Gender and the Politics

of Rights and Democracy

in Latin America
Edited by
Nikki Craske and Maxine Molyneux
Gender and the Politics of Rights and Democracy
in Latin America
Also by Nikki Craske:
WOMEN AND POLITICS IN LATIN AMERICA
DISMANTLING THE MEXICAN STATE? (co-edited with Rob Aitken, Gareth Jones and
David Stansfield)
MEXICO AND THE NAFTA: WHO WILL BENEFIT? (co-edited with Victor Bulmer-
Thomas and MoÂnica Serrano)

Also by Maxine Molyneux:

WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: LATIN AMERICA
AND BEYOND
HIDDEN HISTORIES OF GENDER AND THE STATE IN LATIN AMERICA (co-edited
with Elizabeth Dore)
Gender and the Politics of
Rights and Democracy
in Latin America
Edited by
Nikki Craske
and
Maxine Molyneux

Women's Studies
at York
Selection, editorial matter and Chapter 1 Q Nikki Craske and Maxine Molyneux
2002
Remaining Chapters Q Palgrave Publishers Ltd 2002
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002 978-0-333-94948-1
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
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Companies and representatives throughout the world
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gender and the politics of rights and democracy in Latin
America / edited by Nikki Craske and Maxine Molyneux.
p.cm.
``This edited volume emerged out of a conference organized
by the editors . . . held at the Institute of Latin American Studies
of the University of London'' ± Acknowledgements.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Women's rights ± Latin America ± Congresses. 2. Women's

rights ± Latin America ± Case studies. I. Craske, Nikki. II. Molyneux, Maxine.
HQ1236.5.L37 G455 2001
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11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
Contents

List of Tables vii

List of Abbreviations viii
Acknowledgements xii

Notes on the Contributors xiii

1 The Local, the Regional and the Global: Transforming

the Politics of Rights 1
Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske

2 Engendering the Right to Participate in Decision-making:

Electoral Quotas and Women's Leadership in
Latin America 32
Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones

3 Getting Rights for those without Representation:

the Success of Conjunctural Coalition-building in
Venezuela 57
Elisabeth Jay Friedman

4 Taking the Law into their Own Hands: Women, Legal

Reform and Legal Literacy in Brazil 79
Fiona Macaulay

5 In Pursuit of the Right to be Free from Violence:

the Women's Movement and State Accountability in
Uruguay 102
Niki Johnson

6 Constructing Citizenship in the PoblacioÂnes of Santiago,

Chile: the Role of Reproductive and Sexual Rights 124
Ceri Willmott

7 Indigenous Women, Rights and the Nation-State in the

Andes 149
Sarah A. Radcliffe

v
vi Contents

8 Economic and Social Rights: Exploring Gender Differences

in a Central American Context 173
Jasmine Gideon

9 The Struggle by Latin American Feminisms for Rights and

Autonomy 199
Virginia Vargas

Index 223
List of Tables

2.1 Quota laws in Latin America 38

2.2 Quota laws and the election of women 41
2.3 Composition of ordinary committees in the Argentine
Chamber of Deputies, 1997 46
2.4 Policy priorities in the first `post-quota' legislative
period in Argentina, 1993±94 47
5.1 Bills on domestic violence presented to the Uruguayan
parliament, 1990±99 114
8.1 Social imbalances in Central America: key indicators
(mid-1990s) 184
8.2 Gender differences in Central America: key indicators
(mid-1990s) 185
A1 Selected data on women's status in Latin America 222

vii
List of Abbreviations

ACOMUC AsociacioÂn de CooperacioÂn con la Mujer/Peruvian

Association for Cooperation with Peasant Women
AL Alianza Liberal/Liberal Alliance (Nicaragua)
AMNLAE AsociacioÂn de Mujeres NicaraguÈ enses Luisa Amanda
Espinoza/Luisa Amanda Espinoza Association of
Nicaraguan Women
ANR AsociacioÂn Nacional Republicana/National Repub-
lican Association (Paraguay)
ARENA Alianza Republicana Nacional/National Republican
Alliance (El Salvador)
CCP ConfederacioÂn Campesina del PeruÂ/Peruvian Peas-
ant Confederation
CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Dis-
crimination Against Women
CEPAL/ECLAC ComisioÂn EconoÂmica para AmeÂrica Latina y el Car-
ibe/Economic Commission for Latin America and
the Caribbean
CFEMEA Centro Feminista de Estudos e Assessoria/Feminist
Research and Advisory Centre (Brazil)
CHR Commission for Human Rights
CIDEM Centros de InformacioÂn de los Derechos de la
Mujer/Information Centres for Women's Rights
(Chile)
CIM ComisioÂn Interamericana de Mujeres/InterAmeri-
can Commission for Women
CLADEM Comite de AmeÂrica Latina y el Caribe para la
Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer/Latin American
and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of
Women's Rights
CLT ConsolidacËaÄo das Leis Trabalhistas/Consolidated
Labour Law (Brazil)
CNA ConfederacioÂn Nacional Agraria/National Agrarian
Confederation (Peru)
CNMD ConcertacioÂn Nacional de Mujeres por la Democra-
cia/National Coalition of Women for Democracy
(Chile)

viii
 List of Abbreviations ix

COFEAPRE ComisioÂn Femenina Asesora de la Presidencia/Presi-

dential Women's Advisory Commission (Venezuela)
CONAIE La ConfederacioÂn de Nacionalidades IndõÂgenas del
Ecuador/Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities
of Ecuador
CONAMU Consejo Nacional de Mujeres/National Council of
Women (Uruguay)
CONAMUP ComisioÂn Nacional sobre Mujeres Peruanas/Na-
tional Commission on Peruvian Woman
CONAPRO ConcertacioÂn Nacional ProgramaÂtica/National Con-
sensus-Building Forum (Uruguay)
CONFENAIE ConfederacioÂn de Nacionalidades IndõÂgenas de la
Amazonia Ecuatoriana/The Confederation of Na-
tionalities Indigenous to the Ecuadorian Amazonia
CONG Coordinadora de Organizaciones No-Gubernamen-
tales de Mujeres/Coordinating Committee of
Women's Nongovernmental Organisations (Vene-
zuela)
CSW Commission on the Status of Women (UN)
CTV ConfederacioÂn de Trabajadores Venezolanos/Con-
federation of Venezuelan Workers
DINAMU DireccioÂn Nacional de la Mujer/National Women's
Directorate (Ecuador)
ECOSOC Commission for Economic and Social Rights
ECUARUNARI The Awakening of Ecuador's Indians (in Quechua)
FCS FederacioÂn de Centros Shuar/Shuar Federation
(Ecuador)
FEDERCAMARAS Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce
and Production
FEINE Ecuadorian Federation of Evangelical Indigenous
FEVA FederacioÂn Venezolana de Abogadas/Venezuelan
Federation of Women Lawyers
FIDEG FundacioÂn Internacional para el DesafõÂo EconoÂmico
Global/International Foundation for the Global
Economic Challenge (Nicaragua)
FMLN Frente Farabundi MartõÂ para la LiberacioÂn Nacional/
Farabundo MartõÂ Front for National Liberation (El
Salvador)
FSLN Frente Sandinista para la LiberacioÂn Nacional/San-
dinista Front for National Liberation (Nicaragua)
GEM gender empowerment measurement
x List of Abbreviations

GNP Gross National Product

ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
ICESCR International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights
IDB Inter-American Development Bank
IELSUR Uruguayan Institute of Legal and Social Studies
ILO International Labour Organisation
IML Instituto MeÂdico-Legal/Legal Medical
Institute (Brazil)
IMM Intendencia Municipal de Montevideo/Muncipal
Government of Montevideo
INFM Instituto Nacional de la Familia y la Mujer/National
Institute for the Family and Women (Uruguay)
IPRE Institute for the Prevention of Domestic Violence
and Rehabilitation of Victims (Uruguay)
MNR Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario/National Re-
volutionary Movement (Bolivia)
MUDE Mujeres por la Democracia/Women for Democracy
(Peru)
NGOs Nongovernmental Organisations
NTAEs non-traditional agricultural exports
OAS Organisation of American States
OLM Oficina Legal de la Mujer/Women's Legal Office
(Nicaragua)
OMN Oficina Nacional de la Mujer/National Women's
Office (Venezuela)
PAIT Programa de Apoyo de Ingreso Temporal/Temporary
Aid and Income Programme (Peru)
PROMUDEH Ministerio por la PromocioÂn de la Mujer y del Desar-
rollo Humano/Ministry for the Promotion of
Women and Human Development (Peru)
RSMLAC Red de la Salud de las Mujer Latinoamericanas y del
Caribe/Latin American and Caribbean Women's
Health Network
RUVDS Network against Domestic and Sexual Violence
(Uruguay)
SERNAM Servicio Nacional de la Mujer/National Women's
Agency (Chile)
SIM ServicËo de InformacËaÄo aÁ Mulher/Women's Informa-
tion Service (Brazil)
SIN National Intelligence Service (Peru)
 List of Abbreviations xi

SNA System of National Accounts

STJ Superior Tribunal de JusticËa/Higher Justice Court
(Brazil)
UN United Nations
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights
UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund
WID Women in Development
Acknowledgements

This edited volume emerged out of a conference organised by the editors

with the help of Virginia Vargas, which was held at the Institute of Latin
American Studies of University of London. Thanks are due to the Insti-
tute of Latin American Studies for supporting the conference and to
Tony Bell at ILAS who helped with the practicalities. The editors would
like to thank Georgina Ashworth, Georgina Waylen, Teresa Sacchet,
Karen Newman, Marilyn Thompson and SõÃan Lazar who gave papers at
the conference and to all who participated in the debates. We would also
like to thank Niki Johnson and Anne-Marie Smith for their assistance
with Gina Vargas' translation, and all the many women activists in Latin
America who gave their time in interviews on the question of rights.

xii
Notes on the Contributors

Nikki Craske is Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies,

University of Liverpool. She has written extensively on Mexican politics
and is author of Women and Politics in Latin America (1999). She is
currently writing a book with Sylvia Chant, Gender in Latin America
and is preparing a manuscript entitled The Feminisation of Politics in
Mexico.

Elisabeth Jay Friedman is Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics in

the Political Science Department at Barnard College, Columbia Univer-
sity. Her work focuses on the intersection(s) of gender, women's organ-
ising, civil society and democratisation in Latin America, as well as on
the development of global civil society. In addition to her book Unfin-
ished Transitions: Women and the Gendered Development of Democracy in
Venezuela, 1936±1996 (2000), she has published in journals such as
World Politics, Latin American Research Review, and Women and Politics.

Jasmine Gideon is based at the University of Manchester, where she has

been researching socioeconomic and gender issues. Her main areas of
research include economies as gendered structures, health sector
reforms and NGOs, and she has published in all these fields. She has
recently completed her PhD on primary health care delivery in Chile.

Mala N. Htun is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Graduate

Faculty of Political and Social Science of New School University. She is
author of a book on gender rights in Latin America to be published by
Cambridge University Press and several articles on women in politics
and public policy. She acts as advisor to the Inter-American Dialogue's
Women's Leadership Conference of the Americas.

Niki Johnson was awarded her PhD in Politics in April 2000 from Queen
Mary and Westfield College, University of London. Her doctoral thesis
looked at gender citizenship, the women's movement and the state in
Uruguay. She is currently living in Montevideo, Uruguay, and taking
part in a research project on women's political participation at the
Instituto de Ciencia PolõÂtica of the Universidad de la RepuÂblica.

xiii
xiv Notes on the Contributors

Mark P. Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Political

Science at Michigan State University. His work focuses on the influence
of electoral laws and other political institutions on party systems, elite
and mass political behaviour, and representation. In addition to Electoral
Laws and the Survival of Presidential Democracies (1995) he has published
widely, including recent articles in Comparative Political Studies, Journal of
Development Economics and the Journal of Politics.

Fiona Macaulay is Research Fellow at the Institute of Latin American

Studies at the University of London, and also participates in the Centre
for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford. She was previously Brazil
Researcher at Amnesty International. Her present area of research con-
cerns human rights and the reform of the criminal justice system in
Brazil. She has also published articles on violence against women in
Latin America and state gender policy and political parties in Brazil
and Chile.

Maxine Molyneux has written extensively in the fields of feminist

theory, political sociology and development studies. Her recent books
include Women's Movements in International Perspective: Latin America and
Beyond (2000) and Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America
(co-edited with E. Dore, 2000). She is Professor of Sociology at the
Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, where she
teaches courses on Society and Development, and Gender and Politics in
Latin America. She is also acting as consultant to UNRISD on a year-long
project entitled Substantiating Rights in a Disabling Environment.

Sarah A. Radcliffe (Department of Geography, University of Cam-

bridge) researches issues of gender, race/ethnicity and nationhood in
the Andes. Her work has covered themes of migration, Andean indigen-
ous women, social movement organisations, the formation of national
identities, and geographical and feminist social theory. Her books in-
clude Viva: Women and Popular Participation in Latin America (1993,
edited with S. Westwood) and Re-making the Nation: Place, Politics and
Identity in Latin America (1996, co-author).

Virginia Vargas is currently completing a Ford Foundation study of

women's movements in four Latin American countries and is a member
of the Peruvian NGO Centro de Mujeres: Flora TristaÂn. She has held
teaching and research posts in Europe and Peru and has attended sem-
inars, meetings and workshops around the world. In 1995 she was
 Notes on the Contributors xv

Coordinator of Latin American and Caribbean NGOs for the IV World

Conference of Women. She has published widely on the Latin American
women's movement in Spanish and English.

Ceri Willmott completed her PhD in Anthropology at the London

School of Economics in 1998. Her thesis, `Gender, Citizenship and
Reproductive Rights in the PoblacioÂnes of Santiago', examines the influ-
ence of cultural factors on women's ability to exercise their rights. She is
a qualified lawyer. Until recently she was Head of Projects at a social
development consultancy and is currently working as a freelance con-
sultant in the field of social development.
1
The Local, the Regional and the
Global: Transforming the Politics
of Rights1
Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske

This book addresses the recent evolution of women's movements in

Latin America, and, in so doing, seeks to demonstrate the wider rele-
vance of this history for the comparative study of women's rights.
To those who live in conditions of stable democracy, issues of rights
and legal reform tend not to appear urgent or pressing unless as
occurred in regard to reproductive rights, social movements make
them so. In Latin America where liberal guarantees had been violated
by decades of authoritarian rule, women's movements from the 1980s
placed a special value on the `right to have rights' and worked for the
restoration of the rule of law, democracy and basic civil liberties. But at
the same time, the language of rights and citizenship was deployed not
only to restore or to improve upon formal legal rights, but also to
deepen the democratic process. The affirmation of a culture of rights
grew out of popular social movements in Latin America. `Rights talk'
was used to raise awareness among the poor and the socially marginal-
ised of their formal legal rights, but also to call into question their
lack of substantive rights. The language of rights thus became a way
of making claims for social justice as well as for recognition in an
idiom that framed such demands `as a basic right of citizenship' (Baierle
1998: 124).
The focus of this book is on a central political issue facing Latin
American women's movements, that of the potential and limits
of post-authoritarian democracies as vehicles for the promotion of
greater gender justice. The 1980s in Latin America were marked by
the human and social costs of stabilisation and adjustment policies on
the one hand, and the transition from authoritarian rule on the other.

1
2 Gender and Rights in Latin America

By the 1990s, however, the end of the Cold War signalled a new
international conjuncture which saw a more confident assertion of
economic and political liberalism, but also a greater emphasis on
human rights. The collapse of Soviet communism in 1989, coming
after the painful reality of Latin America's `lost decade' of economic
crisis, was followed by a major reassessment of the goals of develop-
mentagencies. In the 1990s a wave of UN Summits and Conferences
sought to place issues of democracy, justice and rights on the develop-
ment agenda. In the context of the continent-wide process of demo-
cratic consolidation that characterised the decade, women's movements
were able to focus their attention on issues of rights and democracy
in ways that were unthinkable in the 1970s and 1980s when the
region's second wave feminism developed under the heel of military
rule.
If issues of democracy, rights and justice were both revitalised and
radicalised in the post-authoritarian democracies, this was a develop-
ment that was also impelled by the international endorsement it re-
ceived through the global summits that took place in the 1990s. This
was an extraordinary period for international policy-making and stand-
ard setting in which UN conventions and regional agreements multi-
plied. Latin American governments readily signed up to many of these
agreements to mark their re-entry into the international community. In
so doing, they provided women's movements with the opportunity to
advance reforms in women's position in a comparatively benign set of
political circumstances.
The chapters in this volume analyse how, within specific national
contexts, Latin American women's movements engaged the language
of rights and the practice of democracy. They consider campaigns to
change the law, including those which centred on improving female
political representation through quotas, and those which made the issue
of violence against women a major issue of public policy. Several authors
examine critically the international instruments that served as a lever to
press for reforms in the practice and letter of the laws pertaining to
women. Others consider the ways that women's movements worked
with notions of rights within poor communities. Taken together, these
studies present a complex and contrasting picture of women's legal
gains in post-authoritarian Latin America. While they show how the
struggle for rights has potential for achieving greater gender equality,
they also highlight the significant limits and difficulties of rights-based
work.
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 3

Gender, rights and citizenship: twentieth-century

developments

Women's activism around rights issues, including that engaged in by

self-designated feminist organisations, has a long history in Latin Amer-
ica. In the late nineteenth century, feminist organisations, along with
socialist and anarchist movements, demanded that women should be
treated `as equals not slaves' in the workplace and in the home. Suffrage
movements were also active throughout Latin America, as were reform
groups emerging from conservative Catholic and socialist currents cam-
paigning for social rights and protection for mothers. Women therefore
played an active part in the emergent civil societies of their nation-
states, and through the course of the twentieth century came to occupy
an increasingly visible role in political life as voters, movement and
party activists and occasionally, as in the case of Eva PeroÂn, as actors at
the apex of political power.2 Yet while some reforms were introduced
over the course of the century, and women gained greater equality in the
family and workplace as well as social rights as mothers, their presence
in the public sphere as workers, professionals and traders co-existed with
marked inequalities between the sexes in all areas of social life. This
second class citizenship, both social and legal, was a source of growing
female discontent. As the student movements of the late 1960s gathered
momentum in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and elsewhere, demands for
equality, and for an end to illegitimate authority in the political and
personal realms, became part of the language of revolt. In the 1970s
following international trends, the region spawned a vibrant second
wave feminism and an active and increasingly feminist popular3
women's movement: these combined to provide the dynamic and sup-
port for women's demands in the region as a whole.
These movements were, however, overshadowed by the rise of mili-
tary dictatorships in more than a dozen countries in the region. Some of
these regimes resorted to forms of state terrorism, seeking not only to
extinguish political life but engaging in extreme forms of human rights
violations. In Central America and the Southern Cone where
the repression was fiercest, many thousands were sent to their deaths,
were `disappeared' or were forced into exile. It was only slowly and where
political conditions permitted, that the forces of civil society were able
to regroup, and to demand the restitution of civilian rule. The literature
on Latin America's transition from authoritarian rule has debated
the relative importance, among other factors, of social movements and
4 Gender and Rights in Latin America

elite pacts in precipitating the demise of military rule.4 Varied though

the influence of these political forces was in the final outcome, few
scholars doubted the importance of social movement activism in
helping to accelerate regime change. Yet while the contribution of
civil society as a whole was given early recognition in the transition
literature, it took far longer for that of women's movements to be
acknowledged. Feminist scholarship brought to light the gendered char-
acter of social movement activism and identified the multiple forms of
women's movement that contributed to it.5 Among the most celebrated
were the protest movements of mothers of the disappeared such as the
Madres de la Plaza de Mayo who succeeded in drawing international
attention to human rights abuses in Argentina. However, also important
were the feminist groups that worked in a wide range of activities such
as publishing, advocacy and voluntary projects, and the sometimes
extensive movements of low-income women who mobilised against
the conditions of scarcity occasioned by the debt crisis and the stabilisa-
tion policies imposed to contain it.6
This gender-aware research demonstrated that women's activism in a
variety of arenas made its own distinctive contribution to bringing the
era of authoritarian states to a close. Women's movements contributed
to the development of an autonomous civil society and helped to foster
the spread of democratic and humanitarian values. They gained support
from an international climate which was itself becoming more respon-
sive to pressure from human rights movements both national and inter-
national. But, if women's movements were a vital force in the transition,
and helped to create some of the conditions for revitalising democratic
life, it was unclear if they would be able to sustain their momentum in
the different conditions signalled by the return of civilian rule, and of
`politics as usual'. Some observers doubted that they could make the
shift from being in opposition to securing a stake in the new `masculin-
ised' democracies that were emerging in the region (Safa 1990). More-
over, even if they did adapt their politics to take account of the new
context, what role would these movements play, what campaigns would
they advance, and what success would they have in meeting their
demands?

