Two decades since its 1995 implementation, Brazil’s gender quota has been unable to mitigate the stark underrepresentation of women. Recent reforms strengthening the quota law have also failed to disrupt an entrenched informal norm of quota neglect. Although the reforms stimulated significant boosts in the proportion of female candidates advanced in 2014 elections to Brazilian state and federal legislatures (29% in each), gains in the proportion of women elected have been meager. Only 51 women were elected to the Chamber of Deputies (9.9%), increasing Brazil’s IPU ranking from 130th to 127th. In Brazil’s 27 state legislatures, the proportion of women elected actually decreased from 12.9 to 11.3 percent. This paper explains that disconnect, demonstrating significantly higher proportions of “extremely nonviable” female candidacies in 2010-2014 elections. Advancing extensive evidence on interparty variation in candidacies to Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies and state Legislative Assemblies and interviews with candidates, party leaders, bureaucrats, and activists throughout Brazil, the paper shows how electoral rules and party dynamics interact to undermine the quota. Many parties have proven resistant to change, with leaders failing to recognize and/or respond to the extreme gender imbalance of their candidate lists until the final hour. The result has been a widespread offering of sacrificial lamb candidates in the post-quota reform elections. In addition to offering evidence for the presence of “candidatas laranajas,” the paper elucidates a general profile of such candidacies, and examines differences in the intentionality of candidatas laranjas in their sacrificial lamb status. I consider the implications of laranjas for the future of Brazil’s quota law, and conclude that if quotas are to be an effective mechanism for leveling the playing field in Brazil’s heretofore vastly masculine formal political realm, they must be coupled with policies that more adequately incentivize the cultivation, recruitment, and support of viable female candidacies.
