The European Parliamentary elections are approaching. Their results are easy to predict in Poland. For many weeks public opinin polls have been showing that Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform – PO) has the greatest support and can count on 40-50% of votes, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice – PiS) is second with 20-30%, the coalition of Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej (Democratic Left Alliance – SLD) and Unia Pracy (Labour Union – UP) is third with 7-15% and PSL (Polish People’s Party – PSL) is fourth with 4-8% of votes. All other parties and electoral coalitions have minimal chances of entering the European Parliament.
Over 130 lists have been registered with the National Electoral Commission, including 10 in all constituencies. These are: Platforma Obywatelska, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej-Unia Pracy, Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, Prawica Rzeczypospolitej (The Right of the Republic), Porozumienie dla Przyszłości: Partia Demokratyczna-Socjaldemokracja-Zieloni 2004 (Alliance for the Future: Democratic Party-Socialdemocracy-Zieloni 2004), Samoobrona RP (Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland), Polska Partia Pracy (Polish Labour Party), Unia Polityki Realnej (Real Politics Unia) and Libertas which is the Polish branch of Declan Ganley’s Libertas party created in February 2009.
According to data of the National Electoral Commission there will be over 1,300 male and female candidates running in the elections, with a very uneven distribution of men and women, as only 24% of the candidates are women and 76% are men.
There are no stipulations in Polish legislation requiring parity or other procedures leading to the equalisation of the political representation of men and women. The largest parties also do not use such mechanisms. Of the nationwide lists, Polska Partia Pracy has come the closest to achieving parity, with 47% of women candidates. The participation of women candidates is significantly lower on all the other lists. One of the members of the coalition Porozumienie dla Przyszłości, Zieloni 2004, supports parity on electoral lists and there is an equal number of men and women among the party’s authorities, however, the share of women among the candidates of the entire alliance Porozumienie dla Przyszłości is only 31%. The situation is even worse when it comes to other electoral committees. Prawica Rzeczpospolitej has 28% of women on its lists, PO – 27%, SLD-UP and Libertas – 20% each, PiS and PSL – 18% each, Samoobrona RP – 17%, UPR – 12%. Parity (50% each of women and men) is used by Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party) but this party has only registered a list in one constituency. Partia Kobiet (The Women’s Party), which has expressed support for parity not only on electrocal lists but also in some public institutions, was not able to register its lists.
It should also be pointed out that not only are women a visible minority among candidates, they are also placed significantly lower than men on the electoral lists. This means that the percentage of women among Polish Europarlamentarians will most likely not exceed 20%. Currently, the Polish representation in the EP consists of 8 women (15%) and 46 men (85%) and it can be expected that these numbers will be similar during the next term.
The issue of women’s rights is seldom brought up by the dominant parties on the Polish political scene. The topic of women’s rights is usually treated as a “substitute” topic and is pushed aside. Rightist governments often call upon “pro-family politics”, while in reality family benefits were very low during the reign of PiS and few benefits had universal character. After the PO came to power, the situation did not change. Women’s rights are also neglected by leftist parties. For example, during the reign of the SLD the restrictive anti-abortion law was not liberalised and no solutions leading to equal pay for equal work were implemented, even though such issues had been raised in the party’s ideological declarations. Thus, the dominant attitude to gender issues on the Polish political scene is indifference. Neglecting the various forms of discrimination which are experienced by women results in the strengthening of the conservative status quo. Additionally, certain parties try to “smuggle in” very specific, patriarchal solutions connected to gender policies, presenting them as neutral and natural. For example, the reform of the pension system significantly increases the discrepancy between the pensions of men and women. The situation of women in the labour market is still much worse than that of men, but none of the important parties want to introduce solutions which would change this state of affairs. Such an attitude is visible in the policies of the subsequent Polish governments and in the views of Polish male and female parlamentarians in the European Parliament – most of them steadfastly support conservative and antifeminist initiatives.
