On 4 July 2021, Chile made history with the world’s first constitutional convention where men and women held an equal number of seats. One year later, Chile made history again, when the delegates presented a thoroughly feminist draft constitution.
What made the draft ‘feminist’ was not just guarantees of legal equality for individuals of all genders, but provisions that sought to undo the historically unequal power relations between men and women. The draft charter contained rights to sexual health education and legal abortions. It envisioned a universal care system that would include state funding for childcare and elderly care. It required judges to decide cases using a ‘gender perspective’, meaning that they should account for how gender inequality affects women’s lives.
Whether women’s presence in elected office leads to policy outcomes that benefit women is among the most enduring questions in political science. Chile’s constitutional convention provided a ‘best-case scenario’ for probing this link: how did the gender parity body succeed in translating equal numbers into feminist outcomes? To answer this question, our research drew on interviews with men and women delegates on the left and the right, and on Julieta Suárez-Cao’s participation as an expert advisor to various convention members.
Political scientists know that the relationship between women’s numbers in parliament on the one hand, and gender equality outcomes on the other, is mediated by additional factors. These features include political parties’ control over parliamentary agendas, committees’ ability to rewrite legislation, and the broader procedural rules that shape how a bill becomes a law.
Scholars call these factors parliaments’ ‘masculine blueprints’, because they often work to minimise women’s interests and concerns. We argue that since Chile’s convention differed from regular parliaments in critical ways, the convention offered a unique, real-world experiment in whether such blueprints could be eliminated.
First, while the 155 members were popularly elected using the same electoral system as for the Chilean congress, the delegates had more ties to progressive social movements than to traditional political parties. Many were independents and first-time officeholders. These new actors tilted the convention’s ideological balance to the left, limiting the power of conservative parties and conservative voices.
Second, the delegates received substantial autonomy to design the convention’s internal processes. Whereas parliamentary procedures date back decades if not centuries, and are thus very difficult to change, Chile’s constitutional delegates got to write brand-new rules. The ability to innovate meant designing structures and procedures that preempted some of the common ways that women lose influence in parliaments. For instance, while women are not usually speakers of parliament, the constitutional convention was led by a collegial body that also respected gender parity.
Our analysis shows that gender parity brought in new actors, who wrote new rules, and who then used these rules to shape outcomes. We focus on the convention’s adoption of the feminist procedural code (reglamento feminista). The code sought to alleviate women’s double-shift by providing onsite daycare and childcare stipends. It included protocols for sanctioning gender-based harassment within the convention. And in addition to gender parity within the collegial leadership body, the procedural code also required gender parity among committee co-chairs and committee members.
This latter design feature enabled women delegates to gain leverage over all committee proceedings. To ensure their influence, leftist and progressive women delegates – about 50 of the 77 women delegates – formed an informal group, calling themselves ‘Feminist Articulation’. They relied on an unofficial steering committee of about 10–15 women who met in person every week, and a WhatsApp group that included all members.
Since the procedural rules required gender parity on all committees, Feminist Articulation members occupied every deliberative space. Feminist Articulation could then act as hub and command post. Committee members sent information to Feminist Articulation about each committee’s proposals, and Feminist Articulation sent back consistent communications about women’s policy demands.
Political parties’ absence also allowed Feminist Articulation to marshal votes in the plenary. In traditional parliaments, party discipline sometimes means that lawmakers must vote the party line, even when they personally disagree. In the convention, however, delegates could follow their own preferences. As a result, right-wing women would often join Feminist Articulation in voting for articles that benefitted women, like the universal care system.
In summary, we find that gender parity combined with newness consolidated feminist gains in the convention. Delegates unanimously reflected on how much women’s interests, and specifically feminist understandings of women’s interests, dominated the convention. A right-wing woman reported that she ‘advanced and grew as a feminist’. And even a right-wing man acknowledged that the convention’s emphasis on women’s rights ‘reflected the new themes that the social and feminist movements brought here’.
Yet despite the draft constitution’s groundbreaking content, voters rejected the charter in the September 2022 referendum. The reformist mood that had launched Chile’s constitutional process had waned, and the economic outlook had deteriorated, reducing voters’ enthusiasm for change. However, voters’ dissatisfaction with the draft constitution was not directly tied to its feminist content: only five per cent of voters objected to the charter’s expansion of women’s rights.
Chile quickly launched a second constitutional process. The new constitutional assembly maintained gender parity but more closely resembled traditional parliaments, returning procedural and substantive control back to the political parties. Consequently, the second draft constitution (which voters also ultimately rejected) contained far fewer provisions for women’s rights and could not be considered feminist.
While Chileans remain without a new constitution, their efforts provide invaluable insights into the relationship between gender parity, new actors and new rules, and policy outcomes. In the first convention, gender parity and newness combined to eliminate many of the masculine blueprints that plague traditional parliaments, ensuring a feminist draft constitution. Gender parity and new institutions do have the power to reshape social and political norms.
Jennifer M. Piscopo is Professor of Gender and Politics at Royal Holloway University of London. Julieta Suárez-Cao is Associate Professor of Politics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and co-coordinator of Red de Politólogas #NoSinMujeres
New institutions, new actors, new rules: gender parity and feminist constitution writing in Chile by Jennifer M. Piscopo and Julieta Suárez-Cao for European Journal of Politics and Gender is available on the Bristol University Press Digital here.
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