Women Entering Politics in Droves across Latin America

LIMA, Peru (By Tyler Bridges, Knight Ridder) March 12, 2006 — Lourdes Flores rode in the open back of a three-wheeled taxi and waved to the people jamming a street market among sacks of corn, carrots and potatoes.

Men greeted the presidential candidate enthusiastically, but women even more so.

"Since I was born, we've had only male presidents,'' said Irma Presentacion, one of the women watching the motorcade. "We need something better than the men have provided.''

Flores is favored to become the first female president in the history of Peru in elections this April, just months after Michele Bachelet made similar history in neighboring Chile and Jamaica's Portia Simpson-Miller won a People's National Party election that will soon make her the island's first female prime minister.

Flores, Bachelet and Simpson-Miller represent the vanguard of women entering politics in droves throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, thanks in part to affirmative-action laws requiring a greater percentage of female political candidates. Women hold about 18 percent of congressional seats throughout Latin America, up from about 5 percent 15 years ago, reports the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Sign of change

"The presence of women is coming to represent renovation and change,'' Flores said in an interview. "People are thinking, `Why not give them a chance?' ''

Leading the most recent polls with about 35 percent of the vote, Flores is expected to finish first or second in the April 9 balloting. If she does not win 50 percent plus one vote, she will face one of three men in a June runoff. Ollanta Humala, a retired army colonel running as an ultra-nationalist outsider, was second in the latest poll with 25 percent.

Peruvians are clearly disgusted with politics as usual, with traditional male political leaders, President Alejandro Toledo and the Congress all getting low marks in polls. Toledo's popularity barely registers in double figures.

Flores, who is unmarried, is using her gender as a political weapon. And it seems to be working. A recent poll showed that 23 percent of her supporters favor her because she is a woman.

"To be a woman means a break with traditional politics,'' said Lima pollster Giovanna Penaflor. "There's a perception that women are more honest than men and that women care more about helping everyone in society.''

Focus on gender

Bachelet, a 54-year-old pediatrician, also used her gender and unusual political background — she's divorced, an agnostic and a Socialist who lived in East Germany during the Pinochet dictatorship — to win support among voters who wanted change, even as she promised to continue the successful economic policies of her mentor, outgoing President Ricardo Lagos.

Bachelet has named women to half her Cabinet posts, including to such traditional male bastions as the economic and defense ministries. (Lagos had appointed Bachelet as Chile's first female minister of defense.)

"With the election of Bachelet, we're entering a new political era,'' Flores said, "an era when women will come to be seen as a permanent fixture in politics.''

Simpson-Miller's victory in an internal People's National Party vote made her the designated successor to Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, who will be retiring soon.

To be sure, women still have a long way to go. Teresa Rodríguez, a Mexico-based official with the U.N. Women's Development Fund, said no women have emerged as presidential contenders in any Latin American country besides Chile and Peru.

Women of similar education and background in Latin America earn only 87 percent of men's salaries, Rodríguez added, although that is up from 71 percent in 1990, according to the U.N. Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean.

But Latin American women are no longer more likely to be illiterate than men, reports UNESCO, with illiteracy rates among women 15 to 24 years old dropping from 17.5 percent in 1970 to 3.9 percent in 2005. And more women are joining the workforce — 49.7 percent of adult women in 2002, compared with 37.9 percent in 1990, according to U.N. figures.