One of the main characteristics of the programmes of the two strongest Polish parties – Platforma Obywatelska and Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – is the substitution of women’s rights with rights of the family. Both parties define the family as the basic unit of society. The traditional family (understood as a married couple, man and woman, raising children) is supposed to replace the state in solving social problems. The electoral programme of the PO includes the section: “Autonomous and Responsible Family” while it is difficult to find references to women and their autonomy. Similar stipulations are present in the project of the constitution prepared by PiS, where we can read that “The family, as a community which is basic and primary to the state, has its own unalienable rights”. Both parties oppose the liberalisation of the anti-abortion law. Neither one proposes solutions aiming at equalising the situation of men and women in the labour market, although PiS suggests a slightly more active role of the state in solving social problems. In this regard both parties treat relations of domination between the sexes as neutral and nonproblematic. Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe and Samoobrona RP hold very similar opinions, although the latter party, similarly to PiS, emphasies the social function of the state.
Radical right-wing parties have a slightly different approach to gender. Unia Polityki Realnej, Prawica Rzeczpospolitej and Libertas openly support the traditional division of gender roles, according to which the woman’s basic function is raising children and unpaid housework. These parties oppose the emancipation of women and want to disrupt the conservative status quo and introduce even more conservative solutions than the current ones. At the same time, they combine traditional gender relations with support for radically liberal economic solutions.
The third approach is represented by political initiatives which emphasise the emancipation of women in their political programmes. In the upcoming elections these are mostly three electoral committees: SLD-UP, PPP and Porozumienie dla Przyszłości. All these electoral committees declare support for gender equality. However, in practice it seems that they also do not treat women’s rights seriously. PD politicians have supported the conservative model of the state and of the family for many years and have participated in rightist governments which contributed to the worsening of the situation of women. Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej and Socjaldemokracja Polska have been declaring support for the emancipation of women for years but treated this dimension of politics marginally while in power. Both these parties include in their programmes stipulations concerning equal rights for men and women in family life and in the labour market, combatting violence against women and the right of women to decide about maternity. Yet, in practice politicians of these parties rarely emphasise these issues and marginalised them while in power. In the period 2001-2005 central-leftist governments abandoned the fights for the rights of women (and other discriminated groups), in exchange for the church’s support for Poland’s accession into the European Union. Zieloni 2004 put the most emphasis on gender equality in their programme, but this party is the smallest and weakest in the alliance Porozumienie dla Przyszłości. Zieloni 2004 also pays a lot of attention to reproductive rights of women and the representation of women in public life, but the party puts less emphasis on elements of the patriarchy connected with the Polish model of capitalism and poverty as part of this model. PPP also postulates gender equality, but also this party hardly ever voices issues connected to gender discrimination. This party stands out due to its critical stance towards capitalism, which is seen by representatives of PPP as the source of most forms of discrimination, including the discrimination of women.
The lack of postulates connected to gender equality in the electoral campaign is connected not only to the fact that the largest parties neglect this issue. This oversight is also a result of the weakness of feminist movements among non-governmental organisations. Issues connected to gender are raised by few organisations and their scope is quite limited. The few exceptions include: the Heinrich Boell Foundation, Feminist Think Tank, the Feminoteka Foundation, the Pro-Femina Association and the Mama Foundation. Some of them defend broadly understood women’s rights (Feminist Think Tank, Feminoteka Foundation), while others focus on specific rights (Pro-Femina is fighting for women’s right to abortion, Mama Foundation – for the rights of mothers). However, the activity of these NGOs does not transfer onto current politics and anti-feminist organisations, which defend traditional patriarchal relations between the sexes, are much more numerous.
It therefore seems that issues of gender equality and the discrimination of women will not play a significant role in the upcoming elections to the European Parliament, as was the case in the previous elections five years ago. It is possible to discern that gender is not among the interests of the major Polish political parties. Women appear on billboards and in commercials mostly as mothers, good wives or, at the most, serve to soften a party’s image (as in the PiS campaign). No party or coalition puts gender at the forefront of its campaign. Unfortunately, it seems that gender blindness will remain one of the distringuishing features of Polish male Europarlamentarians and the few Polish female ones as well.
Translated by: Justyna Włodarczyk