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Before these elections, the countries that had not been governed by a woman were the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, Paraguay, Uruguay, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

On the other hand, the countries that have had a woman president are Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti, Canada, Honduras, Peru, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Costa Rica and Brazil, to which we can add Mexico, where it took 200 years for a woman to finally sit in Los Pinos.

Claudia Sheinbaum became the first female president in the history of Mexico on Sunday, June 2, 2024.
Starting October 1, Sheinbaum will lead the country. She will do so after having been Secretary of the Environment for Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2000-2006) and Head of Government of Mexico City (2018-2023).
Before Sheinbaum, seven women in Latin America were elected to the top political office.
All of them were the first - and so far the only ones - to be elected to the position of president in their country.

The election of these leaders marked a slow and gradual advance in the search to reverse the underrepresentation of women in decision-making spaces, not only in Latin America but in the world.

At this moment, only 28 women in the world are Heads of State or Government, according to data from UN Women last May. This organization projects that, at the rate we are going, gender equality in the highest spheres of power will be achieved within 130 years.
There were (and are) other women in the region who held the presidency, but they were not elected to do so.
Let us review in chronological order the history of these seven women who were elected presidents in Latin America.

1. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro


 

Barrios de Chamorro was the first woman in Latin America to be elected president.
President of Nicaragua from 1990 to 1997.
Party: National Opposition Union.
Director of the newspaper La Prensa from 1978 to 1990.
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro's victory in April 1990 not only made her the first woman elected president of Nicaragua (1990-1997) but of all Latin America.
Chamorro's political history began during the years of dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. A journalist by profession, married to Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, the director of the newspaper La Prensa, both became two of the most prominent figures in the opposition to the Somoza dictatorship.
After the death of her husband - assassinated in January 1978 - Chamorro, still with very little political experience, came to the forefront of national politics.
"I gave myself to it [politics] so that Pedro and Nicaragua could triumph through me," she wrote in her memoirs "Dreams of the Heart."
After the Sandinista Revolution in 1979, her rejection of the dictatorship led her to participate in the first Junta of Government of National Reconstruction, where she met the then - and also now - president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, leader of the revolutionary process of that time.
Dissatisfied with the direction things were taking, Barrios de Chamorro resigned from the Junta that had been dominated by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which she continued to criticize from La Prensa.
Later, the journalist became part of a heterogeneous coalition of 14 parties, called the National Opposition Union (UNO), which was united only by the common rejection of the FSLN government.
In 1991, Chamorro ran as a candidate for president of Nicaragua for the opposition coalition, and won the elections with 54% of the votes. In doing so, she became the first woman to hold the office of president.
"I will give back to the people the right to elect their leaders through fair and open elections. And, above all, I will offer honesty, not only in appearance but also in practice," she announced at the time.
Once in government, Chamorro reversed some of the measures adopted by the FSLN. She deployed a plan of fiscal austerity and privatization of public companies, while negotiating with the FSLN the maintenance of some achievements of the revolution.
In January 1997, at the end of her term and without the possibility of reelection, Barrios de Chamorro retired from politics.
Two decades later, one of her four children, Cristiana Chamorro, presented her candidacy for the country's president for the 2021 elections, but her attempt was hindered by the Ortega government.
Today, at 94 years old, Chamorro lives in Costa Rica, where he is close to his children, who live outside the country due to pressure against them from the Ortega government.

2. Mireya Moscoso

 
Moscoso rose to prominence after her husband's death.
President of Panama from 1999 to 2004.
Arnulfista Party.
First Lady in 1968.
Mireya Moscoso assumed the presidency of Panama (1999-2004) four months before the United States handed over control of the Panama Canal to her country.
Moscoso entered politics in 1960, after marrying, at the age of 18, the three-time president of Panama Arnulfo Arias Madrid (1940-1941; 1949-1951 and 1968), who was 45 years her senior.
But it was not until 1988, after the death of her husband, that Moscoso was able to play an active role in Panamanian politics as the heir to Arias' political legacy.
Trained as an interior designer at Miami-Dade Community College in the United States, Moscoso decided to put her prejudices aside and get directly involved in politics.
In 1991, Moscoso and Guillermo Endara refounded the Panameñista Party, which had brought Moscoso's husband to the presidency, under the name of the Arnulfista Party (PA).
After four years of government by the Democratic Revolutionary Party (1989-1994), the Arnulfista Party returned to power in 1999 with Moscoso's victory.
The first female president of Panama sought to rescue her husband's popular legacy, in contrast to former president Pérez Balladares (1994-1999), who was associated with the free market economic reforms of the mid-nineties.
Moscoso came to the presidency after having promised to improve education, health care and housing for the country's poorest, as well as to reverse the sale of public companies to private companies.
Moscoso's years in power are remembered for having overseen the handover of the Panama Canal by the United States.





