The Problem of Women’s Rights and Politics in Ecuador

Angelo Franco

 

Every Saturday morning, the president of Ecuador Rafael Correa broadcasts his Citizen Link (Enlace Ciudadano in Spanish) program. It is a nationally televised town hall style meeting where the president visits a different location in the country to remark on the government’s dealings over the past week and address the opposition. Broadcast over 54 channels and radio stations, President Correa has conducted a total of 516 Citizen Links at the time of writing since he took office in January of 2007. It has become customary, it seems, that during this broadcast, the camera will often cut away from the president (at the discretion of the cameraman, apparently) to display the reaction of the people in attendance; more specifically, oftentimes the camera will catch women in the audience and showcase the young, pretty ones. It is not uncommon for comments to then be made about the attractiveness of the women being shown, even by president himself. 

 

On Citizen Link No. 402, for example (at the 3:17:05 mark on this video), the broadcast shows a pretty, young girl smiling affably. President Correa then interrupts his Quechua interpreter José “Mashi” Maldonado. “Look at this beautiful girl,” President Correa says. “Where are you from?” The pretty girl responds that she is the beauty queen of the local town where the Citizen Link is taking place. “Mashi” Maldonado—a beloved staple of the Citizen Links broadcasts who at the end of each summarizes the entire discourse in Quechua and who shares a friendly personal rapport with the president—moves on with his interpretation after agreeing that Ecuador has some great beauties to offer. A few seconds later (at the 3:17:30 mark), President Correa interrupts again, this time to demand the import of the beauty queen from the parish of Monterrey, who had showcased a dress made of abacá (colloquially known as manila hemp) to the president before. “We should have brought the Monterrey queen,” the president says. “Well, next time!” To which “Mashi” Maldonado responds: “Or the queen from Chone [a rural, coastal municipality approx. 7 hours from the capital on bus].”

 

            “There is no need to import, Mr. President,” Maldonado continues, eliciting an infectious laugh from the president of Ecuador. “The local product is good too.”

 

            Ecuador boasts an impressive percentage of female/male ratio in national politics. 52 out of 137 members of congress are women. The Ecuadorian National Assembly is the unicameral legislative branch of the nation, yielding enormous political power in the design and formulation of laws; a woman, Gabriela Rivadeneira, a former beauty queen herself, is currently the president of the National Assembly. Nevertheless, while this radical female empowerment in national legislation is arguably a rarity in “southern hemisphere” politics, the relationship between female policymakers and the executive branch has, at times, been troubled.

 

            Alianza PAIS (PAIS Alliance, or “Proud and Sovereign Fatherland” for its initials in Spanish) has remained a political movement rather than an official political party since its inception in early 2006. This is because remaining a revolutionary movement affords it some liberties that it would otherwise have to relinquish under formal legislature if it were an official party. PAIS Alliance is the platform on which President Rafael Correa ran for office in 2006, taking oath the year after and becoming the movement’s de facto leader.

 

The movement is a leftist socialist faction molded after modern ideologies of political reform and governance—21st century socialism, as the president calls it. It is important to note that this definition in and of itself is largely based on the geographic and historic dogma of socialism in South America. This may be because Ecuador still relies of many centuries-old beliefs of basic rights and lawful behavior despite what would be considered pure socialism in the northern hemisphere, even though President Correa’s policies have more in common with those of Bernie Sanders than President Trump’s.

 


 

In other words, while a leftist socialist movement would probably be billed as a far-left liberal political movement in North America, in Ecuador—by American standards—this same socialist movement would likely fall along the lines of centrist-left to accord with its ideologies, perhaps generally due to the fact that the country remains deeply religious. In fact, according to a census by the U.S. Dept. of Justice, 80 percent of the Ecuadorian population is Catholic and 11 percent is Protestant. To offer some perspective, freedom of worship was implemented on the nation’s constitution of 1897, a constitution that also kept Roman Catholicism as the religion of the republic; meanwhile, separation of church and state was only officially enacted on the constitution of 1906 (the current Ecuadorian constitution, approved in 2008 under Correa’s current administration, is the country’s 20th fully rewritten constitution as the supreme law of the land).

 

According to the U.S. Department of State, only about three reports of societal abuse or discrimination based on religious beliefs or practice were filed in Ecuador in 2015, the year with the latest available information (interestingly, one involved a letter the Ecuadorian government sent to the Vatican condemning that the Archbishop of Guayaquil involved himself in the country’s internal politics by calling for a credible national dialogue between the government and political opposition).

 

This distinction is significant because it elucidates the current role of women in this South American country, both at the political and constituency levels. Practices and philosophies that may appear commonplace within American politics are disputably still in their infancy in Ecuador. And while women may make up 38 percent of the National Assembly in Ecuador, the power they yield to enact legislature for women’s rights remains largely dependent on the executive branch: PAIS Alliance, the president’s political platform, controls the assembly with 74 members out of 137.

