A Theory of Gendered Advantages: Evidence from Latin America

• In Event: The Rise and Fall of Women Presidents from the Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The presidency is often considered the most powerful political office, and today men hold about 95% of presidencies globally. Winning national elections is the most common way to obtain presidential power, and male candidates tend to dominate these contests thanks to several gendered advantages. For example, male candidates tend to command far more campaign resources than women, and “presidential” qualities—such as authority, leadership and toughness—usually are associated with the male sex. Given these disadvantages, how do women come to competitively contest the presidency?
This paper articulates a theory of gendered advantages to explain how and when women mount viable presidential campaigns. To achieve this, women generally need the support of an “experienced party,” defined as a party or coalition that has previously held presidential power. Experienced parties—more often than inexperienced ones—tend to possess the national reputation, organizational infrastructure and financial resources necessary to launch serious presidential bids. The paper’s theory thus aims first and foremost to explain why such parties decide (albeit very rarely) to nominate female instead of male presidential candidates.
I argue that such parties are more likely to support female over male presidential candidates when these parties’ goals align with women’s stereotypical advantages. Feminine advantages can emerge when the same traits that voters desire in their next president are associated with women in politics. Thanks to their gender, voters and parties tend to associate women in politics with political change, moral integrity, democratic and citizen-focused leadership styles, and competency on feminine issues (i.e. healthcare and education). Because of shared gender identity, female politicians are viewed as better at galvanizing women voters. Parties are more likely to break with tradition and nominate a female instead of a male presidential candidate when these parties seek to signal change, demonstrate more democratic and citizen-focused leadership, prioritize feminine issues, and energize previously disenchanted female voters.
I test some components of the theory of gendered advantages via a statistical analysis of presidential contenders in Latin America. Almost all Latin American countries hold presidential elections since the early 1990s, and since 1999, women won eight times and finished in either second or third place another 15 times. Contemporary Latin America therefore offers a high concentration of presidential elections and serious female contenders, facilitating a statistical analysis of the determinants of parties’ nominations of female rather than male presidential candidates.
This paper’s dataset features presidential candidate nominations by all parties from 1999-2020 in 18 countries. The dependent variable is binary, coded 0 if the nominee is male and 1 if the nominee is female. Less than 10% of the candidates are female in my dataset. I incorporate time-series, cross-national data from LAPOP surveys, Executive Approval Project, and the Varieties of Democracy dataset to capture some of the factors that could help predict whether a party will nominate a female over a male presidential contender (“AmericasBarometer” 2004; Carlin et al. 2016; Coppedge et al. 2016). Control variables include parties’ ideology and macroeconomic indicators.
Results show that, overall, incumbent parties are more likely to nominate female candidates for president, possibly because such parties perceive a greater need than non-incumbent parties to signal change. Moreover, all parties are more likely to nominate women as citizens' distrust of parties grows and as levels of public corruption rise. I also find that parties are less likely to nominate female candidates as levels of executive corruption rise, and this could be consistent with existing studies that show that executive-level corruption can serve to exclude women from executive politics (Verge and Astudillo 2018). Contrary to global studies of female presidents and prime ministers (Jalalzai 2013; Thames and Williams 2013), the quantity of female legislators has no independent impact on the likelihood of parties to nominate women for president. Results are robust to different time-series, cross-national modeling specifications.
To conclude, women almost always need vast campaign resources—usually provided by experienced parties—in order to mount competitive presidential bids. However, experienced parties rarely perceive their own need to field female candidates. Possibilities for “feminine” advantages in presidential campaigns can motivate experienced parties to throw their support behind female presidential contenders. This paper therefore has important and timely implications for the literature on electoral campaigns, executive politics, and gender.

Author

• Catherine Reyes-Housholder, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile