Medellín, Colombia -- When Peru's Congress voted to remove Dina Boluarte from the presidency on October 10, the move represented more than another turn toward political volatility in Latin America. It was also the sixth time that a female head of state's time in power was unexpectedly cut short in the region's history.
Boluarte was sworn in after her predecessor and running mate, Pedro Castillo, was impeached and arrested in 2022 for attempting to dissolve Congress. In her inaugural address, she celebrated becoming Peru's first female head of state and pledged to make anti-corruption her administration's central cause.
By this year, however, she had become "the world's most unpopular president," with a disapproval rating of 96%. And this month the Peruvian Congress deemed her "morally incapable" to govern citing several corruption scandals, abandonment of duties, a failure to manage increasing violence, and deadly repression of protests.
This article does not attempt to debate Boluarte's removal from office. With her ouster, just three women leaders remain in Latin America: Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico; Xiomara Castro of Honduras; and Rosario Murillo, who serves as co-president of Nicaragua with her husband Daniel Ortega.
Instead, Boluarte's exit provides another timestamp on the historical record of female leaders in the Americas, and a reminder that it's as good a time as any to examine the current state of female leadership in the region.
'They could not allow a woman to be the head of government'
"It was very hard to imagine that a woman could lead a country," said Rosalía Arteaga, who served as vice president and acting president of Ecuador in February 1997 following the ouster of Abdalá Bucaram by Congress -- a fate not too dissimilar from Boluarte's.
In just over 48 hours, a succession dispute devolved into a political crisis and the head of Ecuador's National Congress took over the presidency.
"It was very hard for me, because most in Congress were men at that time, they decided to break the constitution, to go against the law, and they didn't allow me to maintain my position as president," she told Latin Times, calling out machismo culture in Latin American politics.
"They cannot say that I had problems with corruption, like President [Bucaram] was accused of. The only reason [why they sacked me] is because I am a woman, and they could not allow a woman to be the head of government," she added.
At the time of Arteaga's short-lived rule, just three other females had served as president in the region: Isabel Martínez de Perón in Argentina, Lidia Gueiler Tejeda in Bolivia, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in Nicaragua.
Just one of them, Barrios de Chamorro, had been elected by popular vote. Perón took office after her husband and running mate, Juan Domingo Perón, died in 1974, and Gueiler Tejada was named interim president by the Bolivian Congress in 1979 following a wave of political instability.
To date, 14 women have served as heads of state across Latin America, but only five have completed their full terms: Nicaraguan Barrios de Chamorro, Panama's Mireya Moscoso, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, Argentina's Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and Costa Rica's Laura Chinchilla.
Honduras' Xiomara Castro and Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum are currently in office along with Murillo, who rules alongside her husband in Nicaragua.
The remaining women faced abrupt and often tumultuous exits from power. Martínez de Perón and Gueiler Tejeda were overthrown in military coups; Arteaga was sacked by Congress; Brazil's Dilma Rousseff was impeached; and Bolivia's Jeanine Áñez was removed and imprisoned for alleged participation in a coup.
With her exit, Boluarte now becomes the latest woman leader to be removed from office.
Trailblazers, yet still far from parity
Despite its reputation for machismo (or perhaps because of it) Latin America provided many firsts for women leadership and feminist causes.
Martínez de Perón became the world's first female president in 1974, and Argentina also passed the first-ever national gender quota law in 1991, which sets a minimum number of women on election ballots. In 2009, Bolivia went a step further, becoming the first country to enshrine gender parity into its Constitution, and Cuba was the first nation in the Americas to fully legalize and provide free abortions in 1965 -- a decade before the U.S. 's landmark Roe V. Wade Supreme Court ruling.
Women have historically fought hard to put Latin America at the forefront of gender quotas in politics, with Venezuela and Guatemala being the only two Latin American nations that have not implemented such measures.
Their struggle has borne fruit. Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexico are among just six countries worldwide that have gender parity or more women than men in parliament, according to UN Women. A further six Latin American and Caribbean nations count 40% female participation amongst 21 countries globally.
In fact, a 2024 King's College London study found that women hold 36.8% of Latin American legislative seats -- well above the global average of 26.7%. For reference, 26% of the U.S. Senate is female and 28% of the House of Representatives.
"Even in the most developed country in the world, there are still concerns about women's leadership capability and their chance to get to these high positions," said Arteaga. She noted that in the U.S., "we had women running for the presidency; Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Kamala Harris, both of them running against the same man. Many say that if it had been a man confronting Mr. Trump, he would have probably lost the election."
While benefits of female leadership include economic growth, the implementation of policies that support gender-equal labor markets, and improved cross-party decision making and collaboration, women's representation in the region remains beguiled by violence, traditional political norms, the marginalization of former female representatives, and socioeconomic disadvantages as per the King's College study.
Latin America: A sinking pioneer?
It has not been easy to live a democratic life in Latin America, Arteaga noted. Corruption and poverty are key factors that continue to erode democracies, as well as give rise to populism in the region.
"The worst enemies for democracy are corruption and poverty. This makes our continent very vulnerable to populism on the right or the left, but populism nonetheless," she said.
Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index warned in 2024 that all countries in Latin America -- except for Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic -- had worse levels of corruption than in 2023. The most highly corrupt countries are Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti, ranked near the bottom of the list.
Corruption and gender inequality are tightly bound. A Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) report found that "gender inequality breeds corruption and vice versa: corruption tends to exacerbate gender inequalities."
Beyond corruption, however, the region's institutional fragility and cultural machismo continue to hinder women's leadership. According to a study by Universidad de Chile, Latin America's governmental institutions are complex "with informal arrangements and clientelist networks," prevailing.
Such patronage politics have failed to guarantee equal participation for women. Political parties act as gatekeepers to women's political representation and reinforce gender stereotypes.
A Cambridge University study found that, following the 2008 Great Recession and subsequent estallidos sociales (social uprisings) demanding action be taken against corruption and poverty, Latin America has been immersed in an "age of discontent" rooted in cultural anxiety and resentment. Scholars have found that it is precisely in these times of discontent that more women are nominated to hold office because they are deemed more honest and trustworthy than their male counterparts.
However, this stereotyping can serve as a double edged sword. "Women are promoted during difficult times but ultimately positioned for failure," according to the scholars.
In other words, Latin American women who ascend to leadership during times of crisis have shorter tenures than men ascending in similar conditions. As was the case with Arteaga.
The road ahead
Disheartened by falling public trust in democratic institutions and the "congressional coup" against her, in 1997, Arteaga reinvented herself.
"After I left the political arena, I went back to my roots. I had been a teacher since I was 17 years old, and I understood very early on that education is key for individual development, but also to develop the skills of a nation," she said.
As the Executive President of the Foundation for the Integration and Development of Latin America (FIDAL), Arteaga began training teachers and promoting environmental consciousness and sustainable development.
"[In FIDAL], we talk about 'e-STEM' because we put ethics in the knowledge of science. And not a religious kind of ethics, but ethics in behavior. The impact that this has on lives is the most important goal we can achieve," Arteaga emphasized.
Education, she argued, is the best way to close the gender gap in politics and society. A study this year by Luna Bellani and Marisa Hidalgo-Hidalgo in the journal Economics of Education Review, concluded that education "significantly increases the percentage of women elected to regional parliaments."
"Oftentimes, women perceive themselves [and their work] as lower quality, inferior," said Arteaga. "Education can empower them to decide what they can and want to do, not what others expect of them."
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