Politics Of Venezuela example essay topic

Women and Politics in Venezuela Women in every country all over the world are discriminated against when it comes to politics. There are many reasons for this discrimination and most of the reasons are a result of men being in control. Politicians are "supposed" to aggressive and argumentative. Some men and women do not see women as having these qualities but instead have the qualities of nurture and compromise. Time is a barrier for women because they do not have the time to participate in politics. The women use their time to do housework, take care of children and probably have a full time job.

Politics and running for any kind of office takes money and as a generality women do not have most of the money. Religion is a big impact on whether women are allowed in politics are not. In most religions, women are seen as beneath men. These religions cross over into political and social life, hindering the chance of women to participate in politics. In Venezuela, the women have a hard time being in politics for the same reasons. The highest office that can be obtained in Venezuela is the presidency.

"The president is elected by a plurality vote with direct and universal suffrage. The term of office is 6 years, and a president may be re-elected to a single consecutive term. The president appoints the vice president. He decides the size and composition of the cabinet and makes appointments to it with the involvement of the National Assembly. The Constitution of Venezuela also allows for three additional branches of the federal government -- the judicial, citizen, and electoral branches".

(Politics of Venezuela) "The judicial branch is headed by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice. The justices are appointed by the National Assembly and serve 12-year terms. The judicial branch also consists of lower courts, including district courts, municipal courts, and courts of first instance". (Politics of Venezuela) "The citizens branch consists of three components -- the prosecutor general ('fiscal general'), the 'defender of the people' or ombudsman, and the comptroller general. The holders of these offices, in addition to fulfilling their specific functions, also act collectively as the 'Republican Moral Council' to challenge before the Supreme Tribunal actions they believe are illegal, particularly those which violate the Constitution. The holders of the 'citizen power' offices are selected for terms of 7 years by the National Assembly".

(Politics of Venezuela) "The 'Electoral Power,' otherwise known as the National Electoral Council, is responsible for organizing elections at all levels. Its members are also elected to 7-year terms by the National Assembly". (Politics of Venezuela) Venezuela's Political parties consist of but are not limited to Democratic Action or AD, Fifth Republic Movement or MVR, Homeland for All, or PPT, and Movement towards Socialism, or MAS. The political pressure groups are FEDECAMARAS, a conservative business group, and VEC INOS, the Venezuelan Confederation of Workers. (Politics of Venezuela) During President Perez's time in office he gave considerable amounts of money to social welfare which led to the first state agency of COFE APRE in 1974.

The agency is still running to day although with very little funding. Many consider the agency to be a place where women can come together to debate and promote women's issues within the government and this agency created an awareness of the need for gender based organizations (Wagner). Venezuela has had a Constitution since 1960 that "declared that men and women were formally equal under the law. Women however, who have been active in the struggle for democracy found themselves devoid of its privileges and marginalized from politics".

(Wagner) "The new Venezuelan Constitution, in force since 1999, along with a number of supplementary laws, have led to the adoption of non-sexist language, so that both the feminine and masculine forms of Spanish words like 'citizens', 'electors' and 'president' are used" (Cariboni) However, over the last decade women's participation in high-level public posts has changed very little. There are four female ministers in the President's 22 member cabinet and only 2 of the country's 24 governors are women. Of the 335 positions of mayor, women only hold 29 offices, which is about 8 percent. Women account for 19 of the 165 deputies in parliament and 8 of the 32 justices in the Venezuelan Supreme Court (Cariboni).

After reading these statistics one would believe that the support for women in Venezuela is low. This could not be further from the truth. A majority of Latin American voters believe that women are just as capable as men to be in politics. Some of the voters are so tired of corruption that they want more women in office just to see if the corruption levels will go down (Politics Matter). The Bolivarian movement is an essential part of the politics in Venezuela because the movement is harboring protests and demonstrations on a regular basis.

The movement is based on the fact that the President was supposed to be using oil money to help the people in poverty. He is not making good on his promise and there for a revolution was constructed. The women were the first to realize what was going on and they set up the revolution. Trying to win the supporters back, Chavez set up five new banks for women, small enterprises and farmers and established a new National Women's Institute (Bertaccini). So you can see that the politics of Venezuela do not have a great percent of women involved. Though the women were the first to see the problem with Chavez they still only make up a small number of legislatures, judges, and mayors.

The Constitution may say that there should be no discrimination between men and women, but the statistics do not lie and the President himself does not appoint the number of women that he should. Hopefully the Bolivarian Movement will serve its purpose and bring the women of Venezuela into the politics.