Negotiating Gendered Discourses
Michelle Bachelet and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
By (author) Jane L. Christie
Not available to order
Publication date:
25 November 2015Length of book:
232 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498512350
It has been argued that the first presidential campaign of Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina used a rhetoric of newness. Some political observers have said that as the “first women” to successfully run for the highest office in these countries, they were presented as the new faces of democracy. These observers argued that gender was not a determining factor in their electoral success, but the focus on this “first women” frame did generate heavily gendered criticisms of these two candidates. Negotiating Gendered Discourses addresses these views by asking how the gender factor is negotiated when women from the Southern Cone of Latin America run for high political office. In particular, Jane L. Christie examines how Bachelet and Fernández positioned themselves in relation to the numerous women-led social movements, and in doing so, reveals points of intersection between these contemporary political discourses and existing sources of female authority when negotiating complicated ideological debates about human rights, the economy, and women’s rights.
This book contributes to the ongoing discussion of women’s representation in executive politics. Through the use of feminist CDA, the author aptly shows how gendered frames, expectations, a country’s political history and a politician’s own history all are factors in how women presidents see themselves and how they want to be seen by the political elite and general population.