Potencjał wyborczy kobiet w ujęciu krajowym i regionalnym w świetle statystyki Państwowej Komisji Wyborczej

Abstract

Elections to the Sejm in 2011, following the changes of electoral law, brought a new quality of the construction of electoral lists: 35% of places on each list were guaranteed to women and men. As a result, political parties put on their lists 43% of women who have won only 29% of votes, however. Women’s electoral power is measured as the ratio of voting result and participation on lists. A relatively low rate of 0.68 has been adopted in our country. Additionally, as much as 3/4 of female candidates got a trace number of votes, below 0.3% of available ones in their area. To compare, the façade electoral function was taken by 2/3 of male candidates. In the 2011 election, 36 candidates were the “electoral locomotives” in our country (those who collect the minimum of 10% of available votes in the area), including 26 men and 10 women. Statistically, the largest contribution to the success of their own committees was made by female candidates from the Palikot Movement as well as Civic Platform. In the Podlaskie Voivodship the deficit of human potential of women can be noticed, that is the number candidates for the elective political offices. Dependence on the place on the list and the collected votes in the case of women candidates in the Podlasie indicates that in the majority of cases, the position on the given list has not influenced the size of the obtained support of voters, which is quite unusual. In terms of party activity, women are clearly less present than men on both, the national as well as regional levels. Men, at least for now, are a quantitative framework of human resources of political parties. System changes (introduction of the amount act) not connected with the bottom-up growth in number of active women in political parties, social organisations, institutions emerging local leaders, will not lead to groundbreaking changes in the structure of political decision-makers.