The Latin American context

Here we come to the question of how far we can speak of a shared Latin
American experience. While the case studies show that it is possible to
identify many common trends in the strategies and perspectives of
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 5

women's movements in Latin America, they also reveal considerable

variations among countries with regard to outcomes. This reflects the
region's historical, social and economic diversity. The specific evolution
of state±society relations, the political complexion of post-authoritarian
or post-conflict governments and the character and strength of civil
society in particular countries have shaped the priorities, strategies and
objectives of their women's movements. Latin America underwent
major political change in the course of the last century, some provoked
by external intervention, some reflecting the acute social tensions that
accompanied the region's development. If its most recent convulsions
were occasioned by brutal military regimes, its history from the 1930s
was marked by the emergence of nationalist and populist leaders and by
the impact of revolutionary upheavals in Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua.
These more colourful moments, however, should not be seen as ideal-
typical of Latin American formations: there were also states that man-
aged to preserve stable democratic rule throughout these periods of
change and to deliver a measure of well-being to their populations,
Venezuela and Costa Rica among them.
Despite these contrasting histories, by the turn of the twenty-first
century Latin America appeared to have achieved a consensus on core
political values, with regional summits of the Organisation of American
States (OAS) repeatedly affirming their commitment to institutional
democracy and economic liberalism. Even so, political systems in
Latin America and the Caribbean remained diverse, with liberal democ-
racies co-existing with authoritarian quasi-democracies and, in Cuba,
one case of state-centred socialism. In some countries too, the armed
forces retained considerable influence over the political process.
Such political diversity is matched by a strikingly uneven range in the
size of population and economic performance of Latin American States.
At one extreme are the countries of five million or less inhabitants
(Central America and Uruguay) and, at the other are the giants of the
region, Brazil and Mexico with populations of over 170 million and 100
million respectively. Income per capita too, spans a wide spectrum from
$1997 in Nicaragua to $12 730 in Chile, which are ranked 121 and 34
respectively in the global human development index.7 This reflects the
truism that there is no one `Latin America', but a diverse range of
dissimilar formations. While apparently united by a common history
of Iberian colonialism, this too left markedly different traces across the
continent. Those most adversely affected by the system of ethnic exclu-
sion perpetuated by colonial rule, the indigenous and black popula-
tions, confronted distinctive legacies of rights and entitlements. It is
6 Gender and Rights in Latin America

only in recent decades that the significant numbers of Amerindian and

Afroamericans have begun to realise their aspiration to be included as
moral equals within their states and that governments, for their part,
have began to recognise the multicultural character of their forma-
tions.8
The commonalities of Latin America reflect, in part, global trends.
Latin American states are part of the global community and their pol-
icies respond both politically and economically to transnational forces
and influences. If some of these influences may be judged benign, even
positive in the region, others are contested, none more so than the
policies associated with `neoliberalism'. While it would be facile to
attribute the spread of these policies in the region to external forces
alone, the latter do wield considerable power, especially over the weaker
states, through the practice of making aid conditional on compliance
with donors' policy specifications. Governments frequently claim, often
justifiably given these circumstances, that they have little room for
manoeuvre over macroeconomic policy. Harsh and unpopular policies
are said to be necessary if countries are to compete in an increasingly
global and interdependent world, but in Latin America they have had a
mixed economic record (ECLAC 2000). The human costs of such pol-
icies have been high and have fallen disproportionately on women.9
The recessive conditions of the `lost decade' and the accompanying
stabilisation and adjustment policies sent millions into poverty. Inter-
national agencies were slow to acknowledge the depth of the harm
caused by the adjustment process. The policy instruments needed to
protect the poor were not put in place until much damage had been
done (Bulmer Thomas 1996; Green 1995; Cornia et al. 1987).
By the early to mid-1990s, however, Latin America had began its
recovery; most countries registered positive growth rates. But inter-
national economic instability, including the South East Asian crisis of
1997, took its toll, and Latin America's average growth rate for the
decade remained below 4 per cent. Poverty is a persistent feature in a
region marked by deep and often growing income inequalities. Latin
American countries register high levels of inequality when measured by
the Gini coefficient (between 0.42 and 0.63 where 1 is absolute concen-
tration of wealth). At 0.61 Brazil ranks as one of the most unequal
societies in the world (compared with the UK at 0.32 and the USA at
0.35) (UNRISD 2000a: 12) and between 1990 and 1997 ECLAC notes
that at least seven Latin American countries, including some of the
stronger economies, became more unequal.10 Bolivia, Honduras,
Mexico and Uruguay saw slight improvements, but as the Bolivian
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 7

experience shows, this was from such a low base that improvement still
meant that the poorest 40 per cent's share of income only increased
from 12 per cent to a paltry 13.5 per cent (ECLAC 1999: 61, fig. 11.1a).
These inequalities, in turn, make attempts at achieving greater equality
between women and men all the more difficult (ECLAC 2000: 6).11
Poverty also remains a significant challenge and, while it has decreased
relatively, it has increased absolutely, in that the number of those in
poverty has gone up and is expected to continue to rise over the decade
to come.12 For the majority of Latin America's population, democracy
has, in the 1990s, not delivered the results it promised; electorates have
shown that they are capable of punishing governments which have
failed them (Ecuador, Argentina) at times leading to considerable polit-
ical volatility (Venezuela). The desire for radical change has sometimes
resulted in maverick political choices, where unknown and untried
independents have come to power (Peru). A distrust of political parties
and government feeds voter disillusion, evident in low and declining
electoral turnouts in a significant number of countries in the region.13
Elsewhere, notably in Mexico, these trends have served to open up a
sclerotic political system.
This social and political context helps in two ways to define the
terrain upon which Latin American women's movements manoeuvre.
First, their political agendas cannot ignore the painful reality of
deepening socioeconomic inequalities and the limited scope offered
for addressing them by neoliberal policies. Governments see themselves
as caught between the twin imperatives of boosting economic growth
and adhering to economic policies which limit both their capacity to
redistribute and their commitment to social welfare. But at regional and
international fora women's NGOs repeatedly demand greater attention
to social inequality, not least because women are disproportionately
represented among the region's poor and unemployed.14 The return to
civilian rule and democratic governance restored political and civil
rights, but was accompanied by an erosion of some of the social and
economic rights that were associated with earlier developmental and
populist states. For many women's rights campaigners these rights are
indivisible and cannot be separated.
Second, democracy is far from consolidated in the region. Following
an initial period of optimism, there was growing concern about the
character of the `new' democracies that were being put in place. As
these democracies were consolidated throughout the 1980s and 1990s
many were judged to be deficient; if electoral processes were in the main
respected, forms of corruption and clientelism continued to dog
8 Gender and Rights in Latin America

attempts to establish `good governance'. In some countries (notably

Mexico) accusations of rigged elections undermined government legit-
imacy. In others, rulers manipulated the limits of the constitutionally
permitted period of office (both Fuijmori in Peru and Menem in Argen-
tina rewrote constitutions to their advantage). Furthermore, charges of
corruption brought some governments to electoral defeat,15 while many
repeatedly failed to deliver policies adequate to growing social needs
and popular expectations. Issues of women's rights, indeed of rights in
general, could not be detached from the broader question of the quality
and character of democratic rule. This, as we shall see, faced women's
movements with a series of political dilemmas.

International developments and the women's movements(s)

These shared, regional concerns were however addressed within a

broader international context. While Latin American women's move-
ments were active participants in the national struggles and debates that
attended the turn to democratic rule, it was during the years of authori-
tarian rule that they also engaged with the international arena. The first
international women's conference, held in Mexico in 1975, ushered in
the UN Decade for Women (1976±85) and during this period Latin
American women's movements became increasingly involved in `trans-
national networking' (Keck and Sikkink 1998). At the same time, the
changing geopolitical circumstances of the late twentieth century gave
international conferences and conventions a new significance. No
longer were they caught up in the bi-polar world of the Cold War, but
they were able, potentially, to aid democratisation in many parts of the
world that had been junior, but significant, players in the hostilities.
The international terrain was one where Latin American women were
particularly active and influential. It is no exaggeration to say that the
movement became even more internationalised in the 1980s and 1990s
that at any time in its history.16 This was so in three main ways. First,
activists made full use of international networks and institutional arenas
to give movements additional organisational capacity, to coordinate
campaign strategies and to harness resources. Second, these instruments
were used in popular education campaigns to inform both women and
men of their rights and to debate how they should be interpreted. Third,
such international agreements were used to hold governments account-
able and to press for policy shifts consistent with them; if modern
statecraft is forged with an eye to external approbation this could itself
allow women's movements some additional leverage.
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 9

While this process placed specific national movements in an inter-

national context, it was also accompanied by a critique, and revision, of
existing policy and of rights themselves. The international human
rights movement had emerged in the immediate aftermath of World
War II and its declarations resonate with that political moment, reflect-
ing a horror of the abuses of war and in particular of genocide. The
United Nations has been the focal point of these declarations, although
some human rights instruments have been developed in regional fora
such as the OAS. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
remains the reference point for subsequent rights-based conventions
and has itself undergone numerous revisions. To reinforce basic
human rights, the 1960s saw the focus shifting to particular bodies of
rights and the development of new covenants: political and civil rights
(ICCPR), and economic and social rights (ICESCR). The former em-
bodied a liberal democratic perspective where procedural democracy
was highlighted, whilst the latter, promoted by the Soviet bloc, placed
greater emphasis on social and economic rights, rather than civil liber-
ties. In the event, both covenants were adopted for signature in 1966,17
although they only came into effect in 1976. They too reflect the
limitations of their moment of conception.
The expansion in rights instruments was, however, accompanied by a
questioning of women's place within them. Feminist and other critics
argued that useful though these international human rights instru-
ments were, they were insensitive to specific needs related to gender
and ethnicity. Some, following feminist democratic theorists such as
Pateman (1988) and Elshtain (1981), argued that their gender blindness
derived from premises based on masculine norms.18 Where gender was
incorporated it generally focused on discrimination against women but
without questioning women's structural marginalisation; as such, the
focus was on negative rather than positive rights. Moreover, in their
original conception human rights did not apply to the `private' sphere
of relations within the family, thereby ignoring many of the ways in
which women were at risk from violence, and denied justice (Cook
1994).
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the international policy debate had
been less concerned with women's rights than with how to incorporate
women into the development process. At first such efforts at incorpor-
ation were restricted to welfare issues but later attention was paid to
`integrating' women into the modern economy (Moser 1989). Ester
Boserup's (1970) path-breaking book on women in development chal-
lenged many of the assumptions of these policies, stressing that women
10 Gender and Rights in Latin America

were already `integrated' even though the work that they did was more
often than not unpaid and undervalued. Boserup drew attention to the
importance of making women's reproductive, non-monetised and sub-
sistence work visible while she highlighted their exclusion from deci-
sion-making processes.
These, and other theoretical advances within the gender and develop-
ment field, challenged the ways in which women were seen (and saw
themselves) and coincided with the spread of feminist movements and
ideas across the world. A new gender awareness gave rise to, and was
reinforced by, the UN's Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Set
up in the early 1970s this was `the only international institution specif-
ically assigned to attend to issues of justice for women' (Freeman 1999:
519). The CSW was responsible for the Decade for Women and the four
international women's conferences that followed, and it drafted the UN
Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW) adopted in 1979. Although these were important
steps forward, the CSW `concentrated on analyzing development-based
economic and social issues concerning women rather than defining and
pursuing rights issues' (ibid. 519±20). Further theoretical and methodo-
logical developments at this time also side-stepped rights. Molyneux's
analytic distinction (1985), focused attention on strategic and practical
gender interests, and Caroline Moser (1989), drawing on this work
differentiated between types of needs,19 rather than rights. While inter-
national conferences in their different ways offered some scope for
focusing attention on women and their position in society, it was not
until the 1990s that the focus shifted to questions of how rights could be
incorporated into a general questioning of women's place in their own
societies.
It was during this decade, with UN summits on the environment,
social welfare, human rights and population, that rights came to the
fore.20 Of particular interest for women activists in Latin America and
elsewhere were the Vienna Conference in 1993 on human rights, the
Cairo Conference in 1994 on population, and the Fourth World Confer-
ence on Women held in Beijing in 1995. At Vienna the major step was
taken of recognising that women's rights are human rights; this revital-
ised rights-based discourses as a strategic tool as well as placing violence
against women on the human rights agenda.21 In Cairo the thorny issue
of sexual and reproductive rights was debated and was partially incorp-
orated into health policy issues. Whilst this latter conference may not
have gone as far as some would have liked on the question of decrimin-
alising abortion, it did clarify many issues and it made reproductive
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 11

choice part of the human rights agenda, by reinforcing woman's right to

choose the number and spacing of her children (Lyklama aÁ Nijeholt et al.
1998). At the regional level, significant developments occurred in 1994
at summits held in Mar del Plata in Argentina and in the Brazilian town
of Belem do Para both of which tackled the issue of violence against
women. The global campaign against such violence has been one of the
great successes of the 1990s and was both important and effective in
Latin America.
The Beijing conference of 1995, attended by some 30 000 women
(20 000 of whom participated in the NGO Forum), was of particular
significance in advancing the commitment to pursue women's rights
issues. It saw the ratification of the Cairo agreements and went further
in tacitly recognising sexual rights. Its final document, the Platform for
Action, contained a set of policy recommendations, which were adopted
by 189 countries and served as a basis for NGO advocacy.22 The UN
committed itself to a five-year review of the progress achieved on the
recommendations, and this was conducted at the Special Session of the
UN General Assembly in New York in 2000. These regional and inter-
national events were important for women activists in several ways.
First, governments were required to report to the relevant committees
on their actions in relation to specific agreements.23 These reports are
normally biannual and they force states to account for their policy
commitments. Whilst governments endeavour to put their accomplish-
ments in the best possible light, their reports are submitted along with
`alternative' accounts produced by NGOs and other actors within civil
society. Women's NGOs held their own follow-up conferences to moni-
tor government compliance with conventions and produced documents
that were often highly critical.24 Second, they provide organised women
with an opportunity for lobbying governments and highlighting par-
ticular areas of concern. The more effective the women's organisations
within civil society, the better they are able to use such opportunities to
advance their demands and to put pressure on governments to fulfil
their commitments.
The growth in the number of international conventions coincided, as
we have seen, with the consolidation of democracy in Latin America.
States participated in debates at regional and international levels over
how to respond to the new conventions, and the preparatory and
follow-up meetings of these events brought new opportunities for
debate and exchange between governments and women activists. At
the regional level Latin America participated in a number of agenda-
setting institutions all of which began to take up gender issues as part of
12 Gender and Rights in Latin America

their broader remit. The OAS, of which all Latin American states are
members, has its own commission on women (CIM).25 There is also an
Inter-American Commission for Human Rights which had new life
breathed into it in this period. Latin America is also peculiarly advan-
taged by the presence of ECLAC which pursued an active research and
policy agenda on women. These institutions have reinforced the partici-
pation of Latin American states in UN deliberations and have helped to
encourage a regional perspective on these global developments.
It is against this background that we can assess the changes of the
1990s. International developments interacted in important ways with
Latin American politics and were particularly significant for women's
rights campaigns. Women's organisations played a leading role in pro-
moting a more inclusive and socially aware view of development and of
citizenship, while human rights, and specifically women's rights became
a focus of organisational strategy. As governments signed international
agreements to respect democratic principles and human rights, women's
movements were able to use these instruments to press for reforms, as
issues of equal opportunities, positive discrimination and female repre-
sentation in parliament became the focus of campaigns across the region.
Through public discussion and debate, the issue of women's right to be
treated as moral equals became in the words of one scholar, `part of the
common sense of the region'.26 Where democratic institutions acquired
a more secure foundation, Latin American women's movements showed
themselves to be adept at adjusting to the new political context. They
made the move from being an oppositional force whose efforts were
pitched against the state, to being an effective force for reform.

National developments and international processes

These advances raised, however, difficult questions about the limits of

participation, ones familiar to women's movements elsewhere. As noted
earlier, the highly uneven and in many cases partial process of democ-
ratisation helped to determine what was achieved in the political and
policy domains. Faced with the dilemmas posed by such `democratic
deficits', the region's social movements feared that collaboration with
flawed democracies might serve to arrest rather than to advance more
general democratic reform. Even in states with a credible record of good
governance in the post-transition period, women's movements divided
over whether to remain outside government or to enter into the power
struggle being waged within. Those who chose to work with govern-
ments found the new terrain of institutional politics unfamiliar and
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 13

difficult to navigate. This challenge was expressed as one of moving

from `la protesta a la propuesta' (from protest to proposal) and as requir-
ing new strategies to deal with the changed political reality. The state,
formerly a hostile force, was now offered as a site of engagement; many
former opposition activists were faced with the possibility of working
with, or even within, government as women's units, sometimes
women's ministries, were established or reactivated with new `women-
friendly' briefs. Tensions between those who chose to work with or
within the state and those who worked within civil society remained,
however, and were particularly marked in Chile, Mexico and Peru.
Despite these differences, over the course of the 1990s women's move-
ments increasingly directed their attention to securing improvements in
women's legal and political status through a combination of pressure
from below and working with the state. The period of democratic
consolidation coincided with a growth in the importance of nongovern-
mental organisations (NGOs) matched by a corresponding rise in respon-
sibility and international funding. Many women's movements took
advantage of this development to institutionalise themselves, and in
the process submitted to the pressures on them to professionalise their
work, and to develop goals commensurate with donors' agendas. In Latin
America, as a consequence, the distinction between women's move-
ments and NGOs in the post-transition period was not always clearly
drawn, as some NGOs owed their existence to women's movements,
were managed by activists from the movement, and maintained close
ties with the movement.
At the same time, a new regional collaboration developed. From the
outset, Latin American women's movements worked on a transregional
level, creating strong networks, some of which were formed during the
experience of exile from military rule (Vargas 1992), and were subse-
quently fortified by the international initiatives discussed above. Latin
American NGOs participated actively in the UN women's events and
advisory committees. As these networks developed, they enabled those
involved to prepare their suits, achieve some unity on core issues and to
speak with conviction within international and national policy arenas.
Transregional networking was not only evident in regard to public
institutional fora but was also a crucial resource in the practice of civil
society organisations. Important among these were the series of regional
feminist meetings (Encuentros) which, from 1981, occurred every 2±3
years (Sternbach et al. 1992). These regional initiatives fostered an
exchange of ideas and experiences and helped to keep governments
alive to gender issues. Networks could at times generate tensions and
14 Gender and Rights in Latin America

sharp disagreements, but they did enable both coordination on speci-

fic campaigns and a sharing of collective learning experiences that
deepened the impact of in-country initiatives.
Such regional networks have worked both nationally and internation-
ally to considerable effect. They were crucial in advancing specific cam-
paigns such as the struggle for quota laws and the campaigns around
domestic violence, and for legal literacy. Among the most notable net-
works have been those concerned with health, the Latin American and
Caribbean Women's Health Network (RSMLAC), domestic violence (the
Network against Violence towards Women), and the women's human
rights organisation, the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for
the Defence of Women's Rights (CLADEM). CLADEM has taken the lead
in promoting women's access to rights in terms of engendering rights and
in making political institutions take women's human rights seriously.
The organisation emerged in the aftermath of the third UN conference
on women in Nairobi 1985 which brought together a group of legal
activists from across the region. They took a critical view of the law
arguing, `Power is legitimised through law and law legitimises women's
subordination.'27 Within two years, in July 1987, CLADEM was founded
in Costa Rica and has subsequently grown into a campaigning organisa-
tion that has offices or links in sixteen of the region's countries, as well as
links with other organisations and networks. CLADEM sees these re-
gional links as a `spider's web without hierarchies'.28 Its activities focus
principally on promoting women's human rights in international fora
and in monitoring government compliance, but their engagement with
the juridico-institutional terrain is complemented by work within com-
munities and with social movement organisations. They have developed
a regional perspective on legal reform which helps in the formulation of
new legal projects at national level as well as comparing government
efforts to comply with international agreements. Whilst Latin America
may not be unique in its regional organisations, these contribute to the
continued struggle for engendered citizenship and women's rights in key
ways, as well as helping to support local civil society activity through an
exchange of expertise and experiences. The regional dimension of these
campaigns has been one of the strengths of the women's movement as
well as a distinguishing feature of it.

