Governing Bodies, Silencing Women: Reproductive Rights and Institutional Gendered Violence [Panel in Spanish]

Abstract

[Panel in Spanish] This panel examines how gendered power is produced and contested across institutional arenas in Latin America, linking struggles over reproductive autonomy to wider patterns of political and institutional violence. It brings together debates on feminist organising, state governance, and coloniality to show how rights are negotiated through shifting grammars of action that move between autonomy and institutional engagement. The panel centres abortion politics as a key site of democratic conflict: from the long federal coalition-building that culminated in Argentina’s legalisation, to the criminalisation of obstetric emergencies and the tightening of civic space under punitive security regimes in El Salvador. At the same time, it expands the lens beyond reproductive governance to women’s political participation, examining how symbolic, psychological, and verbal violence can shape ambitions, trajectories, and equality of access to office even in contexts with relatively low levels of physical violence, such as Uruguay. Finally, by foregrounding gender coloniality within a major public hospital, the panel highlights how everyday institutional hierarchies and ‘invisible’ forms of violence normalise patriarchal relations and constrain women’s authority within the state itself. Together, the contributions show that struggles over bodies, care, and participation are inseparable—and that institutional change depends on making these harms legible and politically actionable.

Title	Details
Entre la institucionalidad y la autonomía: gramáticas políticas en el movimiento por el derecho al aborto en Argentina	View Paper Details
COLONIALIDAD DE GÉNERO EM EL HOSPITAL UNIVERSITÁRIO DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE SÃO PAULO -BRASIL	View Paper Details
Impactos de la violencia política basada en género en las carreras políticas: un estudio del caso uruguayo	View Paper Details