ABSTRACT
In the spring of 2014 there were three women serving as presidents of their country in Latin America: Cristina Fernández in Argentina, Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, and Laura Chinchilla in Costa Rica. They are not the first to win a presidential election. Before them, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Mireya Moscoso in Panama, and Violeta Barrios in Nicaragua were elected as presidents in open and free elections. But even though the presidency is the most important and more visible political office in a country, there are other levels of government where the presence of women has increased in recent years. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the participation of women in Latin American politics, describing their political background and experience, as well as comparing their political interests with their male colleagues. Here I will focus on legislative members from eighteen Latin American countries. Other scholars have attempted to research women representation beyond legislatures and have looked at executive cabinets (Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson 2005, 2011), political parties (Roza et al 2010; Llanos and Sample 2008), and local-level institutions (Llanos and Sample 2008b; Krook 2009). Different analyses show that women legislators in many countries in Latin America are gaining seats, and even though they face difficulties, women are willing to enter politics. However, in some countries, the representation of women has not made any progress.
