The head of state, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said this Tuesday that he hopes that Portugal will have a female President of the Republic and admitted that the first could be Ana Gomes, his former opponent in the 2021 presidential elections.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was speaking in English at the closing session of a seminar on women in diplomacy and globalization at the Institute of Political Studies of the Catholic University of Portugal, in Lisbon, in a speech in which he considered that there is still a lot of misogyny in Portugal.
“In almost 49 years of democracy in Portugal we have never had a female President”, he pointed out.
Then, referring to the diplomat Ana Gomes, who was in the audience, and to the 2026 presidential elections, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa added: “We had a candidate there, and who knows if she will be the next President of the Portuguese Republic. Who knows , two years and ten months from now”. “It’s something we all hope changes soon,” he said.
In this regard, the President of the Republic mentioned that Portugal was “one of the few European countries with queens, this was very rare in Europe, and some of them were really exceptional”.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stressed that since April 25, 1974 Portugal had “only one Minister of Foreign Affairs, Teresa Gouveia, in 2003, 2004, only one”, and regretted that women are only “about a third” of the current Portuguese diplomatic corps.
“Even more worrying, and this is the bad news of last year: the latest numbers of candidates selected for the diplomatic career show a reduction in the presence of women”, he pointed out, questioning: “Why so few women selected?”.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa appealed to students and diplomats “not to settle for what has already been achieved in terms of gender equality” and chose the fight for the rights and for an active role for women in Portugal as “an imperative not only for political power but also for civil society”.
“We in Portugal are still very, very misogynistic in so many cases”, he considered, defending that there are “barriers to be broken” and “a lot to do” in this matter.
This seminar took place on the eve of International Women’s Day, which is celebrated this Wednesday.
Ana Gomes, socialist activist, former ambassador in Jakarta, was a candidate for the 2021 presidential elections without PS support, in which Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was re-elected President of the Republic.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa obtained 60.67% of the votes cast in those elections. Ana Gomes, who only received a salute to her candidacy from her party, came in second, with 12.96%.
