An Introduction to Gender and Representation in Latin America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
And Gender

In this introductory chapter of Gender and Representation in Latin America, Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer argues that gender inequality in political representation in Latin America is rooted in institutions and the democratic challenges and political crises facing Latin American countries. She situates the book in two important literatures—one on Latin American politics and democratic institutions, the other on gender and politics—and then explains how the book will explore the ways that institutions and democratic challenges and political crises moderate women’s representation and gender inequality. She introduces the book’s framework of analyzing the causes and consequences of women’s representation, overviews the organization of the volume, and summarizes the main arguments of the chapters.

Gender and Representation in Latin America

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
And Gender

In the past thirty years, women’s representation and gender equality has developed unevenly in Latin America. Some countries have experienced large increases in gender equality in political offices, whereas others have not, and even within countries, some political arenas have become more gender equal whereas others continue to exude intense gender inequality. These patterns are inconsistent with explanations of social and cultural improvements in gender equality leading to improved gender equality in political office. Gender and Representation in Latin America argues instead that gender inequality in political representation in Latin America is rooted in institutions and the democratic challenges and political crises facing Latin American countries and that these challenges matter for the number of women and men elected to office, what they do once there, how much power they gain access to, and how their presence and actions influence democracy and society more broadly. The book draws upon the expertise of top scholars of women, gender, and political institutions in Latin America to analyze the institutional and contextual causes and consequences of women’s representation in Latin America. It does this in part I with chapters that analyze gender and political representation regionwide in each of five different “arenas of representation”—the presidency, cabinets, national legislatures, political parties, and subnational governments. In part II, it provides chapters that analyze gender and representation in each of seven different countries—Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. The authors bring novel insights and impressive new data to their analyses, helping to make this one of the most comprehensive books on gender and political representation in Latin America today.

scholarly journals WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION AND DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION IN LATIN AMERICA

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (19) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Leslie Schwindt-Bayer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
National Level ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Legislative Politics ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
National Legislatures ◽  
Latin American Countries

A consolidated representative democracy requires representation of all citizens—including women. Yet, most Latin American countries fall short of gender equality in legislative representation at the national level. In this paper, I analyze women’s representation in Latin America asking three questions:  What does women’s representation in Latin America look like? Why does it look that way? And, what are the consequences of women’s representation for legislative politics and democracy in Latin America? I answer these questions drawing on recent research conducted on women’s representation and present original data from my research on women’s representation in Latin America. I conclude that women’s representation in national legislatures has increased over time in just about every country but to varying degrees. Women’s representation today continues to vary widely across the region. The primary explanation for this is the nature of electoral institutions in Latin American countries—specifically, the magnitude of electoral districts, gender quota laws, party control over their ballots. The benefits of including women in national legislatures are myriad but include most importantly greater attention to women’s issues in the legislative arena. Yet, challenges still persist for women in political office, specifically, their continued lack of access to real political power. These obstacles must be addressed for women to attain full political representation in Latin American democracies, and thus, for Latin American democracies to be fully consolidated.

Gender and Family Ties in Latin American Legislatures

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer ◽  
Agustín Vallejo ◽  
Francisco Cantú
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
The Past ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
Gender Similarities

Abstract Are women disproportionately more likely than men to have family ties in politics? We study this question in Latin America, where legacies have been historically common, and we focus specifically on legislatures, where women's representation has increased dramatically in many countries. We hypothesize that, counter to conventional wisdom, women should be no more likely than men to have ties to political families. However, this may vary across legislatures with and without gender quotas. Our empirical analysis uses data from the Parliamentary Elites of Latin America survey. We find more gender similarities than differences in legislators’ patterns of family ties both today and over the past 20 years. We also find that women are more likely to have family ties than men in legislatures without gender quotas, whereas this difference disappears in legislatures with quotas.

scholarly journals Presidentas Rise: Consequences for Women in Cabinets?

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Reyes-Housholder
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Empirical Implications

AbstractSince 1999, women have democratically won the presidency eight times in Latin America and have named hundreds of ministers. This study argues that under certain conditions,presidentasare more likely than male presidents to improve women's cabinet representation. Two mechanisms,presidentamandates and gendered networks, appear to drive the relationship. Furthermore, because the pool of ministerial candidates is shallower for women than for men,presidentasare most likely to advance women's representation in cabinets at the beginning of their term and for “feminine” ministries. A case study of Michelle Bachelet's 2006 ministerial appointments reveals initial evidence for the argument. Empirical implications are then tested with an original dataset of 1,908 ministers of all democratically elected Latin American presidents since 1999. Model results are consistent with the theory thatpresidentasare most likely to “make a difference” when they are least constrained by the supply of female ministerial candidates.

