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Good practice Imported

CNE Gender Parity & Alternation Regulation for Candidate Lists

Venezuela · Caracas · See the Venezuela profile · See the Caracas profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 71% 48/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Venezuela's CNE has issued last-minute gender-parity rules since 2020, but compliance is weak: just 3 of 26 parties met the 2020 rules, women won only 33.57% of Assembly seats, and by 2025 no parity rules were even published.

3 of 26 parties
Parties meeting the 2020 parity criteria (2020)
93 of 277 (33.57%) seats
Women deputies elected to the National Assembly (2020)
90 of 190 countries
Venezuela's global rank for parliamentary representation (2020)
~48% share of candidates
Women nominated in the 2021 elections (2021)
CNE Gender Parity & Alternation Regulation for Candidate Lists

Details

Maturity
Discontinued
Promoter
Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE)
Period
2020-2025
Keywords
elections, gender parity, political parties

Context

Venezuela has no standing legislative gender-parity law; instead the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE) has periodically issued special parity regulations shortly before each election cycle.

Objectives

To require 50% women on candidate lists (within a 40-60% tolerance band) and mandatory man-woman alternation, first applied ahead of the December 2020 parliamentary election.

Activities

The CNE published its parity project days before candidate registration opened for the 2020 election, and issued a revised regulation ahead of the 2021 regional and municipal elections; no specific parity rules were published at all for the 2025 elections.

Results

Only 3 of 26 parties met the 2020 parity criteria and none respected alternation; women won just 93 of 277 Assembly seats (33.57%), ranking Venezuela 90th of 190 countries in UN Women's 2020 parliamentary-representation assessment. In 2021, parties nominated around 48% women but still fell short of alternation and list-position requirements. By 2025, observers reported no gender-parity rules published and no alternating candidacies presented.

Conclusions

Parity requirements issued as last-minute administrative regulations, without a binding electoral law or sanctions for non-compliance, tend to be treated as optional by parties and have not durably closed the representation gap.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year) — Regulations were reissued, with varying content and enforcement, ahead of the 2020, 2021 and 2025 election cycles; none were made a standing binding law.
Staffing & skills
Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE)

Conditions for success

  • A binding electoral law rather than a last-minute administrative regulation
  • Sanctions for non-compliance
  • Sufficient lead time before candidate registration to avoid the constitutional freeze on electoral-rule changes

Common failure modes

  • Rules published only days before candidate registration, undermining parties' time to comply
  • No sanctions for non-compliance meant parties treated parity as optional
  • By 2025 no parity rules were published at all, effectively ending the practice

Commonly funded by

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Data sources

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