As more and more women are elected president in Latin America, one would think that, when running for office, female candidates would advocate for gender equality. Yet female candidates have so far refrained from invoking women's rights to win elections. In fact, it was a man who first used a feminist argument against his female opponent. Peruvian president Ollanta Humala won a tight runoff race against Keiko Fujimori by focusing his campaign on women's right to decide over their bodies.
The presidential race between Humala and Keiko was tight until the very end. In the weeks preceding the election, five out of six election polls predicted victory by a small margin for Keiko. Things turned around during a presidential debate on May 29, when Humala brought up Alberto Fujimori's record of forced sterilisations in the 1990s. Forcing Keiko to take a stand on her father's policies that violated women's bodies, Humala catapulted gender issues to the forefront of the presidential race.
Read the whole article at Al Jazeera, published 04. August
As more and more women are elected president in Latin America, one would think that, when running for office, female candidates would advocate for gender equality. Yet female candidates have so far refrained from invoking women's rights to win elections. In fact, it was a man who first used a feminist argument against his female opponent. Peruvian president Ollanta Humala won a tight runoff race against Keiko Fujimori by focusing his campaign on women's right to decide over their bodies.
The presidential race between Humala and Keiko was tight until the very end. In the weeks preceding the election, five out of six election polls predicted victory by a small margin for Keiko. Things turned around during a presidential debate on May 29, when Humala brought up Alberto Fujimori's record of forced sterilisations in the 1990s. Forcing Keiko to take a stand on her father's policies that violated women's bodies, Humala catapulted gender issues to the forefront of the presidential race.
Read the whole article at Al Jazeera, published 04. August