Winding Roads: The Shifting Nature of Women’s Policy Agencies in Argentina and Brazil under left and right government

For decades, Latin American feminism has struggled to have a democratic State with enough services for women as well as gender machineries capable of promoting and implementing thorough gender mainstreaming strategies and policies. However, much of this effort is mediated by the type of government in place, especially in light of the heavy presidentialism that characterizes the political system of the region. Consequently, in any study of gender machineries, we must take into account the ideology of government in power as well as the equilibrium of forces required to rule. By taking two major Latin American countries, Argentina and Brazil, in this paper I propose to examine the institutional evolution of women’s policy agencies (WPAs) in Argentina and Brazil over a 20-year period. My analysis is theoretically-driven for I take a classification of WPA institutional types proposed by scholarly literature on state feminism by McBride and Mazur (2010): insider, marginal, symbolic, and anti-movement. Only insider agencies are those that resemble the feminist ideals of a strong machinery open to the demands of the women’s movement. As I show, however, the institutional reality of the WPA, even under governments prone to adopt women’s rights frameworks, is more nuanced. More broadly, what processes mediate the link between WPA attributes and government ideology? I show contrasting trajectories of how WPAs developed under left- and then right-wing governments. In Argentina, the first three center left governments of Kirchnerism (2003–2015) had no significant WPA, which remained symbolic. By contrast, under the center-right alliance of Cambiemos (2015–2019), it did improve its position in the executive hierarchy. It was only after Kirchnerism returned to power in 2019 that an insider agency was finally put into place. Why did it take so long for Kirchnerism to have an insider WPA given that this government always put social justice at the core of its political project and advanced significant gender-sensitive legislation? Conversely, what factors explain an improved WPA under Cambiemos, given its market-oriented political project, which overlooked social equality? In Brazil, the center-left governments of the PT (2003–2016) developed a true insider agency, probably the most feminist model in the region. Under the right-wing Alliance for Brazil (2019-2022) however, the WPA positioned itself against feminist movements thus becoming an anti-movement machinery. The return of the center left and the PT in 2023 also marked the return of a feminist WPA. What factors explain that the PT consistently had an insider WPA? What factors made such an outright inversion possible under the right-wing government? My longitudinal case comparison shows that ideology does play a role, but political authorities do not make decisions about WPAs based on ideology alone. WPA attributes are part of what governments more instrumentally negotiate when they need to build constituencies or, alternatively, reciprocate loyalties, depending on their popular support, the overall demands and mobilization capacities of their core allies, and the extent to which feminists play a role in party politics and electoral campaigns.