Perspectives on the Americas

A Series of Opinion Pieces by Leading Commentators on the Region

Women and Power in

Latin American Democracies
by

Jane S. Jaquette

Professor, Politics and Diplomacy and World Affairs (Emerita)

Occidental College,
Los Angeles
Adjunct Professor, Watson Institute for International Studies
Brown University,
Providence
June 4, 2010
__________________

There is clear evidence that women have greatly increased their presence in Latin
American politics. In the last five years, women have been elected president in
Argentina, Chile and Costa Rica, and a woman is the candidate of the incumbent party
in Brazil. Twelve countries in the region have adopted gender quotas for national
legislatures, which has significantly increased womens representation.
The Latin American experience shows, however, that although it is possible to design
policies to elect more women, the relationship between womens representation and
legislation that addresses womens issues is weaker than many had hoped. In addition,
by focusing on elections, most studies assume that all democracies are alike. In
particular, the impact on women of the rise of populist governments and indigenous
movements, both of which challenge feminist agendas and the principles of
representative democracy, has been largely ignored, despite its importance for
understanding the changing political dynamics of the region.

Womens Movements, Democratization and Gender Quotas

Womens movements were very active in both South and Central America from the late
1970s to the mid-1990s, putting womens issues and low levels of womens
representation on the political agendas of all the countries of the region. During the last
three decades, the number and impact of womens non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) have exploded. Womens movements gained enough clout to help shape the
constitutions of several of the newly restored democratic governments, from Brazil to
Bolivia. Womens movements also asked for quotas to elect more women and thus
insure that issues such as gender equality, family law, violence against women and
womens reproductive rights would be addressed. Studies showed that when women
became a third or more of those elected to national legislatures, legislative agendas
became more open to social concerns. In Latin America, supporters of quotas argued
that, in addition to addressing womens concerns, increasing the number of women
legislators would have a positive effect on a wide range of issues, from improving frayed
social safety nets and greater investments in education and health, to protecting the
environment and human rights.
In the United States, those who argue for womens equality have often been in conflict
with those who believe in maintaining gender differences. In Latin America, this conflict
did not emerge, and quotas were supported both on the grounds that women deserve
equal representation and because womens different perspectives should be part of the
law-making process. Some also argued that women should be elected because they
are less corruptiblea myth, perhaps, but one that carries weight in a region where
corruption is often given as the major reason why people have so little respect for
politicians and political institutions.
Argentina led the way in 1991, when President Carlos Menem urged the legislature to
pass a gender quota law requiring parties to put one woman for every three men on
their party lists. Eleven countries subsequently adopted gender quota laws for elections
to national legislatures. In 2009, just under 40% of Argentine representatives were
women, putting it (along with Cuba at 43%) among the top ten countries in the world in
terms of womens representation in national legislatures, according to the InterParliamentary Union. Costa Rica was third at 37% and Ecuador, Mexico and Peru were
close behind, near 30%, while El Salvador, Venezuela, Honduras and the Dominican
Republic had legislatures that were about 20% female, compared to 18% in the United
States. Brazil, Panama and Colombia were among the last in the region, with the
number of women in national legislatures at about 9%, which put them just above the
bottom third of countries worldwide.
The results of quota policies for womens power and womens issues, however, have
been mixed. A quota law alone is no guarantee that more women will be elected. To
reach levels of a third or more, the quota law must be carefully crafted to avoid
loopholes. Quotas can be most readily implemented where the country has a
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proportional representation (PR) electoral system (not the winner take all system used
in the United States), with a closed list, (i.e. voters cannot change the order of
candidates that the party puts on the ballot). Further, women must be placed in
winnable positions on the partys list, a requirement that was met in Argentina only after
one candidate took her case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Womens activism and the quota debates have brought about real change, even where
quota laws have not been adopted or are very weak. It is now considered normal for
women to run for office and to participate fully in politics. Quota laws have been broadly
supported by the public, and the number of women legislators overall has continued to
increase over time.
More women legislators, however, does not guarantee that there will be more womanfriendly legislation. Women are still often shut out of the most important committees and
chairmanships, and women report that their male colleagues often do not take them
seriously. Not all elected women care about womens issues or support feminist
agendas. Women legislators come from across the ideological spectrum. They may
agree on the need to address violence against women and divorce, for example, but like
their constituencies, they are deeply divided on issues such as abortion and sex
education in schools. Even when they do favor legislative initiatives for women, they
may be unable to unite across party lines to achieve this goal. For example, the closed
PR system that makes it possible to elect more women in Argentina also makes
woman legislators very dependent on male party leaders who do not make womens
issues a priority and who impose party discipline. Finally, it is important to remember
that legislatures themselves are relatively weak in Latin America and little can be
accomplished without strong support from the president.

