Latin America’s Presidentas

Author(s):  
Catherine Reyes-Housholder ◽  
Gwynn Thoma

Catherine Reyes-Housholder and Gwynn Thomas highlight the unexpected emergence of female presidents and presidential candidates in Latin American politics. They point out that theories explaining the election of female executives globally fail to account for the rise of female presidents in Latin America and argue that the transition to democracy, women’s increasing political experience, the rise of the left, and recent political party crises have provided new opportunities for women in the presidency. However, female presidents must continually manage gendered expectations created from men’s past dominance of presidential power. While they appear similarly as successful governing as male presidents, only Michelle Bachelet has made gender equality a central component of her agenda. Female presidents have not used their constitutional powers to enact many gender equality policies, but in certain circumstances, they have been more likely than men to appoint women to their cabinets. Female presidents also have had some positive consequences for women’s participation in politics.

2016 ◽  
Vol 67 (8) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Marta Harnecker

The major element missing from Latin American politics in recent decades has been, with rare exceptions, the traditional workers' movement, beaten down by flexibilization, subcontracting, and other neoliberal measures.&hellip; The fall of the Berlin Wall and the defeat of Soviet socialism left the parties and social organizations of the left inspired by that model seriously weakened. At the same time, trade unions were hit hard by the weakening of the working class, part of the larger social fragmentation produced by neoliberalism. In that context, it was new social movements, and not the traditional parties and social organizations of the left, that rose to the forefront of the struggle against neoliberalism, in forms that varied widely from one country to another.&hellip; The situation in the 1980s and '90s in Latin America was comparable in some respects to the experience of pre-revolutionary Russia in the early twentieth century.&hellip; [M]any of the region's peoples said "enough" and started mobilizing, first in defensive resistance, then passing to the offensive. As a result, presidential candidates of the left or center-left began to triumph, only to face the following alternative: either embrace the neoliberal model, or advance an alternative project motivated by a logic of solidarity and human development.&hellip; [Consequently,] a major debate has emerged over the role that new social movements should adopt in relation to the progressive governments that have inspired hope in many Latin American nations.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-8" title="Vol. 67, No. 8: January 2016" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 505-518
Author(s):  
Amanda Spies

In 2002 the South African Constitutional Court rejected the decriminalisation of sex work and for many years the judgment has constricted further debate on the topic. In 2013 organisations such as the Commission for Gender Equality have again publicly committed themselves toward lobbying for the decriminalisation of sex work. The renewed debate has necessitated a reconsideration of the Court’s decision in S v Jordan and this article focuses on the organisations that participated as amicus curiae in the matter. The discussion highlights the importance of organisational participation in litigation and how this participation could provide the context in which to consider future debates on the topic. 


Author(s):  
Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer

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.


1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-574
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley

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).


2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 721-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT ANDOLINA

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.


2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McCaughan

Rodolfo Walsh was a writer of crime novels, a tireless investigative journalist who uncovered real political crimes, an instant historian of a turbulent and violent era in Argentinian and Latin American politics. He was in Cuba in 1960, participating in setting up the first revolutionary press service in Latin America, "Prensa Latina", when a coded telex arrived in their offices by mistake. After sleepless nights and with one cryptography manual, Walsh deciphered the plans for the US invasion of Cuba being planned in Guatemala by the CIA. Walsh was active in the Montonero guerrilla in Argentina, co-ordinating information and intelligence work. In that capacity he made public the existence of ESMA, the Naval Mechanics School which was the main military torture centre. In his own name he wrote an Open Letter to the Military Junta, a year from the coup and a day before his death, denouncing the dirty war. He was gunned down in the streets of Buenos Aires by a military death squad. This is an account of Rudolfo Walsh's life. It includes extended excerpts from his varied writings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (6(75)) ◽  
pp. 60-63
Author(s):  
G.I. Pavlova

The purpose of this article is to study the share of women involved in healthcare management at various levels. Results: The women engaged in top management are 28%. The share of women at the middle level of management is nearly twice larger (53.4%). In operational management such as the management of healthcare establishments, women’s participation is 36%. Conclusion: Women’s representation in the management of the healthcare system in Bulgaria (35.9%) falls behind European countries’ indicators (41%). Bulgaria is applying a gender equality policy but a lot remains to be done.


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