Issues and cases

The case studies that make up this book illustrate the dynamic inter-
action between international factors and regional particularities within
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 15

women's rights campaigns. The following eight chapters examine what

have been, over the last decades, the central campaigns for women's
rights and demands for full citizenship in the region: these are repro-
ductive rights, protection from domestic violence, socioeconomic rights,
democratic participation and representation, and issues of identity and
difference.
Chapter 2 by Mala Htun and Mark Jones, and Chapter 3 by Elizabeth
Friedman, focus on campaigns for greater gender equality in democratic
representation. Htun and Jones examine one of the most radical meas-
ures taken to redress the under-representation of women in national
parliaments; that of quota laws. Although in the United States support
for such affirmative action measures has been diminishing in recent
years, Latin America has followed the Northern European example in
adopting quota laws to improve female representation in parliaments.
However, while the European measures are voluntarily applied by polit-
ical parties, the trend in Latin American is to go a step further and to
write the requirement for gender quotas into national law.29 Argentina
initiated this trend when in 1991 it became the first democratic country
to include a quota law in its electoral code.
The passage of these laws in Latin America resulted in the first place
from the combined efforts of local and regional women's movements,
but the success of the quota law campaigns also depended in large
measure on cross-party and multisectoral collaboration by women par-
liamentarians and their male allies within the legislature itself.30 The
example of Argentina along with the impact of the Beijing Declaration
in 1995 which called for quotas, and the regional meetings to discuss its
import also helped to inspire women in other Latin American countries
to press for quotas. As Htun and Jones attest, throughout the 1990s
more than a dozen Latin American countries adopted legislation requir-
ing parties to place between 20 per cent and 40 per cent of women on
their lists.31 Once in force, these laws resulted in almost doubling the
average female representation in Latin American parliaments during the
decade, from a low base of 6 per cent to 15 per cent for the lower house,
and 14.4 per cent for senates in 2000.32 This is higher than the UK, the
United States and some European countries. Latin America comes third
regionally to Nordic countries (at 38.8 per cent) and non-Nordic Europe
(at 16.4 per cent). However, Htun and Jones point out that crucial to the
effectiveness of quota laws in bringing about greater female representa-
tion is the electoral system itself: closed list systems such as in Argen-
tina, are more likely to favour the election of women through quotas
than open voting for candidates.33 Such variations in electoral systems
16 Gender and Rights in Latin America

as well as in the letter of the quota laws themselves influence the results
obtained. While all countries with quota laws have seen some increase
in the number of female representatives, in some cases such as Brazil,
the increase in women candidates was small. In the 1998 elections the
results were only 5.7 per cent of women in the lower house and 7.4 in
the senate, leaving Brazil in 85th place internationally. It is moreover
arguable whether the small increase was due to the quota law. As Htun
and Jones demonstrate, if quota laws are to have a greater impact on
reducing inequality in political representation, and if they are indeed to
serve as effective democratic mechanisms, they will need more teeth.
It has been widely acknowledged, however, that the mere presence of
women in parliaments is no guarantee of greater gender sensitivity in
policy-making. Latin American advocates of quotas argue that not only
do they serve as a democratic mechanism for redressing persistent in-
equalities in access to decision-making power, but that there are advan-
tages in women constituting a critical mass in the decision-making
process. Although not all women delegates necessarily serve the inter-
ests of their female constituencies, research has shown that in practice
female representatives tend to collaborate on legislative matters con-
cerning women and that gender legislation is more often put forward by
women. Once in power, female representatives can be an important
resource for civil society campaigners who call upon them to be respon-
sive to women's demands (UNRISD 2000b). However, they also stress
that to recognise these positive aspects of quotas does not imply that
they remedy the structural gender inequalities which limit women's
access to political and decision-making power in society.
In Chapter 3 Elisabeth Friedman examines the alliance-building pro-
cess in a campaign to reform the labour code in Venezuela in the late
1980s. In the case of Venezuela, female parliamentarians from different
parties combined with women active in trade unions and in independ-
ent women's groups to promote the reforms. Their success was due in
part to the enhanced political clout that this gave to their campaign, but
important too, was careful strategising in regard to securing consensus
for the demands. Feminist activists sought to change provisions in the
law that discriminated against women workers by promoting the
principle of equal treatment, but they did so in a way that recognised
rights related to maternity. Here, they aimed to reconcile principles
of equality and difference in a context where motherhood retains sig-
nificant cultural value and where equality feminism is far from being
widely accepted. Catholicism has exerted an enduring influence on the
region's gendered ideologies, and femininity is strongly associated with
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 17

motherhood and domesticity in Latin America even as it is refigured

though divisions of class, race and ethnicity. Laws concerning women
and the family continue to reflect a traditional division of responsibility
between the sexes in the family, as well as to restrict women's reproduct-
ive rights. Advocates of women's equality have had to formulate their
demands in ways that take account of these sometimes tenaciously held
motherist identifications. In the case of the revised Venezuelan labour
code, women were recognised as having special responsibilities in the
family, but whereas this had been a basis for discrimination under the
previous code, employers were now required to hire women on the same
terms as men. This represented a significant legal advance, with two
qualifications. First it would take more than a reformed law to ensure
that employers complied with it, and second, the law did not cover
domestic workers, still a sizeable part of Latin America's female labour
force. The women delegates, Friedman suggests, were not all ready to
surrender their class privileges and embrace the cause of their own
employees.34
In the following two chapters, other key issues of legal reform are
examined in the context first of Brazil and then of Uruguay. In Chapter
4, Fiona Macaulay analyses the importance of advocacy as activism for
the promotion of women's rights. In this context, advocacy work in-
cludes lobbying for changes in the law as well as in the practice of the law.
Legal reform has been considered a fundamental part of the consolida-
tion of democracy in Latin America, and many countries have embarked
on reform programmes of different kinds. International development
institutions, such as the World Bank, have been paying particular atten-
tion to this issue and have supported efforts to reform judiciaries and
legal practice as part of their general support for good governance. Social
movements across the continent have also campaigned in citizens'
groups and networks for such reforms. The complex and often ineffi-
cient legal systems in much of Latin America have made claims on rights
all the more difficult since access to the legal system is limited by its
opaqueness and expense. Making the legal system open and accessible
is seen by legal advocacy campaigners as central to deepening the
democratic process. It is a strategy which operates at different levels
in society, aimed as much at legal practitioners at the highest levels
of the justice system as forming part of the practice of grassroots organ-
isations. The efforts of Latin American women's movements to promote
legal advocacy need to be seen as one of several strategies in the pursuit
of greater gender justice and women's citizenship. Macaulay's examin-
ation of the innovative work of a feminist organisation shows how it
18 Gender and Rights in Latin America

has worked to promote legal literacy and trained `paralegals' among

women from the popular classes in Porto Alegre, Brazil. If women are
aware of their rights they will also be able to be more effective in
claiming them, and their capacity to exercise political agency can be
enhanced.
The contrasting example of the development of the law on domestic
violence in Uruguay is analysed in Chapter 5. Niki Johnson traces the
evolution of the campaign to improve women's legal rights in this area by
making bodily integrity central to gendered understandings of citizen-
ship. As noted earlier, the campaign against domestic violence has been,
perhaps the most successful across Latin America as well as having a
powerful international resonance.35 The entire region signed up to
CEDAW between 1980 (Cuba) and 1989 (Chile) and this provided some
basis for legal change. Over the course of the 1990s several countries
made significant changes in their laws and state provision in protecting
women and children. As an issue, violence against women received
support from international human rights declarations as well as from
the church. Here again, within specific countries, the importance of
cross-party collaboration and links with civil society organisations
made a decisive difference to the outcomes. Johnson, like Friedman,
demonstrates the complexities involved in developing laws which are
acceptable both to the campaigners and to the more conservative law-
makers. She also raises the important issue of how women's rights cam-
paigns can succeed in changing laws, but in ways that were not envisaged
or desired by women's movements. In Uruguay campaigners demanded
educational measures to support changes in attitudes towards women.
Instead, what eventuated were tougher laws for the perpetrators of vio-
lence against women. In other words governments can react selectively
to social movement campaigns, and can use their demands to push
through changes that otherwise might have been resisted.
Another issue that emerged in the Latin American region during the
campaign on domestic violence was that of whether and to what extent
it was desirable to make its gender dimensions explicit. In Uruguay, as
Johnson shows, women activists campaigned to highlight the gender
dimension of the violence and to link it specifically to the extension of
women's rights rather than calling for measures which were focused on
the family. In contrast, in Mexico the government decided to focus on
`intra-family' violence. This downplayed the fact that women make up
the bulk of the victims and derailed the legislative and policy provision
for women, causing concern not only among women activists in Mexico
but also in other parts of Latin America.
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 19

The broadening of the definition of rights by women's movements to

include issues of bodily integrity is also the subject of Ceri Willmott's
Chapter 6 on Chile. The idea that women have the right to choose in
relation to such contested areas as sexuality and reproductive rights is at
odds both with Catholic teaching and with Chilean law. Reproductive
rights are a sensitive and bitterly disputed issue in Latin America. Abor-
tion rates remain high with the least advantaged women at greatest risk
from death and illness from illegal terminations. Conservative, religious
opposition to women's reproductive rights strengthened in recent
decades; the Vatican under John Paul II has promoted a strict policy
on contraception while reinforcing its refusal to permit abortion under
any circumstances. If attitudes towards contraception have been
changing under the impact of the AIDS epidemic, abortion remains a
deeply contentious issue. It is completely illegal in Chile (which with
Peru has the highest per capita number of abortions) and whilst legal in
some form in the rest of the region, in reality access to safe abortion is
extremely restricted and affordable only by an advantaged minority.36
That the abortion debate in Latin America can be highly politicised, and
risks being captured by conservative forces was brought into sharp relief
in Mexico in the summer of 2000. The state of Guanajuato attempted to
increase the penalties even in the case of rape. The subsequent protest
meant that abortion was discussed in all the media, opening up public
debate for the first time. The law in Guanajuato was eventually vetoed
by the governor but, at the same time, attempts to liberalise the law in
Mexico City were also shelved. Although official views on abortion
remain conservative, surveys in Chile and Mexico indicate that there
is public support for its legalisation in many circumstances and that a
majority favours legalisation. Much rests on how the question is asked
with many questionnaires prone to bias.37 Furthermore, whatever the
law and opinion surveys say, women do resort to terminations, often in
very difficult and dangerous circumstances. It is estimated that abortion
is the main cause of maternal death in Argentina (30 per cent) and Chile
(26 per cent) and there is no reason to suppose that these two countries
are worse than others in the region (ECLAC 2000: 39±40).
Within Latin America, Chile stands out as one of the most socially
conservative nations, with predominantly negative attitudes towards
women's rights and equality.38 Whilst it scores highly in the human
development index, where it is ranked 34th, in terms of gender em-
powerment it ranks 54th. This compares poorly with high-ranked Costa
Rica (45th and 23rd respectively), and low-ranked Ecuador (72nd and
29th) and Guatemala (117th and 44th) (see Table A.1 on p. 222). The
20 Gender and Rights in Latin America

combination of these factors has affected women's own perception of

their sexuality and reproductive needs. Drawing on research in low-
income settlements in Santiago, Willmott shows how reproductive
rights and sexuality are being refigured as sites over which women can
exercise more individual choice. While women often found these issues
painful and difficult, Willmott argues that women's groups have opened
up these issues for discussion, allowing their experiences to be shared,
needs to be expressed, and rights reconsidered.
Chapter 7 by Sarah Radcliffe examines questions of identity through a
discussion of indigenous women in the Andean region. With reference
to Peru and Ecuador she shows that with few exceptions, indigenous
women were historically excluded from citizenship in Latin America
and how they have, in recent times, sought to assert their claims in
ways that recognise both their ethnic identities and their rights as
women. The indigenous or Amerindian population of Latin America is
estimated at 40 million, or around 8 per cent of the region's total
population. The majority lives in conditions of poverty and fares badly
on all human development indicators. If issues of Amerindian rights
gradually achieved some limited recognition from the 1960s onwards, it
was only in the 1990s that an effective regional movement emerged.
The catalyst was the quincentenary celebration in 1992 of Columbus's
arrival in the Americas. This sparked a global campaign challenging the
premises of the celebration from the perspective of those who had been
at the sharp end of the colonisation process. Campaigners were able to
highlight questions of rights and identity, promote common interests,
and work towards developing an agreed platform. From the late 1980s
there had been a shift away from the assimilationist policies favoured by
governments and development agencies towards a greater emphasis on
cultural rights and indigenous identities. This move was accelerated
with constitutional and legal reforms recognising Amerindian rights
introduced inter alia in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Para-
guay and Colombia (Brysk 2000). However, as Radcliffe shows, while
these developments have been welcomed by indigenous women, they
have also generated tensions between their individual rights and their
group rights. Indigenous women, so often made responsible for preserv-
ing `ethnic authenticity' in a way that can undermine their individual
rights as women, have found it difficult to reconcile the prevailing
version of authenticity with their own claims for rights and recognition.
The final two Chapters, 8 and 9, focus on some important challenges
faced by women's movements. Whilst significant gains have been made
in securing women's rights and political representation in recent times,
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 21

and while the emphasis on rights has served as a useful strategic re-
source, these gains have occurred in a region still gripped by major social
and economic problems. For women's movements two major questions
remain unresolved: how to make macroeconomic policy more gender-
sensitive, and how to negotiate with states that may well fall short of
fulfilling their commitment to democracy while using their support for
women's rights in an instrumental fashion.
Chapter 8 by Jasmine Gideon is concerned with international instru-
ments such as the 1966 International Convention on Economic and
Social Rights (ICESCR). She considers to what extent they can be said to
be effective and to be appropriately sensitive to gender difference. At the
Beijing conference the indivisibility of economic and political rights was
reaffirmed, and this together with the impact of the feminist critique of
structural adjustment policies drew attention to the need for gender-
sensitive macroeconomic policies.39 The extreme poverty of Central
America makes these issues all the more urgent, but as Gideon argues,
while states have signed up to these agreements, the results have been
limited. This is in part because of deficiencies in the formulation of the
agreements; women's unpaid work, in agriculture for example, is not
recognised as work. But they are also ineffective because adherence to
them would commit states to making active policy commitments and to
providing financial and other resources. Governments, however, are
reluctant to expand their responsibilities in the economic domain, and
are under pressure to shrink public sector expenditure in conformity
with the neoliberal agenda. If international agreements themselves are
insufficiently gender aware, their usefulness as campaigning tools for
women activists is limited. Gideon suggests where improvements could
be made in the ICESCR to promote greater gender sensitivity.
The failure to make socioeconomic rights more meaningful is disap-
pointing given that the original focus of the UN's Commission on the
Status of Women (CSW) was on socioeconomic issues, in keeping with
the then prevalent welfarist approach. At that time in the 1960s and 1970s
it was women's civil and political rights that were ignored in favour of
encouraging development (Freeman 1999: fn. 14). It was only in later years
that the focus shifted to the political arena. As Gideon argues however, the
key issue is the indivisibility of different types or generations of rights, with
each reinforcing the others; only policies which recognise this interde-
pendency will succeed in tackling the multiple forms of female depriv-
ation that are such a persistent feature of the Central American region.
Virginia Vargas (Chapter 9) echoes this sober reflection on the limits of
the process of generalising rights agendas. Vargas is one of Latin America's
22 Gender and Rights in Latin America

most prominent feminist activists, founder of the Flora TristaÂn Women's

Centre in Peru, and coordinator of the Latin American and Caribbean
NGO delegation to the Beijing Conference. Drawing on her considerable
experience at both national and international levels, she addresses a
major and continuing problem for feminists and women's movements;
that of how to interact with states. Whilst acknowledging the importance
of the state as a terrain of engagement, she emphasises that there are
dangers of cooption and over-reliance on the state to fulfil feminist
agendas. For over a century, feminists have struggled for greater state
recognition of their demands, but Vargas argues that women's move-
ments should maintain a distance from the state and that their own
organisational autonomy should not be placed at risk of being colonised
by the state or instrumentalised into fulfilling its agenda. This was a
particular concern during the Fujimori administration (1990±2000)
which increasingly suspended democratic guarantees. Women's issues
achieved considerable prominence and their representation within the
state increased, but not without costs. There is always a risk that women's
organisations might serve as a vehicle for the realisation of government
goals as the latter coopt movements for their own ends. In countries
where this has occurred, it is unsurprising to find women's organisations
wary of close interaction with the state. Yet, at the same time, states can
offer valuable opportunities and resources to campaigning organisations.
Vargas shows how the old tension between autonomy and integration
remains a particular challenge in Latin America. It is, perhaps, in Mexico
under the PRI, and in Peru under Fujimori, where this has been a major
problem, and with the demise of both administrations in 2000, these
countries are undergoing significant political change. But this tension
has been more widely debated in Latin America, and even in the demo-
cratic administrations which succeeded Pinochet in Chile from 1990,
there has been criticism of the close relationship between feminist
NGOs and the state women's committee, SERNAM.40

Conclusions

While the Latin American experience shares some common elements

with other parts of the world, the region's recent history of authoritarian
rule has given to struggles for democracy, citizenship and rights a special
significance. Yet the case studies in this volume highlight the variability
and contingency of rights-based struggles in the region. Issues of rights
and citizenship, while apparently universal and occupying such a cen-
tral a place in women's demands for full citizenship, are nonetheless
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 23

associated with different political objectives, and are contested, reframed

and reinterpreted by different political forces. In the 1980s and 1990s
women's movements in Latin America worked to promote and to spread
awareness of women's rights in their `actually existing democracies', but
they also helped to shape, through their active participation in a variety
of arenas, the international and regional legal instruments that were
developed in this period.
However successful women's movements have been in this domain,
and however committed many remain to extending and deepening the
meaning and effectiveness of rights, there is a keen awareness among
activists of the pitfalls and limitations of such rights-based strategies.
International and national legal instruments can be unwieldy; working
with them requires long-term commitments of time and energy on the
part of campaigners, as well as a favourable policy environment in
which to work. Such instruments are themselves still far from meeting
standards consistent with the principles of equality and fairness pro-
moted by the international women's movement (Charlesworth et al.
1991).41 Gideon's critique of the assumptions of the 1966 International
Convention for its focus on the paid economy and for overlooking
women's unpaid work, is an illustration of these limits. Moreover,
since these instruments must be accepted by often widely differing
states, they can often lack teeth in having the character of `lowest
common denominator'. They are also vulnerable to attacks from oppon-
ents: at the CEPAL Beijing ‡ 5 meeting in Peru in February 2000, and at
the June 2000 meeting in New York, opponents of the Platform for
Action recommendations tried to subvert agreement to continue press-
ing for implementation and questioned the document's terminology
and formulations.42 As many participants in these fora have argued,
the recommendations which eventuate from international conferences
need clearer benchmarks, measurable goals and time-bound targets if
they are to move off the paper and into policy.43 In practice, too, these
instruments are only useful if the rights enshrined in them can be put
into effect at the nation-state level, and if they serve to promote policy
changes that impact positively on the lives of women. Governments
more often than not lack the political will to implement the measures
and to put the necessary resources into making compliance meaningful;
without continued pressure by activists most states are content to treat
these agreements as mere window-dressing.44 It was not for nothing
that NGO forum activists demonstrated at the Latin American UN
governmental fora with tee shirts and placards reading `Deeds not
Words!' Moreover, as Macaulay shows, while valuable and innovative
24 Gender and Rights in Latin America

work in legal education is being undertaken at the grassroots level in

Brazil, the effectiveness of such work is hampered by the absence of a
broader process of legal reform.
A second set of reservations concerns the political risks associated
with working with rights-based agendas. Legal reform in matters of
women's rights is often a highly politicised process and campaigns can
eventuate in unintended outcomes. If these can sometimes be judged
broadly positive, at other times they can be thwarted, diluted or cap-
tured by states to serve their own ends. As Vargas illustrates in the case of
the Fujimori administration in Peru, women's movements in Latin
America have had to be especially cautious in regard to engaging with
states given the dangers of co-optation and resulting loss of autonomy.
More women in government as a result of the quota laws is a step in the
direction of equality as Htun and Jones argue, but where those govern-
ments serve authoritarian and or corrupt states, the gains are minimal or
nullified. Women, many of whom are former movement activists, have
entered the institutional domain in large numbers. While they could
make an impact on legislation, service delivery and policy, there was a
danger that this `institutionalisation' might be at the expense of reduced
links with the movement and a corresponding bureaucratisation of
women's issues. Campaigns around women's rights can also serve to
mobilise conservative opposition or to create acrimonious divisions
among women themselves over the interests advanced and the tactics
and strategies deployed. While women's coalitions and networks have
shown themselves able to overcome many social and political differ-
ences in the pursuit of legal reform, vested interests often remain im-
portant, as evidenced by Friedman in the case of the failure to address
the rights of domestic workers, and by Radcliffe's discussion of the
marginalisation of indigenous women's voices in political policy de-
bates. Many questions remain concerning the ability of universal dis-
courses of rights to recognise and respect difference. Indigenous and
Amerindian rights involve acknowledging a history of colonial oppres-
sion and racialised systems of inclusion and exclusion, a process which
has only just begun in Latin America.
This volume therefore provides evidence not only of the considerable
advances secured by women's movements in the domain of rights and
policy, but also serves to highlight the significant difficulties that attend
such strategies. The accelerated pace of globalisation over the past two
decades has had contrasting effects. On the positive side the prolifer-
ation of international fora, conventions and agreements have helped
to reinforce rights and have served as a lever for women's rights
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 25

campaigners. The focus on rights has introduced new tactics and strat-
egies into women's movements and has delivered some notable gains.
Of these three stand out as of particular significance: the passage of
quota laws in more than a dozen countries (with more awaiting con-
firmation); greater protection for women from violence through better
legal framing, police training and provision of support for the victims of
abuse; and legal and policy reforms to provide for greater equality in the
family and at work, through promoting greater gender-sensitivity in
policy making.45
At the same time however, these gains made only a small contribution
to alleviating the human cost of the adjustment policies,46 and without
a corresponding rise in economic returns poverty and inequality stalk
the region. The focus on rights has made states responsible and account-
able in new ways, but even where new rights have been achieved or
where existing rights have been put in the spotlight, constant cam-
paigning is required both to ensure that women's rights are understood
as central, not marginal, to human rights, and that women are aware of
their rights and can defend them if need be. As noted earlier, activists are
duly sceptical of the narrow individualism that can be associated with
normative definitions of rights. In Latin America, where social policy
issues remain urgent, the struggle for rights has to be accompanied not
only by considerations of need, but also of the diversely situated
demands of indigenous populations. If rights are not promoted in a
way which makes them accessible and acceptable to the disadvantaged,
they remain the preserve of the privileged few. Women's movements
have emphasised the need to radicalise and popularise rights demands,
while they have stressed the indivisibility of rights and the need for
political guarantees to protect and advance those rights. The pursuit of
rights in themselves, divorced from broader questions of democracy and
social justice, has little meaning if they are not accompanied by the
conditions which make it possible to claim them. As Virginia Vargas
argued in her address to the NGO forum at the Beijing ‡ 5 conference in
New York 2000, speaking for many in the region:

