Women and transitional justice in Latin America: obstacles to political agency and initiatives

This paper examines the participation of women in transitional justice processes in Peru, Colombia and Guatemala, by focusing on the barriers they face and the strategies required to overcome them. In recent years, Latin America has made significant progress in advancing women’s political participation, becoming one of the leading regions in the world for female representation. As of 2023, women hold around 35–36% of seats in national parliaments—well above the global average—thanks largely to gender quota and parity laws implemented across most countries. However, despite these achievements, challenges persist as evidenced in the access of women to transitional justice. Based on 50 semi-structured interviews conducted under the PROMUJER project —with both women leaders and officials from transitional justice bodies—, we analyze how cultural standards permeate institutions and normative in the three contexts, reproducing patriarchal patterns that exclude women from decision-making spaces. Our findings reveal a set of obstacles in women access to transitional justice bodies, namely: the strong male leadership, the lack of female political empowerment, the impunity for gender-based crimes and the existence of exclusionary criteria in accessing executive agencies responsible for reparation. Our data also points to a range of strategies to address them. On the one hand, bottom-up initiatives such as alliances among women organizations and promotion of female leadership in civil society organizations. On the other, top-down actions: expanding women's participation rights, monitoring compliance with gender representation norms and good practices from other countries. Ultimately, this paper argues that sustainable peace and justice in post-conflict societies require reconfiguring transitional justice from a gender perspective, which not only recognized women as victims but also as agents of political transformation. Strengthening women’s leadership within these processes is essential for ensuring that transitional justice contributes to structural equality, collective memory, and the non-repetition of violence.