Experts attribute gender inequality in politics to electorate’s mentality

The electorate has a patriarchal mentality, says the report “Equal Chances in the Election Process. Case Study: Local Elections 2007” presented by the Partnership for Development Centre. The Centre’s executive director Daniela Terzi-Barbarosie said that such a study was necessary because women’s participation in the political life can be a reliable barometer of the democracy in a state. The report says that the key factor of the gender inequality in the recent local elections for mayor is related to the electorate’s mentality, meaning the personal choice of the voters based on their support for a certain candidate. If the voters have to choose several persons, as in the case of the election of local and district councilors, the gender inequality cannot be ascribed to the electorate. The report says that the political parties are to blame for the disproportional and inequitable placement of the candidates in lists as eligible applicants. The study shows that the women are another factor of the discrimination as they do not actively engage in the political fight. For instance, only 21.7% of the independent candidates were women and this reveals personal decisions that generate inequality. Sociologist Ana Bulai said that the electoral platforms promote the male attributes of the candidates such as vigour, strength and competence, even in the case of women candidates. The equality of chances topic is present in the electoral programs only when referring to social-economic categories (young, old, poor), without mentioning the gender inequality inside each category. However, most of the platforms include topics of interest for women such as the kindergartens, sanitation, infrastructure or healthcare, Ana Bulai said. The municipal councilor Loretta Handrabura, author of the chapter regarding the gender composition of the media production, said that the mass media covered the women candidates that ran in the 2007 local elections less than the men. It was ascertained that the women appeared in the electoral materials in 2.7% of the cases, while the joint materials made up about one fourth of the total. The men candidates appeared more frequently in posters. The monitoring report “Equal Chances in the Election Process” was carried out with resources from the New York-based Open Society Institute and from Soros-Moldova Foundation.