3. Michelle Bachelet

 
Bachelet gained international prominence after completing her second term.
President of Chile from 2006 to 2010 and from 2014 to 2018.
Socialist Party.
She was Minister of Health and Minister of Defense.
She was director of UN Women and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In addition to being the first female president of Chile, Bachelet was the first in Latin America to have held the position of Minister of Defense.
The political life of the two-time president of Chile (2006-2010; 2014-2018) began at university, where she joined the Socialist Party while studying medicine.
The coup d'état of 1973 changed part of her plans, after her father, Alberto Bachelet, who had been part of Salvador Allende's government, was arrested by the dictatorship and died in prison.
In 1975, Bachelet left Chile in exile and returned to the country four years later.
In democracy, the first female president of Chile returned to politics as Minister of Health under President Ricardo Lagos. In 2002, she assumed the post of Minister of Defense, the first woman in the country and in Latin America to lead that portfolio.
Currently, the ministries most occupied by female ministers are Women and Gender Equality, Family and Childhood, Social Inclusion and Development, according to UN Women, while spaces such as Security and Defense remain, for the most part, in the hands of men.
Bachelet studied Military Strategy at the National Academy of Strategy and Policy in Chile, and at the Inter-American Defense College in the United States.
In 2005, she presented her candidacy for the presidency of Chile for the Concertación and won the elections with 53% of the votes in the second round. Among the achievements of her administration are educational and tax reforms, as well as the creation of the National Institute of Human Rights and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights.
In terms of gender, Bachelet made progress with the creation of the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality and gender quotas to increase women's political participation.
From 2011 to 2013, the former president of Chile was director of UN Women and, between 2018 and 2023, she held the position of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.





4. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner


 

Fernández de Kirchner was twice president of Argentina.
President of Argentina from 2007 to 2012 and from 2012 to 2015.
Justicialist Party (PJ).
First Lady 2003 to 2007.
Deputy, senator and vice president from 2020 to 2023.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became president of Argentina after a long political career.
Twice president of Argentina (2007-2012; 2012-2015), Fernández de Kirchner began her political activism in the left-wing Peronist group Federación Universitaria por la Revolución Nacional (FURN) while studying law.
In 1974, she met Néstor Kirchner - who would soon become her husband and president of Argentina in 2003 - at the Juventud Universitaria Peronista (JUP).
While her husband was serving as governor of Santa Cruz in the 1990s, Cristina began a broad legislative path.
First as a provincial deputy, then senator for Santa Cruz, national deputy and senator again. In this way she gained experience.
In 2006, while her husband was in power, the Peronists announced her candidacy for the presidency, even though Néstor Kirchner had the possibility of governing for one more term.
A year later, she was consecrated in the first round with 45% of the votes as the first elected president of Argentina, in an election where the two candidates with the most votes were women.
In 2011, a year after the sudden death of Néstor Kirchner, Cristina confirmed that she would run for a second term. Elections that she would win in the second round with 54% of the votes.
After her political party's defeat against Mauricio Macri in 2015 - she was not a candidate because she was not qualified to do so - Fernández de Kirchner announced an electoral formula for the 2019 presidential elections in which she would run as vice president and Alberto Fernández as president.
For her followers, Cristina is remembered for having deployed inclusion policies such as the Universal Child Allowance, the doubling of the percentage of GDP allocated to education and the promulgation of the Equal Marriage Law.
For critics, the former president is nothing more than an exponent of the corruption for which she maintains several open fronts in the justice system for illicit enrichment, for which she was convicted in 2022.
What few dispute is the political centrality that her figure has had on the Argentine political scene in the last two decades.



5. Laura Chinchilla

 

In addition to being president, Chinchilla served as Minister of Security.
President of Costa Rica from 2010 to 2014.
Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN).
Vice President of Costa Rica from 2006 to 2008, Minister of Justice, member of Congress and Minister of Security.
Laura Chinchilla Miranda was the first woman elected President of Costa Rica on February 7, 2010, for a four-year term.
Chinchilla is a graduate of the Political Science program at the University of Costa Rica, and has a Master's degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University.
She was Minister of Public Security under President Óscar Arias Sánchez, making her the first woman to hold that position. She also served as President of the National Council against Drugs.
In 2006, she was elected Vice President of Costa Rica, simultaneously assuming the position of Minister of Justice. Finally, in 2010, she became president of the country with 47% of the votes.
In parallel, she dedicated herself to the international sector, working as a consultant in Latin America and Africa with various international organizations in the area of ??institutional reform, especially in public security.
Chinchilla continues to be part of the advisory boards of several organizations, including the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and the Club of Madrid.
In 2020, she announced that she would compete for the presidency of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), but decided to withdraw after Donald Trump announced a candidacy on behalf of the United States.



