Uma ideia de liberdade política da mulher: reflexões a partir do direito à elegibilidade das mulheres no Brasil

Abstract

This thesis presents a critical analysis of the Brazilian legal framework for protecting women’s political participation, centered on the examination of the principle of substantive equality and co-original political freedom in light of the constitutional framework established in 1988. The Federal Constitution enshrines, in Article 5, item I, the formal equality between men and women, and in Article 14, establishes universal suffrage and political rights as essential foundations of the Democratic Rule of Law, prohibiting any gender discrimination in access to active and passive citizenship. Despite these advances, women’s underrepresentation in parliamentary spaces persists as a structural feature of the Brazilian political system, even in the presence of gender quotas, proportional allocation of campaign resources, and the legal recognition of political gender-based violence. The main objective is to investigate whether the current normative framework, anchored in constitutional and infra-constitutional commands, is sufficient to ensure women’s substantive freedom to participate as full political agents, overcoming mere formal equality and confronting institutional, cultural, and symbolic barriers that limit the effective exercise of women’s political rights. Methodologically, the research adopts a juridical-dogmatic and empirical-analytical approach, based on Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities theory, combining normative analysis, critical review of national and international literature, documentary survey, analysis of recent electoral statistical data, and comparative study with Latin American experiences on gender parity policies, in addition to case studies on women’s political trajectories in Brazil. Special attention is given to the P-20, an international forum of presidents of G20 parliaments, whose 1st Women Parliamentarians’ Meeting, held in Brazil in 2024, resulted in the Carta de Alagoas, a landmark in feminist legislative diplomacy that promotes climate justice, sustainable development through a gender and race perspective, expansion of women’s representation in decision-making spaces, and the fight against gender and racial inequalities, considered a strategic instrument for advancing women’s political freedom and strengthening interparliamentary cooperation. The results indicate that the mere existence of protective norms does not guarantee the effective realization of women’s political participation under conditions of freedom and equality, as electoral quota frauds, unequal distribution of party resources, and the intensification of gender-based political violence, including in digital environments, remain recurrent. This demonstrates that women’s underrepresentation arises not only from a deficit of formal equality but, above all, from the absence of effective political freedom, constrained by structural, institutional, and cultural factors that perpetuate exclusion and inequality. It is concluded that it is imperative to reconstruct the normative framework for protecting women’s political participation from the perspective of co-original political freedom, understood as the foundation of democratic legitimacy, proposing the integration of the paradigm of freedom into the issue of gender inequality in politics and presenting recommendations for improving public policies and institutional reforms aimed at fostering a parity democracy in Brazil, based on political freedom indicators and successful international experiences, including the strengthening of the P-20 as a global platform for legislative articulation.