Womens Movements and Executive-Based Strategies

Electing women to national legislatures, therefore, may not be the most effective way to
achieve policy outcomes favorable to women. For this reason, it is imperative not
surprising that womens movements have looked to the executive branch to promote the
issues they care about. One obvious strategy is to elect a woman head of state. Despite
the regions reputation for machismo, polls show that Latin Americans think women
are as good or better politicians than men. Several women have been elected president
or prime minister and several more have been credible candidates. Since the election of
Violeta Chamorro as president of Nicaragua in 1990, Michele Bachelet has been
elected president of Chile in 2006, Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner has been elected
president of Argentina in 2007, Laura Chinchilla has been elected president of Costa
Rica in early 2010 and Kamla Persad-Bissessar has just been elected prime minister of
Trinidad & Tobago in May 2010.
Few women heads of state have made womens issues a priority. Violeta Chamorro
was elected as the widow of newspaper publisher Joaqun Chamorro, whose death at
the hands of the regime of President Anastasio Somoza helped provoke the Sandinista
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revolution of 1979. With one son the publisher of the Sandinista newspaper and
another, a leader of the opposition paper, Chamorro represented the peace option in
the 1990 elections, a mother who could reunite a divided country. But she was neither a
feminist nor committed to progressive social programs. Cristina Fernndez was elected
to succeed her husband, Nstor Kirchner and, although most agree that she is
intelligent and able (she was a senator before becoming president), they also note that
power in Argentina still resides with her husband, while she herself has been subject to
a barrage of criticism, much of it substantive, but much of it sexist as well, which has
further limited her effectiveness. Laura Chinchilla was the minister of justice and a
protg of Costa Ricas previous president, scar Arias. It is too early to judge her
performance, of course, but human rights and feminist groups have been concerned
that during her campaign she participated in a march supported by a coalition of groups
opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage. The new prime minister of Trinidad &
Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, in power for only one week, pledged in her campaign
that her government would focus on community and family issues, and sustainable
economic growth.
Chiles President Michelle Bachelet is perhaps the only example to date of a woman
president whose campaign emphasized womens and feminist issues. She promised to
appoint a parity cabinet (50% men, 50% women), to set up thousands of day-care
crches to help working women, and to provide free morning after pills to teenage
girls through government health clinics. Divorced, a single mother, a socialist and an
agnostic, Bachelet drew strong opposition from Chiles conservative groups (although,
ironically, she did not gain the support of Chiles divided feminist movement). Once
elected, Bachelet appointed a parity cabinet but opted to change ministers (at the
expense of parity) within a few months of her inauguration when it became clear that
several of her appointees lacked sufficient experience. She succeeded in creating
hundreds of day-care centers, but the free distribution of morning-after pills was
challenged by conservative lawmakers and eventually halted by a Supreme Court
decision (although they can still be purchased by prescription). Bachelets initiative to
introduce a parity-quota law was part of an unsuccessful, broader attempt to reform the
electoral system; both efforts failed.
Despite a rough start (due to problems with a new public-transport system in Santiago,
and demonstrations by high school students demanding better schools and greater
access to higher education), Bachelet succeeded in becoming a very popular president,
but Chile does not allow presidents to succeed themselves. In early 2010, the centerleft Concertacin coalition, which had won the presidency in every election since Chiles
return to democracy in 1990, lost to the conservative opposition coalition despite
Bachelets 80% plus approval ratings, the highest ever achieved by a Chilean president.
(Her ratings fell just before leaving office when her governments response to the 2010
earthquake was criticized by the Chilean public.)

Although the strategy of electing a woman president is appealing in theory, it is hard to

