The Organization of American States (OAS) described the Brazilian election as a civic and peaceful process and praised the Superior Electoral Court and the Regional Electoral Courts for demonstrating “significant technical, logistical, and organizational capacity.”

The OAS has been in Brazil over the past few days with 91 independent observers monitoring the local electoral process. These observations are part of the preliminary report released on Tuesday (Oct. 6) by the Organization.

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The document also highlights the broad participation of researchers, academics, and experts in testing the voting machines, the increase in biometric data registration to 89 percent since the 2024 elections, and the expansion of electronic services available through the “Autoatendimento” platform and the e-Título mobile app.

While attesting to the fairness of the election, the organization also reported “a climate of tension and strong political polarization, marked by excessive judicial involvement, personal confrontations, and disinformation narratives intended to sow distrust in the integrity of the electronic voting system.”

Points of concern

Regarding points of concern, the OAS highlighted the absence of an electoral debate between the candidates for the country’s president and vice president, but acknowledged that numerous debates were held among gubernatorial candidates.

The report also cited the “lack of harmonized legal criteria within the Electoral Court regarding the use of real or AI-generated images of individuals barred from participating in politics in both digital and physical campaign materials.”

The number of women in the Brazilian lower house and the Senate will be the highest in history. In the former, the number of women elected rose from 90 to 109, a surge of 21 percent.

This outcome occurred despite a decline in the number of female candidates. In 2022, 3,317 women ran for the office of federal representative. In 2026, they numbered 2,820, down 24 percent.

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For the Senate, Brazilians elected twelve women to the 54 seats up for grabs – the highest since the military dictatorship ended, in 1985. In 2018, when two-thirds of the Senate were also up for election, eight women were elected.

Brazil has 81 senators in each legislative session. Each serves an eight-year term. Every four years, one-third or two-thirds of the Senate is renewed. As a result, the number of female senators will increase from the current fifteen to eighteen next year.

Far from equality

Despite the change, women remain a minority in both houses of Congress. In the lower house, women will account for 21 percent of the 513 representatives in the next legislative session. The coalition comprising the Workers’ Party (PT), the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), and the Green Party (PV) elected the largest share of women – 34 out of the 109 elected.

As for the Senate, the number of female senators starting next year will reach 22.2 percent of the 81 seats. Those elected this year will take office in February, with terms running through 2035.

The Federal District elected two women. Since it already has one representative, the Federal District is now the only unit of the federation with three female senators.

Agendas for women

The increase in the number of elected female lawmakers does not necessarily translate into policies focused on women, says Flávia Biroli, a professor of political science at the University of Brasília.

In her view, as the number of women in elected office increases, so does the diversity of their views, and some will advocate for patriarchal, rather than egalitarian, perspectives.

“You can have elected women representing economic views that are harmful to the vast majority of women. For example, you can have an elected woman – as is the case with Senator Bia Kicis – who voted against the law on equal pay for women and men.”

Black women

The number of black women elected has also risen, at least in the lower house of Congress. A survey conducted by the organization Mulheres Negras Decidem found that 15 black women were elected to federal Congress in 2026 – a 66.6 percent increase from 2022, when nine were elected.

The organization’s political coordinator, Tainah Pereira, celebrates this progress.

“It’s also interesting to note that the vast majority of these black women who are currently in the lower house and who were elected for the next legislative session are young women. So, we’re seeing a renewal of black women in leadership, and I think we can have high expectations for the work of these leaders who have now made it to office.”

The Senate, however, saw a setback. No black female candidate was elected. Benedita da Silva (PT), the first black woman to hold a seat in the Senate in 1998, lost her reelection bid in Rio de Janeiro. To date, only four black women have served as senators.

Scientist Denise Pires de Carvalho will assume the position of Deputy Director-General for Science at the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the coming days. This marks the first time Brazil has held this position since the UN’s founding in 1945.

In making the announcement, UNESCO highlighted the scientist’s experience in leadership and management of research, and in the evaluation of research programs and international scientific cooperation, and stated that her work “has addressed the social dimensions of science, including equitable access, gender equality, and inclusive institutional governance.”

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Currently president of CAPES – the Ministry of Education’s foundation tasked with expanding, regulating, and evaluating master’s and doctoral programs across Brazil – Carvalho states that she arrives at UNESCO with the same perspective that Brazil has held toward science in recent years, emphasizing multilateralism and people-centered science.

