Wesleyan University The Honors College Women’s Empowerment Beyond Elections: The Relevance of Legal Gender Quotas in Latin America by Rebecca Friendly Class of 2011 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in Government Middletown, Connecticut April, 2011 1 Contents CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. 4 CHAPTER TWO: AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................... 39 CHAPTER THREE: COSTA RICA CASE STUDY .......................................................... 60 CHAPTER FOUR: PANAMA CASE STUDY ............................................................... 95 CHAPTER FIVE: COLOMBIA CASE STUDY ............................................................. 122 CHAPTER SIX: NICARAGUA CASE STUDY ............................................................. 152 CHAPTER SEVEN: CROSS‐CASE ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS ............................. 181 TECHNICAL APPENDIX ....................................................................................... 203 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................. 209 2 AcKnowledgements First, I wish to thank my advisor Professor Michael Touchton for his unrelenting guidance, support, and advice. It has been an honor to work with him on this project, and I am very thankful for his contribution of knowledge to my work. My thanks extend to Professor Sarah Wiliarty, whose class, “Women and Politics,” inspired me to write this thesis. I would also like to thank my Thesis Writing Mentor, Ruby Hernandez, for her feedback and editing assistance during our weekly meetings, and for consistently making my Thursdays not only more manageable, but more enjoyable. Gratitude is also due to all those who aided me in my long search for data. I would like to extend a special thanks to Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer, a scholar whose work I admire tremendously, for responding to my inquiries and providing me with invaluable information. I also thank Gloria Valerín and Ottón Solis for allowing me to interview them in Costa Rica. Their insights have been critical in directing and shaping this thesis. I would like to thank Wendy Rodríguez at INCAE Business School and the investigators at The Center for Research on Women’s Leadership for their generosity and time helping me to gather data on women’s leadership in Nicaragua. To my Mom, Dad, and Taylor, I cannot express how grateful I am for their unfaltering love and support. Thanks to Mom for her help with my Spanish translations, to Dad for his assistance with my excel spreadsheets and formatting, and Taylor for his encouraging pep talks. Lastly, thanks to my Grandpa for accompanying me during my interviews. Last but not least, I would like to thank my closest friends -- Daria Lombroso, Emily Brackman, Emily Byrne, Leonora Mardh, Lindsay Keys, Alyssa Lanz, and Asher Kelly-Nacht for listening to me talk about my thesis for hours on end. I am grateful for their patience during times of stress, and for always believing in me and continuing to inspire me. 3 Chapter One: IntrodUction Women’s marginalization is a common pattern found throughout all regions of the globe. In many societies women face substantial gender gaps in the type of work they can perform, the educational opportunities and economic resources available to them, and their access to political power.1 Despite the substantial progress made in these areas over the past decade, Norris and Inglehart note, “progress has proved most difficult in the inclusion of women’s voices in politics” and “in the world as a whole, women remain far from parity at the apex of power.”2 Policy makers in the mid-‘90s began advocating national gender quota laws, laws that set up a specific percentage for the representation of women in the legislature, as a way to rectify women’s under representation in government. Argentina became the first country to adopt legal gender quotas in 1991 and eleven other Latin American countries followed suit between 1996 and 2000. The authors of quota laws view their legislation as the first step toward empowering women in their respective countries. Countries begin this process by mandating a greater presence for women in the legislature. Then, women legislators achieve leadership positions or reach a critical mass of women in elected offices.3 1See Inglehart and Norris (2003), Craske (1999), Gupta (2008), Goertz, and Mazur (2008), Sen (2000). 2 Inglehart, Ronald, and Pippa Norris. Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change around the World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print. (Note: It may also be illustrative to cite the statistics for how many women it in parliament worldwide) 3 Beckwith, Karen, and Kimberly Cowell-Meyers. “Sheer Numbers: Critical Representation Thresholds and Women's Political Representation.” Perspectives on Politics 5.03 (2007): 553-565. Web. Dahlerup, Drude. "Quotas as a 'Fast Track' to Equal Representation for Women." International Feminist Journal of Politics 7.1 (2005): 26-48. Print. Peschard, Jacqueline. “El sistema de cuotas en America Latina. Panorama general,” in International IDEA. Mujeres en el Parlamento: Mas alla de los numeros, Stockholm, Sweden 2002. 4 Next, legislatures with high percentages of women will design and implement legislation empowering women in society.4 Quota laws have been in place for about fifteen years and have attracted a considerable amount of research. Scholars generally agree that the content of a quota law, its provisions, and the political system in which it is implemented will affect the efficacy of the law in terms of increasing levels of female representation. Despite significant attention to quotas, scholars know woefully little about their impact on women’s empowerment. For example, scholars do not know how women elected through legal gender quotas behave once they are elected to office. It is unknown whether these women attain leadership positions in government or support legislation intended to improve women’s status in any areas. It is unknown whether women elected to office have any influence whatsoever. Lack of knowledge in this area has high costs. First, scholars have no way of knowing whether women’s presence in office is the first step toward empowerment in other areas. Many scholars assume women in office will achieve leadership status as their numbers grow and they reach a critical mass.5 Considerable literature uses this assumption to argue for an ultimately virtuous circle stemming from women’s mere presence in government. In the beginning women are elected to office, gain status and pass legislation beneficial to women. 6 This improves the position of women in society in a self- 4 Thomas, Sue. "The Impact of Women on State Legislative Policies." The Journal of Politics 53.4 (1991): 958-76. Print. Thomas, Sue, and Susan Welch. "The Impact of Gender on Activities and Priorities of State Legislators." The Western Political Quarterly 44.2 (1991): 445-56. Print. 5 Beckwith, Karen, and Kimberly Cowell-Meyers. “Sheer Numbers: Critical Representation Thresholds and Women's Political Representation.” Perspectives on Politics 5.03 (2007): 553-565. Web. 6 Carroll, Susan J. (2001), Franceschet, Susan, and Jennifer M. Piscopo (2008), Poggione, Sarah (2004). 5 sustaining feedback loop. However, scholars have not assessed whether women gain leadership positions through legal gender quotas. Evidence suggesting women do not achieve the leadership status necessary to pass legislation could undermine the theoretical edifice supporting gender quotas in the first place. The lack of knowledge surrounding women’s activity after they are elected via legal gender quotas may have real human costs as well. Well-meaning countries may be wasting their time trying to empower women through the adoption of these laws until we perform an assessment of quotas’ impact on women. However, it is equally possible that quota laws are beneficial for empowering women representatives and thus worthy of proliferation. My thesis fills gaps in scholarship and practice by determining whether legal gender quotas matter for the empowerment of women representatives. Gaps in our knowledge surrounding legal gender quotas can be attributed to one major shortcoming in the scholarly literature. The literature cannot speak to whether gender quotas actually matter for increasing women’s empowerment. This question has not been addressed because the presence of gender quota laws and the presence of women in the legislature are often used interchangeably.7 For instance, scholars have studied the impact of quotas on increasing the presence of women in the legislature and subsequently the effects of having more women in office on women’s empowerment but no one has studied the independent effect of quotas on 7 Works include: Htun, M. and Jones, M. (2002), Beaman, Lori et al. (2011), Gray, Tricia (2003), Peschard (2002), Aili Mari Tripp, and A. Kang (2007). 6 empowerment.8 Similarly, no one has investigated the potential impacts of quotas and of representation as two separate variables within a comprehensive study. A handful of scholars have encouraged future studies to examine the effects of legal gender quotas beyond simply increasing women’s representation in national legislatures, recognizing that this topic is under theorized.9 For instance, Dahlerup (2005) suggests, “we need to start looking