Women’s rise to the presidency in Latin America has been dramatic. Women have won the presidency more times in Latin America than any other region in the world. To date, Latin Americans have elected (and in many cases re-elected) women eight times.. This development has exposed how current scholarship has assumed men's dominance of the presidency and has, therefore, failed to understand the effects of this gendered political dominance in terms of how the president governs or how the institution of the presidency functions in different countries. This means that current literature has ignored crucial questions such as: how is the institution of the presidency gendered? How has the past dominance of male political leaders shaped the enduring norms, practices and values embedded within the presidency? How can the election of women presidents help reveal the gendered norms that are part of the institutional practices of the presidency? How might the election of women presidents promote changes within the presidency, particularly towards gender equality? In order to theorize answers to these questions, this paper proposes a new approach to the study of the presidency. I argue that the rise of women presidents necessitates an analysis of the presidency as a gendered institution. To develop a new theoretical framework, I combine key insights from feminist institutional analysis, particularly around how gendered power works within institutions, and the intersectional approach to presidency developed by presidential scholar Georgia Duerst-Lahti. By combining these two approaches, I build a theoretical model of the gendered presidency that understands the relationships between inherited institutional structures, current political contexts, and individual agency. I argue that this model will allow scholars to analyze both the possibilities for movement towards gender equality within the presidency, as well as the limitations faced by women presidents.