The twenty-first century will be a `women's century' only if it also

democracy's century, [democracy understood in its] political, social,
economic and cultural aspects. Only with democratic governments
that fulfil their political and juridical commitments and with strong
civil societies with the capacity to monitor the management of public
resources and formulate proposals will we be able to face the chal-
lenges that the new millennium poses. (REPEM 2000)
26 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Notes
1 This chapter draws on the authors' interviews with women's rights activists
in Latin America and on other thematic discussions in related areas. See in
particular: Craske (1999, 2000), Molyneux (2000a, 2000b, 2000c), and Moly-
neux and Lazar (2002). We would like to thank Fiona Macaulay for her
helpful comments on an earlier draft.
2 For the history of women's movements and rights struggles in Latin America see
Dore and Molyneux (2000), Lavrin (1995), Miller (1991) and Stoner (1988).
3 `Popular' in Latin American usage means of the working or subaltern, classes.
4 For those emphasising elite settlements, see, among others, Diamond, Ham-
lyn, Linz and Lipset (1999), Mainwaring and Shugart (1997), O'Donnell,
Schmitter and Whitehead (1986). For greater emphasis on social movements
and the (re)-building of civil society see Escobar and Alvarez, (1992), Drake
and Jaksic (1991), Foweraker and Craig (1990) and Eckstein (1989).
5 See, among others, Alvarez (1998, 1990), Jaquette and Wolchik (1998), Way-
len (1996a, 1996b, 1994), Jaquette (1994), Fisher (1993), Jelin (1990), Moly-
neux (1985).
6 The `Glass of Milk' programme involved tens of thousands of women in Peru
in running this service for low-income households. See Barrig (1994), Blondet
(1995).
7 These figures refer to real GDP per capita. According to UNDP data four Latin
American countries, Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica and Uruguay, rank in the
`high human development' category whilst the remaining fifteen are ranked
as medium. There are significant differences, however, in the standards of
living of these medium ranked countries with GDP per capita ranging from
over $8000 for Mexico and Venezuela to less than $3000 for El Salvador,
Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua (UNDP, 1999 tab. 1).
8 For a discussion of the indigenous rights movements of Latin America see
Brysk (2000). On the relationship between indigenous people and state
reform see Assies, van der Haar and Hoekama (2000) and for conceptual
issues concerning indigenous rights see Stavenhagen (1996).
9 Women outnumber men among the poor and unemployed in Latin America,
see ECLAC (2000).
10 These are Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay
and Venezuela (ECLAC, 1999: 61, fig. 11.1a).
11 The UNDP's gender analysis indicates that in many parts of the region gender
disparities make conditions worse for women and that relatively wealthy
countries such as Brazil, Chile and Uruguay often display greater gender
disparities than their poorer neighbours. Table A.1 on page 222 offers selected
data on gendered development in the region.
12 Furthermore, although the percentage of people living in poverty in Latin
America has declined from 41 per cent to 36 per cent between 1990 and 1997,
it is still above the percentage for 1980 (35 per cent) and, in absolute
numbers, the number of poor has increased. Although the number of indi-
gents has declined from 93 400 to 89 800, it is much higher than the 62 400
recorded in 1980 (ECLAC, 1999:18 tab. 1).
13 ComisioÂn Andina de Juristas 2000a. A poll of 17 Latin American countries
showed that only 37 per cent of those interviewed were content with the
 Maxine Molyneux and Nikki Craske 27

way their democracy worked in practice. Roughly two out of three had little
or no trust in their politicians, parties, congresses, police or judiciaries (The
Economist 13 May 2000, 66).
14 It is illustrative that in Chile, Latin America's highest ranking country in
human development terms, men's real per capita GDP is $19 749 whilst
women's is $5853 (UNDP, 1999 tab. 2 gender-related development index).
15 Venezuelan president, Carlos AndreÂs Perez, and Brazilian president, Fer-
nando Collor, were both impeached on charges of corruption.
16 As Francesca Miller (1991) has shown the Latin American feminist move-
ment from the early twentieth century was active in international fora and
spawned its own international organisations.
17 The Soviet Union became a party to both on 16 October 1973, whilst the USA
became a party to the ICCPR in June 1992 and a signatory to the ICESCR on 5
October 1977.
18 For a critique of international legal instruments from a gender perspective see
Cook (1994), and Charlesworth et al. (1991).
19 See Molyneux (2000a) for a discussion of the needs/interests debate.
20 The 1980s had already seen further developments in the international arena
with attention to children's rights (CRC: 1989), Convention Against Torture
(1984), and the 1989 ILO Convention 169 on ethnic and minority rights (the
only statutory international instrument on indigenous rights).
21 See Keck and Sikkink (1998) for a discussion of the global and specifically
Latin American campaigns on this issue.
22 Despite some hard fought gains in the areas of sexual preference, as concerns
economic rights and abortion less was achieved than was hoped for, largely
on account of conservative religious opposition.
23 On CEDAW commitments they report to the Commission on the Elimin-
ation of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, for ICCPR they report to
the Commission for Human Rights (CHR); for the ICESCR to the Commis-
sion for Economic and Social Rights (ECOSOC).
24 An index of the participation in these issues can be gained from one example:
500 Chilean women attended a conference on `Beijing one year afterwards'
in 1996 (ValdeÂs and Weinstein n.d).
25 The ComisioÂn Interamericana de Mujeres is a permanent committee of the
OAS on which each member country has a representative. The committee is
obliged to report back regularly to the OAS on progress achieved in meeting
regional agreements.
26 Molyneux interview with Cecilia Blondet, Lima 2000.
27 See CLADEM website: http://www.derechos.org/cladem/index.html.
28 As in note 27.
29 Some laws are specifically to increase women's representation whilst others
aim for gender balance and thus are to ensure that no more than 70 per cent
of the chamber is made up of one sex.
30 Presidential support was arguably a decisive factor as in the cases of Menem
in Argentina and Fujimori in Peru.
31 The most radical, as well as highly controversial, to date, has been the recent
decision by the government of the province of CoÂrdoba, Argentina, to insti-
gate 50 per cent quota laws for elected and `intermediate organisations'
positions (ClarõÂn 4 Dec. 2000).
28 Gender and Rights in Latin America

32 See data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union http://www.ipu.org/.

33 In closed list systems the voter is presented with lists controlled by parties
rather than voting for individual candidates, consequently voters have to
vote for women if they are listed and can't `cherry pick' from a list of
candidates put forward by the party.
34 Domestic work continues to be the major employment available to women
in Latin America.
35 Keck and Sikkink (1998) suggest that the degree of international consensus
on this issue was unusual and due to careful discursive strategising to make
issues of bodily integrity capable of having meaning in a variety of cultures.
36 It is debatable whether abortion is legal under any circumstances in El Salva-
dor but in Chile protecting life from the moment of conception was one of
the last acts of the Pinochet dictatorship. For full details on the region's
abortion laws see www.undp.org.popin/wdtrends/abt/batplac.htm.
37 For Chile see Encuesta Nacional (1999) carried out by the Grupo Iniciativa
Mujeres, for Mexico see GIRE BoletõÂn No. 17, June 1998.
38 Public Opinion Surveys, cited in ComisioÂn Andina de Juristas 2000b.
39 This work built on the theoretical insights of feminist economists such as
Diane Elson. See Elson 1991.
40 For critical discussion see Craske (2000), Schild (1998), Barrig (1997), Waylen
(1996b), ValdeÂs, T. (1998).
41 An example is the BeleÂm do Para Convention on violence against women
where there is the requirement that states exercise `due diligence' in prevent-
ing violence against women. Nowhere, however, is there a normative defin-
ition of what might constitute `due' ± or sufficient ± diligence on the part of a
state. A UN Special Rapporteur was appointed to carry out a country study of
Brazil where implicit benchmarks are employed (Macaulay, personal commu-
nication).
42 The role of the Vatican in coordinating conservative Catholic opposition
during the Beijing process is discussed by Keck and Sikkink (1998), and by
Lyklama a Nijehold et al. (1998).
43 Molyneux's interviews with participants at the CEPAL meeting in Lima, Peru
2000 and the UN Special Session on Women in New York 2000.
44 See the ComisioÂn Andina Reports 2000a and 2000b, for a critical review of
government action.
45 By the end of the decade (1995±2000) there had been a 50 per cent rise in
female participation in the legislature and a sharp rise in the number of
women in ministerial posts; 11 Latin American countries promulgated
quota laws and 12 passed laws on violence against women.
46 ECLAC (2000) estimates that without the gains made by the women's move-
ments inequality and poverty would be far worse in the region.

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Pateman, Carol (1988) The Sexual Contract, Cambridge: Polity Press
Rai, Shirin (ed.) (2000) International Perspectives on Gender and Democratization,
Basingstoke: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave
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que.apc.org)
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Society, 4 (3) 354±69
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nino and A. Escobar (eds) Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Revisioning Latin
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2
Engendering the Right to
Participate in Decision-making:
Electoral Quotas and Women's
Leadership in Latin America
Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones

Since elite women mobilised around suffrage rights in the nineteenth

century, gaining access to decision-making power has been a central
objective of women's movements in Latin America. Today these
demands appear to have been realised. Between 1991, when Argentina
became the first democratic state in Latin America to establish a strict
women's quota, and 2000, when Colombia became the most recent
country in the region to do so, 12 Latin American countries enacted
national laws establishing a minimum level of 20 to 40 per cent for
women's participation as candidates in national elections. The regional
trend toward the enactment of quota laws is unprecedented in world
history. Only Belgium and Taiwan have similar quota legislation. Today
(December 2000), women occupy 13 per cent of the seats in the lower
houses of parliament in Latin America. The region ranks behind North-
ern Europe (at 39 per cent), and compares with the world average, the
rest of Europe, as well as the United States (all at 13 per cent).1
This chapter analyses whether quotas have achieved the goals
invested in them by women's movement activists. We develop two
arguments about the effects of quotas on the election of women and
on gender-related policy outcomes. First, we show that quota laws have
been only mildly effective in increasing women's presence in legisla-
tures. Many of Latin America's electoral systems make it hard to apply a
women's quota, and political parties tend to comply with quotas in a
minimalist manner. Data from the most recent round of elections
show that, on average, quotas helped to boost women's presence in
national congresses by five percentage points. Next, we present prelim-
inary evidence suggesting that when quotas work, women's greater

32
 Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones 33

presence in politics serves to shift the terms of legislative debates. Yet

quotas alone do not generate the political alliances necessary to change
policy.
Quotas, like other policy measures addressed to women in the 1990s,
represent an unprecedented breakthrough in the state's recognition
of certain rights, such as the right to participate in decision-making,
the right to be free from domestic violence and the right to decide on the
number and spacing of children. International agreements such as the
1995 Platform for Action endorsed by governments at the Fourth World
Conference on Women were instrumental in diffusing these broader
understandings of rights. Yet, the dilemmas engendered by quotas are
representative of difficulties in making concrete women's new formal
rights in general. Quotas have produced small and uneven gains in
women's leadership because of a failure to reform the institutions neces-
sary to make quotas work. Institutional pathologies ± corruption, ineffi-
ciency, low accountability ± help to explain the low enforcement not
only of quotas but also a wide array of women's other `new rights'.

Background

The quota laws passed in twelve countries ± Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil,

Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico,
Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela ± are the product of women's
movement demands at the national and international level for govern-
ments to take action to increase women's participation in politics.2 The
growth of women's movements in the 1970s, and the roles played by
women in the struggle against authoritarianism, placed the question of
women's representation on the policy agenda of new democratic gov-
ernments in the 1990s. Meanwhile, international agreements such as the
United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrim-
ination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Beijing Platform for Action,
contributed to the spread of global norms and understandings of gender
equality in decision-making. Latin American leaders responded by
adopting new laws and public policies aimed at furthering women's
equal opportunities in the polity, economy and society. Governments
created women's agencies to propose, advise, and coordinate public
policies on women; modified discriminatory parts of civil and criminal
codes to grant women equal rights and obligations; incorporated prin-
ciples of equality in new or reformed constitutions; and adopted policy
initiatives targeted at women such as microcredit programmes, literacy
drives and daycare for children (Htun 1998, 1999, n.d.).
34 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Why and how did Latin Americans opt for quotas over another policy
mix? Women activists in Latin America argue that democracy, equality
and fairness demand that women participate in political decision-
making on equal terms with men. The gender biases of political insti-
tutions, reinforced by decades of women's exclusion, mean that more
gradualist forms of affirmative action will only produce results in the
very long term. By guaranteeing a certain level of women's representa-
tion in congress, quotas aim to close the gap between women's presence
at the bottom and their representation at the top. Women make up over
half of the eligible voters in most Latin American countries, and amount
to approximately one-third of political party members. Women's pres-
ence in congresses (at an average of 13 per cent) is high by world
standards, but lags behind women's participation in the public sphere
at large. As Brazilian congresswoman Marta Suplicy put it: `In Brazil
today, [the quota] is more than a new instrument in women's struggle
for equality and the construction of true democracy, it is an imperative
of justice' (Suplicy n.d.: 1).
Other arguments for quotas focus on anticipated outcomes. Women
leaders are seen to better represent the interests of women citizens and
to introduce women's perspectives into policy-making. Having a `critical
mass' of women in power facilitates debate and legislation on women's
issues (Staudt 1998). Mexican Senator MarõÂa de los Angeles Moreno
reports that only when at least one quarter of the people in the room
are women is it possible to conduct a civilised debate on issues of
concern to women, such as rape and domestic violence.3 A final argu-
ment centres on the symbolism of quotas. Quotas help to educate the
public about gender equality and demonstrate that society is inclusive
and egalitarian. As Peruvian congresswoman Beatriz Merino explains:
`When women opine on important public issues ± like the management
of the economy ± civil society sees that women are able to face the
challenge of leading the country' (PROMUJER 1998: 44).
The quota movement gained momentum at regional and inter-
national meetings, particularly the September of 1995 United Nations
fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Earlier in the year, Latin
American congresswomen gathered at the Latin American Parliament in
SaÄo Paulo to discuss Argentina's quota experiment and quota politics
around the world. The regional meeting `was the spark that ignited a call
to action' for many of the women politicians present (Suplicy 1996: 9).
Then, the Platform for Action endorsed the notion that women had
a right to participate in decision-making. It called on governments
to ensure `women's equal access to and full participation in power
 Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones 35

structures and decision-making', and to consider adopting affirmative

action policies to achieve equal representation of women and men.
The Beijing Platform legitimised the idea of quotas at the inter-
national level and served as a focal point for domestic mobilisation. To
generate support for the quota, Mexican deputy MarõÂa Elena Chapa
recalled, `we travelled around the entire country organising meetings
about women's participation in diverse areas and women's common
concerns: health, education, employment, politics, poverty, self-image,
environment, violence, children, among others, in line with the issues
granted global attention by the Beijing Platform for Action.'4 The fact
that many Latin American female politicians went to Beijing served to
unite women around the idea of the quota.5 The Beijing conference also
provided normative leverage: since governments had already endorsed
the Beijing Platform, activists could argue that quota laws furthered
governmental compliance with commitments made in international
forums.
Although pressure from women politicians and international norms
were the central causes of quotas, presidential interest has also been
important. Presidents and other senior male officials supported quotas
for a variety of reasons: out of embarrassment over the low levels of
women's representation in their countries; the desire to court women's
votes and the support of women politicians; the need to meet commit-
ments enshrined in international agreements.6 These politicians re-
sponded rationally to the way that principles of gender equality have
been gradually incorporated into prevailing understandings of democ-
racy and modernity.
There is no consensus on the desirability of quotas, however. Oppon-
ents of quotas, many of whom are women, argue that they discriminate
against men, will elevate underqualified women to power, and above all,
are unnecessary, since qualified women will rise to power on their own
merits. They are also concerned that women beneficiaries of a quota will
be stigmatised as owing their position to the quota and not to their own
efforts.
To sum up, advocates of quotas make three claims. The first is norma-
tive: fairness and equality require that women be present in decision-
making affecting society at large. Quotas, which guarantee women's
presence in the short term, are the most effective means of achieving
this objective. The second is consequentialist: quotas, which mean that
more women are in power, will place fresh items on the political agenda
and change policy outcomes to better reflect women's concerns. The last
is symbolic: quotas educate the public about gender equality and
36 Gender and Rights in Latin America

demonstrate society's commitment to a democracy based on inclusive-

ness. The rest of the chapter evaluates the effectiveness of quotas in
meeting these expectations.

Preliminary evaluation of quotas

The enactment of laws establishing a minimum level of women's par-

ticipation as candidates in national elections in 12 Latin American
countries is a truly novel phenomenon. Rarely have so many countries
adopted strikingly similar legislation on women's rights within such a
short period of time. The quota trend reveals an unprecedented com-
mitment to women's participation in decision-making on the part of the
region's leaders. Do quotas work? In this section, we analyse Latin
American quota laws along three dimensions. First, we show that fea-
tures of a country's electoral system and institutions determine whether
quotas help more women get elected. A closed-list system, a placement
requirement, large district magnitude and good-faith compliance by
political parties are the factors that make quotas work. Second, we
explore the consequences of quotas. Preliminary evidence from Argen-
tina suggests that quotas have spillover effects and that women elected
with a quota have different policy priorities than their male counter-
parts. Nonetheless, quotas do not seem to make women's political alli-
ances, the key factor in enacting gender-related legislation, any stronger.
The final section offers a few remarks on the symbolic dimensions of
quotas.

Quotas and the election of women

In general, quotas have been only mildly effective in increasing the

number of women elected to Latin American legislatures. In the 11
countries with quotas, women made up an average of 9 per cent of the
legislature prior to the quota. Following the implementation of the
quota, this increased to 14 per cent. In other words, the quota served
to boost women's presence by five percentage points. In historical per-
spective, a five-point gain is an impressive jump from one election to
another. Still, in very few instances did women's presence actually reach
the level of the quota. To make sense of these results, we must examine
the interaction of quotas and national electoral systems. Women's pres-
ence approximated the level of the quota only in the Argentine Cham-
ber of Deputies and the Paraguayan Senate. The success of quotas in
these two countries owes to the closed-list system, placement mandate,
 Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones 37

moderate to large-sized electoral districts and good-faith compliance by

political parties.7
All 11 countries with quota laws elect their legislators from party lists
in multimember districts using proportional representation (PR), al-
though in some countries a fixed percentage of the legislature is elected
from single member districts.8 Beyond these basic features, the laws vary
significantly (see Table 2.1). The table shows that the minimum level of
women's presence (or quota percentage) varies from 20 to 40 per cent.
Whether this quota is actually reached by the election of women legis-
lators depends in large part on three institutional factors: the type of
party list (closed or open), the existence of a placement mandate, and
the size of the districts from which the legislators are elected (the district
magnitude).

Type of party list

The type of party list (closed or open) is highly consequential for the
effectiveness of a quota law. When party lists are closed, political parties
present a rank-ordered list of candidates in each of the multimember
districts where they are contesting seats. Voters cast a ballot for the
entire list; they cannot alter the ordering of the candidates. Once a
party's seat allocation has been determined (using a proportional repre-
sentation allocation formula), its seats are distributed based on the list's
rank ordering. For example, if a party wins three seats, the first three
people on its list are elected: Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, the Domin-
ican Republic, Mexico, Paraguay and Venezuela use closed lists.
Although parties present a list of candidates in an open-list system,
there is no rank ordering. Voters are required to select a candidate on the
party list (also called exercising a preference vote).9 The seats are allo-
cated among the parties based on the percentage of the vote each party
received (similar to the closed-list systems). However, the seats are dis-
tributed among the party's candidates based on the number of `prefer-
ence' votes received, not based on their ordering on the list. For
example, if a party wins three seats, the three party candidates who
obtained the most preference votes are elected: Brazil, Ecuador, Panama
and Peru use open lists.
In a closed-list system, parties compete against one another for votes.
Every candidate has an incentive to maximise the vote for his or her
party since seats are allocated based on the party's total vote. In an open-
list system, there is fierce intra-party competition in addition to the
inter-party competition. Because a candidate's preference votes deter-
mine whether he or she is elected, candidates from the same party
Table 2.1 Quota laws in Latin America

Country Year Legislative Quota Open vs. Placement Average district

adopted branch percentage closed list mandate magnitude

Argentina 1991 Chamber of Deputies 30 Closed Yes 5

1991 (2001)a Senate 30/50a Closed Yes 3
Bolivia 1997 Chamber of Deputies 30b Closed Yes 7
Senate 25 Closed No 3
Brazil 1997 Chamber of Deputies 25/30c Open No 20
Costa Rica 1997 Chamber of Deputies 40 Closed Noe 7
Dominican Republic 1997 Chamber of Deputies 25 Closed No 5
Ecuador 1997 Chamber of Deputies 20/33c Open No 6
Mexico 1996 Chamber of Deputies 30 Closed No 40
Senate 30 Closed No 4
Panama 1997 Chamber of Deputies 30b,d Open No 4
Paraguay 1996 Chamber of Deputies 20d Closed Yes 4
Senate 20d Closed Yes 45
Peru 1997 Chamber of Deputies 30c Open No 5
Venezuela 1998 Chamber of Deputies 30b Closed No 4
Senate 30 Closed No 2

a
The first Senate election where quotas will be used takes place in 2001. Since each list can elect a maximum of two senators, the de facto quota is 50% (the de jure
quota is 30%). Combined with the electoral rules governing the Senate election (two seats for the plurality party and one for the first runner-up), the quota law
insures that at a minimum 33% of the senators will be women.
b
Approximately one-half of the Chamber legislators in Bolivia and Venezuela, three-fifths in Mexico, and one-third in Panama, are elected from single-member
districts (SMD). The quota law does not apply to these SMD elections. The district magnitude data are based on the multimember district seats governed by the quota
law. All Venezuela data are for the pre-2000 period. In the 2000 Venezuelan election (for a unicameral legislature) no quota law was in force.
c
The Brazilian quota percentage was 25% for the 1998 election (it will be 30% in future elections). The Ecuadoran quota was 20% for the 1998 election (it will be 33%
in future elections). The initial Peruvian quota was 25% (the quota used in the free and fair 2001 elections was 30%).
d
The Panamanian and Paraguayan quotas are for the party primary elections.
e
A placement mandate will be in force for the next election, to be held in 2002.
 Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones 39

compete against one another for preference votes in the general elec-
tion. As relative newcomers, women generally have fewer resources than
their male colleagues, a major handicap in intra-party competition.

Placement mandate
The second factor shaping the effectiveness of quota laws is the exist-
ence of a placement mandate in closed-list systems. The purpose of this
mandate is to prevent parties from clustering women at the bottom of
the party list where they have no realistic chance of getting elected. For
example, the Argentine Ley de Cupos (1991) requires that women ac-
count for a minimum of 30 per cent of the candidates on the party list
and that these women be placed in electable positions. The second
requirement has been interpreted to mean that every third (and sixth,
ninth, etc.) candidate on the party list must be a woman (except in
districts where a party is renewing two seats, where the second candi-
date, at the minimum, must be a woman). The Bolivian law is similar to
the Argentine Ley de Cupos since at least one of every three positions on
the list must be occupied by a woman. The Paraguayan law establishes a
20 per cent quota (for the party primaries) and mandates that at least
one of every five candidates on the lists presented in these primaries be a
woman.
The quota laws in the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Venezuela
respectively stipulate that women occupy at least 25 per cent, 30 per
cent and 30 per cent of the positions on the party list. Yet, these laws say
nothing about the location of women on the list. As a result, parties tend
to place women at the bottom of the party list, where they have little
chance of getting elected. Costa Rica's quota law (40 per cent) originally
contained no placement mandate. In 2000, however, the country's
Supreme Electoral Court ordered political parties to comply with the
quota by placing women in electable positions, thereby establishing a
placement mandate. To be effective in a closed-list system, quota laws
must include a placement mandate.

