Michelle Saint-Germain and Cynthia Metoyer have written the best comparative study available in English on the causes and impact of women's participation in Central America—and in Latin America as a whole. During the 1980s and 1990s, the number of women elected to national legislatures in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua grew, exceeding global and Latin American averages. The authors conclude that there are three major reasons for this growth: the regional crisis caused by the civil wars of the 1980s; the opportunities for women to gain political experience due to the rapid expansion of civil society during this period; and the adoption of a gender consciousness, improving the viability of women candidates and influencing their agendas.

The book opens with useful short histories of the five countries, beginning with the colonial period that created societies highly unequal in class and race terms, and macho in their treatment of women. The authors also identify important differences among the cases, from the more middle-class, wealthy, and egalitarian Costa Rica to Guatemala with its large indigenous population. Using statistical and interview data, Saint-Germain and Metoyer ask whether their data support any of the current theories about how to elect more women: the role of electoral systems, the role of political parties and women's sections, the level of economic development, and cultural factors, including pervasive sexism and religiosity. The diversity of women's paths to political office was striking, ranging from participation in student and grassroots organizations to guerrilla activities, and careers in education and the law. Many became politically active at an early age, often as members of families who were politically involved. In a number of cases, mothers were their political role models.

Saint-Germain and Montoyer then turn to the question of whether having women in national legislatures has made a difference. Whom do these women represent? What are their most important tasks? What do they think are the ideal qualities of a successful legislator? As might be expected, most of the women legislators thought of themselves as representing “the people” or particular sectors or classes, but not women per se; they did not think of themselves as feminists (pp. 260–61). Some owed primary loyalty to their party, others to the specific groups that elected them. But 81% of those in El Salvador, 57% in Guatemala, 46% in Honduras, 33% in Costa Rica, and 29% in Nicaragua thought that they needed “radical” strategies to attack machismo (p. 179). Representational styles differed by country, with the women who were interviewed thinking of themselves largely as “trustees” in Costa Rica and El Salvador (with more leeway to make their own decisions), but divided more or less equally between “trustees” and “delegates” in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua (p. 186). In Chapter 6, the authors argue that the election of women has made a difference, in part due to the normative influence of the United Nations Women's Decade and the 1995 Beijing Conference and, in part, to gender consciousness, that is, to a greater awareness of the differential impact of policies on women and men (p. 262).

The authors then discuss the relationship between women's representation and the quality of democracy. This is a strength of the book, but it is also the source of the few quibbles I have. Noting that the history of Central American politics (with the exception of Costa Rica) has been characterized by personalist, corporatist, and “nondemocratic” clientelist politics (pp. 219–21), they argue that Central Americans are seeking their own version of democracy, not “liberal” (too individualistic and market oriented) and not “radical” (too committed to equality of results). The Central American model is committed to social justice, but going beyond social democracy in its “democratization of civil society” (p. 217).

I fully agree that to democratize, Central America must “transform its corporatist tradition of state-controlled client groups into a democratic practice of interest groups with state access” (p. 220). But I am less convinced that this requires a political world in which civil society is the dominant space of democratic values, greater than either the government or the private sphere (p. 215). Criticizing the negative economic effects of structural adjustment and the “reification” of political parties, the authors assert that civil society is the place where groups “not only acknowledge their inequities and differences (as in social democracy) but seek their transformation” (p. 217). They observe that people want “public order,” but that coercion will only be “delegitimized” when (and if) “some level of equitable development is achieved” (p. 210).

These visions of a civil society–based democracy in Central America are inspiring. But the authors shy away from some basic issues. How can severe inequalities be addressed “by debate” alone? Why has the popular desire for public order often led to the election of right-wing parties that promise coercion but not redistribution? Political parties, when they work, serve essential functions that nongovernmental organizations, social movements, and “interest groups” cannot, by providing legitimate decisions that are backed by a majority and enforceable by the state. Although the theoretical and contextual material is up to date, the interviews were done over a decade ago. One wonders what these legislators would say today about democratic “consolidation,” the reelection of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua (which promptly passed a law banning all abortions), the rise of Hugo Chavez, or the impact of electoral gender quotas, not yet widely used in the mid-1990s.

Typologies are often quite useful, but the distinction the authors make between policy proposals that have “No Gender Perspective” and those that propose “Different Treatment for Women” (p. 268) lumps together policies that support women's traditional roles with policies supporting women's equality, as though (to use a U.S. analogy) the policies favored by Phyllis Schlafly belong in the same column with those of, say, Bella Abzug, each of whom surely has a “gender perspective.” But these objections are far outweighed by the book's strengths. It should be required reading for all scholars working on women's representation and democracy and is an excellent text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses.