Book review: Political power and women’s representation in Latin America

"Political Power and Women’s Representation in Latin America." Leslie Schwindt Bayer. Oxford University Press. November 2012. --- In Political Power and Women’s Representation in Latin America, Leslie Schwindt-Bayer examines the causes and consequences of women’s representation in Latin America. She does so by asking a series of politically relevant and theoretically challenging questions, including why the numbers of women in office have increased in some countries but vary across others; what the presence of women in office means for the way representatives legislate; and what consequences the election of women bears for representative democracy more generally. Schwindt-Bayer shows how the inclusion of women in politics has changed the issues brought into the political arena, writes Natalie Novick.