achieve in practice and inevitably falls short of expectations. A different executive-based
strategy focuses on the creation of womens ministries at the national and state or
provincial levels in order to institutionalize womens concerns within the government.
The dramatic rise of womens movements in the region was strongly supported by the
new international norms established during the UN Womens Decade (1975-85) and at
the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995). Many countries committed
themselves to the establishment of womens ministries as a concrete goal they could
achieve.
In Latin America, these experiments have had varied outcomes. In Brazil, for example,
the first democratic government under President Jos Sarney (1985-90) established a
National Council on Womens Rights, with cabinet status, composed of representatives
chosen equally from government and from civil society. From the beginning, it focused
on womens reproductive rights and violence against women, with innovations in health
policies; Brazil pioneered the establishment of womens police stations to deal with
women victimized by violence or rape. The Council lost power in 1989, however, when
its feminist members resigned in protest when President Sarney reduced its status and
cut its funding. Several of the Councils civil-society members formed an independent
watchdog group to lobby for new legislation and monitor the governments progress on
womens issues. In 2002 President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva established a new national
entity, the Secretariat for Womens Policy, which has been a solid success and builds
on the successes of several state councils and university programs.
In Chile, the womens movement, which had been very active in the public campaign to
defeat President Pinochet in the plebiscite of 1988, and then, in electing the first
Concertacin president, pushed hard for the establishment of a womens ministry. The
Concertacin responded by setting up the National Service for Women (SERNAM), a
compromise between the socially-conservative Christian Democrats and the more leftist
parties in the coalition. A Christian Democrat was appointed the first head of SERNAM,
although there were many more progressive feminists on its staff.
Very soon SERNAM found itself under attack from both the right and the left, with the
right arguing that the state should not support feminist initiatives that conflicted with
traditional Chilean cultural values, the feminists on the left faulting the agency for failing
to take on issues like abortion and divorce, and from grassroots womens groups
accusing it of losing touch with the mass base of the womens movement. It has been a
struggle, but SERNAM today can count many successes, including Chiles 2005 divorce
law and programs geared toward adolescent women. It provided the staffing to back up
President Bachelets ambitious gender initiatives. SERNAM learned, however, that it
was more likely to succeed in getting legislation passed if it couched its policy proposals
in pro-family, rather than pro-feminist, terms.

In many countries there is a deep and persistent division between women activists who
are willing to work with the government and those who insist on maintaining autonomy
rather than risking co-optation. Autonomy is seen as a moral position, and as a basis
for keeping group members active and connected, but it is self-defeating to the degree
that autonomous groups are not present at the table when policies are hammered out
and they may end up sitting out campaigns to lobby for, and ensure the implementation
of, gender equity laws. The case for autonomy is not always misguided, however.
Autonomistas can point to the example of Peru during the 1990s, when President
Alberto Fujimori championed feminist causes and appointed women to cabinet
positions, using his very public support for the womens movement to give a progressive
patina to his increasingly authoritarian rule.
Womens non-governmental groups (NGOs) have proliferated, but the region has a very
weak tradition of philanthropy, and virtually no experience with middle-class, massbased membership organizations (such as the Sierra Club or the National Organization
for Women in the United States) to provide local financing. As a result, womens NGOs
are often highly dependent either on foreign donors or on their own governments, which
may subsidize them directly (through university programs, for example) or pay them to
provide services, such as microcredit or health care. Sonia Alvarez, a sociologist who
served as a Ford Foundation officer in Brazil, has argued that this dependency
produces an unhealthy process of NGO-ization. Womens organizations lose the
ability to set their own agendas, either because they are being set by donors or
because, in order to survive, they become service providers rather than advocates for
change. There is often a gap between the professionalized, usually urban, NGO staff
and the clients they serve, which is reinforced by class and race differences.