scholarly journals Women’s Political Activism and Civic Engagement in Latin America

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany Barnes ◽  
Victoria Beall ◽  
Gregory Saxton ◽  
Dakota Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
Latin American Region ◽  
The Many

Under the authoritarian regimes that dominated the 1950s to the 1980s, during the regional wave of democratization, and as citizens of new democracies, women have been instrumental political actors in many facets of politics in the Latin American region. Due to the many ways women are involved in politics, academic studies of the role of gender in contentious politics are equally varied, encompassing disciplines such as political science, sociology, and anthropology. Women engage in politics both inside and outside the state in many different ways. In this bibliography, we are focused on women’s political activism outside the state and women’s engagement as citizens. Whereas the study of women’s representation in government focuses on women as elites, this bibliography focuses on political activism from non-state actors, such as social movements, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), opinion leaders, and grassroots leaders, as well as political engagement in terms of citizens’ participation. For more information on women in formal political roles, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Women’s Representation in Governmental Office in Latin America.

Elites, Elite Settlements, and Revolutionary Movements in Latin America, 1950–1980: Introduction

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-574
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Revolutionary Movements

Social revolutions as well as revolutionary movements have recently held great interest for both sociopolitical theorists and scholars of Latin American politics. Before we can proceed with any useful analysis, however, we must distinguish between these two related but not identical phenomena. Adapting Theda Skocpol’s approach, we can define social revolutions as “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by” mass-based revolts from below, sometimes in cross-class coalitions (Skocpol 1979: 4; Wickham-Crowley 1991:152). In the absence of such basic sociopolitical transformations, I will not speak of (social) revolution or of a revolutionary outcome, only about revolutionary movements, exertions, projects, and so forth. Studies of the failures and successes of twentieth-century Latin American revolutions have now joined the ongoing theoretical debate as to whether such outcomes occur due to society- or movement-centered processes or instead due to state- or regime-centered events (Wickham-Crowley 1992).

The Sovereign and its Shadow: Constituent Assembly and Indigenous Movement in Ecuador

2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 721-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT ANDOLINA
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
Institutional Politics ◽  
Ideological Struggle ◽  
Indigenous Movement ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Constitutive Principles

A crucial development in current Latin American politics is the growing involvement of indigenous movements in democracies grappling with the challenges of regime consolidation. This article examines how Ecuador's indigenous movement consecrated new rights and national constitutive principles in the 1997–8 constitutional assembly. It argues that the indigenous movement defined the legitimacy and purpose of the assembly through an ideological struggle with other political actors, in turn shaping the context and content of constitutional reforms in Ecuador. The article concludes that softening the boundary between ‘cultural politics’ and ‘institutional politics’ is necessary in order to understand the impact of social movements in Latin America.

Seeing Women, Strengthening Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magda Hinojosa ◽  
Miki Caul Kittilson
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Gender Gaps ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
The Impact

How does the more equitable representation of women in positions of power affect male and female citizens? We argue that the election of women to political office—particularly where women’s presence is highly visible to the public—strengthens the connections between women and the democratic process. For women, seeing more “people like me” in politics changes attitudes and orientations toward the democratic process. Substantial variation persists across Latin America in gender gaps in political engagement and political support. To assess the effects that women’s officeholding has on these, we pair comparative survey data from Latin American countries with case study evidence from Uruguay. The Uruguayan case offers a unique laboratory for testing the impact of women’s representation in elected positions of power on political engagement and support. Our panel survey of Uruguayan citizens reveals that the expected gender gaps in political knowledge, political interest, and other forms of political engagement were alive and well six weeks before the elections. Yet, just six weeks following the election—after the use of a gender quota had led to a doubling of women’s representation in the Senate—those gender gaps had largely disappeared or had significantly waned. Our findings indicate that far-reaching gender gaps can be overcome by more equitable representation in our political institutions.

Progress without Progressives? The Effects of Development on Women's Educational and Political Equality in Cultural Context, 1980 to 2010

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wade M. Cole ◽  
Claudia Geist
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Legacies ◽  
And Gender

Researchers often attribute diminishing gender inequality to economic development. When different aspects of gender inequality are examined, however, evidence points to both cross-national convergence as well as persistent (or even growing) heterogeneity in women's status. To make sense of this contradiction, we examine the extent to which culture moderates the relationship between economic development and gender inequality. We consider two dimensions of gender inequality, gender gaps in educational attainment and women's share of parliament, using data for 150 countries between 1980 and 2010. We find convergence toward greater equality in education, independently of economic development. But cross-cultural differences in female political representation persist or even grow as a function of economic development. Our results imply that economic development is not a direct pathway to greater gender equality. Rather, cultural legacies play an important role in shaping developmental trajectories.

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