Women’s participation
in politics in Hungary
The state of affairs
Contents
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
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
Forrás: www.ipu.org
Svédország
Hollandia
Finnország
Belgium
Dánia
33
Spanyolország
27 28
Németország
Ausztria
23
20 20 21 21 22 22
19
19
15 17 17
14
14
11 13
Portugália
Észtország
Lettország
Csehország
Olaszország
Bulgária
Lengyelország
Luxemburg
Litvánia
Franciaország
Görögország
Egyesült Királyság
Szlovákia
Szlovénia
Írország
Ciprus
9 9
Románia
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Magyarország
Málta
Hungary in international
comparison I.
Proportion of women in the 27 EU states, 2010, %
46
39 40 41
37 38
Hungary in international
comparison II.
Proportion of women in the EU-8 countries, 1998 – 2010, %
25
20
Csehország
Észtország
15
Lengyelország
Lettország
Litvánia
10
Szlovákia
Szlovénia
Magyarország
5
0
1998
Forrás: www.ipu.org
2002
2006
2010
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
Proportion of women in the Hungarian Parliament, 1990 – 2010, %
12
Nők aránya a magyar parlamentben,1990-2010, %
11,1
10,6
10
9,1
9,0
8,3
8
7,3
6
4
2
0
1990
1994
1998
Forrás: Koncz 2006; www.valasztas.hu névlistája alapján
saját számítás
2002
2006
2010
Women in Local Governments
Proportion of women representatives in the Parliament and the local
governments, 2002 – 2010, %
blue: MP, red: local goverments
25
19,1
20
17,3
15,8
15
Parlamenti képviselő
10,6
10
9,1
9,0
5
0
2002
2006
2010
Forrás: Koncz (2006); www.valasztas.hu névlistái alapján saját
számítás
Önkormányzati
képviselő*
Women in the government
Women in the government, 1990 – 2010, person
blue:women
37
28
24
26
20
20
19
12
Nő
Férfi
Forrás: www.parlament.hu névlistái alapján saját számítás
Bajnai-kormány
második
Gyurcsánykormány
0
1
második Orbánkormány
5
3
első Gyurcsánykormány
5
Medgyessykormány
1
első Orbánkormány
2
Horn-kormány
1
Antall-kormány
(Borosskormány)
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Forrás: www.ipu.org
20
10
0
Málta
25 25 22 22
Csehország
Lengyelország
Olaszország
29
Litvánia
30
Írország
41 39
38 37 36 36 36 36 36
33 33 33 32
Szlovénia
Görögország
Egyesült Királyság
Luxemburg
Ciprus
Spanyolország
Románia
Portugália
Magyarország
Belgium
Németország
Lettország
40
Szlovákia
50 48 47
46 44
Ausztria
Franciaország
Dánia
Bulgária
50
Hollandia
70 62
56
60
Észtország
Svédország
Finnország
Women in the European Parliament
Proportion of women in the European Parliament, 2013, %
18
0
Voluntary party quotas
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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
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
- 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)
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
-
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
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
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
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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
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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.