Engendering the Right to Participate in Decision-making: Electoral Quotas and Women’s Leadership in Latin America

Abstract

Since elite women mobilised around suffrage rights in the nineteenth century, gaining access to decision-making power has been a central objective of women’s movements in Latin America. Today these demands appear to have been realised. Between 1991, when Argentina became the first democratic state in Latin America to establish a strict women’s quota, and 2000, when Colombia became the most recent country in the region to do so, 12 Latin American countries enacted national laws establishing a minimum level of 20 to 40 per cent for women’s participation as candidates in national elections. The regional trend toward the enactment of quota laws is unprecedented in world history. Only Belgium and Taiwan have similar quota legislation. Today (December 2000), women occupy 13 per cent of the seats in the lower houses of parliament in Latin America. The region ranks behind North-ern Europe (at 39 per cent), and compares with the world average, the rest of Europe, as well as the United States (all at 13 per cent).