Protests as Gendered Crises: Impacts on Women’s Representation and Leadership

• In Event: Gender, Crisis and Political Power (Pre-Recorded)

Abstract

Citizen protests are common political phenomena, ranging in size, kind, and impact. Massive uprisings motivated by critiques of entire political systems sometimes involve violence and

produce constitutional crises. Such events arguably carry significant potential to alter the demand for women in power. This piece argues that when citizen protests involving violence reach the threshold of constitutional crises, they can have complex, and sometimes contradictory effects on women’s representation and leadership.

Crises demand the immediate and absolute attention of the chief executive, and the violence may have contradictory consequences for voters’ preferences for women in power. Vandalism accompanying protests can lead to the disproportionate use of force by the police, resulting in human rights abuses. As citizens fear the violence, they may seek traditional, masculine forms of executive leadership. At the same time, however, outcry over human rights abuses by the police could move citizens to search for stereotypically feminine, compassionate leaders.

In the medium to long term, protests may lead to legitimacy or constitutional crises. Such developments, sometimes characterized by “leaderless” or “inorganic uprisings,” present
theoretical affinities with feminist ways of non-hierarchical organization and can foster demand for new faces among the representatives or even alternative forms of representation. Constituent moments, which are temporally accompanied by feminist movements, may be more likely to provide space for greater female representation in writing a new constitution.

We illustrate all of these theoretical points with evidence from the Chilean protests of October 2019, which set into motion the creation of the world’s first gender-parity constitutional assembly. We also draw parallels with other massive, violent citizen protests both within Latin America and beyond.

Authors

• Julieta Suarez-Cao, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

• Carmen Le Foulon, Centro de Estudios Públicos

• Catherine Reyes-Housholder, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile