Politics of Gender: Planning, Policies and Laws

#### **Chapter 8**

## Addressing Gender Inequality through Local Planning: The Colombian Case

*Yancili Lozano-Torres*

#### **Abstract**

What does the analysis of city plans reveal about efforts toward gender equality? Gender equity is not often an explicit aim in local planning, and the analysis of planning documents does hardly evaluate the presence of efforts toward gender equity. I evaluate the degree to which city plans support gender-responsive planning (GRP) and examine the circumstances under which GRP is achieved in 21 Colombian cities. I find high mismatch between intention and action toward gender equity. Thus, I conclude with an analysis of what drives cities to include gender in their plans but then not take action.

**Keywords:** gender-responsive planning, feminist planning, gender equality and the city, Colombia, mixed methods, local planning

#### **1. Introduction**

Despite the stereotype as a patriarchal region, several Latin American countries score higher in the global gender gap index than some developed countries. According to [1], these countries are making substantial progress in terms of critical aspects of the feminist agenda, such as political and economic empowerment. In Colombia, a unitarian country, gender equality for women is legislated and mandated from the national government. Nonetheless, it is in the realm of local governments that these national mandates are to be implemented. Thus, this study seeks to better understand local efforts to advance gender equality in politics, economic, education and health, and safety through an analysis of municipal planning documents in Colombia.

The world has seen improvements in terms of gender equality (GE) for women in the last twenty-five years; nonetheless, there are still serious gender disparities in terms of—payment and access to—employment, health, leadership positions' occupancy, and care work, among others [2]. Colombia is an intriguing and interesting country to conduct a case study on advancing gender equality. On the one hand, it has been praised internationally for its efforts to address gender equality [3]. On the other hand, it has unique structural challenges like a fifty-year armed conflict and deep inequalities across economic and geographic lines. For these reasons, this country offered an interesting case study to explore how its municipalities address the inequality that Colombian women experience.

The benefits of tackling gender equality have been highlighted in different arenas [4–7]. Gender equality has a positive impact not just for women but also for the economy and the society at large, as it was recognized by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #5. Despite a lack of political conditions to create more equitable places [8], gender-responsive planning (GRP) can help address gender inequality. A GRP approach should be understood as one that seeks gender equality, as well as accounts for the gender differential impact that it could yield on its beneficiaries. It keeps in mind the differential impact that planning, local planning in this case, will have on different genders. It does not refer to planning for women independently; contrarily, it recognizes that the population is not gender-neutral and that programs might have different effects based on the gender of the beneficiaries. A question that a gender-responsive plan should answer is: does the implementation of the plan lower, reduce, or leave gender inequality unchanged? This research used a Convergence Mixed Method to understand local planning efforts to advance gender equality in politics, economics, education, health, and safety. I anticipate that the knowledge generated from this inquiry provides insights that can inform local governments and planners in creating strategies to address the inequality that women continue to experience within the city.

The remainder of this chapter is divided into four additional sections. Section 2 presents a note on gender equality and local planning. In the subsequent section, I describe the data and methods. Then, a results section follows. Following, I discuss main findings in terms of the intentions and actions to achieve gender equality in Colombia and the factors related to these levels. Lastly, Section 5 offers concluding remarks.

#### **2. A note on gender equality and local planning**

According to the United Nations' Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women [1], women all around the world experience inequality in the access to basic education, health care, safe transportation; they also experience disparities in access to work, face occupational segregation and gender wage gaps, and are underrepresented in political and economic decision-making processes. Why is that a problem? Why is it important to achieve gender equality? Why should we care about it? We should start by acknowledging that, in most parts of the world, women are at least half of the population. Gender equality is therefore a matter of justice for half of the population.

Gender equality could also be seen in terms of the economic benefits that it can provide to the society in general and to the markets in particular. For instance, in the case of STEM fields, many of their associations are promoting the inclusion of women within their fields, not because it is a matter of justice, but because those fields are in need of a labor force that cannot be supplied, at least in North America, with the traditional White-male force [4]. Another instance, the McKinsey Global Institute predicted that if women have the same role in labor markets compared to men, the global annual GDP would rise by as much as 26% in the course of 10 years. In that report, India and Latin America were the two of the regions to gain the most by expanding women's participation in the labor force.

Promoting equal access for women in aspects such as education, just work, health, empowerment initiatives, and decision-making positions, among others, has been shown to help boost the results in terms of human development. Momsen ([7], p. 50),

#### *Addressing Gender Inequality through Local Planning: The Colombian Case DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114208*

for instance, discusses how child mortality reduces when there are increases in education for women. In the same direction, Refs. [5, 6] also debate how household welfare improves as a result of women's empowerment. Equality for women benefits not only them but also the society in general.

Based on the discrimination that women experience, and after decades of feminist activism, most of the UN member countries have defined a women's agenda to enhance women's situation and to protect their rights [9, 10]. The goals within each agenda could vary among countries or regions. However, most of them try to address (1) women's economic capacity, (2) access to resources and services, and (3) representation in decision-making processes and positions. The *economic capacity* is related to access to the job market as well as to economic resources such as land, but this is also highly determined by access to education. Activities related to this goal also include the reduction of gender wage gaps, women's participation in decent work, and actions against the discrimination they experience at work. *Access to resources* addresses problems related to women's health, in terms of both access to healthcare and their own health condition. It also includes the provision of basic services such as transportation or education. Finally, the lack of women's *representation in decisionmaking* should be addressed in two different fronts, that is, getting them to participate as member of the communities within planning processes and empowering them to sit at the political table where decisions are taken.

A persistent concern to reach equity at the city level is the lack of tools or political conditions to create more equitable places [8]. The traditional and most widely used urban planning model also encounters problems addressing gender inequalities since it is conceived from a gender-blind perspective [11, 12]. In terms of gender inequality, gender-responsive planning (GRP) approaches and women-liberalizing laws constitute a way to walk toward that desired equity. Refs. [13] states a comprehensive definition of what a gender-responsive approach is:

*A gender approach means analysing the forms and the links that gender relations take and the links between them and other wider relations in society. What are the links between gender and economic relations between people, whether members of a household or of different social classes, and how do changing economic relations affect gender relations? What are the links between gender and changes in productive relations and how do the conditions of reproduction of labour affect gender relations? ([13], p. 7).*

An influx of studies on the Global South are considering gender within the local planning practice [14–17]. Lirio [14], for instance, shows how female grassroots groups demanded the inclusion of gender within the planning process in Medellin, Colombia, and acted as designers by providing their local knowledge to build safer houses for them and their families. Gutierrez Rivera illustrates how women's grassroots movements are actors in the planning process with clear ideas of how to ensure a gender perspective in local planning.

Meanwhile, Olivieri and Fageda [17] uses a multilevel regression model to test the influence of the household responsibility hypothesis on women travel patterns in Montevideo, Uruguay. Their results indicate that, similar to developed countries, women's travel patterns in Montevideo show a more intense use of public transport; women travel less on private cars than men, commute less than men, and are, in general, less mobile than men. This empirical evidence helps to support the idea that planners and policy makers need to consider gender differences when seeking to enhance their planning decisions and to avoid perpetuating gender inequality.

Another contribution to the literature on GRP, and a departure from the Western theory, is provided by [18]. They defend the importance of home-based enterprises (HBE) in Enugu, Nigeria. The authors refute the notion that HBE contributes to the gender oppression of women by highlighting the wider economic and social benefits of permitting HBE on a wider scale [18]. The study illustrates the ways that planners in Enugu were persuaded by and willing to change zoning codes and land use plans to accommodate HBE in the city. These changes were thought to positively impact gender equality.

On a similar note, Yancili [16] provides empirical evidence on the determinants to aid endeavors toward gender equality at the local level. Lozano-Torres uses content and regression analysis to understand the factors linked to gender responsiveness in local planning. Her contribution is a call to not exclusively relay at who does the planning as a factor determinant to achieve GE. Her findings show women's advocacy as the most significant factor influencing local planning efforts to be responsive toward women's needs. This result is supported by the fact that in Colombia, and in Latin America in general, gender equality achievements are associated to women's group advocacy for their rights.

The studies presented above expand the evidence that local planning has a notable impact on gender equality and can improve it if gender is meaningfully included in the plan. They also show some key factors and strategies that can be used to move toward GE. This chapter focuses on understanding how municipal plans incorporate gender and what actions the city takes to implement what gets planned.

#### **3. Methods**

In an effort to better understand local planning endeavors to reduce gender inequality, this study followed a mixed method approach (MM). Gender inequality is a multifaceted problem and so are the strategies to fight it. Thus, an MM is used to provide a more holistic research approach to it. MMs are versatile in that they could make possible research that otherwise would be impossible to conduct, in terms of either the cost or the physical feasibility ([19], p. 61).

The MM used in this study is a Convergent Parallel Mixed Method (CPMM). **Figure 1** shows the procedures on a CPMM, in which the researcher conducts the quantitative and the qualitative analysis separately and then uses the findings to discern if they converge or diverge [21]. To develop the convergence comparison, I relied on the results from the quantitative and the qualitative phases reported on [15, 16]. Those results, however, provided an index of GRP for cities in the sample as well as a record of strategies and actions to achieve gender equality. Both results, quantitative and

**Figure 1.**

*Convergent Parallel Mixed Method (CPMM). Source: by the author previously published in [20].*

#### *Addressing Gender Inequality through Local Planning: The Colombian Case DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114208*

qualitative, were given the same priority. Thus, they are placed in boxes indicating that both are major components of the design [21]. The next step, the comparison, is a sideby-side analysis of the statistical results from the quantitative phase and the themes resulting from the qualitative analysis. The comparison and interpretation parts were located within a diamond to mark the result that the use of an MM will yield.

As with other methods, CPMM poses some challenges including the fact that it is a time-consuming approach since it implies to do the quantitative and qualitative analysis. In order to deal with this challenge, this study uses a sample following a rigorous sampling procedure. Another challenge with CPMM, according to [21], is the difference between the qualitative and quantitative sample sizes. In this study, that is not a problem because the aim of each phase is different. The quantitative phase yields the factors associated with GRP, while the qualitative phase provides a characterization of GRP in the Colombian context. All the cities studied in the qualitative phase were studied in the quantitative phase.

#### **3.1 Sample**

The study uses a two-stage sampling strategy for each phase. The quantitative phase analyzes 244 Colombian cities that include cities from different regions and socioeconomic and political background [16]. The qualitative phase was conducted in 21 cities that were also analyzed in the quantitative phase and are a representation of the different cities and municipalities of Colombia [15]. These cities also happen to exhibit different levels of GRP index, calculated in the quantitative phase.

#### **3.2 Dataset**

The dataset used in this study comes from multiple sources. I built an original dataset doing content analysis (CA) of, mainly, the city's websites and 2016–2019 municipal development plans (PDMs) and requesting information to the city *via* email. The index of gender-responsive planning (GRP), developed during the quantitative phase, is composed of four attributes: the existence of a women's office within the city, the adoption of the public policy for gender equality for women within the PDM, the recognition of a gender focus also within the PDM's values and or principles, and percentage of expenditure that each city dedicates to advance gender equality for women. It ranges from zero to four, zero meaning no responsiveness toward gender equality and four meaning the highest responsiveness level in the planning process. **Table 1** provides the list of cities used in this study. It also includes their GRP levels, population, and geographical information. As shown in **Table 1**, the highest GRP is 3.1482 for Envigado, while several cities exhibit an index of zero for their responsiveness toward gender equality. The sample includes cities with high, medium, and low levels of GRP.

On the other hand, the qualitative phase showed how efforts toward gender equality are portrayed in the PDMs. First, it showed that all the cities in the sample included some type of action to address gender equality (**Table A1**) ([15], p. 333). The actions differ by city, and they can be considered stronger or more trustable depending on whether they are presented as a solid plan or just an aspiration, whether they have an institutional structure to ensure that the goals will be pursued, or whether they assign a budget to implement their gender equality goal.

Although the qualitative phase used the GRP index to select the cities to sample, both analyses were conducted separately. Therefore, the CPMM seeks to unveil whether these results converge or not.


*Note: Cities with pink highlight indicate the presence of a female mayor. <sup>1</sup> This table was previously published in [20].*

#### **Table 1.**

*Sample cities.1*

#### **3.3 Convergence parallel analysis**

The research question guiding the convergent parallel mixed analysis for this study was: to what extent do the GRP index results converge with cities' effort toward GE? Following ([22], pp. 80–81), I built a convergence table (**Table A1**) to combine the two sets of results and provide a more complete picture of how some cities are more progressive in advancing gender equality for women. Although the analysis of convergence between qualitative and quantitative results can represent a challenge particularly mixing different types of datasets—in this case, the twenty-one cities analyzed during the qualitative phase were part of the cities analyzed during the quantitative component. Therefore, in this specific study, a merged analysis did not represent a significant challenge.

**Table A1** (see appendix) shows a first column with the cities analyzed during the qualitative phase, a second one merging the result from both phases, and a third column indicating whether the results converge or not. The second column of the table includes the *GRP* level for the city (quantitative result) and analysis of the soundness of the city's program for gender equality (qualitative). This last analysis is *Addressing Gender Inequality through Local Planning: The Colombian Case DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114208*

#### **Figure 2.**

*Convergence of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Note: Size and color of the oval represents the quality of city's GE programs. Convergence is represented when the ovals are attached to the cylinder and divergence when they are detached. Source: by the author previously published in [20].*

done by looking at the city's goals for gender equality, its strategies, the identification of responsible parties for these two, and the existence of a budget to address gender equality. These themes emerged as the foundations for a plan to be considered robust on addressing gender equality. The table was used to build a more illustrative figure presented in **Figure 2**.

