Gender Gaps in Paraguay: Voting for Traditional Right-Wing Parties and the Rise of the Radicalized Right
摘要
This chapter seeks to contribute to the identification of gender gaps in the Paraguayan vote in the past 20 years. On the basis of the five rounds of Latinobarómetro surveys conducted in presidential election years between 2003 and 2023, we analyzed the traditional vs. modern gap in the vote for both traditional right-wing parties and radicalized right-wing parties. The main result of the work is that a gender gap exists that is comparable with the modern gap, which allows us to explain the behavior of women and how it differs from that of men regarding the probability of choosing right-wing parties. Specifically, the role of the head of the household widens the gender gap, and more-religious people are more likely to vote for the traditional right (values always lower for women), except in the presence of radical right-wing options, when more-religious women move away from traditional right-wing options linked to mainstream Paraguayan politics. The findings provide evidence on women’s electoral behavior in a little-studied case and complement comparative studies in Latin America.