Women of the Right in Politics: Presidents, Vice Presidents, First Ladies and Candidates

A panoramic view of the candidacies and terms in office at the highest echelons of the Executive branch of power shows that women have increasingly made a place for themselves in politics in the last three decades. However, there is very little known still about how the careers of right-wing female politicians have been built in these cases, and even less so on whether these right-wing women of Latin American politics are merely puppets of the neoliberal patriarchy being ultimately controlled by right-wing men, or if their trajectories define female leaderships that should be analyzed as such in their capacity to organize and implement actions in pursuit of an end. This text offers an account of the changes that have emerged regarding this matter in the last thirty years in Latin America, introducing the topic of the contradictions inherent to the condition of right-wing female politicians, and how these women approach power relations between men and women while claiming a political force that is patriarchal by definition, and while acting as champions of the very force that oppresses them.