#### **4. Do plans for gender equality become a reality?**

**Figure 2** illustrates the convergence between *GRP* levels and efforts toward gender equality for women. The vertical cylinder contains the different levels of GRP (from higher to smaller), and the oval ones represent cities. The more spread-out the oval, the better the city's gender equality program. Likewise, the colors range from red to green, indicating where they fall along the spectrum concerning the quality of the city's program or actions toward gender equality (i.e., red means poor and green means excellent). The oval figure is based on the analysis done for **Table A1**. I assessed whether the city had identified goals toward GE and defined strategies to achieve these goals. Consideration about the identification of responsible parties for these two and the assignation of a budget to address GE were also done. Cities were considered to have a sound plan for gender equality if they meet these four criteria, and subsequently, they were assigned a wider and green oval in **Figure 2**.

Convergence is shown when the oval is attached to the cylinder. Divergence between the two strands of data is shown when the oval is detached from the cylinder. The convergence is certainly clear for the six cities with the highest and lowest values of GRP. Ayapel, Caloto, and Leticia all have a GRP of zero and weak goals for gender equality that could be considered simply statements with no strategies defined to

achieve them. Likewise, no responsible parties are assigned to their aspirational gender equality goals efforts, nor a budget to go with them. Quantitative results showed that having a female mayor reduces the GRP levels. Ayapel and Caloto have female mayors, which is consistent with their qualitative results. That is not the case for Villanueva and Acandí, however. These two cities have female mayors and are still advancing gender equality in their cities.

Correspondingly, Medellín, Cúcuta, and Envigado are the cities with the highest GRP and also excellent programs—arguably the best—to address gender equality for women. Their goals are fact-based. Their strategies are powerful with defined outcomes and accountability. They stated officers or offices to oversee these two elements. Additionally, they allocated a budget for their gender equality program.

Another ten cities were found to have a gender equality program that corresponds to their GRP level. They are cities with low ( *GRP* < 2) , medium (2 3 < < *GRP* ) , and high GRPs ( *GRP* ≥ 3 ), and their gender equality program represents that spectrum. For cities with low GRP, the gender equality plan is similar to the ones discussed above. Cities with medium GRP, on average, have more solid gender equality goals that are usually accompanied with strategies to achieve them. Most of these cities, however, fall short in terms of either defining responsible parties for the gender equality strategies or, to a lesser extent, assigning a budget that works for gender equality for women.

Cities with a GRP greater than three usually have strong goals and strategies, with responsible parties and a budget for gender equality programs. Riohacha, Barranquilla, and Cali, however, did not have budget allocation for their GE. Although the literature and my own experience would mark these cities as not taking gender equality seriously due to the lack of budget, I would also think that for cities like these (i.e., provincial capitals), the fact that they have more national oversight on them could indicate that the lack of a budget is not as bad as it could be for a small or distant municipality that is not as closely watched. Moreover, they have an office for women's affairs that is under the umbrella of a secretary and not directly under the mayor, which could also explain why their budget was not made explicit.

Despite the results presented above, as shown in **Figure 2**, the analysis did not support convergence for the following five cities: Acandí, Villanueva, Bogotá, Villa de Leyva, and Chinú. These cities do not get fastened to the GRP cylinder as an indication of their divergence respect to the GRP. The first four exhibit something that can be described as *positive* divergence from what was expected; that is, their gender equality programs were stronger than what their GRP level could have indicated. Contrarily, in the case of Chinú, its gender equality program is weaker than what one would have expected from its GRP and thus could be described as *negative* divergence.

Among the outliers, Villa de Leyva is the one with the lowest GRP (0.004). This level of GRP corresponds to the funds they allocated for gender equality issues. This city does more than what the GRP would reflect. As per the qualitative content analysis (QCA) on accommodations to work toward GE, they aspire to create a women's affair office and to leverage the Family Superintendent Office. Although no responsible parties were identified, they have clear fact-based gender equality goals and strategies, including some for GBV. This is one positive outlier with no correspondence between its low GRP and the gender equality plan. Further research is needed to understand the divergence. With a population of 17,506, they have zero women's advocacy grassroots organizations, but there is a critical mass of women within Villa de Leyva's cabinet.

With a population of only 9408, Acandí is the smallest city in the sample. Its GRP is 1.0091 as a product of its recognition of the gender equality as a guiding

#### *Addressing Gender Inequality through Local Planning: The Colombian Case DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114208*

principle and its dedicated budget for gender equality actions. The qualitative analysis indicates that they have defined gender equality goals and strategies including campaigns against GBV. With a female mayor and a women's grassroots group, they are aspiring to transform women's underrepresentation and financial security. Even though they did not include the responsible parties for their gender equality goals and strategies, their intentions to advance gender equality are explicit: "*Strengthen gender equality in the exercise of rights and in the expansion of women's own capacities.*" What can explain this divergence? Acandí is a positive outlier, but it is worth exploring whether this is a result of its female mayor. This presents itself as a good follow-up case study.

Consistently, Villanueva, another city with a female mayor, defines a thoughtful gender equality plan to work in favor of women, despite its GRP of 1.08. It has three of the four points to be considered as seriously working toward gender equality (a budget, goals, and strategies). The mayor made her aspirations toward gender equality explicit within the PDM: *to mainstream all the other projects that the city will undertake […] seeking women's inclusion and equity*. Although responsible parties are not identified, they made plans to create a women's office. Thus, with a low GRP, the intentions to advance gender equality jump out.

I did not have any predetermined expectations about the aforementioned cities. They are small cities with relatively low visibility in Colombia. Yet I was expecting a high GRP for the Colombian capital. Bogotá, however, has a medium level GRP of 2.026. This number is due to the lack of recognition of the gender ideology as a foundational principle for its PDM. Still, it has one of the strongest gender equality programs such as the ones for Medellín, Cúcuta, or Envigado. Bogotá is also the only city with strategies and goals to advance gender equality in the workplace by addressing the burden of the unpaid care economy and safe job environment for women. This is a positive outlier with strategies and goals that could be emulated in the rest of the country.

Among the outliers, Chinú is the only one that has a worse gender equality plan than what its GRP (2.0) would indicate. At a medium level, most of the cities were found to have clear fact-based goals and defined strategies (see Appendix: **Table A1**). Yet Chinú, despite having a female mayor and Chief, and a cabinet with 88% of women, only mentioned statements for political participation and physical integrity. Contrary to Villanueva and Acandí, Chinú's mayor does not make her interest on women's empowerment explicit, nor were responsible parties identified either.

Yancili [16] was not able to confirm the hypothesis that *who* does the planning will have a positive effect on gender equality. There were not strong reasons behind that, but suggestions such as the lack of a critical mass of women and the need to include more variables were made. In this regard, it is interesting to see how cities with similar sizes and female mayors such as Villanueva, Acandí, and Chinú get such different results.

The planning power that mayors hold, conceivably, could also explain what happens in Acandí, Villanueva, and Chinú, as shown through web searches. In the case of Acandí, its mayor is a former public officer with more than twenty years of experience. She has been recognized as an exemplary officer for her transparency and efficient management of public resources [23]. Villanueva, meanwhile, has a mayor with experience in the private sector that wanted to bring to the city and act as "the CEO of the city." These two women, with different backgrounds but both without family political ties make clear within their PDM their intention to improve gender equality for women. That is not the case of Chinú, whose mayor is the widow of a traditional politician, which, together with her women's office chief, is being investigated for irregularities in the management of the budget for the elderly [24].

In the case of Bogotá, for instance, the previous mayor was much more interested in social transformation including GE. The 2016–2019 mayor, however, seems to be more task-oriented in terms of infrastructural changes. And yet Bogotá's *GRP* satisfies the other three attributes of *GRP*, that is, *woff* (women's office), the *PGE* (adoption of the public policy for GE), and a budget for gender equality. Then, Bogotá's medium *GRP* could, perhaps, be the result in changes on ideologies from one government to another. Additionally, since Bogotá is the capital, it has a significant amount of oversight that would ensure it complies with gender laws. Perhaps that is also the case for Villa de Leyva, which, even though is a small city, has a better focus on gender equality than what its GRP would suggest, since it is a small touristic city that is close to the capital.

#### **5. Conclusion**

In this study, the concept of gender-responsive planning guides an endeavor to understand local planning efforts toward gender equality. A Convergence Parallel Model is used to analyze how 21 Colombian municipalities pair their intentions to address gender equality with actions toward it. Colombia has signed all the international agreements for gender equality and enacted different regulations aiming to improve the lives of women. The National Department of Planning recommends to all the municipalities to subscribe to these international agreements. Thus, city plans are supposed to include programs to improve women's lives.

Results reveal key findings about the efforts toward gender equality by 21 Colombian municipalities. First, all municipalities in paper plan for GE. Efforts toward gender equality in Colombian municipalities are depicted through planned actions to address the dimensions of an internationally recognized women's agenda. How rigorous each city is with the agenda varies. Second, the GRP and the QCA converge for the cities at the extremes of the line, that is, for the ones with a GRP equal to zero, or the ones with a GRP higher than three. Divergence was found for cities that are in a middle ground. Third, although empirical findings did not show *who* is doing the planning as determinant of gender equality efforts, in this case study, the presence of female mayors was predominantly aligned with more solid effort toward GE. For this particular case study, it happened when the presence female mayors was the result of a political contest such as in Villanueva and Acandí. It was not the case for Chinú, where the position was inherited.

So what drives cities to include gender in their plans but then not take action to achieve GE? Colombia has adhered to international laws and the movement to achieve GE. It is recommended by the National Department of Planning that municipalities work toward equality for women. Moreover, the Colombian National Policy for Gender Equality is indicative, which means it is not a mandate, but a recommendation. Municipalities therefore have a clear directive to include language that claims to advance gender equality. They all included goals to achieve gender equality, but not all of them follow through with their plans, presumably because there is less pressure in the actual implementation. It is unknown if the results would have changed with a compulsory policy. Colombia has also been denoted as a legalistic but lawless country [25], meaning it has excellent laws overall but does a very poor job in enforcing them.

For the period analyzed, the incentives to achieve these goals were not clear. However, in cities like Envigado, Riohacha, or Villanueva, where plans for gender equality converge to actions and implementation, there were always key groups

#### *Addressing Gender Inequality through Local Planning: The Colombian Case DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114208*

advocating for it. These came in the shape of women's grassroots advocacy groups, a critical mass of women within the cabinet, or as a result of the awareness that the political contest generated.

How, then, can urban planners ensure that a gender-responsive approach is followed within the plan? Urban planners can shape the nature of public investments [26] and serve as advocates to pursue a more equal access to opportunities and conditions by various marginalized groups, including for women [27]. This can be most effectively done when harnessing existing civil society groups and other stakeholders' voice and advocacy efforts. In order to do so, planners all need to be aware of the need and benefits of gender equality. Gender awareness is needed in order to change the condition of women and to enjoy the benefits that empowered women bring to societies. This is a necessary condition for contexts such as Colombia where there are laws and policies that will support gender responsive approaches in planning but fall short on the implementation of them.

#### **Conflict of interest**

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

#### **Note**

This chapter uses data collected within the framework of the PhD dissertation available in https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu%3A760049/datastream/ PDF/view, constituting a revised version of Chapter 7 of the dissertation.

#### **Appendix**



*Addressing Gender Inequality through Local Planning: The Colombian Case DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114208*


**Table A1.**

*Convergence matrix.1*

*Gender Inequality – Issues, Challenges and New Perspectives*

#### **Author details**

Yancili Lozano-Torres Independent Researcher, USA

\*Address all correspondence to: yancillylt@gmail.com

© 2024 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*Addressing Gender Inequality through Local Planning: The Colombian Case DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114208*

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[18] Ezeadichie, Hope N, Jiburum U, Onodugo VA, Onwuneme CA, Kingsley A. Integrating home-based enterprises in urban planning: A case for providing economic succour for women of global south. Berkeley Planning Journal. 2018;**30**(1):443-463. DOI: 10.5070/BP330137903

[19] Patterson BJ. A Mixed Methods Investigation of Leadership and Performance in Practice-Based Research Networks. 2013. Available from: http:// ir.uiowa.edu/etd/5039/

[20] Lozano Torres Y. The Quest for Gender-Responsive Planning: A Comprehensive Study of Colombian Municipalities. 2019. Available from: https://diginole.lib.fsu. edu/islandora/object/fsu%3A760049/ datastream/PDF/view

[21] Creswell JW. Research Design (Illustrated). SAGE Publications Inc.; 2013. Available from: https://us.sagepub. com/en-us/nam/research-design/ book237357

[22] Creswell JW, Clark VLP. Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research. SAGE; 2011

[23] Revista El Congreso. Acandí, ejemplo de eficiencia y transparencia. 2019. Available from: http://www. revistaelcongreso.com/Acandí-ejemplode-eficiencia-y-transparencia/

[24] Revista Dinero. Procuraduría Abrió Investigación a 21 Funcionarios Públicos En Córdoba. 2018. Available from: https://www.semana.com/pais/articulo/ procuraduria-inicio-investigaciones-a-7 alcaldes-de-cordoba/259055/

[25] The Economist. Legalism v Democracy. 2014. Available from: https://www.economist. com/the-americas/2014/03/29/ legalism-v-democracy

[26] Rakodi C. Cities and people: Towards a gender-aware urban planning process? Public Administration and Development. 1991;**11**(6):541-559

[27] Young K. Planning from a gender perspective: Making a world of difference. In: Visvanathan N, Duggan L, Nisonoff L, Wiegersma N, editors. The Women, Gender, and Development Reader. London, England: Zed Books; 1997. pp. 366-374

#### **Chapter 9**

## Challenges for the Constructing of Equity and Equality in Mexico

*Adriana Ortiz-Ortega and Adriana Baez-Carlos*

*Dedicated to Mujeres en Plural, a network of women fighting for women's rights and norms to prevail in Mexico*

#### **Abstract**

Mexico stands ahead of the rest of Latin American countries in terms of legal transformation on behalf of gender equality, non-discrimination, and laws for the treatment and follow-up of gender-based violence. Yet, although significant progress has been achieved during the last two decades, thanks to the uninterrupted efforts of feminists and women's networks in collaboration with female and male decisionmakers, gender disparities continue to limit women's empowerment in various areas. These inequalities include education, employment, teenage pregnancy, gender violence, and sexual division of labor.