District magnitude
Small district magnitudes, particularly when combined with a large
number of parties winning seats in the legislature, severely limit the
effectiveness of quotas, since parties normally win only one or two seats
in a district. In closed-list systems, the top positions on the party list
(which are the only electable positions) are generally occupied by men.
The larger the district magnitude, the more effective quotas are likely
to be.
40 Gender and Rights in Latin America

The average district magnitude varies considerably across these 11

countries. At the low end are the Argentine, Bolivian, Mexican and
Venezuelan Senates and the Panamanian Chamber of Deputies with
average district magnitudes of less than five representatives. At the
other end of the continuum are the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies,
Mexican Chamber of Deputies and the Paraguayan Senate. The average
Brazilian and Mexican constituency (district) elects 20 and 40 legislators
respectively, while Paraguay uses a single national district (with 45
legislators). The remaining cases occupy an intermediate position be-
tween these two extremes.10
In most countries, the absence of a placement mandate, the use of
open lists, and/or the employment of small legislative districts reduced
the effectiveness of quotas. With one exception (the Paraguayan
Senate), the percentage of women elected with quotas did not reach the
minimum percentage established by the quota in any country (see Table
2.2). After the Paraguayan Senate, the Argentine Chamber of Deputies
came closest to reaching the minimum threshold (two percentage
points lower than the quota). The Bolivian Senate, Costa Rican Chamber
of Deputies and Venezuelan Senate remained the furthest from this
minimum goal (each 21 percentage points lower than the quota). The
Bolivian and Venezuelan results are not surprising, since a party can
elect a maximum of two senators from each district and there is no
placement mandate requiring the parties to locate a woman in one of
the first two positions on the party list. In Costa Rica, the law stated that
women must comprise 40 per cent of each party's district level lists, but
did not regulate the placement of these women on the lists. The lack of a
placement mandate was also the reason (along with a low district mag-
nitude) behind the limited success of the quota laws in the Dominican
Republic and Venezuela (Chamber of Deputies).

Successful cases
The Argentine and Paraguayan Senate cases highlight three elements
that are crucial to the success of the quota: the utilisation of a placement
mandate in a closed-list system, a moderate to high average district mag-
nitude, and party compliance. The Argentine Ley de Cupos of 1991
contains two important requirements: a minimum of 30 per cent of
candidates on the closed party lists in all of the country's 24 electoral
districts must be women, and these women must be placed in electable
positions on the lists and not in `ornamental' positions from which
there is no chance of election. Party lists that fail to comply with the
law are rejected.11
Table 2.2 Quota laws and the election of women

Country Legislative Percentage Percentage Change Minimum percentage

branch of women of women (in % points) established in the
prior to law after law quota law

Argentina Chamber 6 28 22 30
Bolivia Chamber 11 12 1 30
Bolivia Senate 4 4 0 25
Brazil Chamber 7 6 1 25
Costa Rica Chamber 14 19 5 40
Dominican Republic Chamber 12 16 4 25
Ecuador Chamber 4 17 13 20
Mexico Chamber 14 17 3 30
Mexico Senate 13 15 2 30
Panama Chamber 8 11 3 30
Paraguay Chamber 3 3 0 20
Paraguay Senate 11 20 9 20
Peru Chamber 11 18 7 30
Venezuela Chamber 6 13 7 30
Venezuela Senate 8 9 1 30
AVERAGE 9 14 5 28
42 Gender and Rights in Latin America

In Argentina, the political party has control over access to the party
list and the location of candidates on the rank-ordered list. In Chamber
of Deputies elections, the quota law means that if a party wins six seats
in a district, a minimum of two of the winning candidates will be
women. If the open-list method were used, the quota law would provide
no such guarantee. In the four open-list countries with quotas (Brazil (25
per cent), Ecuador (20 per cent), Panama (30 per cent), Peru (30 per
cent) ), the laws say nothing about placement. While these laws guaran-
tee that there will be a significant increase in the percentage of women
candidates, they provide no guarantee that there will be a corresponding
increase in the percentage of women elected. The same conclusion also
holds for the closed-list countries that lack a placement mandate in their
quota laws (i.e. Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Vene-
zuela).
Second, a large district magnitude (combined with a one-in-five place-
ment mandate) explains the relative success of the quota law in the
Paraguayan Senate election of 1998. In Paraguay, the combination of
the large single national electoral district (from which 45 senators are
elected) and the strong performance by the two largest parties, Asocia-
cioÂn Republicana Nacional (ANR) (which won 24 seats) and the Alianza
DemocraÂtica (which won 20 seats) allowed women placed low on the list
to get elected. No woman occupied one of the first ten positions on the
ANR list, but four held positions between 11 and 20. On the Alianza's
list, only one woman was located in the first ten slots (eighth), but three
women occupied positions between 11 and 20. In all, nine women were
elected to the Paraguayan Senate, five from the ANR and four from the
Alianza.
The third crucial element for the success of the quota in getting
women elected is good faith compliance by political parties. Compli-
ance with the quota law has become routine in Argentina, and problems
of non-compliance are virtually non-existent for Chamber elections.
This present norm of compliance was only achieved by the tremendous
efforts of women activists from across the political spectrum during the
1993±95 period. These women took parties to court to force them to
comply with the law. Although parties eventually complied, it is import-
ant to note that they have largely done so in a minimalist manner,
placing women in the lowest positions permitted by law. In the four
Chamber elections held since 1993, three-quarters of the major party
lists complied with the quota law in this way. In contrast to the success
in Argentina, Brazil has experienced significant difficulties with compli-
ance. There, women represented a mere 10 per cent of the Chamber of
 Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones 43

Deputies candidates in 1998, in spite of a quota law that requires parties

to reserve 25 per cent of candidacies for women.12
In sum, the combination of the use of open lists, the lack of explicit
legislation mandating placement, small district magnitudes, and lack of
good faith compliance contributed to the meagre advances in the elec-
tion of women in most of the 11 countries. Given the features of each
country's electoral system, the disappointing results should have been
relatively easy to predict. In other words, adoption of the quota law in
most countries never posed a major threat to the aspirations of male
politicians. This might help to explain the relatively smooth and
trouble-free passage of many of the quota laws in the 1996±2000
period.

Quotas in political parties

Many Latin American political parties have voluntarily adopted quota

rules that establish minimum percentages of women to be included on
the party lists. The first use in Latin America (and as far as we are aware
in the world) of party quota rules occurred in Argentina in the early
1950s. Due to lobbying by Eva PeroÂn, the Peronist Party applied a
women's quota to congressional elections (Molinelli 1994). Combined
with the electoral success of the Peronist Party, the quotas gave Argen-
tina an impressive level of women's representation in the Chamber of
Deputies (15 per cent between 1952 and 1954 and 22 per cent in 1955)
(Inter-Parliamentary Union 1995). In 1955, Argentina (where deputies
were chosen in contested elections, albeit under somewhat strained
circumstances) had the world's fourth highest percentage of women
national deputies, trailing the communist countries of East Germany,
the Soviet Union and Mongolia. In Finland, the democracy with
the most women legislators in 1955, women amounted to a mere
15 per cent of the legislature. Today, party quota rules are the most
common form of positive action employed to increase the representa-
tion of women outside of Latin America, and are in large part respon-
sible for the high levels of women's representation in Northern
European countries (Caul 1999, Dahlerup 1998, Inter-Parliamentary
Union 1997).
Several major political parties in Latin America use quotas for internal
elections and to construct lists for general elections.13 The use of a party
quota rule by the Frente Farabundo MartõÂ para la LiberacioÂn Nacional
(FMLN) for the 1997 Salvadoran Legislative Assembly election and by the
Frente Sandinista de LiberacioÂn Nacional (FSLN) for the 1996 Nicaraguan
44 Gender and Rights in Latin America

National Assembly election provide evidence of the potential of party

quota rules. In El Salvador and Nicaragua, deputies are elected from a
combination of multimember districts and a single national level dis-
trict using closed party lists. The FMLN and FSLN quotas specify that a
minimum of 35 per cent and 30 per cent of the candidates on the party's
lists for public offices be women.
Women amounted to 29 per cent of the FMLN Assembly candidates in
El Salvador, 10 per cent more than that of the country's other major
party, the Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA) (Luciak 1997).
Thirteen women deputies were elected in 1997: nine from the FMLN
(33 per cent of its 27 deputies) and four from ARENA (14 per cent of its
28 deputies). Neither of the country's two other relevant parties, the
Partido de ConciliacioÂn Nacional (11 deputies) and the Partido DemoÂ-
crata Cristiano/Partido DemoÂcrata alliance (ten deputies), nor any of the
four minor parties that won seats (eight total) had any women elected.
In Nicaragua, 36 per cent of the National Assembly candidates presented
by the FSLN were women. This figure dwarfs that of Nicaragua's other
major political force, the Alianza Liberal (AL), where women represented
a mere 9 per cent of candidates. Ten women deputies were elected in
1996: eight from the FSLN (22 per cent of its 36 deputies), one from the
AL (2 per cent of its 42 deputies) and one from one of the nine minor
parties that garnered a combined total of 15 seats. The relatively high
percentages of FMLN and FSLN women deputies show that party quotas
can work for parties who employ them.14 Unlike a national law, how-
ever, they are not mandatory for all parties.

Quotas and policy outcomes

If quotas work, more women will get elected to public office. Does
having more women present produce changes in law and policy that
are more favourable to women's interests? To answer this question, we
first consider evidence from Argentina. There, the most prominent
effect of the national quota law has been to encourage the adoption of
quotas at other levels and branches of government. Argentine evidence
shows that women legislators have different policy priorities than men,
although many women politicians demonstrate little interest in gender-
related legislation. Next, we analyse the role of women's political alli-
ances in getting legislation passed. Law and policy advances in the
1990s have been brought about by political alliances uniting women
from different political parties. Yet, quota laws are neither necessary nor
sufficient for the formation of such alliances.
 Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones 45

Policy consequences of quotas: the Argentine case

Most Latin American quota laws were adopted between 1996 and 1999,
making it premature to evaluate their effects on public policy. The
Argentine law, however, dates from 1991, and was first applied in
1993. Data from Argentina suggest some preliminary generalisations
about the policy consequences of quotas.
The most visible effect of the Argentine quota law has been the adop-
tion of quota laws for provincial and municipal elections since 1991.
Twenty-one of Argentina's 23 provinces, as well as the federal capital
City of Buenos Aires, currently use quotas in the election of provincial
and, in most cases, municipal legislators. This legislation has in many
instances resulted in a dramatic increase in the percentage of women
provincial and municipal legislators. In the 12 provincial legislatures
elected using closed lists, the average percentage of women legislators
increased from 7 per cent to 21 per cent. Some jurisdictions have gone
even further with quotas. The 1996 Constitution of the City of Buenos
Aires stipulates that members of appointed bodies with three or more
members (such as the Judiciary and the Public Services Commission)
should include no more than 70 per cent of the same sex. The city's
constitution was itself drafted by a constituent assembly elected using
quota legislation (women made up 32 per cent of the assembly).
Evidence from Argentina also suggests that women's legislative behav-
iour differs from men's. Two indicators of legislative behaviour are
committee membership and bill introduction (Crisp et al. n.d.).
Following consequentialist arguments for quotas, we would expect
women to be over-represented on committees that deal with issues
related to women's rights or issues of traditional interest to women,
such as children and families, education, the elderly, the environment,
health care, and housing (Dodson and Carroll 1991). Table 2.3 contains
information on committee membership in the Argentine Chamber of
Deputies in 1997, at which time 72 of the 257 legislators were women.
The table shows that women were significantly over-represented on
most committees of traditional interest to women (e.g. Education, Eld-
erly, Family, Women and Minorities, Public Health and Social Action).
Committee posts in Argentina are assigned by the party leadership based
on the requests of legislators (Jones 1998).15
A second measure of legislator behaviour is bill introduction. The
distribution of bills across thematic areas provides a good indicator of
the policy priorities of a legislator. Table 2.4 displays information on bill
introduction by legislators during the 1993±94 period in the Argentine
46 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Table 2.3 Composition of ordinary committees in the Argentine Chamber of

Deputies, 1997

Committee Women Men Equal

overrepresented overrepresented representation

Agriculture and livestock x

Budget x
Commerce x
Communications x
Compliance with tax and social x
security norms
Constitutional affairs x
Cooperative and mutal aid affairs
Culture x
Drug addiction x
Economy x
Education x
Elderly x
Energy and fuel x
Family, women and x
minorities
Finance x
Foreign affairs x
General legislation x
Housing x
Human rights x
Impeachment x
Industry x
Justice x
Labour legislation x
Maritime, river and fishing interests x
Mining
Municipal affairs x
National defence x
Natural resources x
Penal legislation x
Pensions and social security x
Population and human resources x
Public health and social action x x
Public works
Regional economic development x
Rules x
Science and technology x
Sports x
Tourism x
Transportation x

Note: Overrepresentation signifies that the sex difference was significant at the .05 level for a Chi-
Square test, and that the members of that sex were overrepresented.

Source: Elaborated by the authors using data provided by the Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo
Institucional de la FundacioÂn Gobierno y Sociedad.
 Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones 47

Chamber of Deputies, when 36 of the 257 deputies were women. The

results indicate that while women differed from men in their bill intro-
duction in two of the highlighted areas (Women's Rights and Children
and Families), no significant priority differences between male and
female legislators were observed for any of the other categories often
identified as of traditional interest to women (i.e. Health Care/Public
Health, Education, Welfare/Social Security, Environment).
Although significant gender differences were detected in the areas of
Women's Rights and Children and Families, it is important to note that
this does not signify that all women prioritise these issues. The data in
Table 2.4 show that 33 per cent of the women legislators presented a
third or more of their bills in the Women's Rights area and 11 per cent in
the Children and Families area. On the other hand, 58 per cent of the
women legislators presented no bills in Women's Rights and 61 per cent
presented no bills in Children and Families.16
Argentine evidence suggests that quotas, by getting more women into
Congress, have helped to place gender-related issues on the legislative
agenda. Have these women succeeded in enacting gender-related legis-
lation? The next section explores the role of women's political alliances

Table 2.4 Policy priorities in the first `Post-quota' legislative period in Argentina,
1993±94

Significant Percentage of Percentage of

differences in women who women who
Policy area priority between presented more presented no
male and female than 1/3 of their bills in this area
legislators* bills in this area

Women's rights x 33 58
Children and families x 11 61
Women's rights ‡ children x 50 39
and familes
Health care/public health 8 81
Education 11 83
Welfare/social security 8 83
Environment 6 86
Other x 42 44

* Difference significant at the .05 level for a two-tailed test. For every policy area where there
was a significant difference but `Other', women prioritised the policy area to a greater extent
than men.
Source: (Jones 1997).
48 Gender and Rights in Latin America

in policy change. We will see that alone, quotas do not strengthen the
political alliances necessary to get legislation passed.

Women's political alliances

In Argentina, women's higher presence in Congress led to the introduc-

tion of more bills on women's issues. Women legislators expressed
policy priorities that were different from men's in some areas. What
about getting legislation passed? In the 1990s, women politicians in
various countries have joined in political alliances to lobby for legal
and policy changes to benefit women. If we compare the results
achieved by women's political alliances in countries with and in coun-
tries without quotas, however, the differences are not dramatic. Argen-
tine women, in spite of the fact that they make up 28 per cent of
Congress, have not achieved many more policy changes than women
legislators in other countries where the numbers are smaller. Women
politicians in Argentina were responsible for advances in the 1994 con-
stitutional reforms, domestic violence legislation, and the Chamber of
Deputies' approval of a reproductive health bill.17 In Chile and Colom-
bia, where there was no quota and women's presence in Congress
amounts to 11 and 12 per cent respectively, similar policy changes
have been enacted. In Colombia, the 1991 constitutional reforms recog-
nised the principle of gender equality, including the equal `right to
participate in the formation, exercise, and control of political power'
(Morgan 1992: 381±2).18 By the mid-1990s Colombia had established
around 250 family police stations nation-wide, and a domestic violence
law was enacted in 1996. The Chilean Congress approved a domestic
violence law in 1994 and major (though much-delayed) changes to
family law in 1998.
Women's alliances have secured policy changes on some issues, but
they have failed to produce change on all issues. Several factors mitigate
the strength and the unity of such alliances. The first is the fact that
gender issues are not the first priority of most women elected to public
office. The vast majority of women who enter politics in Latin America
do not campaign on women's issues (such as domestic violence, child
care, equal opportunities or reproductive health), nor do they make
such issues the central focus of their legislative careers. In Argentina,
58 per cent of women legislators did not present a single bill in the area
of Women's Rights between 1993 and 1994. RodrõÂguez notes in the case
of Mexico that `gender concerns come in second within the majority of
women's policy agendas, trailing behind whatever their principal policy
 Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones 49

area may be' (RodrõÂguez 1998: 7). For some politicians, this stems from
pragmatism. Political society and the electorate have not proven imme-
diately responsive, and in fact have at times been resistant, to the
promotion of a `women's agenda' in politics. As one Argentine congress-
woman remarked: `men have convinced women that talking about
women's issues is of little importance. Women, in order to be important
politically, can't talk about gender issues.'19
The second factor is party loyalty. Party loyalty frequently trumps
gender identity in politics. Based on interviews with 80 Mexican women
in politics, RodrõÂguez concludes that

women's political loyalties, first and foremost, rest with the political
party or organisation to which they belong. Gender loyalty, for all
practical purposes, comes in (a distant) second. Even among women
of the same party, it is noticeable that their solidarity and loyalty rest
with policies and programs, political patrons and mentors, career
plans and ambitions ± not with the other women in the party.
(RodrõÂguez 1998: 8).

Another recent study of Mexico concluded that gender-related policy

changes came about only when they coincided with party interests, as in
the case of domestic violence. When party interests contradicted
women's strategic gender interests ± in the case of quota laws, protection
of women in the workplace, and abortion ± women's alliances were
significantly weakened and legislation was not enacted (Alatorre 1999).
The final reason that women's political alliances fail to form around
all issues, concerns women's divergent interests and ideas. Some women
subscribe to a more conservative or traditional view of women's inter-
ests. In this view, gender equality is desirable, as long as it doesn't
question women's roles as wives, mothers and homemakers. According
to a contrasting feminist position, the precondition to equal opportun-
ities is the questioning and restructuring of traditional gender roles.
There is enough compatibility between these two visions to permit the
formation of political alliances around issues like domestic violence,
equal treatment in the workplace, and protection of children. The two
visions diverge most radically in issues surrounding reproduction. It is
most difficult to form alliances of women to push for family planning
programmes and for a liberalisation of laws punishing abortion.
It is rare to find women politicians who openly identify as feminists,
although there are important exceptions. The label `feminist' carries a
negative social stigma in Latin America because it is associated with a
50 Gender and Rights in Latin America

denial of sex difference and a rejection of femininity. Many women

politicians avoid associating themselves with feminism because they
believe it limits their political opportunities. As one Argentine politician
said, `I make claims as a feminist, but I don't publicly identify as one
because it would isolate me . . . In very male political parties, gaining
access to decision-making positions as a feminist is impossible. One can
practice politics with feminist principles . . . but astutely and surrepti-
tiously.'20
A common saying in Latin America goes `cuerpo de mujer no garan-
tiza consciencia de geÂnero' (`being a woman does not guarantee having
a gender conscience'). For those concerned about outcomes favourable
to women's rights, what seems to matter the most is a `consciencia de
geÂnero' (gender conscience), and not a `cuerpo de mujer' (being a
woman). Limited comparative evidence suggests that the existence of
broad political alliances joining women in politics and women in soci-
ety, not a quota, is the most effective guarantee of a consciencia de
geÂnero.21

Quotas as symbol

The final argument in favour of quotas focuses on the symbolic or

cultural dimension. Quota laws help to educate the public about gender
equality, introduce new items on the policy agenda and legitimise
women's political leadership. In short, quotas help make culture more
egalitarian and democratic. As Mexican Senator Amalia GarcõÂa puts it:
`The challenge of the minimum percentage [quota] is not its application
as obligatory but rather to transform the collective conscience, the
culture of both men and women' (RodrõÂguez 1998: 14). Camacho et al.
(1997: 93±4) add that `Quotas benefit all of society. . . [quotas] have
deepened societal understanding of discrimination and clarified the
need to seek alternatives to change the present reality.'
There is plentiful evidence to suggest that quota law proposals have
succeeded in making gender parity in decision-making a national issue.
By introducing quota bills in the national legislature, women legislators
forced their male counterparts to formulate and defend opinions about
gender equality. In many countries, media coverage surrounding the
quotas stimulated debates about the history of women's leadership and
introduced affirmative action in other areas. In Brazil, congresswoman
Marta Suplicy proposed that ballots be gender neutral,22 that campaign
literature feature women and men in equal proportions, that official
agencies gather data about the sex of candidates, and that a fixed
 Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones 51

proportion of party funds be allocated to finance women's political

campaigns (Suplicy 1997). Quota proposals have served an important
agenda-setting function among educated elites; as the Argentine experi-
ence shows, the national law spurred discussion about the adoption of
quotas in other decision-making arenas.
On the other hand, most of the population remains ignorant about
quotas. According to an opinion survey of 1850 Peruvians, conducted in
late 1997 and early 1998, 75 per cent of the population is unaware of the
existence of a quota law. Nonetheless, the vast majority of those polled
in Lima declared that in politics, women are more honest than men,
more concerned with poor people, better administrators, and less au-
thoritarian (Blondet 1998).