6. Dilma Rousseff

 

The first woman to be president of the largest economy in Latin America.
President of Brazil from 2011 to 2014 and from 2015 to 2016.
Workers' Party (PT)
She was Minister of Mines and Energy and Minister of the Civil House of Brazil.
Current president of the New Development Bank of the BRICS.
The first woman elected president of Brazil was unable to complete her second term.
Dilma Rousseff, who occupied the Alvorada Palace for two consecutive periods (2011-2014; 2015-2016), was removed from office by the Senate on the grounds of having violated budgetary rules.
The decision that she described as an "institutional coup" was the result of an impeachment made by Congress in the midst of the country's greatest political crisis in the last 60 years, due to the explosion of the Odebrecht scandal.
Although the reasons for Dilma's dismissal were not linked to this scandal, the anti-political climate in society and the movements within the various parties made her dismissal possible.
Before that time, she was perceived, according to survey data, as a person who adopted a tougher line against corruption after having dismissed six of her ministers for suspected mismanagement.
Rousseff approached politics in her early years, while studying economics at university, shortly after the coup d'état in 1964.
Despite not having joined the ranks of armed groups, according to her own words, Rousseff began to be active in a left-wing university party and was arrested, tortured and imprisoned for three years during the dictatorship.
Already in democracy, Rousseff grew more for her technical capacity than for her political skill.
During the first presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Dilma made her great political step when she was appointed Minister of Mines and Energy. She then went on to occupy the influential post of chief of staff to Lula as Minister of the Civil House.
In 2011, with the support of the popular former president, Rousseff became the candidate for the Brazilian Workers' Party (PT). That same year she managed to win the elections in Brazil and become the first woman president of the largest economy in Latin America.
Dilma won the admiration of many for being a centrist leader with determination and technical ability. While others question her for Lula's lack of autonomy and corruption.
For a year now, Rousseff has headed the New Development Bank of the BRICS, the financial institution of the bloc of emerging countries.




7. Xiomara Castro

 
GETTY IMAGES
Castro was elected by the largest number of votes in the history of Honduras.
President of Honduras since 2022.
Party of Liberty and Refoundation (Libre).
First Lady from 2006 to 2009.
Xiomara Castro was elected president of Honduras in November 2021 by 1.7 million people, the largest number of votes in the history of Honduras.
Trained in Business Administration, the president of Honduras does not have a long political career but began to participate actively only in 2006, after the election of her husband, Manuel Zelaya, as president of Honduras (2006-2009).
Castro would emerge as a political leader in the street demonstrations in 2009, led by the then National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP), after the dismissal and expulsion of her husband from the country.
As a presidential candidate for the Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre), Castro lost the 2013 elections to Juan Orlando Hernández. She was the second Honduran woman to run for president of the country.
It was only in 2021, after having demanded control of electoral transparency, that Xiomara Castro won the elections with 51% of the votes.
The president of Honduras campaigned on a platform that included the protection and expansion of women's rights in a country with high rates of femicide and restrictive abortion policies.
Women in Honduras represent more than half of the population, but in 2022 they only held 6.37% of the positions of elected mayors and 27.3% of parliamentarians, according to the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics.

The unelected presidents
In the history of Latin America, there are other women who were presidents, even if they were not elected to that position.
They became the highest authority in power due to exceptional situations, such as the death of a president, the power vacuum after a coup d'état and the dismissal or resignation of a head of state.
María Estela Martínez de Perón, better known as Isabel Perón or Isabelita, served as president of Argentina from 1974 to 1976, after the death of Juan Domingo Perón. Isabel was not elected to the office of president but to that of vice president, but she was the first woman to serve as president in the world.
In Bolivia, Lidia Gueiler Tejada came to govern the country between 1979 and 1980. Gueiler Tejada was a deputy when Congress elected her as interim constitutional president after the power vacuum left by Alberto Natusch's coup d'état.
Rosalía Arteaga was the first female president in Ecuador, in 1997, but for a very brief period: two days. She was in charge of the country after the impeachment of Abdalá Bucaram. Arteaga had been elected vice president, but became the first woman in the country to serve as president.
In recent years, Senator Jeanine Añez in Bolivia served as interim president after the resignation of Evo Morales.
And Dina Boluarte currently leads Peru after the impeachment of Pedro Castillo.
Claudia Juana Rodríguez de Guevara served as "designated by the president of the republic of El Salvador, in charge of the Office" from December 2023 until last Saturday, when Nayib Bukele assumed his second term after taking a six-month leave to be able to run for reelection.



Ertha Pascal-Trouillot was the interim president of Haiti from March 13, 1990, to February 7, 1991.

Canada, although it does not have a presidential figure, has been governed by a woman: Avril Phaedra Douglas “Kim” Campbell. She was prime minister between June 25 and November 3, 1993, being the first and only woman to have held that position to date.

Celia Lacayo, a sociologist at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), maintains that the precedents that exist in the American continent are lessons for the United States, a nation that preaches democracy, human rights and gender equality, but to date the White House has not yet been occupied by a woman.

The closest to occupying the Oval Office was Hillary Clinton. In 2016, she was the first woman nominated as a presidential candidate by one of the major parties, but was later defeated by Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the current US vice president, Kamala Harris, became the first woman in that position in 2021.

In the global world, Lacayo says, Latin American nations are described as “third world countries” and the United States is seen as an example of democratic progress; however, the expert maintains that this definition is far from reality “and one example is that the United States has not had a female president.”

“When women have more opportunities to take on these types of jobs, they bring different ideas and experiences, and what we often see is that these experiences, these perspectives, these opinions, are often better than those of the past, because this is a group that has been oppressed or marginalized,” Lacayo asserts.

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