**Keywords:** gender, equality, feminists, disparities, women's empowerment

#### **1. Introduction**

Mexico stands ahead of the rest of Latin American countries in terms of legal transformation on behalf of gender equality, non-discrimination, and laws for the treatment and follow-up of gender-based violence. Yet, although significant progress has been achieved during the last two decades, thanks to the uninterrupted efforts of feminists and women's networks in collaboration with female and male decisionmakers, gender disparities continue to limit women's empowerment in various areas1 .

These inequalities include education, employment, teenage pregnancy, gender violence, and sexual division of labor. Thus, women in Mexico continue to face barriers to accessing equal opportunities, and cultural norms continue to limit their autonomy and perpetuate gender stereotypes. The seemingly contradictory outcome between the improved legal framework and women's lives is the result of centuries of women's submission to male norms and the building of a democratic system that has focused on the electoral arena. Considering the pending institutional transformations that lay ahead in terms of gendering institutions, it is highly relevant to stress the

<sup>1</sup> *Mujeres en Plural* (Women in Plural) was founded in 2012 to promote the political rights of women. It is composed of female ex governors, magistrates, deputies, senators, academics, political candidates, public officials and journalists who work in horizontal ways to fulfill its mission.

connections between formal and informal female political organizing to build parity democracy as a means to amend prevailing inequalities.

The argument of this chapter is twofold: on the one hand, we argue that women are raising to become critical actors not only in terms of building gendered public institutions but, more recently, in the defense of parity democracy. This type of democracy emphasizes the end of political violence, women's representation, and the incorporation of a gender agenda through the working of plural coalitions, among other critical issues.

On the other hand, we argue that women are working in demanding a gender trans electoral agenda through the workings of plural coalitions that work to tamer the centralization of political power by Morena, the dominant party in power and which has held an ambivalent position: on the one hand, neglecting critical women's demands in the area of gender violence; while, on the other hand, working to allow parity democracy to advance, mostly thanks to the work of women in this party in collaboration with women politicians from other parties.

#### **2. Women's role in the building of democracy in Mexico**

To sustain our argument, we are content in favor of the relevance of present women's ability to alter the existing legal order by stressing the role of women's mobilization even before the transition to democracy in Mexico, which took place at the beginning of the twentieth century. Such transition found women already involved, since the decade of the 1970s, in the construction of a public voice that expanded traditional forms of universal citizenship. This feminist voice challenged dominant gender-blind institutions and encompassed, among other key topics in their gender agenda, bodily integrity, violence against women, the sexual division of labor, and the recognition of diverse expressions of sexualities [1]. This means that feminists engaged in gendering the (electoral) transition to democracy in Mexico, resulting in a partial and fragmented, but tangible, deconstruction of the public arena. This happened through the establishment of clear connections between the private and public divide at a time when the dominant party, the then located within the *Partido Revolucionario Institutional* (Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI) sought to attract women to expand its social presence and leadership.

In this context, a relatively small group of women through their collective and individual work succeeded in securing for themselves—and for the rest of women—a contested but critical place in the transition to democracy [1]. In the background of women's mobilizations stands out the fact that since the beginning of the 1970s, two tendencies manifested. On the one hand, an independent feminist movement that struggled to be acknowledged as a public actor; on the other hand, different forms of official feminism, that received informal support from PRI as this party sought to recapture feminists' demands and transformed them into social not political concerns. For these reasons, commitment to equality became a leading force for feminist demand for legal change. Nonetheless, feminists debated among themselves regarding the extent of collaboration with the state that they should embrace. In any case, it can be argued that during the first half of the 1970s, women as a social group also provoked a legal and institutional change that secured the recognition of matters of personal and bodily integrity, health, and reproduction [2].

To be sure, Mexico hosted in 1975 the UN's First International Women's Conference, and this served to foster women's legal status in the country, which began to be

#### *Challenges for the Constructing of Equity and Equality in Mexico DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112224*

transformed at a fast speed. For example, federal labor laws were altered to abolish legal protections for women that were deemed discriminatory, as these dispositions limited women's access to night shifts or prevented them from working overtime [3]. Similarly, following the 1975 UN Conference, women gained greater access to land ownership. A decade later, the transformation of the regulation of abortion started. This suggests that when Mexican women joined the 1995 Beijing Conference, whether they were coming from the official or social sectors, different forms of collaboration existed. Certainly, the Beijing Plan of Action, a worldwide landmark women's conference, contributed to Mexico's standing in the Latin American region. Relying on the worldwide government signature of the Beijing Platform of Action, women in Mexico, as well as in other latitudes, gained salience to demand governments to place political representation at the forefront. For example, in Mexico, in 1996, the Federal Code of Institutions and Electoral Procedures (Código Federal de Instituciones y Procedimientos Electorales, Cofipe) recommended not more than 70% of the samesex candidates in electoral lists, favoring a female participation of 30%. Effectively this limited male presence in institutional politics.2 In 2002, a quota law was passed that made it compulsory for parties to include at least a 70–30% split of male and female representation, and finally, in 2008 the law established a 60–40% split.

It was in the context of an uninterrupted feminist struggle and a transition to democracy that, almost 50 years later, Parity Democracy was issued as a Constitutional norm in 2019. Thanks to this measure Mexico stands one among a handful of countries in the world where parity democracy prevails for public representation posts as well as top-level designations in the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive power. Parity democracy prevails at the federal, state, and municipal levels. And this refers to the full integration of women, on an equal footing with men, at all levels and in all areas of the workings of a democratic society, by means of multidisciplinary strategies (European Institute for Gender Equality) [4].

In Mexico, Parity democracy applies also to decentralized, as well as state agencies that hold institutional budgetary as well as programmatic autonomy. Among these, we find the National Electoral Institute, responsible for organizing elections at the federal, municipal, and state levels, as well as the Banco de México, responsible, among other critical functions, for overseeing Mexican reserves, the national supply of Mexican pesos, the stability of its purchasing power and for the development of the financial system.

In 2020, Mexico established a legal disposition to deal with political violence against women, considering it a criminal, administrative, and electoral offense. This conceptualizes political violence on the ground of gender as actions or omissions that can be carried out against women candidates or elected officials in the public or private sphere. According to Law for a Life Free of Violence of Women *Ley General de Acceso a una Vida Libre de Violencia*, Article 20 Bis: political violence occurs when actions are carried out "with the purpose or with the result of limiting, annulling, or undermining the effective exercise of the political and electoral rights of one or more women. This legal disposition is allotted to give women access to the full exercise of the inherent attributes of their position, work or activity, free development of public function, decision-making, freedom of organization, as well as access and exercise of prerogatives" (this law applies extensively to the case of pre-candidacies, candidacies, or women carrying out public functions or positions of the same type).

<sup>2</sup> Reform to Cofipe Article 5/22 transitory.

Its normative progress includes engineering that covers a good part of the gaps that political parties have used to evade their responsibility in this matter, trying to ensure that parity in candidacies for popular representation positions translates into a parity integration of representative bodies.

The development of parity democracy includes the 2023 the "3 out of 3" initiative (which is in the process of being approved by local congresses) whose purpose is to impede men responsible for sexual assaults, family debts, or involved in cases of gender violence to hold public seats.

As the examples provided above show, tangible progress in terms of women's political impact exists resulting from women's uninterrupted reorganizing since, at least, the decade of the 1970s of the twentieth century.

The transition to democracy in Mexico was no exception, they had to rally in Electoral Tribunals while demanding in the public arena that the quota system was respected. It was only following the Trial 12624 that quotas began to be respected allowing women to enter the Chambers of Deputies and Senators. Once women found themselves in a self-built space for full interactions from within political parties, female legislators expanded the construction and advocacy of gender agendas. In this process, women have received limited funding when compared to their male counterparts while receiving signals from the top of the parties that moving forth a gender agenda is a risky activity in a male-dominated arena which is rarely taken by women candidates.

Recapitulating, new legal dispositions for the incorporation of gender representation have contributed to political diversity. Yet violent confrontation, political corruption, and an ongoing centralization of power in political parties and presidential hands are features that manifest almost after a quarter of a century that the transition occurred. Nonetheless, as most of these gains have been made within the electoral arena, several challenges remain. For example, a solid network of female legislators, and activists work intensely to defend that procedures are kept in place or to work in favor of the elimination of discrimination against women and to halter violence against women exists through the issuing of new laws or by requesting the position of women as heads of autonomous bodies or within the Executive power. We find that at present, data shows gender gaps which are addressed, mostly by women, through legislative and programmatic initiatives amidst a competition between old and new forms of making politics [2].

It is relevant to highlight women's representation in the legislative as a salient feature of the Mexican transition to democracy. But also, that the initial privileging of the electoral arena, and, thus, that institutional transformation has lagged [5]. This suggests that, although theorists of transitions to democracy have paid attention to the enhanced role of legality as a means to construct a new social order, electoral politics still determine institutional and legal reconstruction. Therefore, the drafting of new constitutions—or at least bringing transformations to the existing one in Mexico—has preceded the edification of a new institutional apparatus [6]. Regarding women's status, this means that institutions such as the Institutes for Women, in charge of the implementation of new laws issued, have been required to have at their backbone female coalitions collaborate with male allies who occupy critical political positions to foster and implement policies directed to eradicate inequalities and inequities in Mexico?

#### **3. Positioning women gains as political actors within the electoral system**

The connections between electoral politics and the transformation of women's status are critical for our case study. Mexico has a mixed electoral system for the

#### *Challenges for the Constructing of Equity and Equality in Mexico DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112224*

integration of its collective bodies of popular representation (congresses and city councils), which are composed of 60% seats by relative majority and 40% by proportional representation. For nominations, the rules contemplate candidate formulas of the same gender (owner and alternate); proportional representation lists and candidate slates with gender alternation from beginning to end; alternately headed by women and men in each elective period, with provisions in favor of women when there is an odd number of seats at stake in an election and prohibition of the use of partisan criteria for nominating candidates that place one gender in districts with lower chances of winning. Starting in 2023, it also foresees the parity integration of the two houses of the Congress of the Union, that is, parity of results.

The normative progress made allowed, starting in 2021, for the Chamber of Deputies and 27 state legislatures to be composed of women3 with only five falling one seat short of parity due to their odd number of seats. Parity is also visible in the slates of municipal councils.4

The current challenges are related to the definition of norms to guarantee parity in single-person positions, such as municipal presidencies, governorships, and the federal executive. For mayoral candidacies, which lead the slates of municipal councils, vertical criteria (in their composition), horizontal criteria (considering all presidencies at play per entity and electoral process), and in some cases, transversal criteria are envisaged which contemplate competitiveness blocks and size of municipalities. Thus, through electoral reforms women have achieved parity in municipal councils but not in municipal presidencies. After the 2021 electoral process, in which municipalities in 30 federative entities were renewed, only 20.9% of the country's 2016 municipalities were under the presidency of women.

The first advances to apply parity in gubernatorial candidacies were made in 2021, 2022, and 2023, when by judicial mandate, national political parties had to apply the parity principle in their gubernatorial candidacies.5 This measure allowed for the triumph of five women in 2021, two in 2022, and one more is expected in 2023, for a total of 10 female governors by the end of 2023. More than the country had ever had in its history.6 Yet, the solution is provisional both because it is up to the federative entities to define the rule to be applied in their areas of competence and because the Electoral authorities had to intervene. Not surprisingly, four years after the transversal parity constitutional reform, only three states have advanced in regulating

<sup>3</sup> The Legislatures of the following states remain one position behind total parity: Estado de México, Nuevo León, Chihuahua, San Luis Potosí, Durango, and Querétaro. Guerrero, Guanajuato, and Tamaulipas achieved parity and the 23 remaining state legislatures which register an over representation of women.

<sup>4</sup> The LXV Chamber of Deputies legislature (that will run from 2021 to 2024) was integrated by 250 male legislators and 250 female legislators. Nonetheless, during the second year, one man required a license in this legislature and in he was replaced by a woman. Thus, by May 2023 we find 251 female legislators and 249 male legislators.

<sup>5</sup> This ruling was issued by the Electoral Court of the Federal Judiciary as a resolution to a petition filed by Selene Lucía Vázquez Alatorre, a Morena candidate for the Michoacán governorship, and the organizations EQUILIBRA, Center for Constitutional Justice, and LITIGA, strategic litigation, on August 11th, 2020. See INE/CG569/2020.

<sup>6</sup> In 2023, the states of Baja California, Mexico City, Guerrero, Campeche, Tlaxcala, Chihuahua, Quintana Roo, and Aguascalientes are governed by women, and a new female governor will be elected for the State of Mexico from the upcoming June 2023 elections.

the subject matter.7 In addition, the rules that will apply to guarantee parity in the Presidency of the Republic are still to be discussed.

The progress stated above suggests that the achieved parity is mostly descriptive.8 This means women's presence has not yet resulted in a full exercise of power or in the drafting of a comprehensive gender agenda. In addition, stereotypes in task allocation are reproduced within the collegial bodies given that the power of party leadership remains predominantly in the hands of male legislators. A recent study revealed that despite occupying 53% of seats in the plenary sessions of legislatures in Mexico, women only coordinate 23% of the caucus, which is 18% of the political force in the congresses, and preside over only 39% of the ordinary committees that dictate structural economic and political issues [8].

On the other hand, they must remain aware that their negotiations are made vis a vis political party structure. This dynamic slows down the political negotiating process of the gender agenda. Regarding this latter point, a group of researchers from the 32 federal entities analyzed the gender topics addressed by state legislatures during the first period following the approval of gender parity in legislative candidacies, which was in effect in Mexico between 2014 and 2019 [9]. The study found that the most addressed topic was gender-based violence in general, with one-third of the initiatives presented, approved, and promulgated, followed by political violence based on gender, with one-fifth of the initiatives focused on women's labor rights, political representation, sexual and reproductive rights, as well as inclusive language, among others. However, the study also confirmed claims that while some female legislators promote gender-related legislation they also promote initiatives related to violence against women, reproductive and sexual rights, measures against discrimination, and in favor of equality [10].

