A Researcher Profile on Antonia Paredes

By Emma Garcia

Antonia Paredes is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Berkeley Haas. Dr. Paredes focuses her research primarily on gender representation in politics as well as work in the political economy and development field. Before beginning her research with Haas business school, Antonia earned her PhD at Yale University. In January 2023, Dr. Paredes began her research project titled Can Dictatorships Improve Women’s Representation? Evidence from Chile’s Democratic Transition. Paredes created this project to investigate the effect that Chile’s transition from dictatorship to democracy had on gender representation. This research was inspired by the drastic decrease in the percentage of women as mayors when Chile held its first democratic election. Antonia’s goal with her research paper is to study how the exclusion of women, as a result of democratization, will impact political representation of women and public policies long term.

Antonia has always been inspired by women in politics, as she grew up in a country where women represented an incredibly small percentage of all congresspeople. She added that studying female under-representation in politics has been a huge driving force for her pursuing a research career in economics, hoping to make a difference for other young women interested in the same field. Antonia mentioned she has found that policymakers worldwide are “willing to implement policies that increase female representation, so [she thinks] this area of research is something policy makers want to discuss.”

The advancement of inclusivity — specifically in academia — is an issue that Antonia feels very passionate about, having first-hand experience as a woman in the field. While earning her PhD, Antonia had the opportunity to have economist Rohini Pande as her advisor. Antonia credits Rohini as an incredible example of what it means to be an Equity Fluent Leader, praising her willingness to speak out about issues she feels passionately for and for actively promoting inclusion in professional environments.