Women Who Win: Social Backgrounds, Paths to Power, and Political Ambition in Latin America

Abstract

Research on women in Latin American politics in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s showed that very few women ran for and won political office and those who did often did not fit the mold of the typical legislator. Yet, significant cultural, social, and political changes have occurred over the past thirty years and few studies have re-examined the types of women who win political office in the region today. In this paper, I examine the social backgrounds, paths to power, and political ambition of women and men elected to national legislatures in Argentina, Colombia, and Costa Rica. I argue that women and men are likely to be more similar than different given the tight constraints imposed on legislative candidates in democratic elections and empirically examine this with data from an original survey of legislators conducted in 2001-2002. I find that, indeed, women and men are quite similar on an array of characteristics. Women who win elected office in Latin America today do so by playing the traditional, male-defined, political game.