Women Legislators in Central America: Politics, Democracy, and Policy (review)

In 1980, women accounted for only five percent of legislators in Central American national governments, and only eight percent of national legislators worldwide. Fifteen years later, Central American women had more than doubled their numbers as members to 12.6 percent, surpassing the worldwide average of 10 percent. Women Legislators in Central America aims to explain how and why these female candidates successfully bid for office through two interrelated questions: what were the factors that contributed to the election of more women legislators in Central America during this period? Second, did the quantitative increase in women in elected office qualitatively change Central American politics and policy?

To answer these questions, the authors take a three-part approach. First, they offer a comparative historical analysis of national politics in Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua since the time of European conquest. By considering political change over time, the authors conclude that examining national institutional structures can best explain and predict where and when women have become successful political candidates. Women do best, they argue, in political environments with “proportional representation, party lists, multiple-member districts, and even a few left-of-center parties” (117).

Favorable structural opportunities, however, do not guarantee electoral success. Women in Central America who aspire to elected office must battle underlying cultural and social traditions, machismo for example, to successfully bid for public office. The authors, both political scientists, interviewed seventy-five women who had successfully run for national office from 1980–95. Using life stories, the authors describe how individual legislators across the region overcame significant cultural and social obstacles, first to run for, and then be elected to, national office.

The authors adroitly weave together these myriad experiences, life stories, and voices to reveal a tapestry of patterns that may not surprise anyone: these women were different from their nonelected peers “in terms of their education, socio-economic class, marital status, number of children, and having a mother who worked outside the home” (131). Perhaps more importantly, their interest in politics typically stemmed from early family experiences when, in spite of their gender, they were encouraged to participate and take an active interest in national political life. As Saint-Germain writes, with the exception of one politician from El Salvador, all the women were supported in their family either formally or informally through the “absence of opposition” to their interests in public life. “Given the traditional association of politics with behaviors and events antithetical to values for young girls, i.e., as male dominated, corrupt, sordid, dirty, dangerous,” the authors argue that this encouragement made all the difference in the professional lives of political women (134).

The authors describe their oral history methodology in detail in the appendix. Saint-Germain came remarkably close to achieving her goal of interviewing 100 percent of the women who were elected during this period. She interviewed 100 percent of the female legislators of this period from Costa Rica, and 83 percent of those elected in Guatemala and the rates in other countries fell somewhere in between. Saint-Germain’s questionnaire is included in the appendix. The authors describe the challenges of interviewing and transcribing in a second language (though both are fluent in Spanish) and the methods they used to ensure accuracy in translation. Though this book is notable for its comparative and historic approach, the strength of the work lies in the telling of the personal stories. Occasionally, these stories take a back seat to quantitative statistical models, which is understandable given that the quantitative data is the framework on which much of their argument hangs.

The third section of the book assesses the degree to which these women have influenced politics, public policy, and the polity in their respective nations. Two factors enhanced women’s ability to shape the legislative agenda once they were elected to office: the rise of international organizations devoted to women’s issues and the...