Political financing has received much less attention than quota systems as a way to enhance women's political participation. Nonetheless a few countries have adopted legislation to help steer resources towards women. The mechanisms used include tax breaks, provisions for campaign expenses and guidelines on the use of public funds.

Costa Rica’s 1990 Law for the Promotion of the Social Equality of Women calls on political parties to increase the number of women candidates, and to set aside funds to train women and promote their participation. The statutes of all political parties now mention gender equality and the dedication of funds for women’s political development. Several have committed a specific percentage of their training budget to women.

In Panama, Law 60 of the Electoral Code stipulates that parties use at least 25 percent of public funds for capacity development, out of which at least 10 percent should go to women.

Canada’s 1974 Elections Act allows childcare expenses to be included in the personal expenses of a candidate for a campaign, but not for the initial nomination process. The Royal Commission in Canada, highlighting the unequal burden of childcare on many women, has proposed offering a tax deduction for nomination-related expenses.

Some political parties in Latin America have internal statutes that explicitly indicate that certain percentage of resources should go for women candidates: Partido Arnulfista in Panama; the parties Liberacion Nacional and Movimiento Libertario in Costa Rica; and the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN) in El Salvador. The FMLN, for example, gives resources from the party budget to the Secretaria Nacional de la Mujer (National Ministry for Women) for development of activities such as: national assemblies of party women, trainings, female consultations on specific topics. The FMLN also has created a specific fund for the promotion and training of women of that party. The FMLN women have also being involved in doing fundraising among business and financial sectors to increase resources for women candidates.

However, with the exception of a few cases mentioned earlier, normative frameworks regulating political party and campaign financing in the region have not made explicit a gender dimension. Moreover, even in the places where the legal frameworks are in place, there are very few studies looking at the impact of these initiatives.

Aleida Ferreyra is a Research Analyst for the Inclusive Participation Cluster at United Nations development Programme's Democratic Governance Group.

My experience comes mostly from the Central and South Eastern Europe, form the work in women’s movements in the political systems with mixed or proportional voting system and from the states where parties are to an important extend financed from the public funds.

In the European countries with young democracies, parliamentary parties are mostly centered around charismatic male leaders and their informal circles of economically and socially well connected, powerful men. The financing of the electoral campaigns, even when they are regulated by the laws, limiting donations and spending for the campaigns, are of very little help, as the rule of law is still very weak, and the party financial manipulators invent thousand and one way how to go around the legal limitations of spending for the campaigns. The costs of the campaigns became so huge that they limit the possibilities of the parties to implement their programs, to freely choose their crucial candidates without serious interference of the “big money”. Even the parties with the socially sensitive programs are now dependent on their powerful donors, who pull the strings of executive and legislative politics behind the scenes.

In the now distant past and especially in Nordic countries, at least the left wing parties were relaying on small party members’ fees and personal advocacy campaigns for the party values and programs done by the very numerous party and worker’s trade union members - volunteers. Today, all parties in young democracies in Europe are relying on expensive public pooling agencies, highly paid (foreign) spin doctors, expensive posters, mailing, e-campaigns, bought space in the media, free of charge newspapers, public rallies and in many places even on buying of the votes.

Parties do have open and hidden rules of financial participation of the candidates competing for the eligible places. The more eligible is the place, the higher is the sum to be paid by the candidate. Women, especially the ones with the ideas of gender equality and transformative politics mostly do not have this kind of money. So they are sent to run in less eligible or even non eligible places, or they even do not get any place to run at all. SD in Slovenia for example, has internal rules which exempt financially weak candidates from excessive contributions for the eligible places and personal campaigns. There are also standards of minimal in kind contribution of the central party coffers to the personal campaign of each candidate in the form of uniform posters, small hand out objects and party materials.

Cross - cutting women movements, in cooperation with international supporters, especially in the post war Balkan countries with mostly proportional electoral systems, are fighting for a decade for the legal quotas and strong placing rules in the electoral legislation and have succeeded to get them in some countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, maybe soon also in Albania. This has led to much higher percentage of women elected to national and local parliaments - up to 30 % in some of these countries (Kosovo and Macedonia), but it did not really solve the problem of so called token women, women loyal in the first place to the male party leadership, who have mostly been able to get eligible places (with the exemption of Kosovo, where the voters and not the party informal male dominated power circles have decided on which candidates, 30% of women, and 70% of men from each party lists, will be elected by their preferential votes).