Summarizing, regarding gender matters, progress is made topic by topic, given the lack of consensus on a general women's agenda. Nonetheless, women's exercise of political abilities requires also that they prove themselves constantly. This can be exemplified by the following data: according to the civil association *Buró Parlamentario*, female legislators in the local congresses of Mexico have been more productive and efficient than men, registering the approval of an average of 4.41 initiatives, 31% of the projects they present; compared to an average success rate of 3.15 initiatives, 26%, of male legislators. The data emerged from the study of over 40,000 initiatives presented in the 32 legislatures between 2014 and 2022, and the finding is significant given that women's political trajectories are younger than men's [11].

Instead of the above, we must stress that according to the Latin American Parliament and UN Women's Framework Norm (2014), signed by Mexico, parity is acknowledged as one of the key forces of democracy. Democracy is seen in this view as a means to achieve equality in power, decision-making, social and political representation mechanisms. However, gatekeepers that allow for the eradication of the structural exclusion of women require a new architecture given that the pending agenda is still extensive. It is for this reason that the multilayered connections between democratic change and gender transformation need to be explored at length.

<sup>7</sup> Hidalgo, State of Mexico, and Coahuila have been the only entities to legislate on gender parity at the government level. However, Coahuila's regulations were invalidated by the TEPJF, and those of the State of Mexico will come into effect in 2029.

<sup>8</sup> According to Hanna Pitkin, substantive representation refers not only to the descriptive presence of women the in legislative bodies, but it must reflect the interests and needs of those being represented. See Pitkin [7].

#### **4. Gender agendas female political representation and present inequalities in Mexico**

In the face of advances in women's political representation, academic analyses are beginning to focus on the study of their legislative agendas, to verify whether parity begins to translate into substantive representation. Freidenberg and Gilas [12, 13] argue that "presence is not incidence," since a significant number of female legislators do not support the "feminist" gender agenda. In contrast, Báez et al. [8] claim that women are marginalized from leadership positions in party groups in legislatures, only coordinating those parliamentary groups with little political representation, or being excluded from the leadership of committees that address critical issues. This suggests they lack sufficient strength to push initiatives and depend on multi-party coalitions to get equality issues addressed. Certainly, both assessments of women's political participation take different sides on the matter. Freindenberg and Gilas analyze female participation by equating male and female input, resting aside the structural difference from which they build their interventions. In contrast, Baez and Bárcena highlight the structural differences. Possible contributions to this debate are first, assessments of female political participation are changeable and temporal in a climate where new strategies for lobbying and negotiations are taking place as Parity democracy is established. Second, more attention needs to be given to the institutional restructuration of state agencies and how women are placed in them as a result of the combined influence of transnational feminisms in institutional politics as well as the impact of female leadership in Mexico to direct their attention to gender inequities [14]. Promoting this debate around the institutional design of agencies, institutes, and ministries that have an uneven but tangible impact on attending to the needs and demands of the female population is relevant.

At this point it seems relevant to consider recent gender-disaggregated statistical analysis, the National Institute of Statistics, Geography, and Informatics (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informatica, INEGI) to evaluate existing inequalities. In other words, INEGI provides data that can shed light on critical issues that need to be part of a common feminist agenda. A general overview would state that, according to the most recent official statistics on gender gaps [15], Mexico ended 2018 with a population of 124.9 million people, of whom 51.1% are women and 48.9% are men. On average, the fertility rate among Mexican women is 1.0 children, but among indigenous-speaking women, it rises to 3.3 children. This data confirms that fertility is higher when lower levels of maternal education exist if these are measured by the years of schooling that women attend, and vice versa. In addition, women construct their motherhood aside from economic independence: of the women who became mothers in 2017, 69.5% reported not engaging in any economic activity, and only 21.4% reported being employed. This suggests not only that the majority of women were financially dependent on their partners or their family. More importantly, this can be a tendency that will produce a long-lasting dependency due to the difficulties of joining the labor market as age progresses.

Given that in this chapter, we wish to connect political participation with female education and employment we would like to stress that among the issues to be analyzed first and foremost is clear that political representation is the area where the most progress has been made. Nonetheless, inequalities in this arena persist; for example, in 2021, women held 47.6% of senator's seats versus the 52.3% that men hold; the lower house of Congress in contrast has a 50% for men and women. And as we stated earlier, only 9 out of 32 governorships and less than 10% of all municipalities have women as presidents.

Beyond female political representation, one of the most significant areas of gender inequality in Mexico is education. While girls' enrollment rates in primary education are nearly equal to boys, they are less likely to complete secondary education, with dropout rates higher for girls than for boys. This disparity is even more pronounced for indigenous girls, who face additional barriers to education, including language barriers and discrimination. To better understand these dropout rates in education it must be remembered that domestic violence and teenage pregnancy reinforce each other and continue to hold women back. Domestic violence entails that many girls can initiate their sexual lives in the hands of relatives, and this led them to seek relief in the hands of boyfriends and men with whom they run away from home. It is not surprising that this early sexual initiation leads to prolonged engagements in relations where gender violence arises.

Women who can continue their studies at the university level focused on areas of study such as Education, Health, Social Sciences and Law, Business and Administration, Arts and Humanities, while men preferred Information and Communication Technologies, Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction, Agronomy, and Veterinary Sciences, among others. Thus, while the gap favored women by 48.8 percentage points in Education studies, it reached 51.8% in favor of men in Information and Communication Technologies.

Women in Mexico also face significant challenges in the workforce. They are more likely to be employed in informal, low-paying jobs with limited job security, and have limited access to leadership positions at work. In addition, the gender pay gap remains a persistent problem, with women earning less than men on average for comparable work.

Thus, we find a compound problem that includes education and work. Mexico has made significant progress in closing the gender gap in education, but inequalities persist in the workplace, where women receive lower salaries for the same work and are excluded from decision-making positions.

In 2019, the Mexican population aged 15 and over, of legal working age, reached 94.6 million people, of which 60.2% constituted the economically active population (EAP), and 39.8% did not. By sex, 45.0 million were men, eight out of ten of whom were economically active, and 49.6 million were women, four out of ten of whom participated in the labor market. The economic participation rate is 77.1% for men and 44.9% for women. Women with medium-high and higher education represent 41.3% of the total employed in the labor market, while only 36.5% of men have reached that level. Of the women who work in the labor market, 25.4% work in commerce, while 31% of men work in industrial jobs such as artisans and helpers. However, more than half of employed women earn up to two minimum wages, which is 12.0 percentage points higher than men. Women with incomes above five minimum wages represent only 2.4% of the total employed. In general, the remuneration received by women for their work is lower than that received by men in different economic activities. In addition, 77.7% of women with paid work do not have access to daycare or maternal care, since only 22.3% have access to these services.

In 2018, of the more than 13 million people aged 15 and over who had no income of their own and were not studying, 17.4% were men and 82.6% were women. Women devoted 39.1 hours per week to domestic work, while men devoted 14.1 hours; women were primarily responsible for caring for children under the age of six, and only men with higher education levels showed greater participation in domestic work [15].

The gender gap worsens when women belong to other historically marginalized groups and live in poverty. In 2018, 27.3 million women in Mexico were living in poverty compared to 25.1 million men. While the illiteracy rate was 3.1% among the population aged 15–59 years, it was 13.3% among the population who speak indigenous languages, 6.9% among the population who self-identify as indigenous, 4.7% among the Afro-descendant population, and 3.6% among the population with diverse religious backgrounds [15–17].

A difficult and uneven work-education equation for women seems to be heightened by the fact that women often simultaneously have greater responsibilities for household chores, childcare, and caring for sick and elderly family members, without access to public support. This unfortunate combination is particularly severe for women living in poverty, who constitute the group that experiences scarcity of resources the most and is exacerbated when these women also belong to historically marginalized groups, such as indigenous, Afro-Mexican, disabled, and others. Thus, leaving unattended the needs of working mothers, a social group on the rise, appears as a gender-blind failure of the present Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration.

Another aspect to be considered is that men and women have different lifestyles, which is reflected in higher male mortality rates, particularly among young men. For every 100 female deaths, 128 men die, with the highest rates of male excess mortality due to liver diseases, violence, and accidents. Between 2000 and 2008, the gender gap in the illiteracy rate in Mexico decreased, with literacy rates increasing from 96.9% to 99.1% in men and from 96.5% to 99.2% in women. However, the achievement was less significant in localities with less than 2500 inhabitants.

#### **5. Conclusions**

Mexico continues to face barriers to equal opportunities, including cultural norms that limit women's autonomy and perpetuate gender stereotypes. Thus, the most significant areas of gender inequality in Mexico that stand out are employment, uneven care responsibilities, gender violence, and education. These continue to configure inequalities regardless of women's greater access to decision-making. In this sense, positions gained by women in the political arena have resulted in normative advances. Nevertheless, resistance to gender parity persists in the male leadership positions within political parties, executive, legislative, and, to some extent, judicial power. This highlights the importance of the persistence of plural networks of women who work on behalf of a gender agenda and who direct their efforts to surpass the obstacles that individual women leaders can experience at the institutional level. This means that women's forms of political representation are expanding well beyond the institutional arena to encompass the community, social and private sectors. This is so because a defense of existing democratic mechanisms requires that the fragile electoral mechanisms are strengthened in different areas. The above is due to the institutional erosion that has taken place due to the arrival of a presidential rule that remains aloof to the institutional mechanisms and public programs that worked since the first half of the twentieth century to end domestic violence, to promote women's incorporation in the labor market by offering childcare facilities. Although it is true that during the Lopez Obrador administration, legislators work in favor of making abortion legal much more needs to be done to achieve gender equality and equity. It is for this reason that women's plural networks play a key role in defining agendas in collaboration with deputies and senators in ways that are gender aware and hold a gender-conscious lens and perspective. For these reasons, researchers interested in gender contribute to building this agenda with a scientific data-focused perspective.

In this context, the time seems right for pushing again for transnational women's networks to support women's rights and open the conversation about state agencies and the use of technology to produce contrasting effects to the negative impacts of climate change, globalization, and inequality. State actions initiated in the last decades of the twentieth century in collaboration with civil society to bring about new policies need to be redrafted considering the international, regional, and national climate on gender within complex scenarios.

#### **Normativity**

Politican Constitution of Mexican United States. Federal Code for Political Institutions and Electoral Procedures. General Law for Women's Access to a Life Free of Violence. General Law for Political Institutions and Electoral Procedures.

### **Author details**

Adriana Ortiz-Ortega1 \* and Adriana Baez-Carlos2

1 Student Affairs Department, Technological Autonomous Institute, Mexico City, Mexico

2 Political and Social Sciences Faculty, National Autonomous University, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico

\*Address all correspondence to: adriana.ortiz@itam.mx

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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[7] Pitkin HF. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1967

[8] Báez A, Sergio B, Medina O, Tellez J. Fuerza Política de las Legisladoras en México City. México: Inmujeres; 2022. Available from: https://isbnmexico. indautor.cerlalc.org/catalogo. php?mode=detalle&nt=381641

[9] Hernández M. Aidé (coordinadora) Avances y Desafíos en la Construcción de la Agenda de Género en los Congresos Locales en México 2018-2022. México: Instituto Nacional Electoral; 2022

[10] Franceschet, Piscopo. Gender quota and Women's Sustantive representation: Lesson for Argentina. Politics and Gender. 2008;**4**(3):393-425

[11] Buró Parlamentario. "Mujeres en los congresos locales, más eficientes y con mejores resultados que los hombres: Buró parlamentario". Servicio Especial de la Mujer. 2023. Available from: https://www.semmexico.mx/ mujeres-en-los-congresos-locales-maseficientes-y-con-mejores-resultados-quelos-hombres-buro-parlamentario/?fbclid =IwAR1cETF9SOOkeHlW-D5uW8an-K2 dGKnWdfxdd1uV\_UqHGflg7a88dzi1kp0 [Accessed: 10 de marzo de 2023]

[12] Flavia F, Karolina G, et al. Women in Mexican Subnational Legislatures, From Descriptive to Substantive Representation. Switzerland: Springer; 2022

[13] Karolina G, Flavia F. ¡Ellas tienen los escaños, ellos el poder! Representación legislativa de las mujeres en el estado de Morelos. In: Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Nueva Época, Año XV, número 240, September– October 2020. 2021. pp. 327-358

[14] Adriana O-O, Anel OA. Trasnational policy transfer and the gender-based violence agenda: Contributions from civil society. In: Fernanda VC, editor. Political Representation and Gender Equity. London: Palgrave McMillan; 2022. pp. 245-262

[15] Instituto Nacional de Geografía e Informática (INEGI). Mujeres y Hombres en México. Mexico: Mexican Government, Instituto Nacional de Geografía y Estadística; 2019

[16] ONU Mujeres y Parlamento Latinoamericano y Caribeño. Norma Marco para Consolidar la Democracia Paritaria. 2015. Disponible en: https://lac.unwomen.org/es/digiteca/ publicaciones/2016/06/marco-paritario [fecha de consulta: 27 de abril de 2021]

[17] Servicio Especial de la Mujer. Available from: https://www.semmexico. mx/mujeres-en-los-congresoslocales-mas-eficientes-y-con-mejoresresultados-que-los-hombres-buro-parl amentario/?fbclid=IwAR1cETF9SOOk eHlW-D5uW8an-K2dGKnWdfxdd1uV\_ UqHGflg7a88dzi1kp0 [Accessed: 10 de marzo de 2023]

### **Chapter 10**

The Gendered Electoral Choices: Insights from an Experiment on Gender Stereotypes in Political Issues, Parties, and the Voters Preferences for Candidates

*Chia-Heng Chang*

#### **Abstract**

Political issues and political parties in the United States have been connected to different gender labels, which further influences voters' electoral choices. This study utilized an online survey and experiment (N = 1238) with hypothetical congressional candidates to examine the influence of gender stereotypes in ten political issues and the two main political parties on individuals' electoral choices when only limited information is offered. Results found gender stereotypes attached to political parties and topics worked as cognitive shortcuts, affecting individuals' perception of male and female capability of handling different issues. Participants reported a higher likelihood of voting for female candidates when they showed concern for feminine topics and affiliation with the Democratic party; they also preferred male candidates when it comes to masculine issues and the Republican party. Male and female participants further reported different voting preferences, and females reported baseline preferences for female candidates.

