Catherine Reyes-Housholder

PhD Cornell University

Chile's first female president, Michelle Bachelet, leads her final 2013 presidential campaign event.

Brazil's first female president, Dilma Rousseff, inaugurates a Casa da Mulher Brasileira in Brasília in June 2015.

Welcome to my web site! I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES) and an Associate Researcher at ICSO Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile.

​I research the presidency and gender with a regional focus on Latin America, and I use historical, statistical and experimental methods. My dissertation "Presidentas, Power and Pro-Women Change" won the 2017 Best Dissertation Award: APSA Women and Politics section. 

My work has been published or is forthcoming in Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, Politics, Groups and Identities and the ​Journal of Politics in Latin America as well as in four edited volumes. I summarize parts of my research agenda in an essay for the Comparative Politics Spring 2017 newsletter http://comparativenewsletter.com/.

I describe some of my ongoing research in this Spanish-language interview: http://www.icso.cl/noticias/catherine-reyes-housholder-describe-su-proyecto-de-investigacion-sobre-presidencia-y-genero-en-america-latina/. 

I completed fieldwork in Brazil and Chile in 2015 thanks to a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. I also conducted research in Uruguay as a Fulbright undergraduate fellow in 2008.

To learn more about female presidents in Latin America, check out this recent interview in Página 12:
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/124006-al-llegar-una-mujer-a-la-presidencia-puede-cambiar-el-sentid​