Insights from Female Leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean

March 26, 2020

Introduction

In 2016, the Americas Program was set up with the clear forward-looking mission to elevate discussion on the hemisphere to a strategic level. Today, throughout Latin America, much is being discussed and written about the role of women. We want to add our voice to these discussions by highlighting profiles of regional female leaders who are agents of change—those women who deliberately promote and enable gender equality within their own group and organization.

In honor of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, the Americas Program interviewed several high-profile regional leaders in foreign policy whose backgrounds and experiences we wanted to highlight. These regional leaders include former vice presidents, ministers of government agencies, and heads of prominent NGOs, among others. Please find their responses to our questions below.

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1. Personal background information:
Full name: Laura Alonso
City of birth: Buenos Aires, Argentina
What is your current position?
What are some of your responsibilities?
I was the head of the Anticorruption Office of Argentina between 2015 and 2019. I oversaw enforcing the public ethics law in the executive branch, opening investigations against public officials, and supervising legal teams that litigated grand corruption cases. I was also in charge of reporting Argentina’s compliance with the United Nations, Organization of American Affairs, and the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) conventions against corruption. In 2018, I co-chaired the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group. Previously, I was a member of congress for six years in the Chamber of Deputies and executive director of the Transparency International chapter in Argentina.

• Something personal you may want to share about yourself. I am curious and a risk-taker. I love to travel and learn from others.

2. Do you think your leadership style is influenced by your gender? How?

Yes, gender matters. I care about the people I work with. As a leader, I am tough and strict but also approachable and horizontal. I love to mentor and help people grow, especially women. I can have a male-oriented planning mind but a passionate and hearted way of doing and saying things. For me, any work that I do needs to engage me in something extra. I cannot separate my passions from my work. They come together. You can expect the best from me if I like what I am doing and if it has a purpose.

3. Has there been a mentor or someone who inspired you during your personal and professional development?

Many people have inspired me—men and women, public leaders and family members. From my grandma, who was outspoken, political, and determined when women used to keep silent and were discriminated against, to Winston Churchill, José de San Martín, and Karl Popper for defending freedom, which has always been a difficult task. From Hillary Clinton and her unbeatable will to lead, to my little niece Malena who undoubtedly will be president. From my dad and mom who have always persevered despite Argentina’s repeated economic crises, to the nice lady that worked in my office and gave me a long spoon to stir my mate in my extremely big mug. Every person teaches me something relevant.

4. How do you help ensure gender equality from your current position? How have you done it in the past (if that is more relevant)?

When I could, I always hired and promoted women. When I left the Anti-Corruption Office, half of the staff were women. When I am asked to recommend someone for a job or a scholarship, I prefer to do it for a woman or a girl.

5. What specific policy recommendations do you have to promote gender equality for women in your field of work and beyond?

Women are terribly affected by corruption. It is definitely worse in autocracies than in liberal democracies, which are thought to protect and advance those in need. In many countries, women are sexually extorted to get a job, access to health, education, or a social benefit. Corrupt police and corrupt judiciaries can also affect women and their children in lethal ways. Good governance, transparency, and anti-corruption policies must have a gender perspective. For example, whistleblowing protection schemes need to adapt to women’s needs because they are usually the first to report corruption and they are the first to suffer retaliations. Women speak truth to power. They must sit in equal conditions with equal voice and vote as men in all public and private boards to make decisions. Congresses, companies, tribunals, supreme courts—all plural bodies must respect gender parity. Women lead and think differently. They complement men. They deserve to be sitting at the table where decisions are made.

6. What advice would you like to give to the next generation of female leaders?

Persist and never give up. Convince yourself to convince others. Dare and be bold. You can achieve whatever you want. Work together and collaborate with other women.

7. Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

If the reader has the chance to hire, mentor, promote, contract services, buy products, and vote: do it for women. They will never let you down.

