Winning a seat in parliament is not enough: the various faces of women’s political underrepresentation in the Brazilian Congress since the Constitution of 1988

This article analyzes political representation from a gender perspective. The objective is to investigate whether the increase in the occupation of seats by women extends to other dimensions. The main hypothesis is that female representation in Brazilian legislative production is low, as is the approval of legislation of interest to women, although female occupation in spaces of power has been growing in parliament. Based on a model with four-dimensions – formal, descriptive, symbolic, and substantive – we developed a methodology with three indicators: composition of parliament, legislative production by women representatives, and spaces of power. The results indicate an increase in the legislative production of female authorship in a proportion higher than their number of seats, but this has not translated into a greater approval of important and/or substantive norms, nor in the occupation of spaces of power in the Congress.

female participation; spaces of power; electoral representation; National Congress; Brazilian legislative production