Gender balance reform long overdue in Brazil’s lower house

Rodrigo Maia, the speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress, has promised to sponsor a floor vote this week on a bill to institute gender quotas in municipal councils, state legislative assemblies, and the federal lower house itself. Mr. Maia stated that female representation has been “insufficient” in the country’s proportional elections. “Today, there are almost two thousand municipalities without a single woman in local councils”, he added.

The bill would reinforce incentives for gender equality in Brazil’s legislative bodies: laws already state that at least 30 percent of a given party’s candidates must be women, and that these candidates must receive the same proportion of the party’s electoral funds as male candidates.

As The Brazilian Report showed earlier this year, however, women have still struggled to run for office as parties try to circumvent this rule.

Regardless, despite Mr. Maia’s lip service to the cause, the vote is unlikely to go...