12 Introduction

Autonomy of decision-making is a necessary component of women’s rights, not only because political representation should be a right in and of itself, but also because it can have lasting effects on society as a whole. This idea has been demonstrated throughout Latin America.

This section of the book on autonomy of decision-making will begin with a chapter on indigenous women’s consolidation and their collective fight for recognition, economic empowerment, and representation. The next chapter will focus specifically on quotas for female politicians in legislatures in Latin America and determine the extent to which they have been effective at increasing female political representation and overall women’s rights.

The third chapter will analyze women’s public political participation in Latin America and the barriers they face before and during their elections. This includes ministerial, mayoral, judicial, and legislative positions, in addition to other forms of political power.

The final chapter in this section will discuss women involvement in the Zapatista movement, with an emphasis on their intersectional identities. It focuses on the specific testimony of Zapatista women to determine how their intersectional identities affected their participation, and how their lives changed with the passage of the Women’s Revolutionary Law.