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The Rise of Women Vice-Presidential Candidates in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2025

Adrián Pignataro Open the ORCID record for Adrián Pignataro [Opens in a new window]
Adrián Pignataro*
Affiliation:
Escuela de Ciencias Políticas, https://ror.org/02yzgww51 Universidad de Costa Rica , Montes de Oca, Costa Rica
*
Email: adrian.pignataro@ucr.ac.cr
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Abstract

The literature on vice presidencies fails to explain the women’s inclusion as vice-presidential candidates, as the strategies of ticket balancing predict a higher number of female running mates than what is observed. Based on theories of gender representation, this study develops hypotheses about the inclusion of women as vice-presidential candidates and tests them using an original dataset comprising 471 presidential tickets from Latin America (1978–2022), a region where women’s representation has expanded. The analysis reveals that small and left-wing parties nominate more women as vice presidents than major and right-wing parties. Although female vice-presidential candidates tend to have less political experience than their male presidential counterparts, they often add a diverse and complementary policy expertise to the ticket. The findings underscore that women’s inclusion as vice-presidential candidates depends mostly on partisan calculations, since gender quotas rarely apply to the vice presidency.

Keywords

vice presidencywomenpolitical partiesgender quotasrepresentation

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Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , First View , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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