Female leaders for South America

how we live — By Bob Riel on November 7, 2007 at 7:12 am

Now that Argentina has followed Chile in electing a woman president, some observers are wondering if this portends a new era of female political power in South America.

Here in the land of machismo, where leaders were long supposed to conform to the standard of the strong-armed military man in epaulettes, a rising wave of leaders is working on a new 21st-century cliche: la presidenta.

The movement started at South America’s southern tip, where Chile elected Michelle Bachelet president last year. Argentina followed this week, choosing first lady Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as its first elected female president…

The gender-specific rallying cry now seems poised to spread north. In Paraguay, outgoing President Nicanor Duarte is backing former education minister Blanca Ovelar as his replacement in next year’s presidential election. And in Brazil, many political observers say that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva seems to be grooming his chief of staff and former energy minister — a woman named Dilma Rousseff — to carry his party’s torch when his term ends in 2010…

But the possibility that she could become one has South Americans confronting a prospect that just a few years ago would have seemed utterly impossible: a continent where the majority of the population is led by women.

Interestingly, though, while South American women are achieving success in the political arena, they have not been quite as successful in the business world.

According to the World Economic Forum’s ranking of 116 countries in terms of gender gaps, opportunities for women in South America still lagged behind those of women in many other parts of the world in 2006. Argentina ranked 42nd in terms of equal opportunities for women, Paraguay 65th, Brazil 68th and Chile 79th, according to the survey.

But in terms of political empowerment for women, Argentina jumped to 23rd on the list, ahead of the United States and Canada.