Conclusion

In theory, the requirement that women comprise 20 to 40 per cent of

political party candidates in national elections demands a radical sacri-
fice from male politicians and a dramatic restructuring of intra-party
politics. The relatively speedy enactment of quota laws in many countries
therefore gives reason to pause. Why would male politicians forfeit their
historic monopoly on power without a prolonged and vicious struggle?
As we have shown in this chapter, factors such as the nature of the
party list, the existence of a placement mandate, district magnitude, and
good-faith party compliance determine whether quotas increase women's
presence in parliament. Quota laws have achieved only limited success
because of a failure to address all of these issues. As a result, male
politicians have made few sacrifices on behalf of the quota. With the
exception of Argentina, quotas have been a relatively painless way to
pay lip service to women's rights without suffering the consequences.
Still, the enactment of quota laws in 12 Latin American countries is of
tremendous symbolic importance. Since women gained the right to vote
in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, no policy measure has stimulated such
an intense debate about gender equality in politics and decision-
making. The quota movement of the 1990s reflects the growth and
strength of women's movements, the leadership of women politicians,
and the influence of international norms and agreements pertaining to
gender equality. Through their advocacy on behalf of quotas, women
activists are forging fresh notions of equality, democratic legitimacy and
women's citizenship.
When quotas work, women have an equal chance to participate.
Preliminary data suggests that the presence of more women in power
52 Gender and Rights in Latin America

produces spillover effects and introduces new items to the policy agenda.
Yet, significant policy changes have been brought about by women's
political alliances in countries without quota laws. Broad-based political
alliances, not quotas, are what it takes to produce legislative action
benefiting all women.
The quota debate pushed Latin American societies to confront gender
inequality in the public sphere, but much work remains to be done to
make quotas a truly effective policy tool for improving women's repre-
sentation in decision-making. Laws adopted in 12 countries represent
advances in women's rights, but in many cases quota laws lacked teeth.
Quotas reflect the tendency of Latin American governments to grant
citizens formal rights before modifying the institutional contexts where
these rights are enforced. The lesson of quotas is that rights matter most
when institutions change to make rights effective.

Notes
1 The Latin American average was calculated based on data from 18 countries
found at: Inter-Parliamentary Union <http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/clas-
sif.htm>.
2 Quota legislation was enacted by the Colombian Congress in 1999. As
this chapter was going to press, the Constitutional Court verified the consti-
tutionality of the legislation. As the exact details of the implementation of
the law remain unclear, we do not include it in our subsequent discussion.
The first congressional election under this new legislation will take place in
2002.
3 Interview with Senator MarõÂa de los Angeles Moreno, Mexico City, 30 January
1998.
4 Personal communication with Mala Htun, 12 February 1998.
5 Interview with Marta Suplicy, BrasõÂlia, 7 August 1997.
6 In Argentina, the support of President Carlos Menem was decisive in passing
the quota law. Although the law enjoyed the support of women from all major
political parties, it was unlikely to be approved because of male resistance.
Last-minute persuasion by President Menem and his Interior Minister, JoseÂ
Luis Manzano, was decisive in swinging the congressional vote in favour of
quotas (Durrieu 1999).
7 Following adoption of the quota, women's presence in the Ecuadoran Cham-
ber of Deputies jumped by 13 percentage points. However, the gain in
women's representation is largely attributable to voters' lack of familiarity
with the new electoral system, not to the success of the quota. Instead of
utilising the preference aspect of Ecuador's block voting method, voters
tended to vote for a party's entire slate of candidates, a behaviour encouraged
by the parties which strategically placed their most popular candidates at the
 Mala N. Htun and Mark P. Jones 53

top, middle, and bottom of their respective lists. For example, in the province
of Guayas where 18 deputies were elected, the Partido Social Cristiano won
twelve seats with a mere 29 per cent of the overall vote, while two other
parties each won 25 per cent of the vote but only three seats each. We thank
AndreÂs MejõÂa Acosta for providing data and information on the 1998 Ecua-
doran elections.
8 The one exception is Ecuador, which currently employs the block vote for the
election of its provincial deputies. It is likely though that Ecuador will modify
its electoral system, adopting one of the more common proportional repre-
sentation allocation methods, prior to its next scheduled legislative election
in 2002.
9 Some systems also permit voters to cast a vote for the entire list.
10 As indicated in Table 2.1, a large proportion of legislators in Bolivia (Chamber
of Deputies), Mexico (Chamber of Deputies), Panama and Venezuela (Cham-
ber of Deputies) are elected from single-member districts, where the quota
law does not apply.
11 The implementation of the Argentine Ley de Cupos is regulated by Executive
Decree 379/93 (as this chapter went to press in December 2000, a new, more
progressive, decree was being drafted). Although the Ley de Cupos currently
applies only to the election of the national Chamber of Deputies, starting in
2001 (when senators will be directly elected) it will apply to national Senate
elections.
12 The Brazilian electoral law requires parties to reserve candidate slots for
women, but does not require parties to actually fill these slots with women
candidates. If a party fails to find women candidates to complete its list it
may still contest the election. A failure to present the maximum number of
candidates is unlikely to adversely affect the parties, as they are allowed to
present a number of candidates in excess of the number of legislators being
elected from the district (1.5 times as many for parties, and twice as many for
coalitions of parties).
13 Parties that voluntarily adopted a women's quota include: Brazil's Partido dos
Trabalhadores (30 per cent); Chile's Partido Socialista (30 per cent), Partido
por la Democracia (40 per cent), and Partido DemoÂcrata Cristiana (20 per
cent); Costa Rica's Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (40 per cent); El Salvador's
Frente Farabundo MartõÂ para la LiberacioÂn Nacional (35 per cent); Mexico's
Partido de la RevolucioÂn DemocraÂtica (30 per cent) and Partido Revolucio-
nario Institucional (30 per cent); Nicaragua's Frente Sandinista de LiberacioÂn
Nacional (30 per cent); Paraguay's AsociacioÂn Nacional Republicana (20 per
cent); and Venezuela's AccioÂn DemocraÂtica (20 per cent).
14 The relatively large number of FMLN and FSLN women deputies elected is
due not only to the quota rules, but also to the relatively high level of
women's participation within the FMLN and FSLN as well as the parties'
historic commitment to the election of women.
15 Legislators make requests to the leader of their party's congressional delega-
tion regarding which committees they want to serve on. While legislators do
not always receive assignments on their preferred committees, with the
exception of assignments on the most prominent committees (e.g., Budget,
Constitutional Affairs, Foreign Affairs), legislators generally obtain assign-
ments on the committees they requested.
54 Gender and Rights in Latin America

16 Men and women did not differ significantly in the overall number of bills
they presented. During this period women on average presented 3.6 bills
while men presented 4.2.
17 The reproductive health bill, however, died in the Senate, where women occupy
a mere 3 per cent of the seats. Women's high presence in the City of Buenos Aires
Constituent Assembly was also responsible for the progressive character of the
city's constitution. Among other things, the Constitution of the City of Buenos
Aires recognises the `right to be different', and proclaims that `sexual and
reproductive rights' are `basic human rights' (RodrõÂguez 1997).
18 Article 40 of the 1991 Constitution also states that `The authorities will
guarantee the adequate and effective participation of women in the deci-
sion-making levels of Public Administration.'
19 Interview with Deputy Elisa CarrioÂ, Buenos Aires, 4 August 1998.
20 Interview with the City of Buenos Aires Councillor Marta Oyhanarte, Buenos
Aires, 31 July 1998.
21 For discussion of the importance of multi-sectoral women's political alliances
in advancing women's interests in Latin American politics, see Alvarez
(1990), Friedman (1997) and Stevenson (1999).
22 Instead of relying on the `false gender neutrality' of `governador', `senador',
or `deputado' (Brazilian Portuguese for `governor', `senator', and `deputy'),
Suplicy proposed that ballots make reference to `governador/governadora',
`senador/senadora', and `deputado/deputada'.

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3
Getting Rights for Those
without Representation:
the Success of Conjunctural
Coalition-building in Venezuela
Elisabeth Jay Friedman

Introduction

In 1990, the Venezuelan Congress passed a reform of the Organic Labour

Law that, among other provisions, gave women workers equal rights
with men and improved the rights of working mothers. This striking
combination of equality and protectionism for women cannot be
credited to the usual sponsors of legislative reform. Instead of relying
on one of the then dominant political parties or the good auspices of the
powerful executive branch, women came together in a `conjunctural'
coalition to lobby for the reform.1 To establish and/or improve their
rights they united across political arenas at a particular time around a
particular set of issues, without demanding ongoing organisational or
ideological coherence, and achieved their goal. But that goal was de-
pendent on another crucial strategy: the use of a rights discourse that
emphasised the familial and social benefits made possible by simultan-
eously asserting women's equality with, and difference from, men.
The use of national-level coalitions for the advancement of women's
rights has become a common strategy across Latin America, given par-
ticular national and international opportunities. During the democra-
tisation process in Chile and El Salvador, for example, women sought to
assert a wide range of demands. In Chile the National Coalition of
Women for Democracy (ConcertacioÂn Nacional de Mujeres por la
Democracia: CNMD) was created in 1989 as an autonomous women's
coalition in support of the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy
(ConcertacioÂn de Partidos por la Democracia), which won the first
democratic elections in Chile following the Pinochet dictatorship.

57
58 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Drawing together party members, women from nongovernmental or-

ganisations (NGOs) and feminists, the CNMD sought to raise gender
issues in the transition to democracy. It proposed gender-specific gov-
ernment policies and the promotion of women within political parties.
It clearly influenced government policy: `most of the gender-specific
policies implemented by the democratic government between 1990
and 1994 were initially proposed by the CNMD' (Frohmann and ValdeÂs
1995: 288). Moreover, in the 1989 presidential campaign all political
parties, even those outside the coalition, included gender-specific pro-
posals in their platforms and at least discussed the need for female
leadership (ibid. 287±9).
After finding themselves largely excluded from the peace process that
initiated the transition to democracy in El Salvador, women formed the
`Mujeres '94' coalition. Its purpose was to use the opportunity of the
1994 elections as a means to raise gender consciousness in the new
democracy. It had three plans of action: 1) to develop a women's polit-
ical platform and publicise which parties (if any) responded to their
demands; 2) to support female candidates who promoted the platform;
and 3) to help register the thousands of unregistered voters, estimated to
be 75 per cent female. The coalition's efforts resulted in an improved
record of registered female voters, although turnout was disappointing
as a whole. On the municipal and national levels the proportion of
women elected did not improve. However, the government and oppos-
ition coalition signed a document on International Women's Day prom-
ising to implement a minimum set of women's demands regardless of
the outcome of the election (Saint-Germain 1997). The coalition was
active again in 1997, when members continued to work during the
elections to promote a women's initiative for equality in political par-
ticipation (Luciak 1998).
In Brazil, the preparations for the 1995 Fourth World Conference on
Women in Beijing sparked the formation of the Union of Brazilian
Women for Beijing '95 (ArticulacaÄo de Mulheres Brasileiras), which
assembled nearly 100 representatives of women's groups to `bring Bei-
jing home to Brazil'. It organised a series of preparatory conferences and
meetings in 25 of Brazil's 26 states, seeking to capitalise on the inter-
national attention to gender inequality by raising awareness at the
national level. Hundreds of organisations participated in this process.
Although the Union was criticised for its centralisation and seeming
elitism, it did attempt to engage women at the local level around their
particular issues as well as to influence the government efforts around
Beijing (Alvarez 1997).
 Elisabeth Jay Friedman 59

These examples show that coalitions have provided the means for
effective mediation among women to articulate a set of gender-specific
demands at the national level, particularly when women face a history
of political exclusion. But the strategy of uniting women across ideo-
logical, organisational and socioeconomic differences is also useful for
specific goals. In contrast to the more platform-oriented coalitions,
much of the coalition-building in Venezuela has been focused on
gaining legal rights.2 Its success reveals several factors that may be
crucial considerations for such achievement in contexts where women
may not have equal access to traditional representational channels.3
To begin with, the Labour Law reform coalition drew on past experi-
ence with rights advocacy. Most recently, on 6 July 1982, the Vene-
zuelan Congress passed a reform of the Civil Code, formerly one of the
three most discriminatory in Latin America, to ensure women's and
men's equal legal rights within the family and children's equal rights
regardless of their parents' marital status.4 Eight previous attempts at
reform since 1970 had failed to bring results. Thus instead of relying on
the traditional state- or party-backed methods for achieving legal
change, the reform proponents drew together a coalition of women
working inside and outside of the state. First, a professional women's
organisation (the Venezuelan Federation of Women Lawyers ± Federa-
cioÂn Venezolana de Abogadas: FEVA), and then the head of the national
women's agency, Mercedes Pulido de Bricen Äo, took the lead. They built
an alliance that relied upon women's capacity for autonomous organis-
ing across partisan differences and political arenas, using an explicitly
nonfeminist, pro-family rhetorical strategy.
The development of this strategy was provoked by the reform oppos-
ition, conservative congressmen and lawyers who saw the reform as a
radical feminist challenge to the sanctity and stability of the family. In
response, instead of focusing on how the reform would give women and
men equal rights, reform proponents promoted the reform as one that
would foster democracy in the most fundamental building block of
society, the family. This strategy neatly sidestepped the contentious
debate over the structure of gender relations within the family by focus-
ing instead on the societal value of democracy. The result was a reform
of the Civil Code supported by women from a spectrum of civil society
groups and legislators from every political party.
Some aspects of coalition-building were developed and/or improved
following the Civil Code reform. The Labour Law reform proponents
exploited changing national, international and regional opportuni-
ties for women. On the domestic front, more autonomous civil
60 Gender and Rights in Latin America

society-based organisations were taking advantage of the relatively

stable political environment of a consolidated regime, and beginning
to challenge the party-permeated politics of Venezuela. Internationally,
the 1985 Nairobi meeting to close the UN Decade on Women (1975±85)
promoted and legitimised national discussion of women's issues. Many
governments felt obliged to give at least rhetorical support to women's
rights and advocates made good use of the opportunity to prepare both
governmental and nongovernmental documents assessing women's
status. Regional and international networks blossomed under these
auspicious circumstances.
By the time they started working on labour legislation, women them-
selves had improved their capacity for effective action. The new head of
the national women's agency, Virginia Olivo de Celli, cooperated closely
with leaders of a newly constituted umbrella organisation, the Coordin-
ating Committee of Women's Nongovernmental Organisations (Coor-
dinadora de Organizaciones No-Gubernamentales de Mujeres: CONG).
This latter group was quite heterogeneous, bringing together represen-
tatives of professional and grassroots groups inspired by their successful
collaboration around the Civil Code reform.
Women's cooperation was anchored by their transformation of repre-
sentational mechanisms. In and outside of the state, women developed
organisations that were strikingly different from the traditional models
of Venezuelan political representation, which were reliant on hierarch-
ical and usually partisan control over centralised structures. In contrast,
the two organisations upon which the reform of the Labour Law would
depend, the national women's agency and the CONG, were largely
independent from particular parties and relatively decentralised. Their
membership was `mixed', that is, drawn from different parties as well as
from independents, and included well-connected political leaders. The
organisations were linked together through a set of commissions that
assisted in the coordination of women's mobilisation without leading to
state cooptation of civil society groups. During the reform process, the
new institutional resource in the legislative branch of a bicameral com-
mission on women's rights helped generate further support.
In order to promote women's workplace rights, reformers used a
rhetorical strategy that built upon past success by emphasising the
family-friendly aspects of the new legislation. But in a new twist,
they focused on the `social function of maternity' as the underlying
justification for gender-sensitive workplace legislation. They clearly dif-
ferentiated this social function of women ± or the rights of mothers ±
from the equal rights of female and male workers, promoting the
 Elisabeth Jay Friedman 61

recognition of both women's difference from and their equality with

men.5
Finally, reform proponents publicised a personal tragedy that they saw
as clearly linked to the need for reform. At a crucial juncture in reform
organising, October 1985, a pregnant employee of the Labour Ministry
who had been delaying her inadequate maternity leave died from com-
plications linked to work-related stress. Her case became a cause ceÂleÁbre of
the reform movement and a sympathetic media brought it to the atten-
tion of national decision-makers.
Despite the success women achieved through coalition-building, the
coalition was not fully representative of women from all classes. Like
earlier efforts, it was composed principally of, and was certainly led by,
professionals, union women and middle-class political activists,
resulting in low-income women's demands being sidelined. This dom-
inance of more elite women was reflected in the reformed law. It did not
extend equal rights to those women who worked in the home, whether
their own or someone else's. Some of the reform leaders were not willing
to acknowledge legally the work of the women who made it possible for
these very leaders to have full-time careers by carrying out their families'
domestic chores.

Civil society organises

It is widely recognised that the global call put out to women's organisa-
tions to prepare reports on the status of women for Nairobi sparked the
creation of the first Venezuelan umbrella organisation for women's
NGOs (CONG 1988b, GarcõÂa and Rosillo 1992). On 22, March 1985,
five NGOs that had interacted during the Civil Code reform sponsored
a meeting to discuss plans for the Nairobi NGO forum, to be held close
to the time of the government conference.6 But the 20 groups that
attended this historic meeting decided to go beyond Nairobi-oriented
efforts. They established the CONG, a nonpartisan, civil society-based
women's rights association.
The CONG was the first Venezuelan organisation to bring together
feminist and nonfeminist women's groups on an ongoing basis. Its
official statutes proclaimed its commitment to the principle of `unity
within diversity': its stated purpose was to assemble groups working to
end legal, economic, social, political and cultural discrimination against
women and to promote women's full participation in national life. All
types of associations were welcomed, including social, political, eco-
nomic, labour, religious, professional, cultural, neighbourhood and
62 Gender and Rights in Latin America

housewife groups.7 This diversity led to ± and was dependent on ± the

development of the CONG's alternative structure.
The innovative structure largely responsible for the CONG's founda-
tion and successes was developed in direct response to the way in which
Venezuelan parties had coopted almost every sector of civil society while
marginalising and separating women. Nora Castan Äeda, a CONG
member, gave the example of how parties essentially created their own
unions, which were then bound to the parties through their labour
bureaux. But at the same time, parties had done very little for women,
because the women's bureau did not function as well as the others.8
Instead of promoting women's interests in the party, these bureaux
mainly took on infrastructural tasks that mirrored the housekeeping
duties of women in the private sphere (Friedman 1998). Meanwhile,
partisan rivalries kept women from uniting outside of party structures.
Thus the CONG founders sought to construct an organisation that
would address women's concerns without imposing a `party line'.
Due to the influence of the dominant channels of representation,
however, a new structure had to be carefully negotiated between those
who rejected traditional structures altogether and those still working
within them. After considerable debate, the feminists convinced the
other members that a very different structure would be more conducive
to the CONG's goal: bringing together women's organisations to ex-
change information and work on common projects without interfer-
ence in the specific workings of any member group.9
As a result, the CONG statutes called for decentralisation and non-
hierarchical decision-making, with each member group being autono-
mous. All decisions were to be based on the consensus of the group
representatives who attended bimonthly meetings. The coordination of
the CONG was to be done by a three-person council that rotated among
the groups every six months and was elected by direct and open elec-
tion.
The rejection of traditional organising had an impact not only on the
structure of the CONG, but also on its membership and leadership.
Many CONG members feared that, as had happened in the past, party
women would try to colonise the group on behalf of their party. The
extent to which partisan loyalties were embedded in Venezuelan society
could not be ignored; however, it was soon recognised that many of the
NGO affiliates were also active in parties. Moreover, those women who
were party activists made no attempts to take over the CONG. Finally it
was decided that members could join as representatives of the nondom-
inant parties. The leadership council generally represented the three
 Elisabeth Jay Friedman 63

different types of activists who made up the CONG: feminists or profes-

sionals, party activists and grassroots organisers.
A contributing factor to early group unity was, paradoxically, a lack of
funding. This was yet another element which differentiated the CONG
from traditional interest-group organising, often predicated on support
from particular parties. The CONG's resources were always strained.
Dues came in sporadically and outside support was minimal. Several
CONG members were able to go to the Nairobi meeting only when Fidel
Castro chartered a plane from Cuba to Kenya to ferry 100 Latin Ameri-
can activists. However, the lack of funding was not seen as an obstacle.
The CONG met in a donated space and members shared infrastructural
duties. Furthermore the lack of resources prevented schisms around
distribution issues. Castan Äeda noted how surprised a few CONG
members were to find out at the regional feminist meeting in Argentina
(1990) that conflict had arisen between professional feminists running
NGOs and the women in whose name they supposedly raised funds. In
contrast, CONG members saw that their lack of outside funding pro-
tected them from such infighting.10
The decision of the CONG member groups to focus on women specif-
ically, across ideological and programmatic differences, had several
results. Members began to analyse discrimination in their personal and
professional lives;11 the CONG as a whole sponsored a multi-issue event
`Women Take Over the Cultural Centre!' in March 1986; and members
began to rely on gender solidarity in several campaigns. But the largest
of these were dependent on collaboration with the state women's
agency, the National Women's Office.

