Party Institutionalization and Women's Representation in Democratic Brazil

Kristin N. Wylie is Assistant Professor of Political Science at James Madison University, Virginia. She specializes in gender politics, representation, political parties, and Brazilian politics. Her research appears in Politics & Gender and the Journal of Black Studies.

• 1. A crisis of representation: the puzzle of women's underrepresentation in Brazil; 2. Willing and able: party institutionalization, party leadership, and women's representation; 3. Brazil's quota law and the challenges of institutional change amidst weak and gendered institutions; 4. Overcoming gendered obstacles: voters, electoral rules, and parties; 5. Electoral rules, party support, and women's unexpected successes in elections to the Brazilian Senate; 6. Supermadres, Lutadoras, and technocrats: the bounded profiles of Brazil's female politicians; 7. Intersections between race and fender in Brazil's 2014 Chamber of Deputies Elections; 8. Theoretical implications and comparative perspectives.

'Party Institutionalization and Women's Representation in Democratic Brazil dismisses the conventional wisdom about women's underrepresentation in Brazil. Wylie then masterfully demonstrates that the combination of candidate-centric elections with weakly institutionalized political parties keep women out of elected office. Her mixed-methods approach uses an impressive longitudinal dataset of nearly 28,000 legislative candidacies as well as over 100 interviews with politicians, activists, and experts. This book is striking for both its theoretical and methodological rigor, and will stand as a landmark work in the study of women's political representation.' Magda Hinojosa, Arizona State University