Women’s participation in politics in Hungary The state of affairs

Contents International overview Women in the Hungarian Parliament Women in local governments Women in the government Women in the European Parliament Voluntary party quotas Efforts made to introduce constitutional and statutory quota in Hungary Political elbow-room The issue of equal opportunities for women in the 2010 programs of the parties

Hungary in international comparison I. Proportion of women in the 27 EU states, 2010, % Forrás:

Hungary in international comparison II. Proportion of women in the EU-8 countries, 1998 – 2010, % Forrás:

Hungary in international comparison III. Gradation of IPU (Inter-Parliamentary Union) and Gender Gap Index May, 2010: Hungary is in the 100th place out of 131 February, 2013: Hungary is in the 117th place out of 139 Hungary belongs to the one third of the countries of the world where there are the least women representatives. Gender Gap Index (2012): considering political involvement of women Hungary is in the 117th place (out of 135 countries).

Women in the Hungarian Parliament Women in the Hungarian Parliament Proportion of women in the Hungarian Parliament, 1990 – 2010, % Nők aránya a magyar parlamentben, , % Forrás: Koncz 2006; névlistája alapján saját számításwww.valasztas.hu

Women in Local Governments Women in Local Governments Proportion of women representatives in the Parliament and the local governments, 2002 – 2010, % blue: MP, red: local goverments Forrás: Koncz (2006); névlistái alapján saját számításwww.valasztas.hu

Women in the government Women in the government, 1990 – 2010, person blue:women Forrás: névlistái alapján saját számításwww.parlament.hu

Women in the European Parliament Proportion of women in the European Parliament, 2013, % Forrás:

Voluntary party quotas MSZP: “In elected governing bodies – at local, regional and national levels – as well as in lists of representatives for the EU Parliament, the Hungarian Parliament and the local governments at least one fifth of the candidates should be under 35, and at least one fifth of them should be women.” LMP: The party’s constitution states that the party will have a gender quota at EU parliamentary elections (it is a version of the so called zip principle: there should only be two candidates of the same sex on the list after one another). As far as local government elections are concerned, we can only find in the constitution that they will regulate the procedure later (they adopted the gender quota in their own governing bodies). SZEMA: In case of each and every elected body as well as in case of candidates for national and local representatives the proportion of women (and Roma human rights activists) should be the same as their proportion within the party.

Efforts made to introduce constitutional and statutory quota in Hungary -2007: bills submitted by Klára Sándor and Bálint Magyar -One third of the proposed ministers should belong to the same sex -Introducing the zip principle compiling the list of candidates at the elections ◦ Introducing the gender quota in case of appointing under-secretaries of state 2009: Nők a Pályán: they wanted to introduce the zip principle in list of candidates for the elections 2011: Bill of Tamás Gaudi-Nagy and Katalin Ertsey: they also wanted a special version of the zip principle to be introduced

Political elbow-room Review of political forces within and without the Parliament

Parliamentary Parties I. Fidesz – KDNP Two thirds (2/3) majority Confrontational and discriminative policies New constitution Women’s place is at home New election laws in order to cement their own power

Parliamentary Parties II. - The democratic opposition LMP MSZP (Jobbik) After MSZP and LMP split up: Demokratikus Koalíció (Democratic Coalition) Párbeszéd Magyarországért (Dialogue for Hungary) - LMP - MSZP - (Jobbik)

Democratic opposition outside the Parliament Együtt 2014-PM (Together 2014) : ◦ Szolidaritás (Solidarity) ◦ Haza and Haladás (Homeland and Progress) ◦ Milla PM Supporting the introduction of a women’s quota at the round table talks of the opposition

Organizations and movements of civilians Women’s professional and interest groups (Nane, Mona, Patent, Női Érdek /Women’s Rights/, Nők Lázadása /Revolt of Women/) Local women’s clubs The government only pretends to cooperate with the professional and interest organizations.

The issue of equal opportunities for women in the 2010 programs of the parties The issue of equal opportunities for women was not prioritized in the 2010 election programs. LMP: The only party dealing with the issue, although they do not go into details in their election program but deal with it in a separate, special program The right-wing parties only deal with women’s issues within the family Women’s issues have been left out from the program of the MSZP, too. Explanation: Political parties only include women’s issues into their programs if and when they are forced to do it for some reason (e.g.: pressure from women’s organizations, the decline of the economy or the intention of winning over women voters)

Summary Compared to other EU countries, Hungary is lagging behind concerning women’s participation in politics Women are seriously underrepresented in local and national politics The situation is slightly better at the level of local politics Efforts made to introduce constitutional and statutory quota have not been successful so far In the 2010 election programs (except for LMP) the issue of equal opportunities for women only plays a marginal role

What can we do in this situation? What do we plan? To set up a civilian women’s shadow government.

About shadow governments in general Shadow governments or shadow cabinets are usually non-official groups of politicians of the opposition that form an alternative government which corresponds with the structure of the government in power, its ministries, etc., in order to communicate their own solutions to certain specific issues – in case they were in power. This way they can prove to the public that they are capable of functioning as a real government. Although in several European countries it is a popular means of political communication, nobody has ever tried it in Hungary.

The first shadow government in Hungary is going to be brought about by women’s civilian organizations with whom SZEMA did cooperate very effectively last year. This is not like the usual European model. Both the members and the advisors of the shadow government are civilians, committed to democracy and they are experts on their fields. You may ask – and rightfully so – why the shadow government is not going to consist of active politicians. I will explain it later.

The activity of the women’s shadow government The women’s shadow government will persistently take a stand on issues concerning the country (I am going to mention some examples later) and offer their solutions to the problems. Apart from this, they aspire to become a proactive factor in daily politics, making an impact on politics of the present and future governments on women’s issues. This way the women’s shadow government can prove the competence of their own female ministers. They want to set an example: they want to raise awareness of potential female (and partly male) constituents of the fact that women’s expertise is not a bit less substantial than that of men. It is especially important with the present election system: the number of MP’ s is going to be reduced by nearly 50% and since it is a single ballot system, alliances should be formed before the elections, so women’s chances deteriorate further.

The goals of the civilian women’s shadow government 1. to increase women’s presence in democratic public life, including politics. In order to achieve that we need to point out the most serious problems of the country, mostly the ones that impact practically every woman. Let me mention a few examples: schooling is only compulsory until the age of 16 instead of 18; the presence of the police in schools; radical diminishing of government financed places at the universities; forced retirement of teachers, judges and doctors. They do not create new working places or extended social support but they, for example, build sport stadiums and make other pseudo projects. Young people leave the country by the hundreds and so on. These issues, of course, concern everyone, not just women.

The goals of the civilian women’s shadow government 2. People’s attention should be called to the inequalities and the unacceptably low level of representation of women in the Parliament. It should be pointed out that there are no aspects of a democratic society where it would be reasonable and justified to ignore women’s point of view, that each and every political issue can be evaluated from women’s point of view as well. More than half of the population is women. We can only speak about democracy if not a single group of society is excluded from decision making. As we could see, in today’s Hungary less than 10% of the MP’s is women.

The goals of the civilian women’s shadow government 3. Addressing and involving female constituents. In order to involve more women in democratic public life it is necessary to raise awareness of female voters. They should be able to realize they are underrepresented in public life and politics and, they should be aware of the goals to be achieved. Therefore, it is inevitable to criticize the policies of the political parties and their discriminative way of choosing their candidates. The parties either do not take into consideration that there should be a sufficient number of women candidates or they force women candidates to stay in the background. This bad practice must be criticized. Essentially, all bigger political parties are like that. That’s why we decided that it should be civilians who form a shadow government.