Advances and setbacks to gender equality in Latin America: different paths in comparative perspectives

Abstract

The quest for gender equality in Latin America has unfolded alongside efforts at democratic consolidation, often buoyed by international and regional frameworks tying advances in women’s rights, status, and opportunity to quality of democracy. Indeed, Latin America is often recognized as being in the vanguard when it comes to implementing laws and policies that would advance gender equality, from adopting statutory electoral gender quotas to designing specialized health, protection and legal services to address gender-based violence, as well as implementing gender mainstreaming measures in national and subnational states. Yet, despite active feminist movement and civil society engagement, in many cases, these innovations remain only partially implemented, are frequently threatened by conservative forces, or lack rigorous evaluation of their efficacy. The success of these reforms not merely on paper, but in practice, reflects on whether and how Latin American countries are living up to the promise of greater equality that democracy offers to marginalized groups, particularly women and girls. In this panel, we use multi-case as well as single case studies to identify the particular factors at play in Latin America that explain advances and setbacks in gender equality policies. Collectively, the papers examine the role of governing party ideology, feminist strategies, regional and international norm diffusion, determinants of state capacity, as well as civil society's use of formal and informal channels of representation to build more inclusive societies. They highlight ongoing challenges to the realization of gender equality in the region, including the role played by weak state institutions, their openness to conservative groups’ influence; and ongoing challenges to building truly intersectional feminist practices.

Title	Details
The Intersectional Politics of Latin American Legislatures	View Paper Details
Winding Roads: The Shifting Nature of Women’s Policy Agencies in Argentina and Brazil under left and right government	View Paper Details
Progress and challenges in the provision of support and protection services for survivors of gender-based violence in Latin America	View Paper Details
Engendering the State through the Margins: The Pitfalls of Peru's National Women's Machinery	View Paper Details
Fluid Coalitions: Gendered Debates and Political Alliances in the Chilean Constitutional Assembly	View Paper Details