**Keywords:** gender stereotype, cognitive shortcut, electoral decision, political party, issue ownership

### **1. Introduction**

Since the first female politicians entered Congress in 1917, the total number of congresswomen has grown to 150 in the United States now in 2023 [1]. As female candidates become more visible in the field of politics, how they present themselves and how the voters view male and female candidates differently thus require more academic attention. While showing gender stereotypes in electoral choices had become "politically incorrect" in U.S. society, voters have been found to refer to a certain level of gender cues when it comes to different political topics [2–4] and political parties [3, 5]. Not only are political issues discussed in elections connected to the gendered concepts of femininity and masculinity, but political parties are also linked to the gendered topics (and further) "own" particular topics, which makes the political parties gendered as well [3, 5, 6].

These gender elements have been found as factors influencing voters' decisions between male and female candidates. The current research, therefore, integrated studies on cognitive shortcuts in an electoral context, gender schema theory, and how political issues and parties are associated with gender features. As scholars (see [7, 8]) found research bias in studies that asked explicit questions to the participants and required participants to choose between male and female candidates who are equally qualified in a specific area, the current study utilized an experiment to rule out the potential bias caused by the participants' social desirability with implicit cues of gendered names and icons in the context.

#### **2. Literature review**

#### **2.1 Gender stereotypes as cognitive shortcuts in electoral decisions**

The current study builds on highlighting the differences between sex and gender and their influence on individuals' thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors differently in the context of political communication [9–11]. Specifically, sex refers to individuals' biological differences as male, female, or intersex, indicating one's sex hormones, reproductive system, and other biological traits [12]. Gender, on the other hand, refers to socially defined and constructed identities that are rather unstable [13]. Individuals, therefore, are born biologically as male or female sex and grow into gendered beings in society and view others with a gendered lens.

Along the same line, gender schema theory (GST) explains the gendered characteristics linked to males and females in organizing meanings for individuals [14]. The theory claims that the pr-registered scripts in society that are related to individuals' sex would constitute "gender schema." With the theory, a quantifiable scale, Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) scale, was created to investigate individuals' evaluation of others and their endorsement of the stereotypical male and female characteristics; the scale includes 60 items on three categories of masculine, feminine, and neutral personality traits [15]. The application of the BSRI scale found that individuals internalized society's standards of desirable (and mostly stereotypical) behaviors as it measures what characteristics people consider appropriate for males and females. When these associations between sex and gendered characteristics consolidate, gender stereotypes then emerge as a result, becoming a generalized belief about how males and females should typically act. The current research further focuses on how these gendered characteristics and features are attached to political candidates to comprehend the voters' decision between male and female candidates.

In the case of political advertising and campaigns, politicians usually have limited time and condensed texts to present themselves and discuss issues. In the meantime, voters have also been found to have the tendency to pay only passing attention to political information or lack the ability to organize limited information while making electoral decisions [16, 17]. Citizens may use cognitive shortcuts, especially in lowinformation settings, to evaluate the candidates [17, 18] or infer specific personality traits [3, 18, 19], characteristics of political parties [20], sex and gender-related stereotypes [9–11], and sexualities [21] from the candidates. These cognitive shortcuts individuals utilize can come from specific cognitive schemata they develop over time to process and interpret incoming information.

#### *The Gendered Electoral Choices: Insights from an Experiment on Gender Stereotypes in Political… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111803*

Concepts and pre-registered embedded meanings associated with the cognitive schemata work as systematic networks for human brains [22]. However, it is also the same cognitive system that could (over) generalize complicated concepts, which can make individuals make choices consistent with their stereotypes instead of information rationality, including in the electoral decision. Researchers (for example, see [6, 9, 10, 21, 23]) then found that gender stereotyping and traditional gender roles influence the voters' choices. This study specifically investigates the gender stereotypes that are found to be linked to political issues and political parties as a part of the cognitive shortcuts voters refer to when only limited information about candidates is offered.

#### **2.2 Gender stereotypes and political issues**

Reference [3] defined the act of political gender stereotyping as "the gender-based ascription of different traits, behaviors, or political beliefs to male and female politicians" (p. 120). Take male politicians for instance, they are consistently stereotyped as stronger leaders, more competent, tougher, rational, and assertive than women [3, 18, 23]. In the BSRI scale in Ref. [15] mentioned above, masculine items also include similar stereotypical male characteristics, such as "act as a leader," "competitive," and "aggressive." Researchers (e.g., [5, 6]) also found voters generally perceive male politicians as more competent in certain political issues associated with the socalled male characteristics, such as defense, military, crime, international diplomacy, foreign trade, business, and economy. In the post-September-11th context, surveys further showed voters' higher preference for male candidates with the increasing salience of national security and military crises issues, which made female candidates disadvantaged in a male-issues-dominant political agenda [6].

On the other hand, compared to males, female politicians are given credit for dealing with particular political issues that are associated with stereotypical feminine personality traits. For instance, voters generally perceive female candidates to be more empathetic and less decisive than men [3]. At the same time, females are considered to be more caring, sensitive, compassionate, caring, honest, and accessible to the public than male politicians [2, 4]. The BSRI scale also includes feminine items like "affectionate," "compassionate," "gentle," "understanding," and "sensitive to the needs of others" [15]. Voters, consequently, were found to consider females to be more capable of handling "compassion issues" or "female issues" [3, 24–26] like healthcare [27], poverty, social welfare, education, and child-related issues [3].

U.S. female politicians also tend to have these "women's issues" on their electoral agenda [28] and prioritize these issues in their campaigns [19, 29]. The analysis in Ref. [27] on the 2006 U.S. Congressional election then revealed that female senator candidates were viewed more positively than male candidates because they were considered more honest, caring, and more competent at dealing with healthcarerelated issues. The same phenomenon was also found across nations and cultures: for example, female candidates in the U.S. and Finland both emphasize "soft" issues and personal traits to soften up their own images by expressing warmth and compassion [28]. In these cases, female characteristics and political topics are associated with the traditional domain of family [6]. As such, this study hypothesized:

H1a (gendered topics): The gender cues of political topics in candidate information will interact with the voters' decision among male or female candidates. Specifically, H1b: voters will prefer female candidates when it comes to "feminine and compassion" topics and prefer male candidates when it comes to "masculine and tough" topics.

#### **2.3 Gender stereotypes and political parties issue ownership**

In the meantime, as political parties usually play an essential role in elections, these parties in the context of U.S. politics are often found to be associated with certain political issues. According to the theory of "issue ownership" [20], political parties are considered by the public to own certain issue-handling reputations. The theory identified issues "owned" by the two major political parties and found that candidates would emphasize specific issues they are advantaged of [20]. It has been noted later by researchers that Democrats tend to emphasize "compassion" issues that reflect women's stereotypical issue strengths like social welfare and education, which makes the Democrat party (regardless of the sex of the candidates) feminine [3, 5]. The Democrats were also viewed as more competent in managing these issues [30]. On the other hand, the Republicans emphasize "tough" issues that reflect men's stereotypical issue strengths, such as national security and military, which label the Republican party masculine [5, 6]. In this regard, not only are the main two political parties in the United States linked to the gendered topics in political discussion, but the political parties themselves are also gendered at the same time due to their agenda and policy priorities.

In other words, as the political issues become gendered, the parties that "own" the issues are equally linked to the gender stereotypes. Hence, there are scholars who found that U.S. political parties become gendered, in that Republicans are viewed as masculine while Democrats are viewed as feminine. The analysis of data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys in Ref. [5] then revealed the voters' cognitive schemas of Democrats and Republicans in gender-specific ways. Politicians are also found to define and represent themselves according to the issue ownership labels. For instance, the content analysis of the presidential campaign ads of 1952–2000 in Ref. [31] demonstrated Democrat candidates discussing Democratowned issues (education, health care, jobs/labor, poverty, and environment) more as the Republicans discussing Republican-owned issues (national defense, foreign policy, government spending/deficit, taxes, and illegal drugs) more. In this regard, the study hypothesizes:

H2a (issue ownership): When the voters make electoral decisions, the gender cues in the candidates' political parties will interact with the political topics the candidates show concern with. H2b: Specifically, voters will prefer Democrat candidates when it comes to Democrat-owned issues and prefer Republicans when it comes to Republican-owned issues.

H3a (gendered party): The gender cues of the two main political parties will interact with the voters' electoral choices on male and female candidates, such that H3b: voters will prefer female candidates when it comes to Democrats and prefer male candidates when it comes to Republicans.

As candidates in elections would involve more than one element of gender cues (political parties and topics), the current project further tests if different categories of gender cues would impact one another. Female candidates in Democrat (feminine political party) can either show concerns with feminine or masculine issues, which may "add up" or "decrease" the strength of gender cues, and this leads to the following hypothesis:

H4a (gendered topics and gendered party): The interaction between the gender cues in political parties and topics will interact with the voters' preferences of candidates. H4b: Specifically, female Democrats concerning feminine political issues and male Republicans concerning masculine political issues would show the highest *The Gendered Electoral Choices: Insights from an Experiment on Gender Stereotypes in Political… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111803*

likelihood to be voted since the two types of candidates offer gender cues in both political parties and topics.

Simultaneously, not only the sex and gender cues of the candidate would influence the voters' electoral choices, but also the voters' own sex. Previous studies pointed out that individuals are more likely to vote for candidates who are similar to themselves to represent them [32]. Female voters are also more likely to have a baseline preference for women candidates with more "gender consciousness" [10, 24, 33–35]. In the review of female politicians' public speech in Ref. [36], women politicians see themselves as a "voice for the voiceless." Reference [37] also highlighted the importance of visibility in representation and how women politicians can be role models for adolescents. Thus, this research hypothesized that:

H5a (candidate sex X participant sex): There will be significant differences between male and female voters in their voting preferences for different candidates. H5b: Specifically, Female voters would prefer female candidates more than male voters.

#### **3. Research methods**

#### **3.1 Research methods in existing literature**

Several studies have evaluated stereotypes and gender cues in elections through existing data: reference [38] adopted data from the 2006 American National Election Study (ANES) Pilot Study, [39] took regression discontinuity design on data from U.S. House primary elections between 1972 and 2010, and [40] coded data of candidate sex, election outcomes, candidate characteristics for analysis. Other researchers conducted experiments about the relationship between voting behaviors and candidates' personal traits [3], candidates' "facial" traits [41], and the attractiveness of appearance [42]. In Ref. [10], a telephone survey about a hypothetical choice between two candidates was conducted. Participants were asked to answer questions, such as "if two equally qualified candidates were running in the [Democratic/Republican] primary for the U.S. House of Representatives, one a man and the other a woman, do you think you would be more inclined to vote for the man or the woman?" However, like many other studies, such approach and survey design would compromise the intention of the research, and participants could make different choices while being "watched" by the researchers. The study in Ref. [24] on individuals' baseline preference for supporting candidates of a particular sex, the researcher utilized an experiment to demonstrate head-to-head matchups between male and female candidates, which would again compromise the result as the respondents being aware of "surveillance" of the researcher.

In this sense, while making decisions between male and female candidates, participants that originally would vote for male candidates due to gender stereotypes could choose otherwise to avoid being judged as sexist or not being politically correct. According to reference [8], self-report data from explicit questions involving sensitive topics (such as gender stereotypes) can be compromised by the human tendency of positive self-representation. In other words, research bias can be caused by the participants' social desirability. Researchers then exploited different research methods to avoid bias. Reference [7] did a qualitative review of previous poll questions and pointed out the problems made by leading questions. Reference [43] used an experiment with self-report data about gender stereotypes and applied technologies to record eye movement and see if the participants responded to the questions with their "most honest" answers.

#### **3.2 Research procedure and design**

Although the current research did not apply the same eye-movement technology to see if the respondents are showing their "true" preference of political candidates, it started with a series of questions of demographic information to learn about the participants' previous voting decisions without revealing the researcher's intention of testing gender cues in the experiment.

After the Institutional Review Board at the University approved the study, participants were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). After entering the survey link on a Qualtrics survey voluntarily, the participants were directed to a web page that demonstrated a short introduction to the study. In this introduction, it is stated that this research is designed to understand the relationship between the voters' likelihood to vote for different candidates and the topics they support or are concerned about. Upon indicating consent, the survey started with demographic information gathering, including age, sex (biology), gender (social identification), race, educational level, employment status, religion, and marital status. Also, to obtain information about how voters make electoral decisions generally, the survey also included a section that asked about the participants' political ideology (very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative, very conservative), partisanship (Democrat/ lean Democrat, bipartisan/no lean, Republican/lean Republican), the important reasons that influenced their previous (or future) electoral choices (the topics candidates concern with, the candidates' partisanship, personality, sex, popularity, previous experiences, age, other).

In this research, the participants were randomly given 40 individual stimuli that showed 40 different short candidate descriptions, including name (that specifically revealed the candidates' gender from an online random name generator), the age of the candidates (40–60), their previous work experiences (such as lawyer, U.S. military, and doctor that are related to the topics they show concern with), and three topics and bills they support selected from the five masculine and five feminine topics. The participants were then requested to choose from a 5-point Likert-type scale survey to express how likely they would vote for the candidate (from 1-least likely to 5-very likely). Thus, the dependent variable was the favorability and likelihood to vote for the candidates shown to the respondents.

As reference [41] noted, the attractiveness of appearance, especially genderspecific attractiveness, plays a significant part in elections. Therefore, to prevent the influence of the candidates' physical appearance on the respondents' decisions, the research did not provide photos of the candidates. Instead, the gender cue of the candidate image was replaced by a gender-implicit avatar icon that is often seen as the default image when one signs up for online accounts. Names that could reveal the candidates' sexual identities were offered: these names were randomly selected from an online character name generator website for writers rather than using the real names of politicians to avoid misleading cues. (See Appendix A for candidate description stimuli example).

