More than half the candidates for the Cuban National Assembly are women, according to the nation's electoral authorities – meaning that if all 320 female candidates are ratified, Cuba would become the second country in the world to boast a female majority in parliament. Rwanda currently ranks first in the world for its parliamentary female majority, with women making up 61.3 percent of all members.

The outrage may be more selective and change agonizingly slow, but even in the most patriarchal societies of the Americas, the pushback is gathering force. From Mexico City to Buenos Aires, a new generation is speaking up, driving policy changes and calling out the creeps in power for whom a leer and grope -- or far worse -- were part of the script.

Together with Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff and Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez, Bachelet embodied the major strides made by women across a region that has passed laws deterring rampant violence against women and set quotas for political participation that have given Latin American women a bigger share of parliamentary seats than in Europe. But now some worry that progress on women’s rights could stall. “We’re seeing a shift to conservative politics that is questioning the advances of the last 15 to 20 years,” said Eugenia Piza-Lopez, who works on gender in Latin America for the United Nations Development Program.