Women and politics in Latin America
McClatchy has a story about the increased political status of women in Latin American politics (which even showed up in my Charlotte Observer this morning). I was pleased to see such a story get wide coverage, since the popular impression in the U.S. of Latin America is generally so negative.
This raises interesting questions about causal relationships. In the article, a former human rights official from the Bolivian government argues that women have been making gains as a result of the governments that are focusing on the underprivileged in general, led by presidents from disadvantaged backgrounds. As I mentioned the other day, the Venezuelan constitutional reforms include gender equality. The argument makes intuitive sense if a political movement is pushing for equality—I don’t know if anyone has tested for a correlation between ideology (though even defining it can be challenging) and gender equality outcomes in Latin America.
Yet if we look at another angle, namely legislative gender quotas, the countries with quotas are all over the place ideologically. Actually, there’s an interesting UCSD working paper on Latin American quotas by Jennifer Piscopo.* Costa Rica, Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Ecuador, Paraguay, Brazil, and Honduras don’t have much in common on the surface, so what commonalities can we find that help explain the outcome?
Much food for thought. I’ll definitely discuss this in class tomorrow.
* In fact, she is pessimistic about the impact quotas have on women’s rights generally, though I would think it might be too soon to understand fully the ways in which they transform politics and society.
3 comments:
Greg
Jack Chang's story is part of a 2-day series about Latin American women that he's written for McClatchy. The leadership story was part 1. I don't know if any other parts will make print. There's at least 2 more components, one on women as heads of household, and another about domestic violence. Hoping to have the stories up in Spanish at www.charlotte.com/espanol.
I don't see the other parts yet--I hope they publish it.
I've just posted the Spanish version of the domestic violence story on charlotte.com/espanol.
The English version is here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/280135.html
And here's the story on heads of household (Spanish version to be posted Tuesday on charlotte.com):
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/280139.html
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