Five gendered political issues were equally provided in each category. The feminine and compassion issues include (1) social welfare, (2) education [3], (3) healthcare, (4) family and childcare, and (5) poverty [9]. Masculine and tough issues included (1) national security and military, (2) economy [24], (3) science, (4) crime, and (5) foreign policy [9]. The 40 stimuli were equally distributed into the ten topics. For instance, of the ten female candidates that had the main concern with feminine issues, two of them support social welfare policies, and two of them show concern

*The Gendered Electoral Choices: Insights from an Experiment on Gender Stereotypes in Political… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111803*



#### **Figure 1.**

*Research experiment design.*

with education topics. In this regard, the current study came up with a 2 (candidates' sex: male, female) X 2 (candidates' party: Democrat, Republican) X 2 (the topics candidates showing concern with: feminine topics, masculine topics) factor statement as the **Figure 1** illustrates.

As each category included five hypothetical candidates, all candidates are divided into five groups: (1) one male Democrat candidate concerning feminine topics, (2) one female Democrat candidate concerning feminine topics, (3) one male Republican candidate concerning feminine topics, (4) one female Republican candidate concerning feminine topics, (5) one male Democrat candidate concerning masculine topics, (6) one female Democrat candidate concerning masculine topics, (7) one male Republican candidate concerning masculine topics, and (8) one female Republican candidate concerning masculine topics. To prevent exhausting participants, each participant was randomly assigned to only two groups of candidates.

#### **4. Research result**

A total number of 1238 individuals finished the whole survey and experiment section. Out of these participants, 49.51%, or 613 were females, 50.16%, or 621 males, 3 preferred not to reveal their sex, and 1 identified as other. 50.24%, or 622 participants identified themselves as Democrat/lean Democrat, 31.18%, or 386 Republican/lean Republican, 16.40%, or 203 No lean, and 2.18%, or 27 Other.

The descriptive data revealed that participants significantly preferred more for female candidates (M = 3.20, SD = .73) than male candidates (M = 2.89, SD = .78), *t*(1237) = −17.74, *p* < .001. They also reported more preference for Democrats (M = 3.09, SD = .88) than Republicans (M = 2.99, SD = .92), *t*(1237) = 3.07, *p* < .005. This was not a surprising finding since 50% (N = 622) of the participants identified themselves as Democrat or lean Democrat in the demographic information survey. A multivariate test also unveiled a main effect on the voters' preference for the candidates of different parties made by the voters' party recognition, Wilks' Λ = .70, F(6, 1134) = 36.84, *p* < .001, partial η<sup>2</sup> = .16. Simultaneously, the participants generally reported more preference for candidates concern with feminine topics (M = 3.20, SD = .72) than candidates concern with masculine topics (M = 2.89, SD = .78), *t*(1237) = 17.74, *p* < .001.

H1a and H1b were both supported as a multivariate analysis demonstrated a significant interaction between the candidates' sex and the topics they concern with in the candidate description (see **Table 1**: candidate sex X topic). The participants reported a significantly higher likelihood to vote for female candidates concerning feminine topics (M = 3.13, SE = .04) than female candidates concerning masculine topics (M = 2.98, SE = .04), Wilks' Λ = .91, F (1, 571) = 56.07, *p* < .001, partial η<sup>2</sup> = .09 (see **Table 1**). They reported significantly more preference for female candidates (M = 3.13, SE = .04) than male candidates (M = 3.01, SE = .04) when the two candidates both showed concern with feminine topics. In the meanwhile, they reported significantly more preference for male candidates (M = 3.06, SE = .04) than female candidates (M = 2.98, SE = .04) when the candidates both showed concern with masculine topics.

The multivariate test revealed another significant interaction between the political party and political topic (see **Table 2**: candidate party X topic), Wilks' Λ = .91, F (1, 571) = 56.07, *p* < .001, partial η<sup>2</sup> = .09, which supported H2a. In general, the participants reported significantly higher voting likelihood for Democrat candidates (M = 3.21, SE = .04) than Republicans (M = 3.11, SE = .04) while they both showed concern for feminine topics. Among the candidates showing concern with masculine


*Wilks' A = .93, F (1, 571) = 45.28, p < .001, partial η<sup>2</sup> = .07. Means with no subscript in common differ at p < .05 using Holm's sequential Bonferroni post hoc comparisons.*

#### **Table 1.**

*Interaction between candidate sex and political topics candidates showing concern with.*


*Wilks' A = .91, F (1, 571) = 56.07, p < .001, partial η<sup>2</sup> = .09. Means with no subscript in common differ at p < .05 using Holm's sequential Bonferroni post hoc comparisons.*

#### **Table 2.**

*Interaction between candidate party affiliation and political topics candidates showing concern with.*

*The Gendered Electoral Choices: Insights from an Experiment on Gender Stereotypes in Political… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111803*


*Wilks' Λ = .95, F (1, 571) = 30.6, p < .001, partial η<sup>2</sup> = .05. Means with no subscript in common differ at p < .05 using Holm's sequential Bonferroni post hoc comparisons.*

#### **Table 3.**

*Interaction between candidate sex and party affiliation.*

topics, the participants reported significantly more preference for Democrat candidates (M = 3.03, SE = .04) than Republicans (M = 3.09, SE = .04). Among Republican candidates, the participants reported significantly higher voting likelihood for concerning with feminine topics (M = 3.11, SE = .04) than the candidates concerning with masculine issues (M = 3.09, SE = .04). Therefore, H2b was rejected.

The test also supported H3a by laying out a main effect on the interaction between the candidates' party affiliation and the candidates' sex (see **Table 3**: candidate sex X party), Wilks' Λ = .95, F (1, 571) = 30.6, *p* < .001, partial η<sup>2</sup> = .05. Among both male and female candidates, the participants showed a significantly higher preference for Democrats (female: M = 3.25, SE = .04; male: M = 3.10, SE = .03) than Republicans (female: M = 2.89, SE = .03; male: M = 2.95, SE = .03). They showed higher likelihood to vote for female Democrats (M = 3.25, SE = .04) than male Democrats (M = 3.10, SE = .03) as well as for male Republicans (M = 2.95, SE = .03) more than Republican females (M = 2.89, SE = .03), which supported H3b.

In the descriptive data in **Table 4**, participants reported the highest scores in likelihood to vote for female Democrat candidates concerning feminine topics (M = 3.42, SD = 1.10). When both the party-affiliation Democrat and the political topics both offered feminine gender cues, the participants reported a significantly higher likelihood to vote for female candidates (M = 3.42, SD = 1.10) than male candidates (M = 2.96, SD = 1.02), *t*(1237) = 14.30, *p* < .001. Nevertheless, the participants' preference for male Republicans concerning masculine political issues does not come out with the same tendency; rather, the candidates that include three masculine gender cues at the same time in their description reported rather low scores in the likelihood of being voted (M = 2.80, SD = 1.10). While both the political party (Republican) and the topics offered masculine gender cues in the candidates' description, the participants reported a significantly higher likelihood to vote for female candidates (M = 3.22, SD = 1.09) than male candidates (M = 2.80, SD = 1.10), *t*(1237) = 14.38, *p* < .001. In the meantime, with further analysis through a multivariate test, the study found no main effect on the interaction between the candidates' party affiliation, the topics they concern with, and the candidates' sex (Candidate Party X Topic X Candidate Sex), Wilks' Λ = .96, F (1, 571) = 24.62, *p* < .001, partial η<sup>2</sup> = .04, which supported H4a.

To test H5a and H5b, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) on the voters' sex and the voters' likelihood to vote for each type of candidate was conducted. The


**Table 4.**

*Descriptive data of the participants' voting preference for candidates.*

analysis revealed significant differences between male and female voters in some specific cases: Female participants (M = 3.62, SE = .04) showed significantly higher rates for Democrat female candidates concerning feminine issues than male participants (M = 3.23, SE = .04), F (3, 1234) = 13.96, *p* < .001, partial η<sup>2</sup> = .03. Male participants (M = 2.90, SE = .04), on the other hand, showed higher rates for Republican male candidates concerning feminine issues than female (M = 2.61, SE = .04), F (3, 1234) = 7.80, *p* < .001, partial η<sup>2</sup> = .02. They also reported higher rates (M = 3.04, SE = .04) rates for Democrat male candidates concerning feminine issues than female (M = 2.89, SE = .04) as well as more preferences for Republican male candidates concerning masculine issues (M = 2.98, SE = .04) than female participants (M = 2.62, SE = .04), F (3, 1234) = 11.67, *p* < .001, partial η<sup>2</sup> = .03. In other cases, notwithstanding, there were no significant differences between the voting preferences of male and female participants. Therefore, H5a was partially supported. However, in general, female participants reported a significantly higher likelihood to vote for female candidates (M = 3.03, SE = .04) than male candidates (M = 2.93, SE = .04), Wilks' Λ = .96, F (1, 569) = 21.56, *p* < .001, partial η2 = .04, which supported H5b.

#### **5. Discussion**

This study utilized an experiment to investigate how gender stereotypes intersect with political parties and political issues and influence U.S. voters' choices between different political candidates. Instead of asking the participants explicit questions and putting male and female candidates into head-to-head comparisons, the experiment that randomly assigned hypothetical candidates to participants tested the gender stereotypes cognitively attached to their implicit attitude toward each candidate. While many existing studies have discussed gender stereotypes in politics (see [3, 25]) and the representation of females in the electoral context (see [24, 32, 33]), this research provides a nuanced examination of the impact of gender stereotypes on the individuals' electoral choices.

As the research design purposefully provided only very limited candidate information that contained different types of gender cues, the results disclosed that participants did rely heavily on cognitive shortcuts and referred to the gendered

#### *The Gendered Electoral Choices: Insights from an Experiment on Gender Stereotypes in Political… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111803*

characteristics while making decisions in low-information situations. The research findings unveiled that individuals' voting preferences can be influenced by how they cognitively associate certain political topics with gender stereotypes. Consistent with existing literature (for example, see [23, 24, 26]) on how political topics are gendered, the experiment results confirmed that voters would prefer female candidates when it comes to feminine issues and prefer male candidates when it comes to masculine issues. The study results also confirmed the argument in Ref. [5, 6] on how the two main political parties in the U.S. are linked to stereotypical male and female characteristics. Viewing the experiment results from the viewpoint of gender schema theory (GST) [14], the implicit association between the political topics and the candidates' sex then indicates the public's stereotypical perceptions regarding what males and females are more capable of. Behind the association, there is also a categorical thought about how males and females should act or perform themselves.

Nevertheless, the participants did not consider the political issues examined in the study specifically owned by the two political parties in the exact same way previous studies found. The participants reported a higher likelihood to vote for Democrat candidates when it comes to masculine issues. They also reported a higher preference for Republican candidates that showed concerns with feminine topics rather than masculine topics. Indeed, more than two decades have passed since reference [20] introduced the concept of "issue ownership" of political parties. Not only how the voters view each political party can constantly change, but how the political parties prioritize their agenda can also vary. While gender stereotypes were found to be attached to certain political topics and political parties in this research, the issueownership of political parties hypothesized by the study was not supported. These findings, furthermore, suggest that researchers need to re-examine the interaction between political topics, the candidates' party affiliation, and the candidates' sex.

In the meantime, there were significant differences between male and female participants in several cases. Female voters, in general, reported significantly more preference for female candidates over male candidates. The study results were then consistent with the female baseline preferences for female candidates that existing literature (see [24, 33, 34]) discovered. This then added to the literature finding female voters identifying with female candidates with more "gender consciousness" [10, 35].

Results on the gender stereotypes attached to the candidates' sex supported the study's hypothesis and demonstrated society's consolidated perception of how individuals (including politicians) would (and should) act or be more capable of certain things. Viewing this result from the social constructionist theory [44] that argues individuals act in specific ways according to their adaptation to the socially constructed concepts (like gender), this research further highlights the fact that one does not only passively follow the social norms but also contributes to the same social norms. When individuals become aware of the socially constructed gender stereotypes they take for granted, they can examine their actions and decisions more consciously and further change the long-fixed gendered perception.

As with all studies, the current research has its limitations. Making electoral decisions is a complicated process, and there are other potential factors affecting voters' choices that were not analyzed in the experiment and survey, such as other demographic backgrounds (e.g., racial identities, ethnic identities, and geographic areas of residency), the voters' previous electoral decisions, and the topics that voters consider important. Future research can, thus, include more variables for further analysis of the candidate description's influence on voters' electoral preferences.

As the current research referred to the existing literature, the political topics studied were limited to the five feminine issues—healthcare (see [24, 27]), social welfare, education, poverty, childcare, poverty (see [3])—and five masculine issues—national security and military, economy, science, crime, and foreign policy (see [5, 6]). As society and the public's concerns change over time, new political issues can be further created (such as topics related to climate change). This then calls for future research to explore new political topics that have not been studied in a gendered sense. The experiment also put political topics into two main categories (masculine and feminine political topics) in the experiment design, it is unclear whether individual topics are gendered at different levels. It will take further studies to investigate how much individual topics are associated with gendered concepts by U.S. voters. For instance, researchers can apply implicit attitude tests (IAT) to explore whether particular keywords link political topics to gender stereotypes, as the method has been utilized to measure stereotypes and prejudices in different social contexts (see [45–47]).

Simultaneously, there are more topics discussed in the electoral context that are not associated with gender stereotypes or deemed as masculine or feminine issues, such as environmental and climate issues. While environmental issues like renewable energy and water pollution may be associated with (or even be owned by) certain gendered political parties, the issues themselves may not be gendered at the same time. Future studies can design experiments to examine each topic individually and include the "gender-neutral" category. There are also some issues that can researchers can approach from different perspectives. For instance, while discussing unemployment rates, the candidates can address the topic from a social welfare perspective, which is often related to the feminine feature of care. They can also discuss the issue through an economic aspect, and the association with the economy can thus make it categorized as a masculine/male issue as existing literature (see [6]) suggested. It will require further studies that use different research methods to take the same political topics into account.

