Although women’s participation in politics in Latin America has gained relevance in the past few years, there isn’t much academic research on the role of women in subnational politics and single-member districts in Colombia. This thesis delves into two aspects of the political lives of women candidates for mayor in Colombia: what factors helped or blocked the nomination of women candidates to mayoral elections in Cartagena (2007 – 2019) and what was the role of political parties in these factors? and, what institutional, contextual and cultural factors have an effect on the election of women as mayors at the national level (2019)? The qualitative analysis offers a case study in Cartagena, where I show that parties’ instrumental role and informality, in addition to the influence of outside partisan structures such as patriarchal local political clans, present barriers for women in pursue of their candidacy. Women also face obstacles in their efforts to run with petition signatures. The quantitative analysis hints at the relevance of the proportion of women candidates in the likelihood of a woman being elected as mayor.
