In a region known for machismo, Latin American women have won the presidency eight times since 1999. Presidents in Latin America possess strong legislative powers, and single case studies suggest that some – but not all – presidentas are using these prerogatives to promote women’s status in society. This puzzle drives my research: Why would some presidentas deploy their power to push for PWC (pro-women change) more than other presidentas?

            I first develop a novel three-tier conceptualization of PWC that simultaneously avoids the problem of essentializing women’s interests and permits cross-cultural comparison. I then argue that any president is more likely to use his/her powers to promote PWC under two conditions: (1) when he/she has a politically significant constituency demanding PWC (“constituency” hypothesis); and (2) when he/she has access to expertise on PWC policies in the form of linkages to women’s organizations and elite feminists (“expertise” hypothesis). Presidential gender matters because presidentas are more likely than their male counterparts to meet each of these conditions. Yet, presidential gender is not destiny. Variations in incentives and expertise account for divergence in the extent to which presidentas advance PWC as well as the kinds of PWC presidentas pursue.

            To probe this argument, I first identified presidentas with divergent outcomes using female cabinet nominations as a proxy for the use of presidential power to promote PWC. From the small group of presidentas who displayed significant variation, I selected “most similar” presidentas (Michelle Bachelet of Chile and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil) and matched them with their immediate male predecessors who were from the same political party (Ricardo Lagos of Chile and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil). Case selection thus controls for confounders such as party, country, institutions and presidential gender.

            Two original databases, one Chilean and the other Brazilian, with approximately 400 legislative bills and executive decrees provide fine-grained measures of the use of legislative powers to promote PWC by these four presidents. National media archives, approximately 80 personal interviews and public opinion data collected in both countries test observable implications derived from the “constituency” and “expertise” hypotheses.

            In sum, the dissertation pushes research frontiers in three ways. First, the dissertation’s PWC operationalization has the potential to significantly advance the comparative study of reforms benefiting women. Second, while existing literature focuses exclusively on single cases of presidentas, this dissertation innovates by choosing cross-country cases of both female and male presidents. Third, while existing scholarship has employed primarily interview data, this research systematically leverages and integrates interviews, online archives, cross-national and public opinion statistics and a vast secondary literature from Chile and Brazil.