Gender and Populism in the Latin American Experience

Many scholars focusing on populism have rejected the relevance of gender to understand populism. More recently, the spread of extreme-right populist options in Europe posited nativism on the center and accordingly the traditional role of women as mothers. In Latin America, the spread of populism is not novel, while there are many versions of populism on the right (Alberto Fujimori in Peru, Carlos Saúl Memen in Argentina) and the left (Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela), past ( Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina) and present (Andrés Manuel López Obrador or Nayib Bukele in El Salvador). This has been a space dominate by men, with few special exceptions (such as Cristina Kirchner, a politician on her own but also married to a former president when running for office). This paper explores the role attributed to women by populist leaders and the relation between populism and gender during Cristina Kirchner's government.