CARACAS, Venezuela — Hundreds of people poured into the narrow streets of the densely populated neighborhood, waving blue flags and dancing to samba music, as the candidates arrived. “Unity! Unity!” they shouted.
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Standing in the center of the crowd were three politicians speaking into reporters’ microphones, promising change for Venezuela.
“Today we want to show what that change looks like,” said Tomás Guanipa, an opposition candidate for mayor of the municipality in the heart of Caracas.
But what it looked like was more of the same: another campaign here made up predominantly of men.
The three politicians at the center of Wednesday’s rally — one candidate for regional governor and two for mayoral races — were men. Two women, running for city council with the same party, stood behind them. But neither spoke.
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Opposition candidates here are preparing to compete in their first elections in three years, after boycotting votes conducted by the authoritarian government of President Nicolás Maduro that were widely viewed as fraudulent. They’re hoping to energize their supporters and revive the floundering pro-democracy movement.
But as the parties built their lists of gubernatorial and mayoral candidates for Sunday’s elections, women were largely left out.
Of the 182 candidates running in gubernatorial or mayoral races in capital cities, only 30 are women, according to an analysis of preliminary candidate lists by independent Venezuelan news site Efecto Cocuyo.
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Among 192 gubernatorial candidates nationwide, only 21 — or just over 10 percent — are women, according to Venezuelan election monitoring nonprofit Súmate. In mayoral races, about 20 percent are women.
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Despite attempts in recent years to set quotas, Venezuelan parties have long failed to elevate women to top leaderships posts. The failure carries particular weight this year, as the economic crisis and coronavirus pandemic in the broken socialist state continue to place the heaviest burden on women. The elections follow Venezuela’s own #MeToo movement over the past year, when allegations of sexual harassment were leveled against prominent men in music, sports, media — and politics.
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For an opposition struggling to connect with the people, critics say, the lack of diverse new voices in the elections is a missed opportunity.
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“There’s a huge disappointment in Venezuela over the candidates,” said Natalia Brandler, president of the women’s rights group Asociación Cauce. Elevating women and younger candidates, she said, “would bring fresh air to the elections, a kind of renewal.”
But advocates and politicians say the issue has taken a back seat as the opposition movement risks falling apart.
“Unfortunately, today it’s not a flag I can raise as high as the need to rescue the vote,” said Marialbert Barrios, a 31-year-old elected in 2015 as the youngest member of Venezuela’s National Assembly. “We need to differentiate between what’s important and what’s urgent. What’s urgent is participation in these elections.”
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Luisa Kislinger, a women’s rights advocate, pushed back against that approach. “It’s not either/or. Right now, voting is important, and it is also important to have an internal policy of equality. How hard can this be?”
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council published a resolution this year requiring 50 percent gender parity for each political party, but critics say the rule has not been properly enforced.
A similar rule was in place for last year’s National Assembly elections, but only three of the 26 national political parties met the criteria, according to the Center for Justice and Peace, an advocacy group. The resulting legislature is less than 34 percent female.
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Only three of the 20 lawmakers involved in creating Plan País, a reconstruction plan for the country, are women. Only two of the nine members of the opposition delegation in recent talks with the Maduro government in Mexico were women.
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The “historic and persistent” dearth of women on the ballot prompted a group of 36 organizations to sign a letter in September demanding that the National Electoral Council guarantee gender parity.
Guanipa, the mayoral candidate in Caracas, said Venezuela’s leaders need to establish measures to guarantee the participation of women in top roles.
“Venezuelan politics is still very machista,” he said. “Women understand much better the drama of living in this country, because they live it in their own flesh.”
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At least 60 percent of Venezuelan households are headed by a woman, according to the 2020 nationwide poll ENCOVI. Seventy-eight percent of child-care and home tasks fall on women, and men on average earn 17.7 percent more than women, the 2021 ENCOVI poll found.
For many women, Brandler said, the financial obstacles of running for office are too high. In a country suffering chronic gas shortages, even paying for fuel to travel for a campaign can become an insurmountable cost.
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Opposition lawmaker Liz Carolina Jaramillo said she was encouraged to run for mayor of San Sebastian in Aragua state. But financially, she said, it would have been nearly impossible for her to compete with the two male candidates running in the race.
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She also faced personal hurdles: Her mother died in March of complications from covid-19, and now she’s the only daughter left in Venezuela to take care of her father. She worried about her teenage daughter’s mental health. She decided she couldn’t run.
Her ex-husband, however, is running for a city council race.
“He doesn’t make the sacrifice, and she’s also his daughter,” she said. “The ones who end up making the sacrifice are us women.”
One Venezuelan lawmaker elected in 2015, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing a job opportunity, said certain top leadership roles in the opposition have seemed out of reach for women.
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“If you’re a woman in politics, you’re seen as either a prostitute or a lesbian,” she said.
At one point, she said, when she wanted to work on issues related to the border, a leader of her party told her: “That’s a man’s issue, that’s a military issue. It’s dangerous.”
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When someone suggested a woman for president of the National Assembly, before Juan Guaidó was chosen for the role, one top opposition leader said a woman couldn’t handle the job. “Women can’t keep secrets,” he said, according to the lawmaker. “They are not firm in their posture.”
Other prominent women in the opposition disagreed. María Corina Machado, a former lawmaker who is now head of her own party, said she hasn’t experienced any barriers by being a woman — aside from the “weight” of being a mother.
As Guanipa and the other candidates marched through the slum of El Guarataro, down steep steps between homes stacked on top of one another, beneath wires hanging over the street, one single mother stood on the sidewalk waiting for them.
“I have seen so few women in these things,” said Carmen Gallardo, a 30-year-old mother of two. “If there was a woman running for mayor, maybe I would feel more excited to vote. If I get the time, I’ll do it. But honestly, none of them are like me.”
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Gallardo is preparing to leave the country, to help her youngest son find medical treatment for his glaucoma in Brazil. A private surgery in Venezuela could cost up to $2,000, an amount she said would be impossible for her family to afford. “I can’t have a full-time job,” she said. “Someone has to take care of them.”
The candidates “don’t know what it’s like to be a mother, a single mother, with all the weight on you,” she said. “What are they going to promise me?”
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