Santiago Cabrera POSC 308 Gender Country Policy Brief THE SPANISH LAW OF EQUALITY

The main objective of this essay is to analyse how the spanish Organic Law 3/2007, 22 March for an Effective Equality between Women and Men, commonly known as Law of Equality works and how effective it is in its purpose.

This law, among other measures, introducts electoral quotas that aim the parity in the political representation of the country. For example, since the approval of this law political parties are obliged to include at least a 40% of women in the electoral lists. The Law of Equality was introduced by PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Espaol) in 2007, at the end of the legislature that began in 2004. This political party is the main one in the left, politically speaking. This law was controversial because it affected not only political representation, but also the private sector, stablishing also representation quotas in the main boards of big businesses and obliging small and big enterprises to implement equality plans in order to adequate the business structure to society. Initially this law was blocked by an action of unconstitutionality driven by PP (Partido Popular), which is the main political party in the right. The Constitutional Court failed that this law is constitutional, and although now in 2013 PP is the party in the government with absolute majority, the Equality law has not been revoked, something that a sector of the PP supporters were waiting anxiously.

The policies introducting positive discrimination favouring women are based in a simple reality, women have been always discriminated because of the only fact that

Santiago Cabrera POSC 308 they are women, therefore in policies of positive discrimination the State can put temporarily the Principle of Equal Treatment in the back burner, because an unequal treatment has to be promoted when the starting point is different for two or more different groups, men and women in this case. The imposition of quotas for ensuring women representation is one of the most popular positive discrimination measures around the world. Studies in this area have revealed that generally the imposition of this quotas produce long term benefits, they make citizens aware of the real problem and the number of female candidates grow progressively.

The Law of Equality provides important legal definitions of the types of discrimination, direct and indirect, and also some positive action measures; the more important ones are: the implementation of non-sexistlanguage in the administration, the creation of equality offices in each ministry, measures to encourage women to access new technologies and aid to women living in rural areas among others. This law also includes some rules related to the effective legal protection, there is one that has been really controversial, the one that inverts the burden of proof in cases of gender violence, but only when the woman is the victim, this means that if a woman makes a formal complaint against a man accussing him of hitting her for example, the man is the one that has to proof that he didnt do that. Some social rights have been improved also with this law, for example the lenghtening of the maternity leave and the creation of a paternity leave as well. As I mentioned before, one of the aspects of the law that has been considered more innovative is the promotion of equality in the private sector. The most important measure is the one that obliges to negotiate equality plans in the business collective

Santiago Cabrera POSC 308 bargaining in companies with more than 250 employees, and the obligation of promoting an equalitive thinking in companies with less than that number. Anyway the law doesnt stablish any fine for companies that violate this law, so I think it is not so effective. Another really innovative measure is the positive discrimination of women in the executive boards of big companies, the aim is a steady annual increase of 10% in order the achieve the goal of 40% of the executive board in 8 years time.

One of the main purposes of this law is to regulate the electoral lists in all the elections in Spain, both national and local. Since the implementation of this law the electoral lists have to be gender balanced, the candidates of each sex have to represent 40% of the total, minimum for both men and women. The law of equality stablishes two rules to protect the balance:

In electoral lists with less than five candidates, the proportion of men and women has to be as near as possible to the numeric equilibrium. Also in the electoral lists with five or more candidates each section of five has to maintain the minimum proportion of 40% for each sex. When the last section of the electoral lists is compounded of less than five candidates the proportion would be again as near as possible to the numeric equilibrium.

If the electoral list doesnt accomplish the law it will be annuled. Thanks to this rule this policy is effective, because in another way political parties would continue doing each legislature the composition that they would prefer without any care about gender. There are some countries in Europe applying penalties to parties which dont

Santiago Cabrera POSC 308 accomplish the equality ratio, for example in France a fine is imposed, but this has been proved to be ineffective because many parties prefer to pay rather than change their electoral lists.

I think that the law of equality is a really innovative instrument in the spanish jurisdictional system, introducing the positive discrimination for women in politics. Now the parties have to seek the equality if they dont want to see their electoral lists annuled. The problem I see is that this rule is easy to dodge, a male-dominated party can always include the minimum number of women necessary and in the bottom of each section, being sure that mostly male candidates are going to be elected. About the inversion of the burden of proof I should say that is a good measure in order to protect the victims of gender violence that because of the fear or the a difficult situation of dependece cant proof that they have been hitted by their male partners, but I think that maybe too severe, this measure could be used with bad intentions or for coercing the male partner. Finally about the interference of the state in the private business trying to introduce equality quotas I have to say that I dont agree. If I were the owner of a company I would like to be free to select the members of my executive board, meaning that that I would be choose them based in their curriculum, behaviour etc. But not obliged by a law that forces me to introduce more women or men, maybe a full women executive board could be better in one company, as a full male one could be for another.