 

In Ecuador, abortion is strictly prohibited with exceptions to cases where the life or health of a pregnant woman is in danger and the danger cannot be adverted and for pregnancies resulting from rape of a woman with a mental health disorder. A physician, or anyone, who performs an abortion with a woman’s consent is subject to imprisonment for two to five years. A woman who induces her own abortion can be jailed for one to five years. And still, the legality of abortion in cases of rape of women with “mental health disorders” was half a win.

 

In early October of 2013, President Correa met with the country’s justice commissioner Mauro Andino, National Assembly President Gabriela Rivadeneira, and a number of representatives from pro-abortion groups at the Carondelet Palace (the seat of government in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito). At that meeting, the attendees had expressively agreed to reword the article in the penal code regarding abortion, which stated that the procedure was legal in the case of rape of “idiot or demented” women. The objective was to strike those rather problematic terms in favor of the broader “women with mental health disorders.” 

 

Two days later, PAIS Alliance Assemblywoman Paola Pabón, with the sponsorship of other female legislators, moved to legalize abortion in cases of rape, regardless of a woman’s mental health, into the five-year-old Ecuadorian constitution. Later that same day, President Correa, on a televised interview, qualified Assemblywoman Pabón’s motion as treason and made a stunning promise:

 


 

“If these acts of betrayal and treason go on,” President Correa said, “that […] are taking place within the PAIS bloc, I will tender my resignation. They can do whatever they want, I will never approve the decriminalization of abortion.”

 

It was a striking assurance by the executive branch that presented clear limits within its own political majority in the National Assembly. It effectively forced the assemblywomen who had sponsored the motion to choose between legalizing abortion in the case of rape or destabilizing the country’s executive branch and, by extension, the legislative as well. “This is not where the traitors are, Mr. President,” Assemblywoman Pabón said the next day on the assembly floor when she was withdrawing the motion. “The traitors are not those who thought it was correct to defend the lives of women.”

 

Assemblywoman Pabón concluded: “With the great affection we have for you, we tell you that this time you’re making a mistake,” she said to the president. “But on behalf of the unity of my 100 congressional colleagues, I withdraw my motion so that this bloc may not present any rupture.” At the end, the wording of the penal code was rewritten from “idiot and demented” to women “with mental disabilities,” and the three assemblywomen who had sponsored the bill, including Ms. Pabón, were suspended for a month by the Ethics Committee of PAIS.

           

The stance of the Ecuadorian population at large on the issue of abortion may be hard to determine or, at the very least, difficult to reconcile with the religious doctrines and beliefs of the people. According to a national survey in 2014, 65 percent of Ecuadorians support the decriminalization of  abortion; while a Pew Research Center survey from 2014 found that 84 percent of Catholics and 95 percent of Protestants in Ecuador believe abortion is morally wrong. President Correa describes himself as a left-wing, humanist, Roman Catholic. 

 

The divide between the political ideologies of a leftist socialist political movement in regards to women, while seemingly incoherent, may have more clearly defined roots in the apparent difference between sexism and machismo. Generally speaking, sexism is frowned upon given the evident discrimination of women because of their gender, while machismo is sometimes seen as appropriate, perhaps even necessary, because it provides a male benefactor for the sake of protecting women.

 

Culturally, it may even be perceived that machismo is simply part of human nature that categorizes women as, indeed, being the weaker sex. For example, nearly 38 percent of Ecuadorian women believe that abuse at the hands of their male spouses is justified (usually if the man believes that a woman has been unfaithful). And it only became legal for women to sue their spouses for physical abuse when Ecuador signed the treaty at the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women in Belem do Para, Brazil, in 1994. But paradigms of this trend can be much subtler than that.

 

On December 31 of 2011, President Correa conducted that year’s last Citizen Link broadcast, as he would on any other Saturday morning. During his discourse, President Correa commented on the annual New Year’s celebration he had hosted a few days before at the government’s Palace of Carondelet under and for the auspice of the governing party, PAIS Alliance. He said the following, at the 1:58:58 mark on the official video of Citizen Link No. 252 uploaded by the Ecuadorian government:

 

“… It became an incredible party. I don’t know if gender equality improves democracy, what is certain is that it has improved the party at an amazing level. It has improved the quality of living because it became an incredible party.”

 

 

President Correa’s term is coming to an end. A second round of voting for the Ecuadorian executive office is scheduled to take place in April after Lenin Moreno, President Correa’s ex-vice-president and who was handpicked to run for PAIS Alliance, fell short of the votes necessary to secure the presidency. Cynthia Viteri, the only woman who ran, came in third place during the first round and is now ineligible to compete in the second.

 

Author Bio:

 

Angelo Franco is Highbrow Magazine’s chief features writer.

 

For Highbrow Magazine

 

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