Women Are a Minority in Governments and Reach Power with Greater Technical Requirements
Portugal had only 15% of women ministers in the last five decades, according to a study by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation titled "Who Governs Portugal? Ministerial Profiles in Comparative Perspective," coordinated by researchers António Costa Pinto and Marcelo Camerlo. Between 1976 and 2025, of the 398 holders of ministerial portfolios who joined inaugural governments, only 60 were women (15%), contrasting with 338 men (85%). Until 1985 there was an almost total absence of women, with the first appointment occurring with Leonor Beleza in the X Government led by Cavaco Silva, for the Health portfolio. From there, slow growth was observed, with António Guterres in 1995 registering greater openness to appointing women ministers, and José Sócrates's governments deepening this trend, exceeding 30% for the first time in 2009. In 2011, Passos Coelho appointed only two women ministers (18%), but António Costa, in 2015, raised this number to four, with the Government becoming, in 2019, the first to exceed the 40% threshold, and in 2022, reaching 53% female representation. The governments of Luís Montenegro (2024-2025) maintain high values (41% and 37.5%).
The study reveals that women ministers have higher academic qualifications than male ministers (50% with doctorates versus 25% of men) and "disproportionately depend on technical credentials to access power." Women who hold ministerial portfolios in Portugal are more concentrated in peripheral portfolios and the social sector, with female presence in the strategic core of Government being residual, where decision-making power and the most significant budgetary resources are concentrated. This underrepresentation in central portfolios substantially limits women ministers' capacity to influence the structural decisions of the executive. Among women, party affiliation functions as a necessary condition to access the core of Government, while in peripheral portfolios more than half of women ministers (53.7%) are independents, recruited for their technical capital.
Regarding ministers in general, the study concludes that one in five lacks relevant experience for the portfolio. Of the 507 ministers Portugal has had since 1976, the majority (43.4%) had "extensive" professional experience related to the ministerial portfolio, but 22% (113 ministers) had no relevant professional experience for the exercise of the duties entrusted to them. Nevertheless, ministers are today more specialized and technically prepared than in the early decades of democracy, but this evolution did not remove parties' control over Government composition. According to Marcelo Camerlo, one of the study's coordinators, the most profound change is the emergence and consolidation of the specialist politician profile, which began to take shape in the mid-1980s, especially during the Cavaco era, and the dominant profile is no longer that of the pure politician, but also not that of the specialist recruited outside politics, but of someone who brings together both dimensions.
