Lithuanian elections provide new opportunities and women empowerment

Lithuania’s new prime minister, Ingrida Šimonytė, participates in a government zoom call. The new prime minister has formed a government; at least three-fourths of which are women. Photo: Office of the Prime Minister of Lithuania

More women in power

The European Institute for Gender Equality issued the gender equality index 2020. They use criteria such as work, money, power, knowledge, time and health. The index shows that with 56.3 out of 100 points, Lithuania ranks 22nd in the EU on the Gender Equality Index. Its score is 11.6 points below the EU’s average. Since 2010, Lithuania’s score has increased by only 1.4 points (+ 0.8 points since 2017). Its ranking has dropped by four places since 2010. To illustrate the gender imbalance in the leading political positions in Lithuania, for instance, out of 60 mayors of towns and regions, only four are women.

A larger number of women in politics is needed to better represent the composition of society. A current overrepresentation of men points to systemic issues in the country’s politics. Even liberal parties have difficulties in this area and do not have many female members who could equally participate in party life, the Seimas, or the government. Out of 141 Liberal Movement candidates, 35 are women; out of 74 Freedom Party candidates, 28 are women. Thus, the new parliamentary vote has given some new optimism in terms of gender equality in Lithuania. The new parliament, the Seimas, will have 103 male and 38 female members. Although an increase of five percentage points, women will still make up only 27 per cent of the Seimas.

Yet, the three parties that form the coalition were led by women: Ingrida Šimonytė, who was the lead candidate of the Homeland Union; Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, the chairwoman of the Liberal Movement; and Aušrinė Armonaitė, the chairwoman of the Freedom Party. In December 2020, Šimonytė was named as prime minister in the new government, and Čmilytė-Nielsen became the speaker of parliament. Since the 1990s, Lithuania has had two female prime ministers for a brief period of time – Kazimiera Prunskienė and Irena Degutienė (who was twice the acting prime minister) – and two female speakers of the Seimas, Loreta Graužinienė and Irena Degutienė.

Meanwhile the outgoing government, led by the Peasant Popular Party, struggled to maintain a gender balance in its government. At one point, men assumed all 14 ministerial positions, making Lithuania the only EU country with an all-male cabinet. Šimonytė, who is now the prime minister, has formed a government made up of at least three-fourths of women. During the elections she contributed to bringing women forward and making them visible on the list of the Homeland Union.

Gender inequality in Lithuania is precarious. There is a tendency of tokenism by putting women in high positions as a pretext to avoid the wider and much deeper gender inequality issues to be found in Lithuania. As the runner up in the 2019 presidential elections, Ingrida Šimonytė was significantly defeated in the second round by Gitanas Nausėda, who, unlike Šimonytė, lacked political experience for the job. One of the reasons for her defeat was perhaps due to her gender, as Lithuania’s preceding president was another female politician, Dalia Grybauskaitė, who served two terms as president. Moreover, both women are not married and have no children. This aspect was noted and discussed in Lithuanian media and public discourse. Yet, with the election results there is some optimism that Lithuania will be more inclusive and represent a wider spectrum of its citizens, which would empower women into more decision-making positions.

The previous four years

For the previous four years Lithuania was ruled by the Peasant Popular Party. They were greeted in 2016 with great enthusiasm as Lithuanians had been disappointed with the larger and more established parties, and wanted a new political force that would give them hope for economic and social improvements. What started with a democratic feast and 56 mandates soon proved to be something else: the party chairman’s (Ramūnas Karbauskis) authoritarian approach of leadership meant that other party members had to submit to him. This style of leadership was also observed when dealing with other parties and partners under the pretext that the Peasant Popular Party’s decisions and suggestions for socio-political change and improvement in Lithuania represent a will of the majority of the nation.

The party lost the 2020 election, though they were not crushed. As in previous elections, the Popular Peasant Party electorate was concentrated in areas outside Vilnius and made up predominantly of older and less educated voters. There is still an urban-rural divide that the new Seimas has to overcome in order to reduce the size of this social gap. The Homeland Union, which is historically viewed as not appealing to the more vulnerable voters of society that live in regional Lithuania, needs to work especially hard. In a 2019 report (2019 European Semester: Assessment of progress on structural reforms, prevention and correction of macroeconomic imbalances, and results of in-depth reviews), the European Commission expressed concerns over large social and economic inequalities in the country’s regions, despite stable economic growth. The role of the new minister of finance will be especially important for the ruling party and prime minister.

