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The Gender Gap in Latin America: Contextual and Individual Influences on Gender and Political Participation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2009

Scott Desposato  and
Barbara Norrander
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Abstract

While a substantial literature explores gender differences in participation in the United States, Commonwealth countries and Western Europe, little attention has been given to gender’s impact on participation in the developing world. These countries have diverse experiences with gender politics: some have been leaders in suffrage reforms and equal rights, while, in others, divorce has only recently been legalized. This article examines the relationship between gender and participation in seventeen Latin American countries. Many core results from research in the developed world hold in Latin America as well. Surprisingly, however, there is no evidence that economic development provides an impetus for more equal levels of participation. Instead, the most important contextual factors are civil liberties and women’s presence among the visible political elite.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 141 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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30 We are unable to test for the effects of children on participation as no question on parenthood was included in the Latinobarometro survey.

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53 Predicted values come from the reduced models. Where interactions were not included in the reduced model, the gender gap will be unaffected by covariates, by design. See, for example, Religiosity in Table 3.

54 Most Latin American countries restrict voting to those 18 years of age or older; Brazil allows literate 16 and 17 year olds to vote.

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67 Setting positive interactions with Womanto their maximum empirical values and interactions with negative coefficients to their minimum empirical values.

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69 See http://www.latinobarometro.org.

70 Inter-Parliamentary Union, Women in National Parliaments, http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif-arc.htm.

71 See http://www.freedomhouse.org for more details.