"Exhibiting You" - Story
When Women Enter Elections
By: Luz Lajous Vargas
Submitted: 09/19/2008
In their initial forays into professional careers, women are often directed into less influential posts. Women have done better in those agencies or branches where some semblance of meritorious promotion criteria takes precedence over other more informal criteria, which is the essence of most political appointments in Mexico. In retrospect, women have engineered their career choices in such a way as to become generalists rather than specialists.
Moving Women Up the Political LadderRecruitment variables such as education and family background greatly affect the selection of women for political positions. Other than place, level, and type of education, a women’s family background can also function as a critical recruitment tool. Kinship in Mexico, as the case elsewhere in Latin America, is a crucial variable in the determination of political linkage and success in public life.
If women were to emulate men as a means of strengthening their abilities to obtain influential offices, they might increase their presence among present leadership but do so at a certain price.
Do Women Politicians Have Different Values?It is unknown to what degree--if at all--women’s values differ from their male peers on social, economic, and political matters. If one assumes such values would differ, then the short term achievement of greater numbers might sacrifice a level of diversity that female politicians with a different set of experience might bring to the same leadership.
As I see it, women entering politics have two options: replicating the weaknesses already apparent among male leadership or expanding and strengthening their present qualities.