The Second Barrier: Gender, Class, and Social Diversity in the Recruitment of Women to Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies (1998-2022)

Abstract

The growth of women's political representation is usually assessed by the number of seats won. This article shifts the focus from "how many women" to "which women," asking whether the numerical expansion of women in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies was accompanied by greater social diversity, operationalized through the occupations candidates self-declared to the Superior Electoral Court. The study population comprises all 3,591 representatives elected across the seven general elections from 1998 to 2022, of whom 380 are women. The primary analysis uses 3,342 records (356 women and 2,986 men) classified into 12 social categories; only 249 cases coded as "retired," "not reported," or "other" are excluded. The unweighted mean Simpson diversity of women's delegations fell from 0.862 to 0.633 (−26.5%), but the monotonic trend is not statistically supported (Kendall's τ = −0.429; exact two-sided p = 0.239). Sen's slope is −0.0308 per election (95% CI [−0.0845, 0.0166]). The Simpson index, bias-corrected Shannon entropy, and rarefaction do not consistently support lower diversity among women, and there is no evidence that the gender gap widens over time or that women elected on the left are more socially diverse. None of the four primary tests remains significant after Holm correction. The data show numerical expansion alongside a descriptive decline in social diversity, but do not robustly confirm a "second barrier." The observational design precludes causal identification.