Solidifying state action for women12

Civil society was not the only arena affected by preparations for Nairobi.
With a change of administration in 1984, incoming Social Democratic
president Jaime Lusinchi closed down his Christian Democrat predeces-
sor's Ministry for the Participation of Women in Development (Minis-
terio para la ParticipacioÂn de la Mujer en el Desarrollo). This action shut
off the crucial channel to the state women relied upon in the Civil Code
reform. But a pivotal activist within the state, Virginia Olivo de Celli,
ensured that this key factor for women's mobilisation would not be
abandoned. In order to justify maintaining a national women's agency,
she relied on the legitimacy provided by international attention to
women's issues during the UN Decade on Women. As the then head of
the Family Department of the Youth Ministry, she attended a 1984
64 Gender and Rights in Latin America

women's meeting of the Socialist International at which she heard of the

need for a state women's agency. After discussions with collaborators on
the Civil Code reform confirmed the key role the now defunct women's
agency had played, she was determined to maintain this resource for
women in the executive branch. Olivo de Celli established the National
Women's Office (Oficina Nacional de la Mujer: ONM) within the Youth
Ministry in 1984, using two justifications: the recommendation of the
Organisation of American States' Interamerican Women's Commission
that every member state have a national women's agency, and secondly
the need to coordinate a report for the Nairobi conference.
Olivo de Celli was well positioned for her activism on women's behalf.
She was politically connected through her prominent Social Democrat
family and, ironically, did not have a history of visible women's activ-
ism. Her lack of previous involvement in women's issues allowed her to
serve as a nonthreatening outer representation for women's transforma-
tive actions within the state, while simultaneously making her depend-
ent on encouraging collaborative work. To facilitate collaboration, she
took on as the direct head of the ONM Rosa Paredes, a well-known
activist on women's issues, particularly those of low-income women.
Olivo de Celli's need for advice and the obvious success of collabora-
tive efforts around reforming the Civil Code led to a significant differ-
ence in organisation between the ONM and the previous women's
agency. The ONM went one step beyond the frequent nongovernmental
consultations to incorporate explicitly women from outside the govern-
ment within its structure. The first description of the ONM's functions
included interaction with several NGOs mentioned by name; not coin-
cidentally several of the key players in the Civil Code reform (Ministerio
de la Juventud 1984: 50). Members of these and other groups were to be
incorporated into the work of the office through the mechanism of
voluntary advisory commissions. Commission membership ranged
across parties and philosophies: the official swearing-in ceremony in-
cluded Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, Socialists, Communists
and even the most radical feminists.
As Olivo de Celli was promoted through the executive branch she
took the office with her. When she was made the Minister of the Family
in 1987, she converted the ONM into its own department, the Depart-
ment for Women's Advancement (DireccioÂn General Sectorial de Pro-
mocioÂn a la Mujer or Directorate). By this time 170 women were
participating in the commissions, and state women's offices were oper-
ating in 17 of 22 states (Ministerio de la Familia 1987: 60). Policy design,
not execution, was the limited prerogative of the women's agency.
 Elisabeth Jay Friedman 65

However, the commissions' input spurred a notable transformation in

the interests expressed through the agency's policy-making. From a
focus on women's contribution to development and their needs as
mothers, policies gradually shifted to promoting women's legal rights
and improving their economic and social status.

State±civil society relations and results

The institutionalisation of women's representation through the ONM/

Directorate resulted in a modification of the traditional methods of
state-based interest mediation. These methods had been based on the
incorporation of the major players in interest group politics, such as
capital and labour, directly into the state.13 In contrast, the women's
advisory commissions formed a decentralised network with autonomy
in its decision-making and represented a wide range of women. Instead
of privately reconciling class interests through the state by striking
bargains over economic resources, the ONM/Directorate and its com-
missions became motors for public campaigns on women's issues.
The collaborative model of the ONM/Directorate proved so successful
that at the UNICEF-sponsored regional meeting `State and Civil Society
Joining Forces to Support Women' (Caracas, 15±17 August 1988) the
Venezuelan experience was used as a model of successful cooperation
(Rocha SaÂnchez 1991). But the model was also dependent on its other
half: the increasingly organised women in NGOs whose input was cen-
tral to developing more explicitly women-focused policies. Many
women from the CONG sat on the state commissions and took an active
part in much of the ONM/Directorate's work.
Despite its close relationship with the state agency, the CONG mem-
bership did not consider its practice of autonomous decision-making
compromised. Moreover, the lack of financial ties between the CONG
and the state agency kept the type of clientelistic relationship that often
results in the political subordination of the constituencies of state agen-
cies to dominant political interests from developing. At the 1988
UNICEF meeting, CONG members explained that they had no definitive
methodology for their work with the agency. Much as they interacted in
their internal process, they cooperated with the agency around con-
junctural issues. This method was the only one possible due to the
heterogeneity of political outlooks represented in the CONG and the
state administration (Rocha SaÂnchez 1991: 42±3).
Instead of leading to political subordination, the cooperation between
the two organisations undergirded three successful campaigns against
66 Gender and Rights in Latin America

gender discrimination. The campaign to free IneÂs MarõÂa Marcano

(1987), a young single mother unjustly imprisoned for child abandon-
ment, was largely an effort of the CONG membership in conjunction
with women from the marginal neighbourhoods, but it also relied upon
sympathetic actors in the Directorate (CONG 1988c). The United
Women Leaders' movement (1987±88), which sought to improve
women's positions on party electoral lists, was coordinated by the Dir-
ectorate with the help of CONG members and elite party women.
Finally, the successful fight to reform discriminatory aspects of the
Labour Law (1985±90) drew on the entire spectrum of women activists,
from union members to politicians to feminists.14

Reforming the Labour Law

The ONM began work on the reform early in its tenure. In the evalu-
ations undertaken for Nairobi, the need for reforms in the Labour Law,
as well as the Penal Code, surfaced with vigour. In one of the first uses of
the advisory commissions, Olivo de Celli called together women from
parties and civil society to discuss the reforms in February 1985, and the
ONM submitted a proposal for reform of the Penal Code to Congress in
late 1985. But the proposal was quickly dismissed. Among other
reformed articles was the liberalisation of abortion restrictions, which
would have decriminalised abortion in the cases not only of risk to the
mother's life, but also if the pregnancy were the result of rape or incest,
or if the foetus were badly malformed (Sgambatti 1992: 81, 85). The
abortion debate provoked severe dissension among the mainly male
legislators, who put aside the women's proposal.
The dismissal of the Penal Code reform illustrates the problem women
faced in altering discriminatory legislation. Anything that could seen as
a radical departure from traditional gender relations, such as increasing
women's control over reproduction, was politically too sensitive. Sup-
porting maternity was more popular than controlling it, as was evi-
denced by the family-focus of the Civil Code reform. Thus, it is not
surprising that women promoted the reform of the Labour Law as
protection for the mothers of future generations of Venezuelans. But
in doing so they also made an important departure: this protection was
justified in a way that recognised that not all women workers were
working mothers, and that motherhood had a function for society as a
whole beyond family boundaries. In this way reform proponents
managed to simultaneously promote gender difference and gender
equality.
 Elisabeth Jay Friedman 67

The ONM found highly placed allies in its quest to reform the Labour
Law. Ex-president Rafael Caldera, a Christian Democrat and the co-
author of the original 1936 legislation, headed a bicameral congressional
commission already working on a comprehensive reform. The prepar-
ations for the 1985 UN women's conference in Nairobi helped extend this
effort, in the form of the Congressional Commission to Evaluate the
Decade on Women. Under the guidance of Social Democratic congress-
woman Paulina Gamus, the Commission took up the reform of the
Labour Law as a priority for women. These efforts were united in a
Commission workshop in early May attended by those already working
on the reform: the ONM, CONG members, the Labour Ministry, and the
influential business organisation FEDECAMARAS (the Venezuelan Feder-
ation of Chambers of Commerce and Production). Those present at this
workshop agreed that there were two types of discrimination to be ad-
dressed in the Labour Law. Women workers were still excluded from
certain positions due to antiquated protective legislation (such as limita-
tions on nightwork), but working mothers needed increased workplace
rights (such as the provision of onsite nurseries for the infants of women
who were breastfeeding). This differentiation challenged the automatic
association of women with motherhood. The protective clauses were
rejected on the grounds that working women should have the same rights
as working men. The increased rights were solicited on the basis of the
central importance of healthy maternity to family and social life. In
promoting these various demands supporters cited their inclusion in
international agreements such as the UN Convention to Eliminate All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which Venezuela had ratified
in 1982 (ComisioÂn Especial n.d.: 5±1.).
But in the general agreement over changes to be made in the Labour
Law, one point of contention stood out: that of which classes of women
would have full rights. Whether to extend workplace rights to paid
domestic workers was fiercely debated at the workshop. Some congress-
women and FEVA lawyers spoke against their inclusion, while the ONM
and CONG members fought for it (Ultimas NotõÂcias, 5 May 1985). Shortly
after the workshop the CONG sent a letter to Olivo de Celli to clarify
that as an organisation, it supported the equality of home- with work-
place-based workers. The ONM was in agreement; its director, Rosa
Paredes, understood the need for domestic workers' rights from her
experience organising women in marginal neighbourhoods. The debate
pointed to the conflicting interests within the coalition. Those opposed
to including paid domestic workers were not willing to compromise
their class privilege and acknowledge that their ability to lead
68 Gender and Rights in Latin America

professional lives was based on the potential exploitation of other

women. Those for inclusion insisted that all women deserved equal
rights at the workplace, irrespective of the impact on particular classes.15
To ensure representation of nongovernmental women's perspectives
in the reform, the CONG held a three-day meeting to analyse the
government proposals. Members found few disagreements with the
proposals from the ONM and the Decade Commission. But as explained
by CONG member organisation All (Women) Together (Todas Juntas),
Caldera's version, which already had been introduced into Congress in
August 1985, was problematic. It left in place too many outdated pro-
tections, did not strengthen the enforcement of workplace nurseries for
workers' children, and paid little attention to the situation of domestic
workers (Revista SIC 49: 484:159±60.).
As in the case of the Civil Code, lawyer and judge Yolanda Poleo de
Baez authored the final proposals that the CONG agreed to support. To
end discrimination against women workers, she proposed eliminating
sex-specific employment advertising, banning pregnancy tests for
female applicants and prohibiting any other sex-specific limitations on
employment. In supposedly neutral but gender-freighted provisions,
she sought flexible and shorter workdays (which would make women's
balancing of home and work obligations easier), an end to the law
whereby one spouse (usually the husband) could ask the other (usually
the wife) to give up her job on the grounds of it being `prejudicial to the
family', and, finally, a limitation on workers' early liquidation of their
severance benefits to 50 per cent without the consent of their spouses, to
guard against the loss of housewives' communal property.
In order to clarify that the rights she sought to expand in the reform
were to protect maternity (or parenthood) and not women per se, Poleo
de Baez proposed changing the section entitled `Women and Minors' to
`Protection of Maternity and the Family'. Within it she argued for an
expansion of pre- and postnatal leave from 12 to 18 weeks, and the
adoption of a maternity exemption protecting pregnant women and
new mothers from being fired. The demand for the exemption was
based on a legal exemption that protected union organisers from
being fired during union drives and while serving in union positions.
If firing procedures were started for some severe violation of workplace
conduct, they had to be carefully monitored by a state labour inspector.
In a sense, the application of these conditions to pregnant women
protected the `union' being formed between mother and child.
To help new mothers Poleo de Baez suggested a six-hour workday for
nursing mothers, the expansion of workplace nurseries into childcare
 Elisabeth Jay Friedman 69

centres for the children of male and female workers,16 and fines, closure,
or jail for owners who did not protect pregnant women and provide
onsite childcare. The reform also asked for obligatory social security for
housewives; and finally, it stipulated equal rights for paid domestic
workers, including set hours, vacation time, and social security, as well
as social security for home-based and pieceworkers (La Mala Vida, March
1986: 3).
Shortly after the CONG workshops, a tragic incident gave the reform
movement a powerful case around which to mobilise support for their
cause. CõÂpriana VelaÂsquez was a pregnant office worker in, of all places,
the Labour Ministry. She had been working as close as possible to the
end of her term in order to save her six week prenatal leave to add to her
six-week postnatal leave; a strategy used by many women who wanted
more than a month and a half to spend with their newborns. However,
upon receiving a memo in late October stating that the procedure for
firing her was underway due to several unexplained absences, VelaÂsquez
went home, became hysterical and, despite a recent bill of good health,
went into shock. She died shortly after.
No sooner had her death made a banner headline in the major daily El
Nacional on 31 October 1986, than the CONG started organising. They
united women's efforts across separate arenas to bring the individual
tragedy and its social meaning to the public's attention. The following
day a congresswoman demanded a full investigation of the case in
Congress. The matter was taken up the Committee on Social Affairs
within the week. Meanwhile the current president of FEVA gave a press
release decrying the case as one more result of a faulty Labour Law.
CONG members from the Central University quickly established the
CõÂpriana VelaÂsquez Committee, bringing together academics, staff and
students. The Committee immediately made a public demand for the
firing of CõÂpriana's supervisor, who under the current law had been
responsible for giving at least three verbal warnings to her employee
before beginning firing procedures. Women from the major labour con-
federation, the CTV, used the case to highlight the need for a maternity
exemption: it would have granted CõÂpriana, as a pregnant worker, an
exemption from being fired. On 6 November women from the CTV,
the CõÂpriana VelaÂsquez Committee and two feminist organisations
staged a protest outside of the Labour Ministry and Congress to demand
the immediate reform of the Labour Law, especially the protection of
pregnant women, longer maternity leave and onsite daycare. This
protest set off others in cities in the interior (El Nacional, 31 Oct.±6
Nov. 1985).
70 Gender and Rights in Latin America

At the Caracas-based protest, the CONG began a petition drive in

honour of CõÂpriana to introduce their version of the reformed Labour
Law into Congress.17 As with a similar petition drive for the Civil Code
reform, it raised awareness of the issues throughout the country. Six
months after the Labour Law petition was begun 20 000 signatures were
delivered to Congress (8 April 1986). Outside, the 8 March theatre
group, which had been started in 1983 to publicise the Civil Code
reform, performed a new piece about the issues at stake in the Labour
Law reform. CONG members passed out leaflets claiming that `the
Venezuelan State should recognise maternity not as a particular and
private problem of a woman and her family, but as a social and public
problem which requires State policies' (CONG n.d.). As a result of the
petition drive, the CONG-sponsored reforms joined those already under
discussion in Congress.
Work slowed during the 1987±88 electoral season. When Caldera
introduced the reform for congressional consideration in August 1988,
he sat on the fence when it came to women's demands, simultaneously
warning that the `overprotection' of women might make employers opt
for men and acknowledging that `women have been the sector most
interested' in the reform (El Nacional, 8 April 1988). In June 1989 the
debate started to heat up again and the coalition was ready. The CONG
and women from the major labour confederations declared the estab-
lishment of a united front to fight for their reforms, helped by two new
state organisations for women's issues: the latest version of the execu-
tive-branch women's agency and one in Congress.
By this time the national agency for women had taken on yet another
form with the change of administration in 1989. Under pressure from
female party activists, the reelected Social Democratic president, Carlos
AndreÂs PeÂrez, reestablished the Presidential Women's Advisory Commis-
sion (ComisioÂn Femenina Asesora de la Presidencia: COFEAPRE) from
his previous term in office (1974±78). Although linked with the new
administration, COFEAPRE continued the reform campaign of the Dir-
ectorate and made its support public. In its press releases, COFEAPRE
affirmed the separation of women's equal work conditions from protec-
tion of the `social function' of maternity and called on international
norms in support of it:

We support the proposal of the Labour Law in all its parts, because it
constitutes a significant advance in Venezuelan labour legisla-
tion . . . Chapter Seven [on maternity and family protection] deserves
special attention because it considers maternity as a social function,
 Elisabeth Jay Friedman 71

contains dispositions which protect it and achieves the objective of

the principles contained in our Magna Carta and the UN Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women,
so that women might exercise their right to employment in condi-
tions of equality, might have access to all the economic activities and
enjoy the social benefits for their condition of female worker, such as
the maternity exemption. (El Nacional, 7 August 1989)

During the course of the debates, Congress also instituted a new

mechanism for women's representation in the legislature which con-
gresswomen put at the service of the reform effort. The idea for the
Bicameral Commission for Women's Rights (ComisioÂn Bicameral de
Derechos de la Mujer) started in the wake of the furore over the death
of CõÂpriana VelaÂsquez, when congresswomen proposed a specific com-
mission to oversee women's rights issues.18 Officially convened in June
1989, by mid-1990 the Commission was sponsoring a series of forums to
keep discussion of the reform alive in state legislatures and city halls
across the country.
Meanwhile women outside the government teamed up with a con-
gressional representative to ensure the continued effectiveness of the
women's coalition. Amarilis Valor, a member of the CTV and recently
elected congressional deputy, brought together female party leaders and
CONG members in regular meetings on the reform. She reported on
what was being discussed in Congress and all would plan what she
would say on the House floor.19
One of Valor's speeches underscored both this concerted consultation
and the lessons women had learned from prior mobilisation: speak of
the family, but make sure everyone knows that united women are
seeking their rights. Her speech began: `Notice, citizens, that we are
not talking about women. We are speaking without bias about the Law
which protects families.' Yet despite her universalistic rhetoric, through-
out the rest of her speech Valor continually mentioned the range of
women consulted on the bill and women's refusal to let it get dismissed,
as had happened in the early stages of the Civil Code reform (Diario de
Debates, 4 July 1989: 33). To make sure the message got through, every
time Valor spoke in Congress, CONG activists demonstrated outside for
the reform. Occasionally they took their protest inside, opening up a big
banner in the House balcony declaring `we women want the reform of
the Labour Law NOW' when debate was particularly intense.20
The opposition to the Labour Law grew fiercest towards the end of
the deliberations. The main opponent was the business organisation
72 Gender and Rights in Latin America

FEDECAMARAS, despite its earlier support of reform efforts. It was gen-

erally against the law's increase in worker benefits and protections at a
time of changing economic conditions,21 but the section protecting
maternity came under particular attack. According to FEDECAMARAS,
the maternity exemption would only result in employer reluctance to
hire women. Moreover, small businesses would go under if they had to
provide the level of childcare specified in the law. That sort of social
service, business argued, was the duty of the state.
In response to the opposition, women turned again to appeals based
on the family-oriented nature of maternity protection. In the closing
congressional debates on the reform, congresswomen took the floor to
defend the different provisions of the section on `Maternity and the
Family'. A Social Democrat argued:

It is not women we are protecting in a special manner by considering

them inferior to men, they are equal to men, they have the same rights
and duties in that which does not have to do with the function of
maternity; when women are mothers, it is their children whom we
ought to protect, and that has been the intention of this Chapter
which refers to maternity and to the family. (Ibid., Diario de Debates, 8)

Because the Labour Law was not only concerned with women, the
reform coalition was far from alone in its advocacy. It took advantage of
the opportunity afforded by the broader reform debate to advance
women's rights. Being on the side of the workers was a claim all parties
in Venezuela had made at some point in their history, generating a great
deal of political support for the reform. Party objections to FEDECA-
MARAS's accusations of political interference in the economy reached a
peak when the Senate passed a resolution stating that it had been
offended by the way in which the business community had publicly
disparaged the Congress (El Nacional, 16 November 1990). The reform
passed 27 November 1990.

Results of the reform

The new Labour Law included many of the original proposals generated
by the ONM and the CONG. From the removal of discriminatory articles
to the newly entitled chapter `Of the Labour Protection of Maternity and
the Family', the reform made clear that no differences were to be per-
mitted that denied working women's equal rights with men, only those
that allowed them to combine work and motherhood. Thus, discrimin-
 Elisabeth Jay Friedman 73

ation on the basis of sex, in employment advertising and work condi-

tions (for example mandatory pregnancy testing) was banned, and nei-
ther spouse could now ask the other to give up their job on the basis of
family needs. Simultaneously, the special maternity dispensations were
explicitly labelled as nondiscriminatory. Pregnant women were
exempted without penalty from work that might harm their pregnan-
cies and granted 18 weeks of maternity leave, compensated for by Social
Security. The maternity exemption was included, protecting women's
employment while they were pregnant and for one year following birth
(or adoption). Breastfeeding women were given the right to two half-
hour breaks to nurse their children at onsite nurseries, or two one-hour
breaks if their children were at home. Finally, employers with more than
20 workers had to supply a childcare centre, or make provisions for
childcare, for all of their employees (male and female) with children
under six.
But because the predominately upper-class women who had led the
reform campaign could not agree to protect low-income women's rights,
class-based discrimination remained in the final document. Paid domes-
tic workers were not given equal rights. Although these workers con-
tinued to be legally entitled to one day off a week, ten hours of rest a day,
15 days paid vacation a year and yearly bonuses, they were not given
health care benefits or social security. Pieceworkers and outworkers were
also denied these benefits.
Two years after the law's passage, business continued to object to it ±
and the coalition of women continued to support their victory. In
November 1992, a business lawyer brought a claim to the Supreme
Court to annul the daycare provisions in the Labour Law and its enab-
ling legislation. His argument was that the extension of these provisions
went against the original spirit of the law, which was only to provide a
place for women to nurse infants, not to supply daycare for the young
children of workers of both sexes. The coalition partners reunited to
fight the claim, filing a brief that explained that the intent of the reform
was to bring the law up to date, not violate its spirit, by protecting all
workers' children (GarcõÂa Prince et al. 1993).
The implementation of the Labour Law revealed a gap between de jure
and de facto rights for women. Following the Supreme Court suit, a few
of the enabling provisions were nullified, making it easier for businesses
to pay parents directly to provide for their own childcare ± the preferred
solution of those businesses that complied with the law.22 Moreover, the
sanctions put in place for the many businesses that violated the provi-
sions were not as serious as the activists had asked for. Violators of any
74 Gender and Rights in Latin America

dispositions of the maternity section were fined between one and four
times the minimum wage. Finally, the growing informal labour sector ±
where many of the poorest worked ± could not be forced to comply with
any legislation.

