Madame President, Madame Ambassador? Women Presidents and Gender Parity in Latin America’s Diplomatic Services

• Author: Carsten-Andreas Schulz,María Fernanda Hernández-Garza,Matthias Erlandsen
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912921997922
• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Date: 01 June 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 75(2) 425 –440

Article

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912921997922

Political Research Quarterly

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912921997922

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Introduction

While women remain underrepresented in all political

leadership positions, this is especially true in diplomacy.1

Recent studies suggest that women occupy only 15 per-

cent of all ambassadorships worldwide (Aggestam and

Towns 2019, 23; Towns et al., 2018, 193), and most

women ambassadors concentrate in less prestigious post-

ings, which limits their career opportunities and political

influence (Calin and Buterbaugh 2019; Schiemichen

2019; Towns and Niklasson 2018). Ambassadors repre-

sent their home country and its interests abroad. They are

senior executive appointees tasked with conducting inter-

national relations on a day-to-day basis. Yet ambassadors

are often unrepresentative of the country’s population

they represent.

This study focuses on the gendered nature of ambas-

sadorial appointments. Analyzing the diplomatic services

of ten Latin American countries between 2000 and 2018,

we examine the factors that explain the appointment of

women to ambassadorships. More specifically, we are

interested in whether the election of women to the presi-

dency in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica

impacted the gender gap at the top of those countries’ for-

eign services.

The past two decades saw an unprecedented wave of

women that came to power in Latin America, including

Michelle Bachelet in Chile (2006–2010, 2014–2018),

Cristina Fernández in Argentina (2007–2015), Laura

Chinchilla in Costa Rica (2010–2014), and Dilma

Rousseff in Brazil (2011–2016).2 In particular, Bachelet

became internationally recognized as a champion for

gender equality (see Franceschet and Thomas 2015;

Thomas 2016). She appointed Chile’s first gender parity

997922PRQXXX10.1177/1065912921997922Political Research QuarterlyErlandsen et al.

research-article2021

1Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile

2Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile

Corresponding Author:

Carsten-Andreas Schulz, Instituto de Ciencia Política, Pontificia

Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul,

Chile.

Email: caschulz@uc.cl

Madame President, Madame

Ambassador? Women Presidents

and Gender Parity in Latin America’s

Diplomatic Services

Matthias Erlandsen1, María Fernanda Hernández-Garza2,

and Carsten-Andreas Schulz2

Abstract

This study focuses on the gendered nature of ambassadorial appointments. Analyzing the diplomatic services of ten

Latin American countries between 2000 and 2018, we examine the factors that explain the designation of women to

ambassadorships. More especially, we are interested in whether the election of women to the presidency in Argentina,

Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica had an impact on the gender gap at the top of those countries’ foreign services. Drawing

on an original dataset on diplomatic appointments, we show that the presence of women ambassadors has increased

only marginally over the past two decades. Furthermore, multivariate regression analysis demonstrates that women

presidents on the left have (partially and temporarily) corrected the gender gap in their foreign services through

political appointments, provided they had the discretionary powers to do so. Our findings suggest that the impact

of women-led presidencies is conditional on the chief executive’s vested interest in gender parity and the scope of

presidents’ prerogatives to appoint ambassadors. In so doing, the study contributes to debates on the descriptive

underrepresentation of women in executive positions and the gender gap in diplomacy.

Keywords

diplomacy, gender parity, Latin America, executive appointments, ambassadorships

426 Political Research Quarterly 75(2)

2 Political Research Quarterly 00(0)

cabinet in 2006 and became the inaugural Executive

Director of UN Women after her first term in office.

Bachelet, Fernández, and Rousseff also formed part of

the so-called “pink tide” that brought leftist governments

to power across Latin America. Despite running on plat-

forms that emphasized social justice and equality, these

progressive governments did not always advance wom-

en’s rights (Blofield et al., 2017). As in Chile, the election

of women to the presidency in Argentina and Brazil

raised expectations that the presidentas would act on

behalf of women. However, both Fernández and Rousseff

faced criticism for not making gender equality a priority

(Jalalzai 2015; Jalalzai and dos Santos 2015; Lopreite

2015). By the same token, the impact of Laura Chinchilla’s

center-right government on women’s advancement in

Costa Rica remains contested (Piscopo 2018, 168). We

ask whether these women used their presidential preroga-

tives to appoint more women to ambassadorships.

