Excerpt
​The most difficult kind of political power for women to obtain arguably is the most important: the presidency. Farida Jalalzai (2013) first showed that across the globe, some of the most powerful chief executive offices—such as the “pure presidential” regime of the United States—are precisely the ones women are least likely to hold. The most common and legitimate way to access the presidency is through democratic elections, and yet, women have won just 6% of the world’s presidential races from 1990 to 2020.[1] Women’s rates of winning presidential elections during this period remain similarly low across regions, varying from 9% in Asia[2]  to just 3% in Africa.

       In part because of their rarity, women’s presidential victories tend to attract enormous attention and genuine surprise. For example, Corazon Aquino’s 1986 presidential win in the Philippines was described as “astonishing” at the time (Times 1986). When Ellen Sirleaf won the 2005 presidential election in Liberia, a British journalist wondered why “developing countries, where traditional attitudes to gender are entrenched” elected women for president (Smith 2006).

       Michelle Bachelet’s 2006 presidential triumph as a single, divorced mother in Chile, known for its social conservatism, also seemed improbable at the time. “Who would have thought ... that Chile would elect a woman as president. ... The world has looked at this election with astonishment,” she said in her victory speech on January 15, 2006 (“Gobierno de Michelle Bachelet Jeria (2006-2010)” 2006). Some believed that her one-of-a-kind charisma propelled her to the presidency, a feat that seemed nearly impossible for any woman to repeat.
       
       Yet after Bachelet’s initial success, women went on to win these races eight more times in Latin America, home of some of the world’s most powerful presidencies. The “astonishment” that President Bachelet referred to over twenty years ago persists today. We still know little about how women win presidential elections.
Scholars do know quite a bit about how presidential elections generally work. Dominant theories argue that election fundamentals, such as macroeconomic conditions (Campbell and Lewis-Beck 2008; Sigelman 1979; Gélineau and Singer 2015), and candidate traits, such as leadership capacity (Holian and Prysby 2014; Bartels 2002), determine who wins these democratic competitions. These intellectual traditions, however, fail to consider gender and thus cannot explain how women triumph. If gender did not influence presidential selection processes, then we would expect about 50% of the world’s presidents to be men and 50% to be women.
       
       This book systematically explains how women win presidential elections. Despite what mainstream theories of presidential elections would predict, women do not triumph in these races in exactly the same ways that men do. The book reveals that the central unknown factor behind women’s victories is how they become candidates of major parties, and gender deeply influences political parties’ decisions over who to nominate for president. Through its exploration of how parties make decisions about who to run as candidates, this book’s theory casts new light on how presidential elections operate even when women are not competing

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1. Gendered Incentives and Perceived Potential
       How, then, do women win presidential elections? An obvious starting point is that individuals almost always achieve the presidency by first securing the nomination of a political party or a coalition of parties.  Yet this raises a question: if men win almost all presidential elections, why would a political party nominate a woman to begin with? This book theorizes and illustrates two concepts that motivate parties to break with tradition and back women for president: gendered incentives and perceived potential.

       Taken together, these concepts involve a relay between selectors, voters, and potential nominees.[3] Selectors, the members of a party who choose presidential candidates or influence nominations, are usually elites with more than just one goal: they want to maximize vote share to win the election, but they also may seek to improve their party’s brand (Lupu 2016). Outgoing presidents who act as selectors also want to back candidates who can secure their presidential legacies.

       Selectors tend to assume that picking a presidential candidate with the right set of traits can help them achieve their goals.[4] They therefore face incentives to nominate someone with these coveted attributes. Cognizant of their nation’s political culture, its history, and their parties’ weaknesses, selectors mull over which qualities they need in their next presidential candidate. Although they never reach unanimous agreement, there often is a shared sense among selectors that the party could benefit from a candidate with a certain set of positively-viewed attributes. The traits selectors think they need can vary according to their country’s political culture or to their party’s historical trajectory. The incentives can motivate selectors to make decisions that they may not have made in the absence of said incentives.

       Perceived potential refers to how selectors evaluate possible nominees based on their capacity to transmit desired traits. Selectorates use systematic or anecdotal evidence to compare candidates’ future performance and often end up choosing the one they think offers the best available combination of sought-after attributes. Selectors’ assessment of possible candidates’ potential to exude the qualities constitutive of parties’ incentives move them to back certain candidates over others.

       Gender enters this theoretical equation insofar as some of the traits that selectors look for and use to assess possible nominees can be associated either with men or with women in presidential politics. Numerous studies have demonstrated that many traits desired in presidents, such as toughness and experience, are associated with the male sex (Duerst-Lahti 1997; Conroy 2016; Vaughn and Michaelson 2013; Katz 2016; Rosenwasser and Dean 1989). I add to this work by highlighting how some desirable attributes can be associated with women in presidential politics.

