Madame President, Madame Ambassador? Women Presidents and Gender Parity in Latin America’s Diplomatic Services

This study focuses on the gendered nature of ambassadorial appointments. Analyzing the diplomatic services of ten Latin American countries between 2000 and 2018, we examine the factors that explain the designation of women to ambassadorships. More especially, we are interested in whether the election of women to the presidency in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica had an impact on the gender gap at the top of those countries’ foreign services. Drawing on an original dataset on diplomatic appointments, we show that the presence of women ambassadors has increased only marginally over the past two decades. Furthermore, multivariate regression analysis demonstrates that women presidents on the left have (partially and temporarily) corrected the gender gap in their foreign services through political appointments, provided they had the discretionary powers to do so. Our findings suggest that the impact of women-led presidencies is conditional on the chief executive’s vested interest in gender parity and the scope of presidents’ prerogatives to appoint ambassadors. In so doing, the study contributes to debates on the descriptive underrepresentation of women in executive positions and the gender gap in diplomacy.

本研究聚焦于大使任命的性别化特征。研究分析了2000年至2018年间10个拉丁美洲国家的外交部门运作情况，旨在探究影响女性出任大使职位的各类因素。更为具体而言，本研究重点关注阿根廷、巴西、智利以及哥斯达黎加的女性总统当选，是否对这些国家外交部门高层的性别差距产生了影响。本研究基于一套有关外交任命的原创数据集，研究发现过去二十年间女性大使的任职占比仅实现了小幅增长。此外，多元回归分析结果显示，左翼女性总统可通过政治任命手段，在其拥有相关自由裁量权的前提下，（部分且暂时地）缩小本国外交部门的性别差距。本研究结果表明，女性执政对外交部门性别差距的影响，取决于行政首长对性别平等的切身立场，以及总统任命大使的职权范围。本研究通过上述分析，为有关女性在行政岗位上描述性代表不足以及外交领域性别差距的学术讨论贡献了新的视角。