#### **6. Conclusion**

The experiment in the current study revealed how gender stereotypes in political parties and political issues interact with U.S. voters' choices between different political candidates. The results confirmed gender stereotypes are utilized as cognitive shortcuts that individuals adopt when making electoral decisions. The political topics studied are found to be gendered, such that the participants preferred female candidates when it comes to feminine topics and male candidates for masculine topics. While the study showed the interaction between gender stereotypes and the two political parties in the U.S., the participants did not consider the topics owned by the two political parties as existing literature found. Further examination of how "issue ownership" of political parties and the gender stereotypes embedded have changed over time is then required. Consistent with previous findings on female voters' baseline preference, the female participants demonstrated a significantly higher preference for female candidates compared to their male counterparts. Since the current research only included political topics discussed by existing literature, the author calls for further examination of more political topics, including the ones that might be considered "gender neutral," and whether they are considered owned by particular political parties. Different research methods (both qualitative and quantitative) are also required to explore the details of each political topic as well as how gender stereotypes are used as cognitive shortcuts in different cases.

*The Gendered Electoral Choices: Insights from an Experiment on Gender Stereotypes in Political… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111803*

#### **A. Experiment examples**

#### See **Figures A1** and **A2**.



#### **Figure A1.**

*Experiment example: female Republican candidate showing concern with health issues.*



#### **Figure A2.**

*Experiment example: male Democrat candidate showing concern with health issues.*

*Gender Inequality – Issues, Challenges and New Perspectives*

#### **Author details**

Chia-Heng Chang University at Albany, New York State University, Albany, NY, USA

\*Address all correspondence to: cchang6@albany.edu

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*The Gendered Electoral Choices: Insights from an Experiment on Gender Stereotypes in Political… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111803*

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#### **Chapter 11**

## Article 175 of Turkish Civil Code, No. 4721: Assessment of Debate on the Duration of the Poverty Alimony

*Burcu G. Özcan Büyüktanır and Dila Okyar*

#### **Abstract**

Even after the dissolution of marriage, as a reflection of solidarity obligation, Turkish law grants the party who will fall into poverty due to divorce the right to request alimony from the other spouse. Article 175 of Turkish Civil Code (TCC), no. 4721, titled "poverty alimony," states that the party "may request alimony indefinitely". It is the phrase indefinitely that has led to heavy discussions. The constitutionality of this provision was also challenged before the Turkish Constitutional Court, and in 2012, the Court had declared that the phrase indefinitely is not unconstitutional. Still, the debate on the duration of the poverty alimony is on the agenda. Even though Article 175 TCC grants the right to request poverty alimony to both of the spouses, without making any distinction in terms of male or female, this alimony is generally granted to women who are *de facto* at home and are economically weaker. The debate results from the situation of unemployed married women who suffer economically after the divorce. This study aims to examine poverty alimony under Turkish law with respect to its duration, evaluate the different doctrinal opinions in the literature, and, as a proposed solution, present an alternative way to interpret Article 175 TCC.

**Keywords:** poverty alimony, indefiniteness, time limit, divorce, obligation of solidarity

#### **1. Introduction**

Article 175–178 of Turkish Civil Code (TCC) envisages that the spouses have financial obligations even after the dissolution of marriage. The general purpose is to regulate the responsibilities of spouses, due to social and moral reasons even for the post-marriage. The basis of this alimony is the partial continuation of solidarity obligation between the spouses even after the dissolution of marriage [1].

Different jurisdictions address this type of support with different concepts such as *spousal support* or *postmarital maintenance*. In this study, we preferred "poverty alimony," which is the direct literal translation of the legal concept used in TCC. "Alimony" is defined as a regular amount of money that a law court orders a person to pay to his/her partner after the legal ending of the marriage by divorce [2]. Since the spouses are expected to support each other during the marriage, the concept of spousal support seems to fall short of reflecting its postmarital qualification. Thus, rather than support or maintenance, in this study, the concept of "alimony" is adopted. Since, under Turkish law, granting this alimony is conditional on falling into poverty, the concept of *poverty alimony* is thought to fit best in reflecting the fundamental requirement of this legal institution.

According to Article 175 TCC, titled "poverty alimony," "*the party who will fall into poverty due to divorce may request alimony for his/her livelihood indefinitely from the other party in proportion to his/her financial power, provided that his/her fault is not grosser. The fault of the alimony obligor is not sought*". Under Turkish law, the starting point of the heavy discussions rests at the phrase "*indefinitely*". Under the first text of Article 144 former TCC (Türk Kanunu Medenîsi, no 743), poverty alimony was limited with time; it could only be ordered for a period of 1 year. In 1988, with the Law, no. 3444, the provision was modified; the time limit was removed, and it was envisaged that the poverty alimony can be granted indefinitely. Article 175 TCC, which is in force today, still preserves indefiniteness in its wording. This is because the discussion as to the duration of the poverty alimony dates back to 1988 under Turkish law.

This study aims to briefly explain the concept of poverty alimony under Turkish law and examine the conditions of Article 175 TCC with special focus on the duration of the poverty alimony. In the conclusion part, personal thoughts and, as a proposed solution, an alternative way to interpret Article 175 TCC will be presented.

The study reviews the relevant jurisprudence of Turkish Court of Cassation as well as the decision of the Turkish Constitutional Court regarding the unconstitutionality challenge brought against Article 175 TCC. It also examines the different doctrinal opinions put forward both in Turkish and Swiss literature.

With the establishment of Republic of Türkiye, the adoption of a civil code based on secular principles was one of the leading revolutions of the new Türkiye. For the realization of this purpose, Swiss civil law was preferred since, by that time, Switzerland was the country with the newest, most modern civil law system, which has the simplest language that the public can easily understand and which includes provisions that ensure social balance thanks to its liberal structure. In 1926, the Swiss Civil Code and the Swiss Code of Obligations were directly translated and adopted. Although the current Turkish Civil Code is renewed in 2002, Turkish civil law is still under the Swiss law influence. Since it constitutes the reference law, this study makes comparative analysis with Swiss Civil Code.

#### **2. The concept of poverty alimony**

Poverty alimony is a type of maintenance alimony. Its main purpose is to support the spouse economically after the divorce and to ensure that the standard of living is minimally affected after the marriage. The underlying idea of poverty alimony is the continuation of mutual assistance and financial solidarity between spouses, subject to some conditions, even after the termination of marriage by divorce [1, 3].

During the divorce suit, the judge is not allowed to order poverty alimony; if conditions are met, the judge may, instead, order precautionary alimony. Upon the finalization of the decision of divorce [4, 5], the precautionary alimony turns into poverty alimony. In order for the judge to order poverty alimony, it must be either

*Article 175 of Turkish Civil Code, No. 4721: Assessment of Debate on the Duration of the Poverty… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113140*

stipulated by the parties in the consensual divorce protocol in case of an uncontested divorce or demanded while the divorce suit is ongoing.

Poverty support does not qualify technically as compensation. As it was held by the court (YHGK, 04.04.2018, 2017/2-1579 E., 2018/673 K.), "*since the poverty alimony is for protecting the party who will fall into poverty after the divorce, the poverty alimony to be granted to the divorced poor party is, by no means, a punishment or compensation imposed on the other party*" [6]. It is argued that if compensation is awarded together with the decision of divorce, the condition of "falling into poverty due to divorce," stipulated under Article 175 TCC as a condition for the poverty alimony, should presumed to be eliminated, and so the alimony should not be awarded [3, 5]. However, besides the need to discuss the criterion of falling into poverty; the essence of granting poverty alimony is to support the spouses financially and being less faulty is found sufficient to request [1]. Conversely, to award material or moral compensation due to divorce, the other spouse is required to be at fault. In such a case, not rendering a separate order for poverty alimony despite the request will *ironically* result in "rewarding" the faulty spouse.

#### **3. The conditions of poverty alimony**

#### **3.1 Finalization of the divorce decision**

Poverty alimony is a secondary consequence of divorce. In order for the judge to grant poverty alimony, the divorce decision must be finalized [1, 4]. While the divorce suit is ongoing, the judge may decide, upon request, on precautionary alimony as a temporary measure.

#### **3.2 Request of the party**

In a divorce suit, the judge cannot decide *ipso iure* on the poverty alimony without the request of the parties [4]. Poverty alimony can be requested either together with the divorce when filing the divorce suit or after the divorce decision is finalized, as a separate lawsuit within 1 year (Article 178 TCC). The requested amount must be clearly stated [5]. If the amount is not specified, the judge is obliged to ask the requesting party for clarification.

#### **3.3 The requesting party shall not be more faulty than the other spouse**

The spouse is allowed to request poverty alimony as long as his/her fault is not grosser than the other spouse. The requesting spouse shall be either faultless or less faulty. Here, the decisive criterion is the degree of fault. The ratio behind this requirement is to prevent rewarding the spouse with alimony who caused the divorce with his/her gross fault.

#### **3.4 The requesting spouse shall fall into poverty by the end of the divorce**

The law does not provide an explicit definition of poverty alimony. Poverty is (Y3HD, 26.05.2014, 2014/820 E., 2014/8178 K.) "*decided by evaluating the economic and social conditions and lifestyles of the parties, together with the economic conditions of the day*" [7]. Falling into poverty due to divorce should be evaluated in each concrete case. It must be underlined that falling into poverty does not mean that the alimony creditor (requesting party) does not have a job or income [4]; the poverty in the sense of Article 175 TCC occurs if he/she cannot make a living with his/her own work and financial power [1]. The court held that (YHGK, 04.05.2011, 2011/2-155 E., 2011/278 K.) the state of poverty occurs if the spouse does not have sufficient income to meet the necessary expenses to improve his/her individual's corporeal existence such as nutrition, clothing, shelter, health, transportation, culture, and education [7].

#### **3.5 Determination of the amount according to the financial situation of the alimony obligatory spouse**

While the judge decides on the amount of the alimony, a fair ratio should be established between the amount of support required to prevent the alimony creditor from falling into poverty and the income of the alimony obligatory spouse.

#### **4. The discussions on the duration of poverty alimony in Turkish law**

#### **4.1 The decision of Turkish constitutional court**

The constitutionality of Article 175 TCC was challenged before the Turkish Constitutional Court (case dated 17.05.2012, E. 2011/136, K. 2012/72, Official Gazette 26.06.2012/28335). It was argued that the provision is not sufficiently detailed since it does not clearly regulate the conditions and the effect of the issues such as the financial strength of the parties, their age, the duration of marriage, and so forth. Either the complete cancelation of the provision or, if this is not accepted, partial cancelation limited with the phrase of indefinitely was requested. The Constitutional Court evaluated the contested rule in the light of "social legal state" under Article 2 of the Turkish Constitution and has declared that the phrase "indefinitely" in Article 175 TCC is not unconstitutional.

The main reasoning of the Court is as follows: the obligation of solidarity and assistance of spouses continues after marriage, albeit partially; the term "indefinite" cannot be understood as an obligation for lifetime; the poverty alimony is regulated as conditional on falling into poverty; the purpose is the economic support of the spouse who will fall into poverty due to divorce by the other, and under Article 175 TCC, the financial situation of the alimony obligor is also taken into consideration.

The dissenting opinion expressed in the aforementioned decision of the Turkish Constitutional Court examines the issue from a different perspective and finds indefinite alimony as unconstitutional: "*Despite the fact that people have ended their legal relationship by getting divorced, the continuation of their responsibilities in the marriage union for life is both unjust and contrary to equity. The existence of an alimony obligation arising from divorce, which is, under some conditions, continuous throughout the life of the alimony debtor as if it were a property right, damages the sense of justice in a legal system in which the concepts of statute of limitations are accepted*".

#### **4.2 Poverty alimony under Swiss law as the reference law**

As in many legal systems, poverty alimony is a legally discussed issue [8]. Swiss law provides poverty alimony only if the spouse cannot make a living on his/her own. *Schweizerisches Zivilgezetsbuch* (ZGB) adopts, under Article 125 ZGB, the concept of

*Article 175 of Turkish Civil Code, No. 4721: Assessment of Debate on the Duration of the Poverty… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113140*

*Nachehelicher Unterhalt* (*postmarital alimony*), which was formerly regulated under Article 152 former ZGB. Article 175 TCC corresponds to Article 152 former ZGB. Article 125 ZGB is almost completely different than the current Article 175 TCC.

None of the abovementioned ZGB provisions stipulate time limit. However, in Swiss practice, the Swiss Federal Court has introduced some criteria regarding time limitation. According to Article 125 ZGB, the judge shall decide the amount and duration of the alimony, taking into account various variables [8]. These variables are regulated explicitly in the law.

Article 125 ZGB is as follows:

If a spouse cannot reasonably be expected to provide for his or her own maintenance, including an appropriate level of retirement provision, the other spouse must pay a suitable contribution. In deciding whether such a contribution is to be made and, if so, in what amount and for how long, the following factors in particular must be considered:


Exceptionally, a maintenance contribution may be denied or reduced if it would clearly be inequitable, particularly because the spouse otherwise entitled to receive such contribution:


As is seen, the Swiss judge is granted with wide discretionary power with respect to postmarital alimony. Article 125 ZGB is indeed the statutory version of the criteria developed in practice by the judges by way of using their discretionary powers (Article 4 ZGB).

#### **5. Different doctrinal opinions in the debate on the duration of poverty alimony**

With the marriage union, the spouses are obliged to be in solidarity and to participate in the expenses of the marriage with their labor and assets as much as they can afford (Article 185 TCC, Article 159 ZGB). As long as the conditions exist, even after the dissolution of marriage, this obligation of solidarity continues to exist economically under the name of poverty alimony. The underlying idea is, based on social and moral considerations, the protection of the trust formed by marriage and supporting the spouse who will be adversely affected by divorce in economic sense [1].