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1. Personal background information:
Full name: Manuela Bolívar
City of birth: Maracay, Venezuela
What is your current position?
What are some of your responsibilities?
I am a deputy in the Venezuelan National Assembly, and president of the Committee on Women and Gender Equality in the National Assembly. Alongside my responsibilities as deputy, I also oversee the social sector of the government of Interim President Juan Guaidó.

• Something personal you may want to share about yourself. My two children are my greatest inspirations.

2. Do you think your leadership style is influenced by your gender? How?

Of course. Being a woman is an essential part of who I am and therefore has an influence on the practice of politics. Being a woman and assuming a gender perspective has made me see leadership and my professional duty in politics more broadly and empathetically.

3. Has there been a mentor or someone who inspired you during your personal and professional development?

One of the many women who have inspired me and who continues to inspire me even after her passing is my professor Mercedes Pulido, a woman who made a difference and accomplished significant changes for women and families in Venezuela.

Currently, and in the context in which we are living in Venezuela, we are trying to empower women against gender violence. We are generating proposals from the National Assembly to this effect. We set up a hotline for victims that offers legal and psychological support, and we are developing response capabilities by training female deputies.

From our legislative branch, we have many pending responsibilities to guarantee the rights and equal opportunities for women. I think one of the fundamental issues that we must address is to generate internal measures in our political parties to guarantee that there will be no discrimination against women and that permits women’s political growth and development. Today, I am in the National Assembly thanks to gender quotas. We must work to ensure that these measures are not transient and are able to ensure competitiveness without gender being a factor that may hurt your career.

Don’t give up. Work as a team and stand in solidarity with other women. If one woman grows, we all grow. We should also never believe that our ideas are not valid just because we are women.

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1. Personal background information:
Full name: Jacqueline Charles
City of birth: Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos Islands
What is your current position?
What are some of your responsibilities?
I am the Haiti/Caribbean correspondent for the Miami Herald. I am primarily responsible for covering events in Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald as a member of its foreign desk.

• Something personal you may want to share about yourself. I am a child of the Caribbean, having been born in the Turks and Caicos Islands and raised by my Haitian-born mother and Cuban American stepfather. I grew up both in the Turks and Caicos and Miami and spent a considerable amount of time during my childhood traveling back and forth to Haiti.

2. Do you think your leadership style is influenced by your gender? How?

I have always been an admirer of strong women and have been blessed to be influenced by them. Women are the backbone in Caribbean households, though their influence and strong personalities aren’t always appreciated or respected. In my job as a journalist, I not only try to embody that strength, but I try to show that strength in my coverage. By virtue of my gender and our continued struggle for equality in this region, I am drawn to stories about women.

3. Has there been a mentor or someone who inspired you during your personal and professional development?

I have been blessed both personally and professionally to have “she-roes,” women who have and continue to inspire me by virtue of their own accomplishments and the new narratives they have written about the role of women in their society. They include my mother, and the lessons she taught me as a Haitian immigrant in a bi-cultural, bi-racial marriage; my older nieces, who led the way to higher education; and teachers and journalists—­all females­—who continue to inspire me and be a sounding board. All have shown me that there is no limitation to what can be achieved and that exhibiting strength and courage as a woman should not be the exception, but rather the norm.

4. How do you help ensure gender equality from your current position? How have you done it in the past (if that is more relevant)?

I am a vocal advocate on issues surrounding gender and racial equality in my newsroom, and I am sensitive to the need to give back. Over the years, I have mentored young females who are interested in going into journalism, for instance. I believe that having a diverse newsroom is essential to our news coverage.

5. What specific policy recommendations do you have to promote gender equality for women in your field of work and beyond?

Before the current crisis of layoffs, mergers, and shuttered newsrooms, diversity was a priority in many newsrooms across the United States. As the financial pressures have increased, I believe it has now become a second thought. Given the many challenges that newsrooms, including mine, face across the United States and elsewhere around the globe, I believe that managers need to ensure that our newsrooms reflect the societies we cover. This means grooming women and girls to step in and take up the fight.

