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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

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.

Chile altered its electoral rules for municipal elections in 2002. The new rules separated mayoral and council member elections, and while the latter continue to use proportional representation, mayors are now chosen based on plurality. These changes serve as a natural test of the effects of electoral rules on women's political representation. The Chilean case demonstrates (1) that electoral reform is gendered, (2) that women's representation is shaped by both formal and informal rules, and (3) that electoral rules have different effects on mayoral and council member positions, demonstrating that the "glass ceiling" for executive positions is harder to crack. Adapted from the source document.

Chile altered its electoral rules for municipal elections in 2002. The new rules separated mayoral and council member elections, and while the latter continue to use proportional representation, mayors are now chosen based on plurality. These changes serve as a natural test of the effects of electoral rules on women's political representation. The Chilean case demonstrates (1) that electoral reform is gendered, (2) that women's representation is shaped by both formal and informal rules, and (3) that electoral rules have different effects on mayoral and council member positions, demonstrating that the "glass ceiling" for executive positions is harder to crack.

'Seeing Women, Strengthening Democracy' asks how the more equitable representation of women in positions of power affects male and female citizens. The book argues that the election of women to political office - particularly where women's presence is highly visible to the public - strengthens the connections between women and the democratic process. For women, seeing more 'people like me' in politics has important effects, changing how they interact with government and the political process. The authors look at comparative data from across Latin America, but focus on an in-depth case study of Uruguay. Here, the authors find that gender gaps in political engagement declined significantly after a doubling of women's representation in the Senate.

"How does the more equitable representation of women in positions of power affect male and female citizens? We argue that the election of women to political office-particularly where women's presence is highly visible to the public-strengthens the connections between women and the democratic process. For women, seeing more "people like me" in politics changes attitudes and orientations toward the democratic process. Substantial variation persists across the region in gender gaps in political engagement and political support. To assess the effects that women's officeholding has on these, we pair comparative survey data from Latin American countries with case study evidence from Uruguay. The Uruguayan case offers a unique laboratory for testing the impact of women's representation in elected positions of power on political engagement and support. Our panel survey of Uruguayan citizens reveals that the expected gender gaps in political knowledge, political interest, and other forms of political engagement were alive and well six weeks before the elections. Yet, just six weeks following the election-after the use of a gender quota had led to a doubling of women's representation in the Senate-those gender gaps had largely disappeared or had significantly waned. Our findings indicate that far-reaching gender gaps can be overcome by more equitable representation in our political institutions"--

Descriptive representation is commonly understood as the proportion of women or racial minorities in an institution. While useful, this approach is limited in its ability to capture intersectional identities, less visible characteristics, and the extent to which particular characteristics are more or less central to one's identity. Traditional approaches have raised concerns about essentialism—"the assumption that members of certain groups have an essential identity that all members of that group share" (Mansbridge 1999, 637). This assumption can lead to faulty logic—for example, that any woman can represent all women. Traditional approaches have also focused on visible characteristics, rather than shared experiences. These limitations affect not only who counts as a descriptive representative, but also our ability to assess which descriptive representatives will be most likely to contribute to substantive and symbolic representation.

The incumbency advantage is typically thought to constrain female political representation, but can female incumbency provide a signal to parties that reduces strategic gender bias? We argue that once women prove they can win elections, parties will revise their strategic evaluations of their value as candidates. We test this using an original dataset of twenty-one Chilean elections between 1989 and 2012. We use a Heckman selection model to assess re-election rates by incumbent candidate gender, conditional on the re-nomination of incumbents. We find that female incumbents are just as likely to be re-nominated and re-elected as their male counterparts.