Studies on the gender gap in political representation

have proliferated in recent years. While earlier scholar-

ship focused on the presence of women in legislative bod-

ies, an increasing number of studies examines the

gendered process of executive appointments (see Field

2020). These studies expect that core executives chose

appointees based on their preferences and in response to

political incentives. At the same time, they recognize that

selectors are gendered actors who make decisions within

a context shaped by gender-based assumptions and

expectations (Annesley et al., 2019). Reyes-Housholder

(2016), for example, observes that women presidents in

Latin America appointed more women to their cabinets

because of their electoral mandates and gendered net-

works. Although scholars disagree on whether women in

power appoint more women, they agree that institutional

and political factors condition the effect (Annesley et al.,

2019; Barnes and O’Brien 2018; Childs and Krook 2009;

Field 2020; Krook and O’Brien 2012).

We provide the first cross-national comparative study

on the importance of the selector’s gender for understand-

ing the descriptive underrepresentation of women in

diplomacy.3 Our contribution is twofold. First, the study

expands the scope of the present literature to an underex-

plored area of executive appointments. Second, it also

speaks to recent debates on the political and institutional

origins of the gender gap in diplomacy. In contrast to the

public and scholarly scrutiny that the appointment of cab-

inet ministers has received, we still know little about the

process in countries’ diplomatic services, especially out-

side Europe and North America (Aggestam and Towns

2019, 23; Lequesne 2019, 781).

To that end, we analyze an original dataset that con-

tains information on the (attributed) gender of ambassa-

dors and whether they were recruited from the professional

foreign service or political appointees.4 Unlike prime

ministers, presidents tend to have considerable discretion

in the appointment of ambassadors. While constitutional

prerogatives empower incumbents, as selectors, they also

face constraints because political allies may expect

ambassadorships in exchange for their support (Fedderke

and Jett 2017; Hollibaugh 2015). Furthermore, in many

countries, the career service conditions the “supply” of

eligible personnel, often to the detriment of women.

Existing research suggests that women in diplomacy con-

tinue to face unequal opportunities, leading to their

underrepresentation at the top of the organizational hier-

archy (Aggestam and Towns 2019, 17). Although politi-

cal considerations and the presence of a career service

impose limitations on the executive, selectors can use

their prerogatives to bypass these constraints. Discretion

creates space for selectors to act as key allies or “critical

actors” for advancing women’s presence in leadership

positions (Aggestam and True 2020; Annesley et al.,

2019, 19).5 We expect that selectors invested in gender

parity will (partially) correct the “supply-side” failure in

the career service through political appointments, pro-

vided they have the discretion to do so.

Consistent with existing scholarship, we find that

women are underrepresented in our sample of Latin

American foreign services, accounting for only 15 per-

cent of all ambassadors in 2018—well below the parity

target of 50 percent. We further observe that women-led

governments have not consistently yielded an increase in

the proportion of women ambassadors. The positive

effect only occurred in three cases of leftist governments

headed by women (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile). In con-

trast, the proportion of women appointed to ambassado-

rial positions decreased during Laura Chinchilla’s term in

office (Costa Rica). Our findings confirm previous evi-

dence that leftist governments tend to advance women’s

participation in political leadership (Barnes and O’Brien

2018; Bashevkin 2014; Claveria 2014; Davis 1997;

Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson 2005). The effect

is further dependent on the scope of presidential discre-

tion over political appointments (high in Argentina and

Chile; low in Brazil). We conclude that the impact of

women-led presidencies is conditional on political and

institutional factors, namely the executive’s vested inter-

est in gender parity and the scope of discretionary power

to appoint ambassadors.

The remainder proceeds as follows: The second sec-

tion examines the history of women’s inclusion in Latin

America’s foreign services, focusing on the reasons of

women’s underrepresentation and the role that discretion-

ary appointments played in opening opportunities for

women outside the career bureaucracy. The third section

reviews the literature on the gendered dynamics of execu-

tive appointments. The fourth section develops our main

argument, which centers on the role of critical actors in