Barriers Beyond the Quota: The Gender Power Dynamics of Candidate Selection in Latin America

This paper argues the need for in-depth critical analyses of the legislative recruitment and candidate selection processes used by Latin American political parties, in both countries that have adopted quotas and those that have not. Here I offer a first approach to that analysis based on my qualitative research of the selection procedures used by the six main party factions in the 2009 Uruguayan parliamentary elections, which I compare and contrast with the findings of other recent –and as yet few– quantitative and qualitative studies of gender and candidate selection in Latin America. A shared conclusion of these studies is that the selection procedures used by political parties have a decisive effect on women’s political representation, not only terms of how many women are elected, but also in terms of the profile of successful women candidates. However, there is no clear consensus with regard to which procedures favour women’s access to electable candidacies or promote the election of more autonomous women politicians. From this comparison of the empirical findings in the region, I first offer some reflections on the implications of the lack of a “controlling presence” by women in the processes whereby they gain access elective political posts, for the substantive and symbolic dimensions of their political representation. I also review some of the methodological difficulties involved in studying candidate selection procedures, and signal why some of the analytical categories used in the mainstream literature on recruitment and selection prove problematic for studying how women fare in those processes. The paper ends with some suggestions for possible future approaches to research on candidate selection in the region, which could contribute to our understanding of women’s continued exclusion from political power, even in scenarios where the adoption of legal gender quotas has had a significant impact on women’s descriptive representation.