“Over the past three years, what Brazil has done – and what CAPES has done – is to promote South-South collaboration at the graduate level and to increasingly internationalize the country’s graduate programs, engaging with Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as with African countries, in addition to all the cooperation we were already undertaking,” she declared.

Carvalho also highlighted the role of science in the development of countries, especially the poorest ones. She argues that there is no way for Brazil to become a developed country other than through science.

“Those who reject science reject the nation’s development. There is no independent country without universities. There is no independent country without science. And Brazil began this process of true independence far too late. All the most developed countries in the world are more developed because they have invested in science,” she said.

UNESCO’s Directorate-General for Science is responsible for promoting international scientific cooperation and implementing UN programs in the areas of Natural Sciences and Social and Human Sciences, including recommendations on the ethics of artificial intelligence.

Recognition of Brazil

The Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations celebrated the nomination and expressed confidence that the scientist’s work “will contribute to strengthening the sciences and their role in promoting peace, equity, sustainability, and human development.”

Profile

Denise Pires de Carvalho is a physician with a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where she is also a full professor in the Department of Biophysics. In 2019, she became the first woman to serve as president of UFRJ.

She also served as secretary of higher education at the Ministry of Education from 2023 to 2024. In February 2024, she assumed the presidency of CAPES. She currently also chairs the Scientific Council of France’s Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and participates in regional and global academic and scientific cooperation networks.

The Superior Electoral Court found that the number of cases involving gender-based political violence has increased more than 11-fold in four years. In 2022, 15 cases were brought before the Electoral Court. As of September 2026, cases have reached 177.

Since 2018, the federal prosecutors have recorded 436 complaints of gender-based political violence. In more than half of the cases (221), this violence was of a moral nature. And in 40 percent of them (177), psychological violence was involved.

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Political violence against women can take many forms, ranging from intimidation and attacks on a woman’s honor to threats and murders. Cases such as that of Rio Councilwoman Marielle Franco, who was murdered in 2018 for reasons linked to her political activities, and the attacks suffered by Congresswoman Maria do Rosário in Congress in 2014, highlight the extent to which this type of violence can escalate.

Awareness

In an effort to combat this type of violence, the Superior Electoral Court and the Federal Prosecution Service on Tuesday (Sep. 22) launched a campaign dubbed Política é Substantivo Feminino (“Politics is a feminine noun,” in reference to the fact that the word “politics” follows the feminine gender in Portuguese grammar). The initiative aims to raise awareness among the public about the role of combating the various forms of political violence perpetrated against women.

Court Judge Estela Aranha explained the impact of this type of violence on Brazilian democracy.

“It [gender-based political violence] silences women individually. A woman thinks, ‘I’m going to leave politics,’ but it also affects the community as a whole, because other women who witness the violence think, ‘Why should I get into politics?’ You drive out those who are already involved as well as those who are thinking of getting involved. And this is serious, because democracy presupposes the political and electoral participation of all citizens – men and women alike – and women are being excluded from the debate,” she argued.

Gender and race

During the campaign launch, women’s rights and black rights organizations presented court head Judge Minister Nunes Marques with a letter expressing concern over the rise in political violence based on gender and race in this year’s elections and demanding effective measures to prevent further incidents.

The document states that, in recent weeks, social movements have received reports in various states from female candidates – especially black, lesbian, bisexual, and trans women – who have been threatened with death and sexual violence, had their addresses and family members’ information exposed, and suffered racist and LGBT-phobic attacks, persecution, intimidation, and physical assaults.

The text also emphasizes that gender-based violence does not affect all women in the same way. A study by the Marielle Franco Institute analyzed 77 cases from 2021 to 2025. Among the victims, 87 percent were black.

Women in elected office

Brazil is one of the countries with the lowest representation of women in Parliament. In a ranking of 184 countries, Brazil ranks 135th, with only 17.5 percent of women in Congress, trailing behind nations with less democratic regimes, such as North Korea and Burkina Faso.

At the local level, Brazil has over 700 municipalities with not a single woman in elected office, and only 16 percent of city governments are led by women.

Raquel Branquinho, coordinator of the working group on preventing and combating gender-based political violence at the Office of the Prosecutor-General for Electoral Affairs, says that Brazilian legislation is in line with international guidelines on women’s representation.

“The major problem to be addressed, however, is violence against these women,” she said.