Additionally, it is evident that public confidence in education and health care has decreased. This is related to COVID-19 and the various measures used to combat it. In regards to the pandemic, the previous government was heavily criticised by the opposition, health care experts, virologists and journalists as non-transparent and for lacking necessary preparations for the second virus wave in the autumn which hit the country harder than the first one in the spring. The Lithuanian health system is poorly funded which made the fight against COVID-19 even more difficult. According to Eurostat Statistics from 2018, total current health care spending was only 6.5 per cent of GDP in 2017. Only a few other countries in the EU spend less on healthcare. The average life expectancy among Lithuanians is the lowest in the EU. The country’s mortality rate is one of the highest between men and women, with a gap of 10.5 per cent compared to the EU average of 5.4 per cent (twice as many men die from health problems). The abovementioned report also found that the quality of policies and measures to tackle the problems are too underdeveloped.

Most political parties running in the October elections acknowledged in their programme that the education system requires special attention. In 2018, teachers in Lithuania went on a nation-wide strike. They demanded reforms to address working conditions for teachers across Lithuania. Eventually an agreement was reached on improvements to wage payment procedures, though overall conditions remain challenging.

“We will not essentially change the education system in four years, this is not possible because it is a long-lasting process, the results of which we can see in ten years,” Šimonytė, the new Lithuanian prime minister, said, adding, “What we have to do in the following four years is to lay the tracks on which education can start rolling, so that in 2024 or 2028 the new government would not decide to dismantle it and lay new tracks for the education system. Our goal is that this train could roll in the direction that we will agree upon. Therefore, we will need a lot of wisdom, patience and trust in discussions with various parties and education experts; think about teachers’ training programme.”

New challenges await

The new coalition of the Seimas will form a centre-right political discourse. In addition to the Homeland Union, two other liberal parties, the Liberal Movement and the Freedom Party, have produced an incredibly good result by winning 13 and 11 seats, respectively. Does this mean that Lithuania is becoming more liberal and less conservative? Vilmorus, an independent institution for public opinion and market research, conducted a survey in February 2019. According to their findings, 13 per cent of respondents support the proposal to register same-sex partnerships, 11 per cent view it satisfactorily, while the majority of the population, 66 per cent, are against it. The good election performance of the liberal parties does not necessarily mean there are a growing number of convinced liberals in society and it does not explain why people voted for a particular party. Most likely, they were a good alternative for those who did not like the Homeland Union but were also dissatisfied with the Popular Peasant Party. Moreover, the liberal parties proved to be credible and empathetic during the debate, showing special attention to human rights.

It is also possible that the Freedom Party as a newcomer helped its chances (as it did for the Popular Peasant Party in 2016) since it stood out from the other parties with a smart advertising campaign and fresh look. The success of the liberal parties, however, does not mean that the whole of Lithuania will now support the legalisation of same-sex marriage and legalising marihuana, which is especially unacceptable in the more conservative parts of society. As a matter of fact, the Popular Peasant Party presented itself as the fighter and safeguard of tradition in the eyes of the public in order to form its own position in the political landscape.

The reality is different. The liberal parties, in their campaign programmes, have called for the decriminalisation of small quantities of certain narcotics. It is also important for them to continue the discussion on human rights issues that may lead to a more tolerant society – for instance, with regards to same-sex partnerships. Lithuania is a traditional, Catholic country; it will take time before these topics can be peacefully discussed.

Ingrida Šimonytė summarised the differences she saw between the two Seimas: “The [outgoing] Seimas led by the Peasant Popular Party was more focused on the past, probably not knowing what to offer for the future. I would very much like to believe that the newly elected Seimas will be about the future and not about the past. What happened in the past, that happened – there were good decisions made, there were also things that perhaps should not happen. Some of the decisions taken will naturally need to be modified and amended in the future. We do not come to make a revolution and my goal is not to change everything that the Popular Peasant Party with its leader Ramūnas Karbauskis have done in the last four years, so that they would later come and change everything that I have done. I think this vicious circle has to end”.

Apart from that, it will be important to enhance trust between civil society and governmental institutions as well as within the civil society itself. The past four years saw a lot of decision making on important and complex issues – whether on education, health care, or even changing some constitutional clauses – in a hurried fashion, as if those issues were easily solvable. The Peasant Popular Party was often criticised for making reforms in a “bulldozer way”, without listening to others and discussing the measures with them.

There are many different interests in society, though there should be an understanding that not all of them can be met and some compromises have to be made. Perhaps not incidentally, the leading Homeland Union party indicated in their campaign that different sides will be heard; that decisions will be made by weighing up all the costs and benefits; and promises will be made cautiously, because political decisions require time and consideration.

Kristina Smolijaninovaitė is the deputy director of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum in Berlin.

Lithuania, politics, women