Women’s Political Inclusion in Latin America: The Challenges of Gauging Visibility

Abstract

Chapter 3 focuses on a select set of Latin American countries (Honduras, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Panama) where women’s legislative representation doubled from one election to the next and rose above 20 percent. Detecting the effects of quotas and descriptive representation is complicated. Available survey evidence is inadequate to discern clear patterns on how sizable jumps in the numbers of women in political office influence political engagement and support. Cross-national survey timing makes it even more difficult to gauge the impact of these changes. Further, these gains may not have always been publicly visible, and a variety of salient campaign issues and events contend for the public’s attention and may overshadow the influence of women’s election to office. Assessing changes to political engagement and political support requires precise methods. In this way, this chapter sets up the analysis using our unique survey from Uruguay.