Informal rules and gendered political hierarchies: On the experience of women deputies in the Argentine Congress

GENÉ, MARIANA; GLASSERMAN APICELLA, CAROLINA

Congreso; IPSA 27th World Congress; 2023

IPSA

Argentina has been a pioneer in affirmative action measures that contributed to mitigate gender inequalities in the political world, especially in the Legislative Branch. In 1991, the Quota Law established that 30% of the lists should be made up by women, and in 2017 the “Parity Law” raised that number to 50%. As a result, the descriptive representation of women in the National Congress grew significantly during the last thirty years. But beyond the regulatory changes and their effects on the composition of both Chambers, our knowledge about the informal power dynamics and internal hierarchies that open or obstruct decision-making spaces for women in Congress is still limited. Based on in-depth interviews with deputies of different generations, parties and provinces, and on the systematization of secondary sources, this paper interrogates the unwritten rules of the lower house, accounting for the changes and continuities of women’s experience inside the Congress. Firstly, we focus on the processes by which women are included in the lists of candidates and the specific challenges that financing implies for them, taking into account significant changes and certain continuities that have taken place since 1991. Secondly, we examine their daily work once they reach the Chamber, paying special attention to the treatment among peers, the unequal distribution of speech and hierarchical positions between men and women, and the place of conciliation between family life and political work in the development of their careers. Finally, we set out to understand the reasons for which women lead and occupy stereotypically feminized commissions. We argue that the Chamber of Deputies is a gendered institution, that with its informally institutionalized practices limits women’s access to positions of greater value among their peers, but also that women themselves might not seek these roles by virtue of their previous expertise or the masculinized conformation of these spaces. In this way, our work contributes to shedding light on the effective functioning of the Argentine Congress and also to understanding how gender shapes internal hierarchies in political work