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1. Personal background information:
Full name: Gabriela Cuevas Barrón
City of birth: Mexico City, Mexico
What is your current position?
What are some of your responsibilities? I am president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the global organization of national parliaments. It was founded 130 years ago as the first multilateral political organization in the world, encouraging cooperation and dialogue between all nations. As president, I direct the IPU activities, chair full meetings, and work for peace, democracy, human rights, gender equality, youth empowerment, and sustainable development through political dialogue, cooperation, and parliamentary actions.

• Something personal you may want to share about yourself. With regard to my experience, I was mayor in Miguel Hidalgo and now I preside over a global organization. This helped me to understand that the only way to achieve substantive change for people is for us to translate global agreements into local realities, and I am convinced that if 46,000 in the world work in unity of purpose and share best practices, we can transform the planet.

I was first elected deputy at 21. I know that young people must be in politics and in decisionmaking; for politics to be truly effective, we need the new generations and women.

2. Do you think your leadership style is influenced by your gender? How?

Yes, as the second woman and the youngest in the history of the IPU to preside the Organization, I am particularly interested in leading activities and spreading knowledge among politicians and civil society of the importance of women’s participation in politics, since it is a precondition to good governance. Also, I insist in providing guidance on how to make parliaments gender-sensitive institutions where women can fully engage, including by showing zero tolerance towards sexism, harassment, and violence against women in parliament.

3. Has there been a mentor or someone who inspired you during your personal and professional development?

Unfortunately, politics is often not a collaborative space, as it really should be. Few people are willing to teach and serve as a guide. I was fortunate to start politics at 15 and have the support of my family, although no one in my family had been a politician before me. In the party I joined, I had a youth area that allowed me to grow and train, open spaces for myself, and provide a way to bring an ideal of a fairer and more inclusive Mexico into practice.

One of the most remarkable examples of my work on gender issues is the support on the elaboration of data about women in politics that is jointly done by the IPU and UN Women. This data ranks countries according to the percentage of women in parliament and in ministerial positions. As mentioned before, I also lobby for the inclusion of women in different committees inside and outside the IPU.

Gender quotas have proven to be effective in achieving the goal of gender equality, because during the parliamentary elections held in 2019 in 68 chambers, women obtained on average 30.3 percent of the seats in the 40 chambers that had quotas, whether they were legislated or applied voluntarily by political parties. This contrasts with just 17.9 percent of the seats obtained by women in the 28 chambers that do not yet have a quota system.

Women and girls constitute half of the world population and therefore half of its potential. Gender equality is a fundamental human right and is also essential to achieve peaceful societies with full human potential and sustainable development. Help other women, study, and empower and believe in yourself.

7. Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

Women must work more than men. It is up to us to make our way and leave better opportunities for the new generations. Those of us in positions of high responsibility today have the great task of delivering results soon; we cannot wait a century to achieve gender parity, we cannot allow violence against women to continue. I know that it is not easy, I know that the rules of politics were made by men, I know that we do not have all the tools to do our work, I know that we are discriminated against and that we experience harassment and violence in campaigns and in our work, but also I know that every step, every effort, is worth it. This century is that of women, that of equality, and that of opportunities for all women and girls.

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1. Personal background information:

I think that leadership styles have more to do with personality than with gender. Culture and education have great influence, too. I grew up in a family that taught me, and my three sisters, that women can be as strong as men, as successful as men, and as free as men.

My mother and my father, both lawyers, as I am, and some teachers at university. I think that in terms of mentorship and role models, we should not think that only women can be mentors or role models. Although in my career I have met and worked with men that tried to mansplain to me, I have to recognize that I have also met and worked with men that fully respect women as employees, as colleagues, and as bosses.

Although some forms of corruption affect women more than men, and vice-a-versa, corruption doesn’t differentiate between genders. This makes it all the more important to have equal representation at Transparency International. As a movement and at the board and secretariat, we have a balanced gender presence. At the board, we are 5 women and 7 men. In our history, we have had an equal number of women and men as chairs. Many of the executive directors of our 100+ chapters are women. We are conscious of the need to maintain gender balance and respect equality.

