Quietly and against the odds, women are stepping up the political ladder in Latin America, moving ahead of the United States when it comes to political empowerment and closely matching much of Western Europe.
The Latin America-Caribbean region, once a caldron of machismo and gender inequality, has jumped ahead on women’s advancement with more female heads of state and heads of government — five — than any other area globally and a higher percentage of female members of parliament (22.5 percent) than any region except Nordic Europe, according to the 2012 Women in Politics survey of the agency U.N. Women and the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
Female leaders are no novelty in the region. But now, at the same time, there are Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica, both first-time presidents; Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, in her second term; and Kamla Persad-Bissessar of Trinidad and Tobago and Portia Simpson-Miller of Jamaica, the first female prime ministers of their island nations. And in Mexico this election season, Josefina Vázquez Mota, an economist, is the first woman to run for president under a major-party banner.
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