Selecting Women, Electing Women

Magda Hinojosa is Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. She has received awards from the Fulbright and Ford Foundations.

"[A] discerning exploration of women in Latin American politics... [Hinojosa] handily disproves the leading explanations for female under-representation, refuting both supply-side arguments and demand-side excuses with a parade of data on women's progress... Selecting Women, Electing Women [provides] detailed case studies on Chile and Mexico, drawing the surprising conclusion that it may in fact be the primary process - often thought of as the most democratic of all nominating systems - that keeps Latin American women disempowered."--NACLA Report on the Americas, Winter 2012 "Selecting Women, Electing Women argues that the rules for candidate selection affect the election of women to political office in Latin America. Hinojosa's overall approach and the substantive argument she makes represent significant innovations... In addition to providing a persuasive explanation of the puzzle of variation in women's representation in the region, the book provides ample background on the status of women overall, a clear description of the political terrain in two important countries in the region, and a sense of how the same issues play out in other countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Guatemala, and Peru. Her interview data provides the kind of detail that illuminates important differences within and across countries and makes the book easily accessible to readers unfamiliar with political parties in Latin America."--Journal of Politics, April 2013 "Hinojosa has analyzed the results of her magnificent, tightly organized research project that examined institutional and gatekeeper barriers to women who run for municipal (mayoral) offices in Latin America, with a focus on Mexico and Chile... The genius of Hinojosa's research design is attention to the candidate selection process. Counterintuitively, she finds that selection procedures that are more exclusive (not inclusive) and centralized (not decentralized) benefit women... Summing Up: Highly recommended."--Choice, June 2013

• Acknowledgments 1 Electing Women: Female Political Representation in Latin America 2 Why Selection Matters: Explaining Women's Representation in Politics 3 How Selection Matters: A Theoretical Framework 4 The Paradox of Primaries: Inclusive-Decentralized Selection 5 Inclusive-Centralized and Exclusive-Decentralized Selection 6 "Less Democratic, but More Effective": Exclusive-Centralized Selection 7 Selecting Candidates Closer to Home: Widows, Wives, and Daughters 8 Altering Candidate Selection: The Adoption and Implementation of Gender Quotas 9 Candidate Selection and Women's Representation in Latin American Politics Appendix A: Latin American Women's Representation by Party Appendix B: Interviews Notes References Index