Brazil is expected to have a record proportion of black and women candidates in a federal election. According to partial data from the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), of the 26,398 registered candidacies, 49.3% are from black people and 49.1% from white people. The percentage of women in the dispute totals 33.4%, so far.
The change in the profile of candidates has occurred in the wake of rules that seek to encourage the political participation of the black population and women, as well as improve the representation of these social groups in spaces of power.
In 2018, applications from black people represented 46.7% of the total, compared to 52.2% from white people. In the previous edition, 44.2% were black and 55% white.
Regarding the diversity of gender, the highest percentage of women until then had been registered in 2018, with 31.8%. Now, according to partial records, it is up to 33.4%.
Brazil is a diverse country but Congress does not reflect the population. Government data shows that Black and mixed-race people make up nearly 55% of the population, but less than a quarter of the lower house of Congress is Black or mixed race and only about 15% of members of the lower house are women.
Since 2020, Brazil’s political parties have been required by law to apportion public funding and airtime fairly to the election campaigns of candidates of all genders and races (if a certain percentage of candidates are Black, then Black candidates must receive that same percentage of funding, TV and radio). But only a few parties complied in the 2020 municipal election, when voters picked mayors and councillors in more than 5,000 cities across the country, and an amnesty was granted to those that transgressed.
In practice, parties invest in already-experienced politicians, and these are disproportionately white men. The law doesn’t make any special provisions for Black women, this makes political parties complicit in maintaining inequalities, ignoring intersectionality and marginalising Black women in terms of political representation.