Womens NGOs, Globalization and the Rise of Populist Governments

As governments cut back spending in the 1980s and 1990s to achieve fiscal stability,
many NGOs and womens organizations increasingly stepped in to fill the gap, providing
services from primary health care to basic nutrition, particularly in the shanty towns that
surround many Latin American cities. As states cut back and growth lagged, however,
many feminist and grassroots womens groups became disillusioned. As the World
Bank and UN Development Programme noted, structural adjustment reforms were
particularly hard on women, who were pushed into informal-sector employment and into
providing services that relieved the government of the responsibility of providing a social
safety net. Many womens and feminist groups have also become increasingly identified
with local and transnational networks that oppose globalization; they blame these
neoliberal reforms for increasing unemployment and inequality.
Opposition to globalization and neoliberalism is a common theme in the region and
has been a significant part of the campaigns that brought populist leaders to power in
Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, supported by thoseincluding women
who feel they have been hurt by the pro-market, anti-state policies of previous
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regimes. In office, these leaders have taken steps to reassert control over natural
resources, mobilize the poor and indigenous, and aggressively promote social
programs, many of which are targeted specifically toward women. Populist leaders are
democratically elected, often with robust majorities. But they are changing the rules of
the game. It is no longer sufficient to ask whether women are gaining power in Latin
Americas democracies. Rather, it is important to understand how different types of
democratic regimes structure womens access to power and to ask, are populist
democracies good for women?
Many think the answer is yes. In Venezuela, the government has enlisted women to
participate in neighborhood committees and social welfare programs known as
misiones. Women are among President Hugo Chvezs most enthusiastic supporters,
willing to volunteer to do work that helps others and helps the country. Populist
governments (like earlier Marxist regimes) address what British political scientist Maxine
Molyneux calls womens practical gender interests, that is, the everyday needs women
have to care for their families: food, housing, health care and schools. In societies beset
by poverty, exclusion and rapid economic change, these are critical issues, that are vital
for poor women, both urban and rural.
Focusing on practical gender issues, however, allows populist governments to put aside
what Molyneux calls womens strategic gender interests: gender equality, womens
reproductive and family rights; and sexuality. Thus, the Venezuelan feminist movement,
active since the 1930s, has been largely marginalized by the chavista government,
which has reneged on its own gender-parity electoral rules and has been openly
homophobic, although it has strengthened Venezuelas law on violence against women.
The election of Sandinista former president Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua is a striking
example of how gender issues may be denied by populist governments. Ortega won
the presidency a second time despite strong evidence that he sexually abused his
stepdaughter. Immediately after the election, his government passed the most
restrictive anti-abortion legislation in the hemisphere, Ortegas reward to the Catholic
Church, which had supported his campaign. That these events could occur in
Nicaragua, which is noted for the strength of its womens movement during both the
Sandinista governments of the 1980s and the conservative governments of the 1990s,
is telling. Today, Ortega has married his common-law wife of many years and embraced
family values; meanwhile, feminist leaders in the opposition are subject to threats and
harassment.

