Gender as a Condition for Political Participation in Brazil: Trajectories, Political Vapital and the Potential of Technologies

Abstract

In the context of this year's Brazilian municipal elections, the situation faced by female candidates is unprecedented: they face not only the disparities in the number of candidates and investments of the parties in their campaigns, but also the world scenario of a pandemic caused by the new coronavirus, which changes dramatically political campaigns and gives even more space to political activities focused on media and digital technologies. Therefore, this article aims to propose discussions about the participation of women in politics in the Brazilian context, based on results obtained in the doctoral research carried out in the Post-Graduate Program in Media and Technology of the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp), funded by CAPES. To this end, a survey of the main achievements in search of gender equality in politics in recent years is presented. In addition to this historical recovery, the results of applying a questionnaire and conducting an episodic interview with the women who compose the research sample point to the issue of gender as a condition for political-citizen participation in Brazil. The results show that the main forms of participation performed by women are linked to the uses and appropriations of digital technologies, pointing to the centrality of the discussion of digital technologies as a condition for the democratization of participation.