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