From left to right: Gustavo Petro, Roberto Pombo (moderator) Federico Gutiérrez and Sergio Fajardo, during a debate at the end of January. Camilo Rozo

Cecilia López is at 78 years old one of the women who best knows the intricacies of Colombian power.

With a degree in Economics and two postgraduate degrees, she has dedicated most of her life to politics.

She was always an outsider in a world dominated by elites, castes, and men.

She tried three times to be the candidate for the presidency of the Liberal Party.

And she three times she crashed into an impossible reality.

Her last attempt was in 2010, after she became the star senator for her debates against former president Álvaro Uribe.

Now I'm ready, she thought.

She was wrong again.

"[César] Gaviria [the president of the Liberal Party] closed the doors on my nose," she says now.

López resigned from the party and abandoned politics.

A decade after that episode, Colombia is once again immersed in another electoral race.

In the uncertain national political landscape there is only one certainty.

The next president will be a man again.

Of the 19 politicians with aspirations, only four are women and three of them do not even have the possibility of formalizing a candidacy, diluted in coalitions in which men lead the polls.

When López still dreamed in the early 2000s of turning inertia around, a reporter asked her if she had not yet realized that being a senator was her glass ceiling.

She now she does know.

"And today it's the same," she says.

The UN has warned in a recent report on the gender gap in Colombia that when participation does not depend on an administrative decision (quota law) but on the popular vote, women end up notably underrepresented.

Legally, the country has made notable progress.

In 2000, a quota law was passed that requires that 30% of senior public positions be held by women.

In fact, the current cabinet of Iván Duque began as a parity, although today there are six female ministers out of 18. And last December the Senate approved a reform of the electoral law that requires party lists to have equality of men and women. women, but pending a pronouncement of the Constitutional Court, necessary for its ratification, its application depends on the commitment of the parties.

Transparency for Colombia pointed out in December that in the preliminary lists for Congress, women hardly exceed 40%.

A percentage that, after going through the polls, is drastically reduced.

Being part of a list does not guarantee access to power.

In Colombia, most of the lists are open, that is, each voter chooses their candidates.

In the legislature that is about to end, of the 270 elected positions in Congress, only 55 are women, 19.7%, 10 percentage points less than the average for Latin America and the Caribbean and also far from the global average, which is 24.5%, according to 2019 data from UN Women.

At the territorial level, the picture is similar.

In the last elections, 132 women mayors were elected, less than 15% of all mayors in the country.

The political scientist Sandra Borda, after years at the university and working as a columnist, has decided to "take action."

She is a Senate candidate for the newly resurrected New Liberalism party.

“I am on a closed and parity list that recognizes that these inequalities exist, so it is not up to us to go out and get our votes, people vote for the entire list.

There are many parties that make open lists, clearly to the detriment of our participation, and include women who are directly linked to male politicians: aunts, cousins, wives”.

The traditional parties are one of the main obstacles.

Organizations tied to political castes that have been managing politics for decades and even bequeath power from parents to children, with relatives and friends who end up weaving their network through all State agencies.

Your chances of getting funding and control over millions of votes is immense.

Quotas are sometimes handled for their own benefit.

"Now they put the heiresses of the political clans of the country and close the space to all those women who do not have those votes of origin," laments López, who sees there a thick glass ceiling for women prepared for politics, but without options. .

“There are many policies that make us feel ashamed, like the president of Congress [accused of plagiarizing her thesis and the center of numerous controversies].

What is she wearing?

Votes".

Economic inequality

It is these elections to the Congress, for the first time in the history of the country, a feminist political group is presented.

"We saw that there were no opportunities in the parties, that's why we made our move," explains Elizabeth Giraldo, head of the Senate list for We Are Ready.

The candidate denounces, in addition to the logic of the traditional parties, underlying structural problems that the spheres of power have not touched.

Economic inequalities: in 2018 the percentage of poor women was 18% higher than that of men.

And inequality of roles: in 2017 women spent just over seven hours a day on average on unpaid domestic and care work compared to just over three hours on average for men.

Giraldo maintains that thinking only of names with which to fill the lists or percentages does not solve the underlying problem.

That is the debate that López is now trying to stir up from her place as a columnist in various media.

“As long as that image that we were born to care is not broken, they see everything else we do as of secondary importance.

Women increasingly invade academic spaces and reach the market and strangle them, she understands that her job is to care for and subsidize the world.

One thing is filial love and another is activity, the responsibility of care is a social responsibility”, she maintains.

There she sees the "core" that prevents Colombian women from having economic autonomy in order to have political power.

There is less than a month to go before the consultations are held in the coalitions that will define the presidential candidates.

Three of the four women who are currently in the presidential race, whose first round will be on May 29, will not achieve the candidacy, according to all the polls.

Ingrid Betancourt will remain, as a candidate without a coalition of the Oxygen Green party, but she barely exceeds 7% in voting intention.

Politicians increasingly show their discomfort when questioned about the absence of women.

Most defend themselves by promising that, if they win, they will appoint a vice president.

Women at number two.

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