Defending the Status Quo

"Silence and inaction as sufficient strategies to keep the quota idea at a distance became obsolete when strong quota proponents managed to get elected to Parliament in 1999 and strategically carve out space to increase their pressure for quotas within the legislative arena. When women legislators formed a cross-party women's caucus in 2000, pressure to adopt a gender quota intensified. In this Chapter, we will see how quotas go from an individual idea held by a few women to a collective idea also within the realms of the Parliament, strongly advocated for by a unified women's parliamentary caucus. Due to a strategic move made by this caucus that secures a parliamentary debate of a quota bill, quota proponents manage to push the policy idea into the second phase in the Resistance Stage Framework - policy formulation. After almost 15 years of advocacy for the introduction of a gender quota law to curb men's political overrepresentation, quota proponents had finally managed to bring the quota onto the parliamentary agenda. Once in this second phase, status quo defenders are forced to actively and openly respond to the challenging idea by arguing against quota advocates' formulations of the policy, the problem it addresses, its causes, and solutions. This chapter will recount the power struggles leading up to the first quota debate in 2003 and analyze this debate, ending in the failure to adopt a quota law. Here, we will see how opponents use a range of discursive and non-discursive resistance strategies to avoid policy adoption. Overt quota resistance reaches its high point during the days of debates in 2003. While open resistance to quotas will increasingly become attached to sanctions as the quota idea institutionalizes, in this policy formulation stage, individual opponents are free to express their doubts and discontent with the idea. The Bancada Femenina In the 1999 parliamentary elections, a record 15 women were elected (12 percent) - nine from Frente Amplio, four from Partido Colorado, and three from Partido Nacional. While Frente Amplio had lost the second round of the presidential elections to Partido Colorado's candidate Jorge Batlle, the left-wing party was, for the first time, the largest party in parliament, securing 40 percent of the seats. On International Women's Day on March 8, 2000, the 15 newly elected women legislators called a press conference to announce that they would work together across party lines to promote a women's rights agenda in the Parliament. Media immediately started calling the initiative "Bancada Femenina" [the Women's Bench]. The three leaders of the initiative, representing each of the three big parties represented in Parliament, Margarita Percovich (FA), Glenda Rondán (PC), and Beatriz Argimón (PN), had successfully collaborated in the Montevideo municipal council during the early 1990's around a women's rights agenda and had been among the staunchest supporters of quotas outside Parliament. In 1992, the three women had formed the Network of Women Politicians (Red the Mujeres Políticas - RMP), whose purpose was to train women politicians and encourage them to work for women's rights: "[We wanted] to turn them into feminists, and for them to be prepared to fight inside their parties." When Percovich, Rondán, and Argimón all were elected to the National Parliament in 1999, they brought their close friendship and ways of working across party lines with women's rights issues with them (Johnson and Josefsson 2016): We were women who all were very committed to gender issues and committed to working together on this. We saw the opportunity to make ourselves visible with a gender equality agenda, and we used this politically. It was really a very important breakthrough. As such, the coincidence of these three women's election to Parliament and their subsequent formation of the Bancada Femenina can be perceived as a "critical juncture" (Capoccia and Kelemen 2007), as it significantly would come to reshape Uruguayan decision-making in relation to gender equality policy"--