       Novelty and moral integrity are the two most important traits that are positively associated with women in presidential politics. Previous research from across the globe shows that, partly because men numerically dominate politics, women in politics can be viewed as bringing something new or as symbolizing change (Murray 2010; Jalalzai 2013; Schwindt-Bayer and Reyes-Housholder 2017; Baldez 2002; Funk, Hinojosa, and Piscopo 2021). We might expect this association with novelty to be particularly solid with regards to women in presidential politics given women’s extreme marginalization in this arena of power (O’Brien and Reyes-Housholder 2020; Beckwith 2020). Because women as a group tend to be positioned so far outside the presidential arena, political elites and voters are especially likely to think they will offer symbolic and substantive change.

       Citizens in diverse countries may associate women in presidential politics with moral integrity (Reyes-Housholder 2024). Scholars have shown that this stereotype can influence support for women in legislative and sub-national politics (Barnes and Beaulieu 2014; Wiesehomeier, Verge, and Schwindt-Bayer n.d.; Barnes and Beaulieu 2019; Valdini 2019, 41–45). Political leaders sometimes operate in ways that assume and reinforce a collective idea of the moral superiority of women in presidential politics. For example, women presidents in Asia have sought to shore up political capital by evoking cultural notions of women’s honesty (Derichs, Fleschenberg, and Hüstebeck 2006; Hüstebeck 2013). Chapter 1 will explain how because of women’s historical marginalization and maternalism, women in presidential politics can be viewed not only as novel and ethical, but also as modern, empathetic, or stereotypically “feminine” leaders.

       The idea that women in presidential politics may be associated with desirable traits helps unlock the mysteries behind women’s nominations and, by extension, women’s victories. Selectors sometimes calculate that to achieve their goals, their next candidate needs to convey attributes linked to women in presidential politics, such as novelty and moral integrity. I argue that when this happens, parties’ incentives are gendered feminine.

       Just because party selectors face incentives to nominate someone with traits associated with women in presidential politics does not mean they will back a woman for president. Perceived potential provides a crucial, yet to date missing, piece to the puzzle of women’s presidential nominations. Confronted with feminine incentives, selectors will opt to back a woman only if they view her as better than other possible contenders at transmitting these traits. Perceived potential helps explain why selectors nominate a particular woman instead of other women. It also accounts for why selectors—even when faced with incentives to back someone with traits associated with women in presidential politics—often end up nominating men for president. Women with presidential ambitions can influence their perceived potential by, for example, strategically crafting a discourse that makes selectors believe they are the most capable of conveying desired attributes. Given the right incentives, party selectors’ perceptions of a woman’s strong potential to convey these traits increase their probability of nominating a woman for president.
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       The key to understanding women’s presidential victories lies in their nominations, specifically by incumbent or major challenger parties. Once the nominations are fixed, presidential elections for women tend to function as a referendum on those holding power (Carlin, Singer, and Zechmeister 2015; Lewis-Beck and Ratto 2013; Valdini and Lewis‐Beck 2018). Yet citizens’ satisfaction with the incumbent cannot explain all the complexity driving election results. I instead suggest that it tends to better predict women’s than men’s presidential victories, at least in Latin America.

       This book will show how indicators of citizens’ satisfaction consistently predict the election results of women who are nominated by either incumbent parties or by major parties that are competing to displace those in power. When voters think that the current administration is doing a good job, women backed by incumbent parties remain well-positioned to win the presidency. When running in similar conditions, women from major challenger parties tend to lose. Conversely, when voters think that the current administration is doing a bad job, women nominated by incumbent parties tend to lose whereas women nominated by major challenger parties tend to win.

       The fundamental unknown behind women’s presidential victories thereby traces back to their nominations by major political parties. This book uncovers the mechanics driving these outcomes.


[1] The world’s first woman president, Isabel Perón of Argentina, never competed in a presidential election. Rather, she served as both first lady and vice-president of Argentina before her husband, Juan Perón, died in 1974.

[2] This statistic excludes Taiwan, which elected a woman in 2016 and 2020, but is not generally recognized as an independent country. It also excludes presidential elections in semi-presidentialist regimes, such as India and Nepal, in which presidents obtain power via indirect election or legislative appointment.

[3] Both terms selectors and selectorates refer to individuals and groups who decide who the party will nominate for president.

[4] Political scientists, on the other hand, disagree over whether and how much candidate traits influence election outcomes, as I will explain in Chapter 1.

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