Article 175 TCC has caused controversy recently since it allows to decide on poverty alimony indefinitely. Poverty alimony can be paid either in lump sum or in the form of annuity. In practice, generally, it is decided to be paid in the form of annuity [4]. Debate with respect to the duration of the alimony comes to the fore when it is decided in the form of annuity. The indefiniteness of poverty alimony is the result of this debate [9].

The discussion under Turkish law dates back to the amendment made with the Law No. 3444 in 1988. Prior to the amendment, Article 144 of former TCC restricted the poverty alimony with a period of 1 year. By then, the focus of the debate was the incompatibility of one-year period with the purpose of alimony [9]. Indeed, it was stated that "*poverty alimony is an institution that has been accepted purely by social and moral considerations. However, since it can be ruled for (one year) finally in our country, it does not give practical results suitable for the purpose of its acceptance*" [10]. The amendment modified Article 144 former TCC and introduced that the poverty alimony can be granted indefinitely. Another amendment was the removal of the condition of "falling into *gross* poverty*"*.

Article 175 TCC provides the right to request poverty alimony to both parties, without making any distinction in terms of gender of the spouse. Since mostly it is the female spouse who requests this alimony, the "time debate" stems from the woman's request of indefinite alimony after divorce. The main point of criticism is the introduction of an obligation to pay alimony for lifetime, which is regarded as not equitable [7]. *Akipek/Akıntürk/Ateş* states that the modification made in Article 144 former TCC was the result of doctrinal criticisms on the one-year time limit and founds this criticism as justified [1]. *Zevkliler* also supports the modification in the former TCC [3]. Similarly, *Şıpka* states that alimony should not be time-limited since the timelimitation may cause unfair results [11].

A closer look at Article 175 TCC brings another approach to the debate. This approach argues that it is not legally correct to conclude that Article 175 TCC directly provides indefinite alimony; although the judge is allowed to render alimony indefinitely, in each concrete case, the judge should be able to decide on the duration of the alimony [12, 13]. Another view in the same direction supports that the provision, in fact, does not introduce an upper limit; the judge, by using its discretionary power, should be able to set a limit and thus order a time-limited alimony [5, 11].

According to the practice of Turkish Court of Cassation, if the parties do not request alimony for a certain period or if the alimony was not agreed upon as timelimited in the consensual divorce protocol, the judge has no discretion in determining the duration of the alimony. The Court held that (Y2HD, 11.07.2012, 2012/14282E., 2012/19487 K.) "*Poverty alimony in the form of monthly income for the benefit of the defendant was ordered, and the poverty alimony was limited to four years. As a reason for* 

*Article 175 of Turkish Civil Code, No. 4721: Assessment of Debate on the Duration of the Poverty… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113140*

*the limitation, the Court stated that 'the assignment of indefinite alimony would not be in accordance with fairness, and the limitation to four years, taking into account the age of the parties, was in accordance with equity*'. *The law did not limit the poverty alimony to a certain period, it stipulated that this alimony could be requested indefinitely. The aim is to support the spouse who will fall into poverty due to divorce by the other to meet the minimum living requirements. In this regard, unless the requesting party explicitly states, limiting the alimony to a certain period of time means to include an element that is not included in the law. In cases where the law grants the judge discretionary power or orders to consider the requirements of the situation or justified reasons, the judge decides on an equitable basis (Article 4 TCC). The law does not order the judge to give any discretion regarding the duration of the alimony, and to determine the duration by taking into account the requirements of the situation or justified reasons. Since the law clearly stipulates that this alimony should be indefinite, unless the party asked for limitation, limiting alimony to a certain period of time by way of using discretionary power, constitutes a clear violation of the law*" [7]*. Şıpka* argues that literal interpretation of Article 175 TCC grants the judge with the discretionary power and adds that "*removing the indefiniteness of poverty alimony with an amendment in law and introducing an upper time limit shall lead to unfair results in most of the concrete cases. Especially in our country, considering the classical mother model where due to reasons such as the wife being a housewife, being under-educated, not even being literate, having to take care of the children, and being deprived of the financial means to make a living after marriage that lasted for many years and ended in divorce, the possibility of receiving indefinite alimony should also not be abolished*" [11]*.*

Another view supports the application of the *clean-break principle*. This principle means the termination of the ties with the end of the marriage and the severance of the economic relations of the parties [9, 14]. With the divorce, the property rights are shared at once and the bond of the spouses ends economically [14]. In the cleanbreak principle, alimony is regarded only as a temporary support given to the spouse who will suffer financial difficulties, until he/she achieves economic independence [14]. *Akipek Öcal* states that with the dissolution of the marriage, a structure should be established in which the spouses can terminate the social and economic relationship between them as soon as possible and underlines that the indefinite request for alimony should be subject to certain conditions [12]. Despite the obligation of solidarity, the necessity of individuals to earn their own living cannot be ignored. When the marriage ends, the parties should also need to separate their ties [15]. Although the literal interpretation of Article 175 TCC supports the indefinite order of poverty alimony, solely literal interpretation should be avoided; teleological interpretation, by way of applying the clean-break principle, leads to the conclusion that the poverty alimony could be limited in time in accordance with the needs of the alimony creditor [15]. Under the practice of Turkish Court of Cassation, the existence of the obligation to pay poverty alimony is subject to the continuation of the state of poverty of the alimony creditor. Such practice is regarded as a reflection of the clean-break principle. Although this principle is not explicitly mentioned in the court decisions, it is not completely ignored [15].

From another perspective, the basis of the discussion on the duration of the alimony is related to the question of whether Article 175 TCC is of mandatory nature [11, 12, 16]. By way of literal interpretation, it is argued that this provision is not mandatory, and thus, the judge has discretion [17]. According to *Dural/Öğüz/Gümüs*, Article 175 TCC, in its current wording, does not grant the judge with discretionary power with respect to duration [9]. The authors also argue that, *de lege ferenda*, the clean break principle should be adopted under Turkish law by amending the law,

"*provided that the principle of post-marital solidarity is not weakened excessively by giving undue weight to the principle of ending the bond between spouses as soon as possible, given the economic and social situation of women in Turkey*" [9]. Another view underlines that "*(…) there should be no harm in requesting alimony indefinitely as long as the duration of the marriage is considered and the alimony request of the party, who has the capacity to work but violates the principle of honesty by choosing not to work arbitrarily, is prevented*" [6]*. Oktay-Özdemir* states the need to develop some criteria to help in the realization of equity when determining the amount and duration of poverty alimony. Introducing such criteria by law will serve to eliminate the differences in application. In particular, objective criteria such as the duration of the marriage, the distribution of duties in marriage, age, health status, and the sacrifices made within the marriage need to be taken into consideration [18].

#### **6. Our view on the duration of poverty alimony**

At the heart of debate on the "time limit/indefiniteness" of poverty alimony lies a critic question of interpretation. How to interpret Article 175 TCC? Does it grant power of discretion to the judge in terms of duration? As in Swiss law, introducing criteria for determining the duration is another option. Although the Swiss Civil Code is considered as the reference source for Turkish law, it is important to note that solutions for problems in real life is searched at abstract legal rules. Social structures and dynamics of society can justify different legal solutions. While the legal problems of different societies are basically similar, the proposed solutions may differ. In this study, we prefer to approach the debate from this perspective and with respect to the term "indefinite", to question the applicability of clean-break principle.

Under Swiss law, the postmarital alimony obligation also includes the maintenance of the children [8]. In a sense, it provides support for both the care of children and the economic maintenance of the spouse. In Swiss law, there is a 10/16 rule for child support. According to this rule, the spouse with custody can work half-day when the child turns to the age of 10 and can work full-time when the child turns to the age of 16 [8, 19]. The amount of alimony is determined accordingly. It is also stated that postmarital alimony is gradually losing its importance in Swiss law since spousal support is not requested in more than 70% of divorce suits [8].

Under Turkish legal system, for the postmarital stage, there is a separate type of alimony for children. For Türkiye, 2022 divorce data of TUIK (Turkish Statistical Institute) shows that while the number of divorced couples was 175.779 in 2021, it was 180.954 in 2022. When the divorce cases are analyzed according to the duration of marriage, it is seen that 32.7% of the divorces in 2022 occur within the first 5 years of marriage, and 21.6% within the 6–10 years of marriage [20]. Considering the employment rates according to TUIK data, the employment rate of women is less than half of men. According to the results of the survey on household labor force, the rate of employed people aged 15 and over in 2021 was 45.2%. This rate is 28.0% for women and 62.8% for men [21].

A research conducted on a database containing judicial decisions regarding the demand for poverty alimony between 2012 and 2019 reports that when the first 83 decisions were examined, it was not understood whether the request for alimony was made by female or male spouse due to the use of the phrase plaintiff-defendant in 16 decisions; in the rest of the decisions, it was seen that the request for alimony was made by the female spouse. Accordingly, it is seen that under Turkish Law, the debate

#### *Article 175 of Turkish Civil Code, No. 4721: Assessment of Debate on the Duration of the Poverty… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113140*

with respect to indefiniteness of the poverty alimony is basically stemming from the request of the female spouse [17].

In jurisdictions that have abandoned the principle of fault in divorce law, poverty alimony has started be questioned. Imposing alimony on the non-faulty spouse for life time is discussed [14]. Poverty alimony is one of the financial consequences of divorce; however, regardless of the fault requirement in divorce law, the poverty alimony does not qualify as "compensation". This justifies why the obligation to pay poverty alimony is independent of fault. The fault is of importance only for the request; the requesting spouse must be either faultless or less at fault in the divorce.

We support that Article 175 TCC should be read in conjunction with the following provision. According to Article 176 TCC, "*(…) The pecuniary compensation or alimony that is decided to be paid in the form of annuity is automatically terminated in the event of the remarriage of the creditor or the death of one of the parties; if the creditor lives as if he/she is de facto married without official marriage or the state of poverty ceases or he/she leads dishonourable life, it is abolished by a court decision. The judge may decide to increase or decrease the income in cases where the financial situation of the parties changes or when equity requires it. The judge may, upon request, decide how much the material compensation or alimony that is decided to be paid in the form of annuity will be paid in the coming years according to the social and economic conditions of the parties*".

The conditions stipulated under Article 175 TCC and grounds for abolishment set forth in Article 176 TCC lead us to conclude that obligation to pay poverty alimony does not necessarily last for lifetime. The Court held that (Y2HD, 14.01.2013, 2012/13534 E., 2013/264 K.) under Article 175 TCC, poverty alimony cannot be ordered in favor of the spouse who has more income [7] or (Y2HD, 14.01.2013, 2012/13540 E., 2013/268 K.) with a similar economic situation [7]. Also, it was decided that (Y2HD, 06.05.2014, 2013/28754 E., 2014/10439 K.) "*From the investigation and the evidence gathered, it is understood that both parties work in textiles. It was accepted by the court that the plaintiff (woman) is working. Considering that the plaintiff is working and the income levels of the parties are close to each other, it is not correct to order alimony for the benefit of the plaintiff (woman), since the plaintiff (woman) will not fall into poverty by divorce and the conditions of Article 175 have not been fulfilled*" [22]; and (Y2HD, 16.10.2019, 2019/2007 E., 2019/10211 K.) "*according to the economic and social situation research conducted by the court, it is understood that the plaintiff (woman) works at minimum wage and the defendant (man) works at minimum wage and does not have any other income. In this case, the incomes of the plaintiff (woman) and the defendant (man) are equal. It cannot be said that the conditions of Article 175 of the Turkish Civil Code are fulfilled for the benefit of women. It was not correct to rule on alimony for the benefit of the plaintiff woman*" [22].

In the final analysis, we are of the opinion that *de lege lata*, the phrase of *indefiniteness* in Article 175 TCC, does not seem to be grossly problematic. First, Article 175 TCC states that the spouse "*(…) may request alimony indefinitely*". By applying the principle of *in toto et pars continetur,* one may conclude that time limitation is indeed *inherent* in the scope of the word "indefinitely". Thus, Article 175 TCC, as it stands, is suitable to read it as the alimony may be ordered either for a certain period of time or without any time limit (indefinitely). Secondly, the judge, by exercising its discretionary power, should evaluate the request for poverty alimony by taking into consideration objective criteria such as the duration of the marriage, the requesting party's capacity to work, and the principle of honesty (Article 2 TCC). Third, the word "indefinite" does not mean "lifetime". Article 175 TCC is subject to Article 176 TCC. If the conditions of Article 176 TCC are met, the obligation to pay poverty alimony

is removed by court decision. Taking into account all of these should significantly contribute to reaching a fair balance in each concrete case.

### **7. Conclusion**

It is not easy to bring a sharp end to family relations. Despite the legal dissolution of a family law relationship, due to its nature, it inevitably continues to have anterograde influences. Poverty alimony is such a legal institution of family law. The underlying reason is the partial continuation of financial solidarity despite the termination of the marriage. The crucial question is, in terms of time, to what extent should it continue? For how long is fair to lay this burden on the spouse despite his/ her lack of fault in divorce? The duration of poverty alimony has long been controversial in Turkish law. The former article 144 of TCC was criticized because it limited the request of poverty alimony with one-year period; the current Article 175 TCC is again criticized since it allows for indefinite request. In 2012, the Turkish Constitutional Court had ruled that the phrase "*undefinite*" is not unconstitutional since it is not to be understood as a lifetime obligation. Indeed, at the heart of this debate lies a critical question of interpretation. When the conditions of request under Article 175 TCC are considered and read together with the grounds for abolishment under Article 176 TCC, the limits of the poverty alimony become more clear. The authors of this paper also suggest an alternative way of interpretation to the phrase of *indefiniteness*; due to *the principle of in toto et pars continetur*, it may be concluded that the provision itself inherently grants power to judge to order alimony for a certain period of time.

### **Author details**

Burcu G. Özcan Büyüktanır\* and Dila Okyar Faculty of Law, Hacettepe University, Department of Civil Law, Ankara, Turkey

\*Address all correspondence to: bgozcan@hacettepe.edu.tr

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*Article 175 of Turkish Civil Code, No. 4721: Assessment of Debate on the Duration of the Poverty… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113140*

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