Populism, Gender Attitudes and Religion: Evidence from Latin America

Latin American societies are still characterized by a more patriarchal view of gender roles and other gender-related issues. Such attitudes transcend to political competition and position taking of political actors. Indeed, Wiesehomeier (2010) shows that the majority of parties and presidents in the region oppose liberal policies on homosexuality, divorce, and abortion, even if they support left policies on the economy. In other words, while in the European context the support for anti-feminist and anti-homosexual policies is firmly anchored on the right of the ideological spectrum, this is not necessarily the case across the Latin American region. Rather such policy positioning is driven by defending religious principles in politics versus secular values. We therefore postulate that religious left- and right-leaning populists in Latin America will defend attitudes that are linked by an underlying notion of traditional values rooted in a Christian worldview opposing sexual diversity and gender equality. Contrary, we expect that non-religious populists will display gender attitudes in accordance to their ideological positioning. Using a unique dataset of elite surveys with members of congress in nine Latin American countries allows us to explore the level of populist attitudes among representatives in combination with their attitudes towards gender issues and religion. We can thus systematically assess whether populist ideology is gendered in and of itself or whether strong religious beliefs are a necessary condition that explains gender attitudes among members of Congress across the left-right ideological dimension.