The General Secretary of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, wrote in April 2014 on Twitter that positive discrimination in favour of women is a mechanism whereby women get back through the law that which a macho society has taken from them; a comment that may have led many to believe that Podemos, the new left-wing party in Spain, was in favour of positive discrimination for women.
Less than a year later in February 2015, results in the primaries for the Autonomous Elections, to be held in May this year, show that of the seventeen Podemos candidates for Regional General Secretary, one for each of the seventeen regions, thirteen are men. The voters, signed up members of the Podemos circles, had to choose between thirty four candidates in each region, seventeen women and seventeen men, equal numbers to their credit, being part of the rules set up for choosing candidates. However the Podemos voters assigned 76% of the top positions in the regions to be fought for in the elections by men. These positions are immensely powerful. General Secretaries and Presidents of the autonomous regions are described in the established parties as “the barons” of the political scenario. If Podemos were to win in all the regional elections with this same proportion of men to women, it would appear that the new party will have done little to create conditions for women to emerge as political leaders.
The Podemos platform includes the creation of a public bank, restructuring debt, a shorter working week and an increase in public spending, just for starters and most importantly, wants to focus on a form of direct democracy which allows for far greater participation of the electorate in the development of their programme than exists in the traditional parties.
