, “Internally, we encourage female participation, and we have a majority of women in the party’s executive committee. In elections, this broad participation is reflected in the results at the polls. We are the only group in the Chamber of Deputies [Brazil’s Lower House] with gender parity, with seven female deputies and seven male deputies, in addition to Minister Sônia Guajajara in the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, the only one under PSOL’s command.”
The president of the Republicans, Marcos Pereira, stated that the party “truly encourages female participation.” “In the Republicans, women are not quotas, they are essential,” he said.
PMB, UP, and PCdoB did not immediately reply to Valor’s request for comment.
