Pundits in the United States continue to dicker over America’s readiness for a Madame President. But in Brazil, it’s no conversation: The country will vote for its leader on Sunday and amid a sea of 11 candidates, the election’s two front-runners—incumbent Dilma Rousseff and challenger Marina Silva—are both women.
The race is historic for Brazil. Rousseff and Silva represent the exception: Only 59.5% of women in the country work, says Brazilian political consultant Cila Schulman, compared to 80.9% of men. She adds that the biggest gap, however, is in politics. Currently only 9.6% of the seats in Brazil’s Congress are held by women.
Despite the current numbers, a change is coming. “Research shows that Brazilian voters strongly prefer women candidates,” says Scott Desposato, a political science professor at the University of California in San Diego. The perception of women as outsiders who can help address pressing economic, efficiency and corruption problems has spurred their rise to high office in the Latin American country, adds Desposato, and many poorer Brazilians see female politicians in a positive light—as mother figures.
But that soft spot for women hasn’t kept Brazilians from criticizing Rousseff, the country’s first female president. The career civil servant has drawn failing marks for her handling of Brazil’s financial system: Economists see her as having squandered opportunities to address public debt, improve public services and unravel a complicated tax system. She’s also been blamed for Brazil’s slowed economic growth and for how she and the finance minister have interfered with the central bank.
“The fact that inflation has been high, over 6.5% should have led them to let the price of the real fall,” said Werner Baer, an economics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the author of The Brazilian Economy. “The exchange rate unchanged means that exports of manufactured [goods] are less competitive, and the opposite is true for imports. This has hurt Brazil’s industrial sector.”
Rousseff has support from Brazilians who benefit from Bolsa Familia, a social welfare program started by her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and from workers who have seen their wages go up during her tenure.
Silva is the ying to Rousseff’s business sector yang. Executives view Silva, an internationally known environmentalist and a member of the Socialist Party, as market-friendly. They say she’s surrounded herself with an impressive financial team—including Maria Alice Setubal, the heiress to Itaúsa, the Brazilian holding company that owns Itaú Unibanco, one of Latin America’s largest banks with 96,000 employees.
Silva’s also focused on sustainability programs. Because of her pro-environmental stance—she was the environment minister under Rousseff’s predecessor Lula da Silva, serving between 2003 and 2008—executives of agribusiness view her with skepticism. Should she win the majority of voters’ hearts, Silva would be the first Green president of any large nation. “My objective is not to be President of Brazil. My objective is to contribute so that Brazil can be better, that the world can be better,” Silva recently told Time.
Silva, who also unsuccessfully ran for president in 2010, also has an appealing personal story. One of 11 children (three who have since passed), she is the daughter of rubber tappers from Brazil’s hinterlands and grew up impoverished. She suffered many illnesses, including malaria, hepatitis and metal poisoning. She overcame the challenges and taught herself to read at age 16.
Silva became a presidential candidate in August after her running mate, Eduardo Campos, tragically died in a plane crash while on the campaign trail. She immediately surged in the polls against Rousseff, saw her popularity dip dramatically as she was attacked by the incumbent and the centrist candidate Aceia Neves, the third-place candidate and a former governor. But Silva’s poll numbers steadied by Thursday night, says Schulman.
Both candidates have received their share of gendered criticism. Schulman says that Brazilians often say Rousseff is a “too strong, sometimes aggressive kind of woman.” Schulman adds that “[Silva], on the other hand, is quite fragile, which can harm her image as a president ready to face strikes, disasters and turbulences in the economy.”
Currently, Rousseff has 40% of the vote versus Silva’s 24% and third-place candidate Aécio Neves’ 19%, according to Thursday’s poll from IBOPE Intelligence in partnership with TV Globo and Estado de S. Paulo.
Brazil has a compressed election season, with only 45 days of television advertising, compared to the one in the United States. Rousseff naturally has the power of the office and the exposure that comes with doing her job. A runoff is expected and set for October 26, and by law happens if no one candidate gets 50% of the vote during Sunday’s election. Then a second round of voting is between the top two candidates.
Sunday’s race is down to the wire, but Brazil watchers are betting that October 26’s contest will result in another presidenta for Brazil.