The possible remedy for this problem I see is in the thorough, legally regulated democratization of parliamentary parties. Women’s movements should advocate for the legal rules on how the parties have to nominate all their candidates for elected posts. It is really weard, that we tolerate totally undemocratic and non transparent procedures in selections of the persons who will than represent the people and govern in the name of the people and for the people! How can non democratic parties insure democratic governance? How come that tax payers’ money, used for the parties, is spent in such a non transparent way? So we should ask for the selection of the male and female candidates based on clear criteria of gender and age equality, merit, commitment and talent, on separate lists. The selection of the candidates and their placement in eligible places should be given to all party members for national level, and all members of the smaller electoral unites, like regions, cities or communes. The eligible places (if there is no party lists) should be publicly known and distributed between the male and the female candidates with the highest support of party members. Parity and zipper system should be used if there is a party list voting system. Voters should get a preferential vote, but the election of the candidates should be 50 50 women and men - the candidates who in each gender group got the most of voters’ preferences.

The spending for party campaigns should be thoroughly limited and really monitored and the breaches severely punished, (In case of serious financial machinations, for example, we could ask for the obligatory step down of all the members of the executive party body and the ban of the party executive body members to take part in legislative and executive power ).

All candidates on the comparably eligible places should get the same amount of financial support from the party. Free of charge space in public media should be fairly distributed by the law between female and male candidates of each party.

If we want to achieve such dramatic changes, supported by laws, in party campaigning, we need first to get public funding for three things:

Ø For political empowerment of women within the parties

Ø For financing of the cross cutting women’s movements advocating for equality of women and men in political decision making

Ø For the permanent work on political literacy of the young people and all voters.

This means that we need a law on political partiers which earmarks a part of the party budget allocated to the party from the public money, to be used for the vigorous, democratic and autonomous functioning of the women’s party organizations and political empowerment and capacity building of women party members. Autonomous, cross cutting women’s nation wide movements dealing with equality of men and women in political decision making and their massive advocacy campaigns should be financed from the state budget as one of the urgent positive measures for correcting structural power imbalance between women and men in politics.

We need to invest much more public money in curricula of public schools at all levels and in programs of the public media which will help young people and all the voters to really understand their own political system, not only its general values and declarations, but also practical limitations of the existing voting systems impairing their really democratic functioning. Comparative information on best practices of other countries would help a lot.

Do I dream? Yes, I do, but where would we all have been without similar dreams?

Sonja Lokar

According to the Election Code of the Kyrgyz Republic in 2004 an election deposit for candidates to local Parliaments in the amount of 1000 Kyrgyz soms (about 25 USD) was introduced. This deposit pushed away many women from participating in the elections. Gender expertise of the Election Code was conducted and one of its recommendations was suggestion to cancel election deposit for women-candidates. In October 2007 a new wording of the Election Code was passed, which canceled the election deposit for all candidates to deputies of local councils.

Dishonest Parliamentary elections of 2005 led to protests throughout Kyrgyzstan, which ended by escape of the President A. Akaev. Nevertheless, deputies, who won these elections, took over the Parliament. After several law suits between deputy candidates, where 3 women-candidates lost to their opponents. This made Kyrgyz Parliament unisexual for the first time in history. During the next 2,5 years, women’s NGOs launched active campaign on lobbying special measures for women in Constitution and Election Code. As a result of lobbying, in October 2007 after long process of Constitutional reform, the following changes were introduced:

- 100% of Kyrgyz Parliament is formed by party lists;
- Gender quotas to party lists are introduced: each third name in the list must be of the other sex.

As a result of these measures, after pre-term Parliamentary elections in December 2007, which were also recognized as falsified by international and local observers, 23 women appeared in Kyrgyz Parliament, which makes up 26,6% out of total number of deputies and makes Kyrgyzstan a leader on women’s representation in Parliament among Central Asian countries. It is necessary to note that due to the fact that changes to the Code and pre-term elections had interval of 1,5 months, political parties did not have sufficient number of women among them to include them into party list. Parties had to recruit women who were not members of these parties and to win over women from other political parties. Most of women did not have finances to cover election expenses and would not be able to participate in elections, if it were not funds of political parties which were increased by male politicians and businessmen. So, participation of women was paid for by men, this again makes women dependent.

Nurgul Asylbekova
UNDP Country Programme Gender Coordinator
Kyrgyzstan

It would be great if we can collect all laws and other legislation pieces in countries that are pro-women in terms of this discussion. Some of such laws are not seen obviously as women friendly like state limitations on amount of money spend on electoral campaigns in some countries, some are clearly aimed at supporting women in political process, like the one that French expert in on comment in this discussion has mentioned. Recently in Kyrgyzstan we had local elections and such legal regulation as obligatory fee for registering as a candidate was canceled that it led to increase of number of running female candidates and who women.

