How Latin American Women Governed During the Pandemic
Por Catherine Osborn. Publicado en Foreign Policy. 30 de julio de 2021
The Female Policymaker Dividend
COVID-19 hit Latin America at a moment when all of its elected presidents were men. However, thanks in part to the region’s widespread quota policies to increase women’s ranks in politics, the number of women in lower houses of federal legislatures—31.6 percent—was slightly higher than the global average of 24.5. In some countries, female lawmakers are just as or more common at the state and city levels.
A year and a half into the pandemic, data is emerging about how some of these female leaders governed their responses differently than their male counterparts did, both at the city and federal levels. A groundbreaking study of around 700 Brazilian municipalities found that those with female mayors had, on average, at least 37 percent fewer COVID-19 deaths per capita than those with male mayors.
Measuring the gender effect. While some studies have described correlations between female leaders and better COVID-19 management, the authors of the Brazilian study, which is still under peer review, believe it is the first to establish a causal relationship. To simulate a controlled experiment, the authors—economists who hail from the University of São Paulo, Insper, and the University of Barcelona—selected cities of similar sizes that had tight elections between male and female candidates in 2016 and then compared those that elected men versus women, controlling for other factors.
Along with seeing fewer of their constituents die from COVID-19, female mayors were found to have implemented non-drug interventions like mask-wearing and social distancing requirements more than their male counterparts did. The researchers could not explain those actions according to mayors’ political ideologies or levels of education, concluding that they appeared to be related to less observable characteristics, such as being risk-averse.
Little scientific research has been done on the role of women as policymakers in times of crisis, they wrote, though studies from India, Italy, and China have found that corruption is less intense among female leaders.
Stimulus policy reinvented. In Argentina, a group of female policymakers sit in the upper ranks of the federal government, where they shape budget and policy proposals in addition to holding workshops for regional officials on addressing the gender gap through economic policy. This has resulted in a suite of federal COVID-19 recovery policies that do the same.
Such a focus is sorely needed, officials at the United Nations have pointed out. In Latin America, 30 percent more women than men left the labor market entirely in 2020, for reasons including increased responsibility to care for family members, according to the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Reactivating the region’s economies requires reactivating these women as workers and spenders.
In Argentina, the government’s pandemic response last year included broadening cash benefits to low-income households with children and including domestic workers in emergency payments. As part of its stimulus package, Buenos Aires has created incentives for companies hiring women in lines of work that are among the first to bounce back as the economy recovers, particularly in sectors that are overwhelmingly male—such as civil construction, engineering, and energy. It is also building hundreds of public day care centers. In total, 55 policies, representing 15.2 percent of Argentina’s 2021 budget, could contribute to closing gender gaps, according to Ministry of Economy officials.
“An economic policy with a gender perspective is good for the macroeconomy,” economist and deputy cabinet chief Cecilia Todesca said at a recent event.
Multilateral organizations and policymakers elsewhere in the region are sounding the same note. Some Mexican officials are studying the possibility of implementing a national care work system that could include public centers for children and older people, and Chile has offered companies a subsidy for hiring women amid the economic recovery. ECLAC has released a suite of policy recommendations, and the International Labour Organization is working with Argentina on a manual for any country to design a gender-conscious recovery.
An entirely new rulebook. Perhaps the most revolutionary way that female Latin American policymakers will leave their mark during the pandemic is by rewriting Chile’s constitution. A significant focus on gender equality is expected from the constituent assembly, which is half female and elected an Indigenous woman as president.
The new constitution “will be designed from a point of view that is indissociable from the feminist agenda,” the social scientist Beatriz Della Costa wrote in Folha de São Paulo.
Della Costa coordinated a study that interviewed about 96 Latin American female policymakers in 2019 and 2020. Looking at policymakers from different countries and different political strains, the researchers identified several qualities that repeatedly appeared in the women’s governing styles, including a focus on reducing inequalities, a direct connection to civil society, a collaborative decision-making process, and a willingness to engage in dialogue and cross party lines.
To be sure—as Chilean state representative Fernanda Ortiz told the researchers—some female politicians reproduce “the traditional logic of very sexist, very patriarchal politics.” But a growing number are demonstrating new ways of wielding power.