How Women Win the Presidency: The Case of Brazil 2010

• In Event: Gender, Power, and Political Parties in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The most difficult kind of political power for women to obtain arguably is the most important: the presidency. Variants of presidentialism remain the most common form of democracy today (Samuels and Shugart 2010), and presidents wield unparalleled symbolic and substantive powers in countries such as the United States, Brazil, France, Russia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The usual and most legitimate way to become president is via elections, and yet, women have won just 6% of the world’s presidential races from 1990-2020. Men’s dominance in the presidency worldwide constitutes one of the most egregious inequalities in contemporary democracies.
How do women win the presidency? I develop a two-stage theory of how women win the presidency via incumbent parties. My theory, adopting a candidate-trait interpretation of presidential elections, rests on the concept of latent feminine advantages. Party selectors can be outgoing presidents, party elites or mass-level militants, and their goals may relate to winning the election, building the party brand and, in the case of outgoing presidents, fortifying their legacies. Although rare, latent feminine advantages crystallize when the candidate attributes party selectors believe they need to realize their goals overlap with traits and symbols associated with women in politics. I group these traits and symbols into multiple categories: novelty, modernity, and moral integrity. The presence of latent feminine advantages augments the probability of parties’ nominating women, but the relationship is not deterministic. Candidate performance, that is, women’s ability to credibly convey these desired traits, also matters (Stage 1).
In similar ways as their male counterparts, the fate of female candidates nominated by incumbent parties depends on election fundamentals. I operationalize incumbent parties’ fundamentals using measures of citizens’ satisfaction with the presidential party’s performance, such as presidential approval ratings. Candidate performance on desired traits also matters during the post-nomination stage, at least on the margins. Because they tend to emerge in contexts of latent feminine advantages, female nominees become better-positioned to win the election when they outperform their challengers on broadly desired traits associated with women in politics. Failure to perform well on the traits of novelty, modernity and/or moral integrity can damage women’s chances of victory (Stage 2).
This paper illustrates the theory via an in-depth case study of Dilma Rousseff’s victory in Brazil’s 2010 election. No other incumbent political party in post-transition Latin America was better positioned to democratically win another presidential race than the PT in 2010. The central black box of this election is not how the PT won, but how the party ended up with Dilma Rousseff as its nominee. I argue that in the case of the PT’s dominant selector Lula, party-building and legacy goals aligned with two traits associated with women in politics: (1) progressive modernity and (2) moral integrity. I explain how the abstract notion of “Brazil’s first female president” was consistent with the PT’s brand as a promotor of historically marginalized groups, and it also would advance Lula’s own legacy. Upon the mensalão scandal, the PT need to re-brand itself as a corruption-fighting party created a latent feminine advantage of moral integrity. Concerning candidates’ performance on latent feminine advantages, I argue that Lula selected Rousseff thanks to her technocratic brilliance, which enhanced perceptions of her potential to serve well as Brazil’s first female president. Moreover, Rousseff’s squeaky-clean record and her shallow ties in the PT enhanced public perceptions of her moral integrity and hence her ability to perform well on these traits.
I sustain these arguments by integrating national surveys, media-based accounts of campaign events, and campaign advertisements. First, survey data provides evidence of not only the evolution of Brazilian’s vote intention, but some questions also shine light on why Brazilians preferred specific candidates over others. Second, newspaper archives ground key points in the campaign from 2007-10 and evidence of Lula’s and Rousseff’s discourse while on the campaign trail.
Third, I contextually interpret televised advertisements from the Rousseff campaign. I maintain that campaign advertisements, properly interpreted, can reveal crucial aspects of Lula’s and the PT’s intent in nominating a female rather than a male candidate for president. My discursive interpretations bolster my argument concerning latent feminine advantages and Lula’s and the PT’s understanding of Rousseff’s potential performance on the specific advantage of progressive modernity as Brazil’s first female president.

Author

• Catherine Reyes-Housholder, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile