Related areas such as the social, human, legal and communication sciences seek to explain the reasons why women are not elected to positions of popular representation. Feminist theories and gender studies contribute to the understanding of the power relations between genders, also listing the capitalist and patriarchal systems as determinants in the structuring of societies, which exclude women from public decision-making spaces. This article presents the theoretical responses to the most common comments and questions made in more than a decade of national and international lectures on public image of female candidates and female participation in politics given by the author. Only Latin American countries whose conferences were held in person were considered: Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Dominican Republic and Mexico. Based on a participatory ethnographic methodology, it was possible to trace a behavioral pattern that is reflected in the ballot boxes of Latin countries based on the most frequent interventions. Qualitative data are crossed with affirmative laws showing that the number of seats in parliament, for example, is not reflected in the quality of participation, nor in changes in electoral behavior. The text brings reflections and proposals for the impasses that hinder equal representative democratic processes.