In the field of anti-corruption, we have included gender in our analysis of corruption impact, especially through one of our key research tools, the Global Corruption Barometer. We are working on research into the hidden scourge of sexual extortion, or sextortion. Exposing the scale and impact of sextortion allows us to better understand which public policies and laws are needed to prevent and punish this abuse of power. We also campaign for the adoption of gender-sensitive whistleblowing protections and the adoption of measures that guarantee equal political participation.

I would encourage women to work together to ensure that no women are left behind. Together, we can defend equality, which starts by being conscious and by acting as equals.

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1. Personal background information:
Full name: Isabel Saint Malo de Alvarado
City of birth: Panama, Republic of Panama
What is your current position?
What are some of your responsibilities?
I am currently working on several projects, including the Human Development Global Report and Governance with the UN Development Programme (UNDP), among others.

2. Do you think your leadership style is influenced by your gender? How?

Everything that we do is as influenced by our gender as it is by our past experiences: where we were born, whether we had access to quality education or not, did we have mentors, did our parents expose us to diversity and different experiences? I believe that our actions are influenced by many factors, and gender is one of them. Women tend to be very intuitive, detail-oriented, and have other characteristics that will influence our style in every way, the same as men are influenced by characteristics that are more prevalent for them. I strongly believe that in the combination of diversity, of the strengths and weaknesses that men and women bring to the table, which can be different, lies the power of collaboration.

3. Has there been a mentor or someone who inspired you during your personal and professional development?

I have been very fortunate to have mentors throughout my life. In my professional career, I can think of a couple of amazing men and women that have taught me different things. Work ethics, the importance of caring for others, and of being authentic to one’s beliefs; they have inspired me and for that I am thankful. I have also learned from some, in a painful way, the importance of loyalty and the demolishing power of betrayal; from those I have learned that it is important to choose your team players in life’s journey, as the wrong choice can have terrible consequences.

I must also refer to mentors in my personal life. My parents, who taught me the power of faith, of doing the right thing, and of family above all. From my husband, that success comes with effort, that good things in life are not created as a result of speed but of perseverance, and that support for one’s partner is inherent to love. From my siblings, I have learned that family is irreplaceable and that we must take care of family. My best teachers are my three children, who teach me new things about life every day.

All of these people in my life have one way or another taught me, inspired me, and supported me along my journey, I am very fortunate to have them.

4. How do you help ensure gender equality from your current position? How have you done it in the past (if that is more relevant)?

As vice president of Panama for the period 2014-2019, several initiatives were launched. As regional champion for Equal Pay, through regional and national activities we raised awareness for the issue. In Panama, we supported the approval of legislation to ensure at least 30 percent female participation on boards and promoted equality in hiring, promotion, and designation of women to high-level positions in Panama.

5. What specific policy recommendations do you have to promote gender equality for women in your field of work and beyond?

In order to have gender equality, we must continue to promote the sharing of care for children and the elderly so that women do not need to make the choice between work and family. Further, we must continue to promote the production of data so that the numbers are shared and the objective is supported with facts. Still, there is not enough consciousness of the fact that men and women do not yet have the same opportunities and that their capacities are affected just because of gender.

6. What advice would you like to give to the next generation of female leaders?

Gender equality is not a women’s issue; it is an issue for men as much as it is for women. If equality is advanced, it will be better for business, for public policy, for men, for children, for the family, and of course for women as well. A study by McKinsey states that advancing women can add $12 trillion to global growth. Thus, if we aspire to move faster toward development, incorporating women is not a choice, but a necessity.

7. Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

We must incorporate the gender lens into every decision, public policy, corporate decisions on brands and consumers, and family priorities. If we can do so, we will undoubtedly advance faster. Gender equality is not a separate issue, it is central to every other issue if we aspire to build better societies in the short term.