When Violeta Barrios de Chamorro stepped down as president of Nicaragua in January, she left behind a country where things had changed for women. Although she had no formal political background and was sought for the office rather than seeking it herself, Chamorro's leadership style and unpretentious manner left their mark.
     Chamorro's biggest accomplishment was "the demythification of power," according to Sofia Montenegro, a Nicaraguan feminist and journalist. "There was something in her way of seeing things and talking, in how she moved her body and walked, that contradicted all the political machismo that has been our daily bread."
     In doing away with "the pomposity of power and the ceremonies which men use to waft incense over themselves and those that surround them," Montenegro claimed that Chamorro's "maternal style and homily simpleness had the effect of desacralizing and demythifying power." Montenegro suggests feminists will look back on Chamorro's term as "a golden era . . .characterized by unrestricted freedom of expression and political tolerance, a factor that contributed to the growth of the women's movement."
     As the Nicaraguan women's movement grew, political participation increased, and by the end of Chamorro's term, several other important posts--including the vicepresidency, the presidency of the electoral tribunal, and the vicepresidency of the Supreme Court--were filled by women.
     Women who have moved up the bureaucratic ladders of government have made a difference. A former nun who left her convent to join the Sandinista fight against Somoza, Aminta Granera was named the national chief of transit police in Nicaragua earlier this year. Within weeks she struck out at corruption, disciplining more than two dozen police officers who had been taking bribes. The evidence had been there before, but Granera's male predecessors had chosen not to act. When Granera suffered resistance to her actions, women's groups came to her rescue. Granera called such support "an oasis in this desert."
     Although Nicaraguan women made political progress under Chamorro, they suffered a setback in last year's elections. National Assembly seats held by women dropped to half what it was before. The trend is the same throughout the region. After rising significantly, women's participation in electoral politics has plateaud or fallen.
     As a result, some are calling for guaranteed quotas. In Guatemala, where women currently hold no cabinet positions and only 16 percent of the Congress and two of 13 seats on the Supreme Court, a coalition of women's groups released their proposal for electoral affirmative action on July 14, the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. "More than two hundred years later, the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity enshrined by the French Revolution still exist only in theory," complained Malvina Armas. The group wants women to occupy half the positions in all party structures; candidate lists would have to have a minimum of 44 percent for either gender.
     Similar proposals have been suggested elsewhere in the region. An umbrella organization of women's groups in Panama recently threatened to boycott general elections in 1999 if 30 percent of the candidates aren't women.
     An increasing number of women have successfully entered public politics representing traditional political parties, but any interest they might have in gender issues is often discouraged by their male peers. A few are nonetheless willing to take on the cause. Zury Rios, a Congress deputy from the Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (the party founded by her father, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt), last year introduced a weak but nonetheless significant law against domestic violence. "They're opening up a bit, but they're still playing a game where the political rules are decided by the patriarchal culture," observed Eugenia Mijangos, a leader of Guatemala's Convergencia Civico-Politico de Mujeres.
     In several countries, women have won prominent positions in managing government social investment funds designed to ameliorate neoliberal-inspired structural adjustments that hit women and children the hardest. But Guatemalan feminist Carmen Pellecer says the resulting microprojects don't encourage change. "Once again they relegating us to care for chickens and take care of the garden," said Pellecer.
     From women's perspective, the political left hasn't performed much better. Leadership of the new political party being formed by the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca guerrilla movement is heavy on ladino men and short on women and indigenous--ironically, both majorities in Guatemala. And although Guatemala has a variety of prominent women who were thrust into political life as human rights champions, most have shown little interest in gender issues and at times have opposed the participation of organized women's groups in public forums. 
     This discovery that other sectors of civil society are resistant to women's issues has contributed to a feeling that it may be necessary to go it alone. After the civil war concluded in El Salvador, a group of leftist women split off from the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN) to form Mujeres por la Dignidad y la Vida. Mijangos said Guatemalan feminists may have to do something similar. "If we really want to be involved in politics, it's going to be necessary that we do it from the women themselves," she predicted.
     Since they don't feel at home in traditional parties, women are "doing politics" in a rapidly increasing number of grassroots groups organized around issues ranging from domestic violence to reproductive rights to sharing agricultural credit. Pellecer says that whereas there were only four women's groups in Guatemala a decade ago, today there are more than 200. She says that many of the women involved in these groups also participate in other political organizations, including unions and church groups, exercising a "double militancy" in their political participation. Combined with the "double shift" of work life and home life, women in the region are working harder than ever.