It's February 2010 and thousands of people are pouring onto the streets of the Costa Rican capital

San Jose to celebrate the election victory of Laura Chinchia.

In all Costa Rica, vivan for always, the travel and la Paz.

In May of that year, she was sworn in as the first female president in her country's history

and one of the first in Latin America.

During four years in power, she signed free trade agreements with China and Singapore

and welcomed several distinguished visitors to her Central American country.

Buenos Aires, this is my first visit to Costa Rica.

Among them, US President Barack Obama.

These days, Laura Chinchia looks at development issues in Latin America and the Caribbean.

She's a co-chair of The Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on the region.

I'm Gideon Long, and I've been speaking to her for this edition of Business Daily,

the final episode in a week-long series about the economies of Latin America.

I started my conversation with Laura Chinchia by asking her about her upbringing in Costa Rica and her rise to the presidency.

When I was a child, it was impossible to imagine a women as president because at that time there were no women presidents.

But I decided to follow a public service career, and that is why I started moving to politics.

Becoming the first female president of my country was the greatest honor of my life.

But also a challenge due to prevailing sexist views. Now we already have 50% of women's

representation in our National Assembly, and that is good news. And you were part of a wave of

female presidents in the region, Michel Bachelet in Chile,

Christina Fernandez in Argentina, Dilmer Rousseff in Brazil.

Did it feel like a significant moment, a period when women had finally made it to some of the top jobs in the region?

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