Linking Populism and Indigenous Politics: Implications for Womens

Rights and Representative Democracy
In one sense, populismthe appeal to the marginalized by developing social programs,
but continuing to rely on a capitalist growth modelis an old phenomenon in Latin
America. Presidents Juan Pern in Argentina and Getulio Vargas in Brazil, for example,
gained strong popular support through similar appeals in the 1930s and 1940s. Then
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the left was opposed to populism, which it attacked for buying off the masses and
weakening support for revolutionary change. Since 1989, socialism has lost its
credibility as a development model. Today, populism has become the preferred
alternative for many on the left, which is critical of the failure of neoliberal policies to
bring rapid growth or address poverty and inequality. Populism has also become a
political vehicle for newly-mobilized indigenous groups, which have become an
important political force in Bolivia, Ecuador and Guatemala, where they are a
substantial proportion of the population. Mexicos indigenous population is the largest in
absolute terms, but it is a relatively small percentage of the population, while Perus
indigenous, nearly half of its population, have remained quiescent. Although indigenous
numbers are small in most countries of the region, their demands for recognition and
justice have resonated widely in the hemisphere and internationally.
Populism and indigenous politics share several characteristics that conflict with
conventional western concepts of representative democracy. Populism relies on
polarization, pitting the people against their enemies. In the past, enemies were the
white oligarchy, foreign investors and the United States. In Bolivia today, President
Evo Morales has gone further, attacking mestizos as well as whites, and showing his
hostility to domestic capital (in the oriente region, which produces soybeans and where
Bolivias gas fields are located) as well as to foreign investors (even when those are not
U.S. firms, but the Brazilian and Spanish companies that invested in Bolivias
hydrocarbon industries).
In populist rhetoric, feminism is often characterized as foreign, and anti-feminist
positions are also found in the rhetoric of indigenous identity politics. In the Andes,
where indigenous movements have achieved their greatest political successes, the
gender ideal is not equality but complementarity between the sexes. The world is
conceived in terms of opposites. Women and men each lack qualities the other needs;
the Andean couple completes the whole and is the core unit of the Andean community.
Indigenous values appeal to many transnational groups and NGOs based in Europe
and the United States. They are also supported by those who favor a socialist
community over capitalist individualism and by other groups who oppose
development as a threat to human and biological diversity.
Taking gender complementarity seriously, however, requires that womens lives reflect
(even if they do not fully measure up to) the ideal. But there is considerable evidence
that they do not, and that womens rights are being violated within Andean communities,
even as indigenous communities ask that their human rights be respected by others.
Within Andean communities, women are subject to physical and psychological abuse.
Marriage may involve kidnapping and rape. Womens labor is undervalued and women
(because they usually marry out of the community) do not effectively own land, the most
valuable asset in a highland indigenous community. Men can travel to the city, learn
Spanish and dress in Western clothes. But, in part because women must represent
Andean values in their dress and behavior, they are expected to use their native
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tongue and to dress in the traditional pollera or layered skirt and bowler hat and not to
cut their hair. Andean communities seek autonomy and base their decisions on
consensus. But women are discouraged from becoming literate, cannot leave their
houses without their husbands permission, and are often ridiculed when they try to
speak in public, making it difficult for them to participate effectively in the political life of
their community.
Indigenous movements are mobilizing women in countries like Ecuador, Bolivia,
Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. While male indigenous leaders welcome the activism of
indigenous women, they do not encourage dissent. Understandably, many indigenous
women, who are in the process of claiming citizenship for the first time and who
experience extreme race and class exclusion, give priority to the indigenous struggle.
They recognize that they cannot hope to improve their situation until the indigenous are
granted respect and the means to address their grinding poverty. The community
comes first. The construction of indigenous identity based on gender complementarity
makes it even harder for indigenous women to formulate, much less claim, their
individual rights as women.
It is understandable that indigenous women will support leaders who are committed to
addressing poverty and who offer recognition and autonomy to indigenous communities,
even when those same governments ignore or downplay their rights as women. But
indigenous identity politics reinforce, rather than curb, some of the more worrisome
aspects of populism. In the communitarian model, decisions are made by consensus
and dissent is repressed. Leaders have a direct, face-to-face relationship with
community members, a form of direct democracy not limited by the checks and
balances or formal constraints imposed by representative democracy. Party competition
is seen as divisive, not as a source of policy alternatives or a restraint on executive
power.
The creation of conditions under which the indigenous can exercise full citizenship is a
pressing task for several countries in the region, one that perhaps can only be carried
forward, as Ecuadorian analyst Carlos de la Torre argues, by populist governments.
Indigenous political practices are not hierarchical or authoritarian; the leadership in
indigenous communities rotates among adult males, and the indigenous ideal of
mandar obedeciendo means that leaders must govern by the will of the people, not by
the leaders preconceived plan or whim. Those who study Bolivia argue that Evo
Morales is bound to his indigenous supporters by this form of accountability, contrasting
his rule with that of Hugo Chvez, who is not similarly constrained.
Indigenous communities are demanding the right to autonomy so that they may live
under their own customs and usages. Several Latin American constitutions now
recognize this claim as legitimate, allowing communities to govern themselves as long
as in doing so, they do not violate basic human rights. There is no doubt, however,
that womens rights are being violated within indigenous communitiesindeed, the
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maltreatment of women has been used by the Mexican government as a reason to deny
indigenous demands. In the Andes, however, political support for indigenous autonomy
is stronger, and governments are often unwilling or unable to interfere with local
customs, rendering the constitutional guarantees meaningless.
Conflicts between womens rights and indigenous rights may halt, or even reverse,
some of the legislative gains women have already achieved in countries like Bolivia,
Ecuador and Guatemala. In addition, conflicts between human rights, which are based
on the individual, and indigenous rights, which are based on the community, weaken
the legitimacy of the demand for womens human rights and strengthen the hand of
those who want to resist feminist pressures to address womens reproductive rights,
gender discrimination and violence against women. The progress that is being made
toward recognizing and incorporating the indigenous is a momentous change. It is too
early to tell, however, whether representative democracy and indigenous populism are
on a collision course, or to know whether women will continue to bear a disproportionate
share of the costs and reap few of the benefits of indigenous identity politics.
Conclusion
Paying attention to what is happening to women, like keeping an eye on the proverbial
canary in the mine shaft, is a revealing indicator of what is going right, and wrong, in
Latin American democracies today. Although some significant progress has been made
by women in the region, the fact that more women are attaining high-level positions in
all levels of government and in their communities does not necessarily mean that they
are all obtaining more political power to pursue changes in the status of women in their
societies. Finally, conflicts between indigenous communitarianism and representative
democracy may ultimately strengthen democracy in Latin America, but the path will not
be smooth.

Jane S. Jaquette is professor of politics and diplomacy and world affairs (Emerita) at Occidental
College in Los Angeles, as well as an adjunct professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at
Brown University. She has been a visiting fellow at Nuffield College (Oxford), the Women and Public
Policy Program at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard, the Latin American Program at Stanford, and
FLACSO (Chile). Dr. Jaquette served as president of the Association for Women in Development (AWID)
in 1990-91, and as president of the 4,000-member Latin American Studies Association (LASA) from
1995-97.

The Perspectives on the Americas series is assisted financially by the

Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State.

All statements of fact or expression of opinion contained in this publication are the responsibility of the author.

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