Selecting Women, Electing Women

Political Representation and Candidate Selection in Latin America

Magda Hinojosa

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781439908495
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

Selecting Women, Electing Women is a groundbreaking book that examines how the rules for candidate selection affect women's political representation in Latin America.  Focusing particularly on Chile and Mexico, Magda Hinojosa presents counterintuitive assumptions about factors that promote the election of women. She argues that primaries—which are regularly thought of as the most democratic process for choosing candidates—actually produce fewer female nominees than centralized and seemingly exclusionary candidate selection procedures.

Hinojosa astutely points out the role of candidate selection processes in explaining variation in women's representation that exists both across and within political parties. Selecting Women, Electing Women makes critical inroads to the study of gender and politics, candidate selection, and Latin American politics.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Electing Women: Female Political Representation in Latin America
• 2. Why Selection Matters: Explaining Women’s Representationin 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