We can use and adapt these rules and laws to our countries and lobby them.

Nurgul Djanaeva
Forum of women's NGOs of Kyrgyzstan

Does banning corporate donations really help women candidates? A Canadian case study

It has become a truism in many circles that legislated limits on campaign contributions will lead to higher women’s political participation. The logic goes something like this:
women have less access to corporate and other money networks, and therefore banning or significantly limiting the ability of corporations, large unions and wealthy individuals to contribute to political campaigns will advantage women. However, is this really the case? Using the example of changes to Canada’s political party financing rules in 2003 I will argue that it is far more productive to focus on limits on spending in campaigns than limits on contributions. Similarly, focusing on transparency of contributions can be more useful than setting rigid ceilings on the amounts that donors can contribute.

Bill C-24, which was passed in June 2003, placed a ban on contributions by corporations, unions and associations to political parties (with some exceptions to permit small businesses such as the local plumber or corner store to give a small amount to a local candidate), and limited individual political donations to a maximum of $5000/year. Since then subsequent Governments have gone further with these reforms, limiting individual contributions to $1000 and eliminating the exceptions on corporate donors.

The rationale for these reforms was to eliminate the perception that money can influence politics, and also to create more space for excluded groups – such as women – to access political office. But has this happened?

The statistics show that there has been no significant change in the success rate of women candidates since the passing of this legislation in 2003. The number of women elected to the Canadian House of Commons still hovers between 20-22%. (The increase in women running in 2008 is likely attributable to a campaign by Equal Voice to get party leaders to commit to increasing the number of women their parties nominated).

2008: 445 women candidates, 68 elected
2006: 380 women candidates, 64 elected
2004: 391 women candidates, 65 elected
2000: 373 women candidates, 62 elected

Before Bill C-24, Canadian electoral laws focused on transparency and spending limits. There was no limit to who could contribute to a campaign, or how much they could donate – except they were required to publicly disclose the donation on the Elections Canada website. Having said that, candidates, parties and third party organizations were (and still are) strictly limited in how much money they can spend during an election campaign. The amount a candidate is allowed to spend in a particular electoral district is tied to the number of eligible voters – averaging between roughly $50,000 - $90,000.

One problem here is that these limits applied only to candidates once they were nominated. However in a first-past-the-post electoral system, the real key is getting the party nomination in the first place – and here candidates were allowed to spend as much as they wanted to. Under Bill C-24, for the first time, due to significant lobbying of womens groups, spending limits were placed on nomination campaigns. In fact, in the original Bill the limit was set at 50% of the spending limit for the electoral district, and due to organized lobbying efforts of the women’s caucus this was reduced to 20% at the committee stage. This means nomination campaigns – which previously ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in a “safe” seat, are now limited to between $10,000 - $20,000. This is a strong example of how concerted efforts of women parliamentarians can impact legislation.

Political party women’s sections agreed that the limits on spending during nomination races was a positive change. However they were more critical of the limits on donations. Most political parties in Canada have special Trust Funds for women candidates. Suddenly these trust funds were categorized as “associations” and were placed in the same category as corporations and unions – who could not transfer money to women candidates. Or they were an arm of the political party and therefore found themselves unable to raise money from traditional sources, such as unions, women’s associations and businesses. As a result the amount of money available to women candidates in fact decreased in many cases.

In addition, researchers and journalists who were previously able to track corporate contributions to political parties suddenly found that corporations were instead having their directors or staff make contributions in their own names, and the strict limits on contributions provided incentives for candidates to seek loopholes, such as setting up “friends of” accounts to spend money in between election campaigns, which falls outside the legislation. While there are strong counter-collusion measures in the legislation, in practice researchers have found it very difficult to track this. So – instead of creating a more transparent system the limits have in fact created one where those who know how to manipulate the system (as opposed to excluded groups such as women) have an advantage.

While it is impossible to know the real impact of legislative reforms such as Bill C-24 due to so many other factors that influence women’s participation in politics, it is worth considering whether some kinds of reforms are better than others in different political contexts. In Canada, I would argue that the limits on campaign spending and requirements for transparency of contributions have been more effective than banning corporate donations.

Anita Vandenbeld is a former Director of Parliamentary Affairs for the Minister of Democratic Reform in Canada and currently project manager for iKNOW Politics