Conclusion

Although implementation would turn out to be a problem, the move-

ment to reform the Labour Law demonstrated the potential of women's
coalition-building for achieving their rights. This particular coalition
was dependent on women's organisational innovations. The women's
agency in the state provided a forum for the expression of demands by a
range of women, and helped advance these demands through the mech-
anism of its advisory commissions. Meanwhile the decentralised, non-
hierarchical CONG significantly altered the traditional model of interest
organisations in civil society; it united women around issues of
common concern and maintained access to the state. Both organisa-
tions took advantage of the presence of international processes directed
at women.
These organisational innovations were bolstered by innovations in
political discourse. Without abandoning appeals that asserted women's
rights claims as essential to a healthy family life, Labour Law reform
proponents combined demands for women's equal and different rights.
Moreover, as the `democratising' Civil Code proponents had before
them, they argued that women's rights had social, and not merely
individual, benefits.
Built by women who as a group shared a common experience of mar-
ginalisation or exclusion from traditional politics, the model of organis-
ing that was responsible for the successful reform had little to do with the
dominant model of representation through highly centralised, hierarch-
ical and partisan structures. In contrast, organising in loose-knit coali-
tions around a specific issue allowed women to work together despite
their many differences ± the very differences that would most likely have
destroyed a highly organised women's group. Long-time activist Esper-
anza Vera described how Venezuelan women had developed this `inter-
mediary form' of organisation through experience:

It is as though reality is showing us that women, through this

method of not being organised in the traditional manner but being
unified around something which interests us, are creating something
like a different form of collective action . . . Even if it might not be
 Elisabeth Jay Friedman 75

exactly the same as the organisations that we know. . . it's a way to

avoid the frictions. And to avoid the differences, because the differ-
ences exist. If we are all together in an organisation that has require-
ments like the traditional ones, these differences will come into
conflict every day. Meanwhile as we are we only unite when there is
agreement . . . It's a good strategy, but [rather than coming from
theory] it has arisen from the activism itself.23

One product of such a contingent form of organising was comprom-

ise, leaving out the more radical demands that presented too strong a
challenge to the gender or class status quo. But considering the nature of
Venezuelan political society, the coalition model was remarkable.
Through it, a politically excluded group demanded and achieved rights
formerly denied to them.24

Notes
1 The concept of conjunctural coalition-building comes from Sonia Alvarez's
work on the Brazilian women's movement; see Alvarez (1990: 237). Previous
versions of this chapter were presented at the Latin American Studies Associ-
ation Meeting, 24±6 September 1998, Chicago, Il. and the Columbia Univer-
sity Institute for Latin American and Iberian Studies Faculty Seminar,
1 February 1999; some of the work also appears in Friedman (2000). Field
research was made possible in large part by a Fulbright Fellowship. The author
would like to thank the interviewees for their kind cooperation, and the
editors for their helpful comments.
2 For examples of historical conjunctural coalition-building, see Friedman
(2000: ch. 2, 3).
3 In the Venezuelan case, these traditional channels include the historically
powerful political parties, the state executive branch, and party-dominated
organisations of central interest groups. Until recently, partisan rivalry and
party dominance of civil society was a defining feature of Venezuelan political
life. Parties participated in the founding of the central associations of major
interest groups, which were also incorporated into party structure through
secretariats or sectoral bureaux; see Powell (1971), Coppedge (1994: esp. 31±5).
Recent developments, particularly the decline in the political legitimacy and
power of the traditionally dominant parties (the Social Democrats and the
Christian Democrats) and the reconfiguration of the party system, may well
change these dynamics in the future. Details of how these representational
channels excluded women are discussed later in the chapter (see also Fried-
man 1998).
4 For a more complete discussion of the reform of the Civil Code, see Prince de
Kew (1990), Friedman (2000: ch. 4), Friedman (1993).
76 Gender and Rights in Latin America

5 The debate over strategies emphasising equality or difference in women's

rights struggles has a long history in Latin America; see Miller (1991: ch. 4),
Lavrin (1995).
6 The NGOs were FEVA, the women's department of the Communist union
federation, the feminist journalist group `Women and Communication', the
women's studies programme at the Central University of Venezuela, and the
feminist publication La Mala Vida.
7 The first NGOs organising the CONG were feminist, professional, popular,
labour, and solidarity. When it was officially constituted, partisan, religious
and health groups also joined (CONG 1988a). Because the CONG saw itself in
opposition to mainstream politics, the dominant centrist parties, the Social
Democrats and Christian Democrats, were excluded.
8 Interview with Castan Ä eda, 30 August 1994, Caracas.
9 Interview with CONG founding member Fernando Aranguren, 23 April 1994,
Caracas.
10 Interview, 30 August 1994.
11 Interview with CONG member Benita Finol, 26 July 1994, Caracas; cf. GarcõÂa
Guadilla (1993).
12 Much of the information for this section comes from an interview with the
head of the women's agency, Virginia Olivo de Celli (6 June 1994, Caracas) as
well as from the annual reports of the Youth Ministry and Family Ministry
(1984±88).
13 For a discussion of this `semi-corporatist' network, see Crisp, Levine and Rey
(1995).
14 The other campaigns are described in Friedman (2000: ch. 5).
15 Elsa Chaney (1979), and Elsa Chaney and Mary GarcõÂa Castro (1989) have
further explored the impact of the class divide between female employers
and domestic employees on solidarity in Latin American women's organis-
ing.
16 In the original 1936 Labour Law all businesses with more than 30 employees
were supposed to provide nurseries where nursing mothers could breastfeed
during the workday. The reform sought to have all businesses with more than
20 employees provide daycare for both female and male employees' children
under six years old.
17 Article 165 of the Venezuelan Constitution stipulates that one of the five
ways a law can be directly introduced in Congress is through a popular
initiative signed by 20 000 citizens. The Civil Code reform coalition was the
first group to ever use this mechanism.
18 Interview with Senator Ixora Rojas, 9 September 1994, Caracas.
19 Interview with Amarilis Valor, 1 August 1994, Caracas.
20 Interview with Benita Finol, 26 July 1994.
21 Accusing the reform of `populism', business leaders claimed that the reform
would drive up business costs on the order of 30 per cent, increase inflation
and consumer costs, discourage foreign investment, hurt efforts at privatisa-
tion and generally derail new economic efforts (El Nacional Oct.±Nov. 1990).
22 Despite the failure of the demand for annulment as a whole, onsite daycare
continues to be insufficiently provided. Its implementation, though called
for regularly by women's and children's advocates, has largely taken a back
seat to a national homebased daycare programme.
 Elisabeth Jay Friedman 77

23 Interview with Esperanza Vera, 13 July 1994, Caracas.

24 The coalition strategy for achieving gender-sensitive legal reform seems to be
continuing in Venezuela, currently focused on constitutional reform (MeÂrola
1999). It has also been used effectively elsewhere in Latin America, for
example in the establishment and implementation of quotas for women's
representation on party lists in Argentina (Jones 1996: 78±80) and the pas-
sage of a gender equality law in Costa Rica (Saint-Germain and Morgan
1991).

Bibliography
Alvarez, S. E. (1990) Engendering Democracy in Brazil, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press
Alvarez, S. E. (1998) `Latin American feminisms ``go global'': trends of the 1990s
and challenges for the new millenium' in S. E. Alvarez, E. Dagnino and A.
Escobar (eds) Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Re-visioning Latin American
Social Movements, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 293±324
Chaney, E. (1979) Supermadre: Women in Politics in Latin America, Austin, Tex.:
University of Texas Press
Chaney, E. M. and M. G. Castro (1989) Muchachas No More: Household Workers in
Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press
ComisioÂn Especial de la Camara de Diputados del Congreso de la RepuÂblica de
Venezuela para Evaluar el Decenio de la Mujer (n.d.) Informe, Caracas
CONG (Coordinadora de Organizaciones No-Gubernamentales de Mujeres)
(1988a) Estatutos, Caracas
CONG (1988b) CONG, Caracas: CONG
CONG (1988c) La Mujer y La lucha Solidaria: En el caso de IneÂs MarõÂa Marcano, Una
en un milloÂn, Caracas: CONG
CONG (nd) `Defendamos Nuestros Derechos en el Trabajo', Caracas
Coppedge, M. (1994) Strong Parties and Lame Ducks: Presidential Partyarchy and
Factionalism in Venezuela, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press
Crisp, B. F., D. H. Levine and J. C. Rey (1995) `The Legitimacy Problem' in J.
McCoy et al. (eds) Venezuelan Democracy Under Stress, New Brunswick, NJ: Trans-
action Publishers, 139±70
Friedman, E. (1993) `¹Democracia en la Casa? A Study of the Venezuelan Civil
Code' Americas & Latinas: A Journal of Women and Gender, 1 (1) 16±22
Friedman, E. (1998) `Paradoxes of gendered political opportunity in the Vene-
zuelan transition to democracy' in Latin American Research Review, 33 (3) 87±156
Friedman, E. (2000) Unfinished Transitions: Women and the Gendered Development of
Democracy in Venezuela 1936±1996, University Park, Pa.: Penn University Press
Frohmann, A. and T. ValdeÂs (1995) `Democracy in the country and in the home:
the women's movement in Chile' in A. Basu (ed.) The Challenge of Local Femin-
isms: Women's Movements in Global Perspective, Boulder, Colo.: Westview, Press,
276±301
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GarcõÂa, C. T. and C. Rosillo (1992) `Conquistando nuevos espacios: la investiga-

cion y las organizaciones de mujeres' in FEMENTUM: Revista Venezolana de
Sociologia y Antropologia, 2 (4) 3±17
GarcõÂa Guadilla, M. (1993) `EcologõÂa: women, politics and environment in Vene-
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in Latin America, London: Routledge, 65±87
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Caracas: photocopy in author's possession
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gentine ley de cupos' Women & Politics, 16 (4) 75±99
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Uruguay, 1890±1940, Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press
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puÂblica, Caracas: Coediciones Universidad SimoÂn BolõÂvar Congreso de la RepuÂb-
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La Mujer, BogotaÂ: UNICEF
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movement in El Salvador' in Women & Politics, 18 (2) 75±99
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demand ``The real thing'' ' in Women & Politics, 11 (3) 23±75
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de la Mujer, Caracas: COFEAPRE, I, 81±5
4
Taking the Law into their
Own Hands: Women, Legal
Reform and Legal Literacy in Brazil
Fiona Macaulay

Introduction

This chapter examines the way in which women in Latin America have
taken an increasingly proactive and transformative approach to the
legal apparatus of their respective countries over the last two decades.
This development reflects growing international attention to legislation
and access to the justice system as tools for improving women's full
enjoyment of citizenship. The chapter begins by surveying how women
have historically been marginalised from the justice system and denied
adequate protection of their rights. The way in which women across the
region have begun to challenge and overturn antiquated and discrimin-
atory laws and practices is then analysed in the context of global trends.
Finally, the chapter looks at women's legal aid and legal literacy projects
in Latin America, in particular one run by Themis, a Brazilian NGO that
trains grassroots outreach workers who in turn assist working-class
women in accessing the justice system. It is a project which seeks to
extend citizenship beyond the letter of the law and secures for women
positive rights as well as redress when their rights are violated. It has also
led to reconsideration of certain discriminatory aspects of the local
criminal justice system, and to reforms of such practices.

Women's access to the legal system

For many Latin Americans justice remains a distant concept, as they

are effectively denied access to the system. The courts are often over-
loaded, understaffed and sometimes corrupt, biased or subject to political

79
80 Gender and Rights in Latin America

influence and interference. The continent has a highly sophisticated

and well-established legal system. Nonetheless, many of the numerous
new laws and constitutional guarantees enacted in the twentieth cen-
tury remain a dead letter because of the lack of effective remedies and
anti-remedies,1 and the structural flaws in the institutions of the justice
system. To take just one measure of access: the number of judges
employed per capita in Latin America, compared to the USA and western
European countries, is very low. In 1996, Brazil employed 8600 judges,
for a total population of 172 million. Some six million court cases are
underway at any given moment, making 700 court cases per judge. Each
case gives rise, on average, to three appeals, adding some 18 million
appeals to an already overburdened system. The 5895 judges working in
the lower courts (of whom only 20 per cent are women) represent one
judge per 26 400 inhabitants.2 This compares very unfavourably to one
per 3500 population in Germany, or one per 9000 in the USA. The
negative consequences of such paltry access to justice are varied: indi-
viduals or communities may take the law into their own hands, indul-
ging in extra-systemic violence such as lynchings, death squads or
revenge killings (Huggins 1991). The creation of such an `uncivil society'
deepens the existing `unrule of law' in these neighbourhoods (MeÂndez
et al., 1999). The shortage of judges, prosecutors and legal aid lawyers
may result in unfair trials of criminal defendants.3 Many crimes go
unreported, unrecorded, uninvestigated and unprosecuted. Crimes
against women, such as sexual or domestic violence, are still less likely
to reach a court of law due a number of additional factors outlined
below.
Women's access to legal defence of their rights is even more restricted
than that of men in the region. First, a number of laws remain on the
statute books that discriminate against women, even though these laws
are now at odds with both the provisions of the international conven-
tions and agreements signed by the respective countries, as well as the
principles set out in their modernised or revised national constitutions.
Second, women suffer a number of specific abuses of their rights related
to the prevailing gender roles in Latin American society, for example
domestic and sexual violence, as well as abuses related to the denial of
reproductive rights. Third, certain sectors of women, for example indi-
genous or rural women, suffer diminished access to the protection
potentially afforded by the criminal justice system by virtue of language
differences, higher levels of illiteracy than their male peers, and geo-
graphical distance from services such as women's police stations, which
tend overwhelmingly to be located in heavily urbanised areas.
 Fiona Macaulay 81

Public services, in this case state judicial institutions, are rarely sensi-
tive to the needs of the consumer, still less to those of the female client,
and to her different time and space patterns (Rose 1993). Restricted
opening hours may deter working women who struggle with the
demands of their double shift. The United Nations (UN) Special Rappor-
teur on Violence against Women has criticised the fact that women's
police stations in Brazil generally operate during normal working hours,
whereas most assaults on women occur at nights and at weekends
(ECOSOC 1997: 14). They are also understaffed, with an average of 24
officers compared to around 60 in ordinary police stations. A woman
reporting sexual assault or domestic violence is then obliged to travel
across town to have her injuries examined by a police forensic doctor, at
the separate Legal Medical Institute (Instituto MeÂdico-Legal: IML), and
return with the report. In addition, services are often located in the most
inappropriate places: the women's police station in Rio de Janeiro is
located directly above a high-security prison holding 600 men convicted
of homicide and drugs offences (ECOSOC 1997).
Women's lower incomes in relation to men also constitute a serious
barrier in a region in which there are chronic shortages of public prosecu-
tors and legal aid lawyers available to bring state prosecutions for gender-
based violations, or to offer legal assistance in bringing a private case,
whether in relation to domestic violence or alimony payments. Women
are most likely to need, or seek, legal assistance for family-related matters,
such as birth certificates, child custody, maintenance, separation and
divorce and complaints of sexual assault or domestic violence. An analy-
sis of over 15 000 enquiries in the early 1990s to Chile's newly established
network of women's legal advice centres (Centros de InformacioÂn de los
Derechos de la Mujer: CIDEM) shows that the clients most commonly
sought information on family related issues (53.4 per cent), followed by
domestic violence (14.7 per cent), and housing (10.1 per cent) (SERNAM
1994a, 1994b). Their concerns also varied depending on their marital and
financial status. Single, separated or widowed women were more likely
than married women to seek advice on their and their children's rights.
Married women, on the other hand, made proportionately more enquir-
ies about domestic violence and household issues. Widows constituted
the group of women most concerned with housing rights and state
benefits.4 In the case of domestic violence, a combination of factors ±
women's ignorance of their rights, institutional shortcomings, lack of
resources and social prejudice ± has resulted in an extremely low prosecu-
tion rate of offenders. In Brazil, it is estimated that only 2 per cent of male
perpetrators end up serving a sentence (ECOSOC 1997).
82 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Finally, the effective defence of women's rights is undermined by the

still-prevalent gender prejudices embedded in the institutions of the
justice system, and expressed by its agents, namely by judges, police,
and prosecutors, particularly in relation to the more `taboo' and `private'
areas of sexuality, reproductive choice, and sexual and domestic vio-
lence (Cadernos CEPIA 1994, 1995). This has given rise to anomalous
situations in which the customary application of the law is at odds with
the letter and spirit of the existing legislation. It was noted in Brazil in
the 1980s, for instance, that men who murdered their wives or partners
whom they believed to have committed adultery were routinely acquit-
ted. Juries in these homicide cases were swayed by the defence lawyers'
invocation of the `honour defence'; that is, that the accused had acted
justifiably in order to redress damage done to his personal `honour'.
Such a defence does not exist under Brazilian law5 and in 1991 the
highest criminal court (Superior Tribunal de JusticËa: STJ) overturned a
decision by the lower courts and ordered a retrial in one such case,
following a women's movement campaign (Americas Watch 1991). Sub-
sequent awareness-raising among the judiciary has decreased the use of
such a defence, but not eliminated it,6 in part because the decisions of
the STJ are not binding on lower courts.7
Similarly, in most countries in Latin America abortion, although
criminalised, is nonetheless permitted in certain circumstances, namely
following rape or incest or in order to preserve the mother's life.8 In
reality, very few public hospitals provide such a service, as doctors refuse
either on the basis of their own moral judgements, or out of a fear of
possible prosecution. Often, the bureaucratic steps involved in procur-
ing authorisation are labyrinthine, painfully slow, or biased against the
woman. For example, in Nicaragua a woman is allowed an abortion only
with the permission of her husband or a near relative, and after the
request has been considered by a panel composed of three suitably
qualified people, most often men. In many countries, judges, prosecu-
tors or police officials have complete discretion to decide on the veracity
of a woman's claim of having been assaulted, quite independently of
any criminal charges being brought and proven against the assailant. In
Brazil doctors will not act without a police report and police medical
examination, although neither is required by law. Article 128 of the
1940 Brazilian Penal Code defined the conditions for legal abortion
and this law should, in theory, be auto-applicable; that is, it does not
require supplementary legislation in order to be put into effect. In
practice, however, the women's movement has had to campaign for
additional enforcement measures. In 1989 the city of SaÄo Paulo, under
 Fiona Macaulay 83

the woman mayor Luisa Erundina of the left-wing Workers' Party

(Partido dos Trabalhadores) passed a municipal ordinance requiring a
large public city hospital to provide legal abortions. By 1999 at least 13
hospitals in seven states had followed suit.9 A bill put forward by two
federal deputies, Eduardo Jorge and Sandra Starling, both of the
Workers' Party, to enforce the law nationwide had not been passed by
early 2000, although the Ministry of Health had by then committed
itself to establishing uniform internal guidelines committing public
health services to providing legal abortion.
The judiciary is by nature a conservative body, slow to reform its
practices and values. In Brazil, where there is far less political interfer-
ence in the judiciary than in other parts of Latin America, federal offi-
cials told the UN Special Rapporteur that they did not have the powers
to train judges with respect to domestic violence for fear of compromis-
ing the independence of the judiciary. Clearly, reform initiatives have to
come from within the institution and, as we shall see later, local initia-
tives in conjunction with civil society have led to greater debate around
issues of gender and justice. It is possible, although not a given, that
higher representation for women within the justice system may grad-
ually eradicate such discriminatory practices. Whilst women's presence
in the judiciary in Latin America is not as low as in other continents,
nevertheless they entered late (after the 1940s), are barely visible at the
top of the hierarchy, and tend to be clustered either in the lowest ranks
or in certain fields such as small claims and family courts, or else serve as
Justices of the Peace (ValdeÂs and GoÂmariz 1995: 167±8). Women are
virtually non-existent in the Supreme Court (federal or national level),
constitute around 20 per cent in the Court of Appeals (at state level) and
45 per cent in the lower trial courts (local courts).10 In Brazil women
have 34 per cent representation in the labour courts, 18 per cent in civil
courts and 15 per cent in the federal courts, whilst the first woman was
appointed to the Supreme Court only in 1999.11

Women's rights in the international arena

The above discussion highlights the complex relationship between the

legislative process, that is, the drafting and approval of gender-sensitive
rather than discriminatory legislation, on the one hand, and the often
glaring disparity between the letter and the application of the law, on
the other. It is this implementation gap that is being increasingly being
addressed throughout the region via women's legal aid and legal literacy
projects. The heightened concern of the Latin American women's
84 Gender and Rights in Latin America

movement with both the letter and the application of the law following
two decades of evolving debate in the international arena is evident in
the conclusions of the Third and Fourth World Conferences on Women
(Nairobi in 1985 and Beijing in 1995) and in the two most important
international instruments on women: the 1979 United Nations Conven-
tion on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women,
CEDAW, and the 1994 Inter-American Convention on the Prevention,
Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women, known as the
BeleÂm do Para Convention. Although the 16 key articles of the CEDAW
frequently recommend legislative reform as a means of combating dis-
crimination, the proposals remain generic and vague. Only article 15
addresses the law as such, and mentions only women's right to equality
before the law and to the choice of domicile. The Nairobi Forward-
Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women continue to place
more emphasis on social and economic issues than on legal strategies for
enhancing women's status. Sixteen paragraphs of a 372-paragraph docu-
ment address constitutional and legal measures: several emphasise the
need for more research in this area, as well as the establishment of
working groups to eliminate `discriminatory practices'. However, para-
graph 75 does recommend in-service training for the judiciary and
paralegal professionals regarding the progress made on women's rights
in international conventions and in national constitutions and laws. It
also urges the recruitment and training of more women in the legal
field.
The perception of the law as both an obstacle to, and an instrument
for, social change and gender equality underwent a sea change after the
1993 United Nations Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. In Latin
America this conference coincided with the transition to, and consoli-
dation of, democracy in several countries. In this process the new polit-
ical authorities increasingly adopted the discourse of rights current
among the social movements and opposition political forces prior to
the transition. Civil liberties and de jure rights acquired a greater import-
ance in the aftermath of decades of authoritarian rule and the sus-
pension of the most fundamental guarantees. The BeleÂm do ParaÂ
Convention, which addresses one specific gender-based rights violation,
goes into much greater detail as to the state's obligations to provide
effective redress, not just through the introduction of new legislation,
but also by paying attention to the institutions and mechanisms of the
justice system, to their efficacy in protecting rights and to their accessi-
bility. The Convention refers explicitly to the state's responsibility to
exercise `due diligence' in order to prevent, investigate and punish
 Fiona Macaulay 85

violence against women. It thus invokes the operational, rather than

normative or discursive, elements of the criminal justice system. State's
parties are urged to establish fair and effective legal procedures, includ-
ing protection orders, swift trials and `effective access' to redress for
female victims of violence. The text reflects the frustration experienced
throughout the region by women's groups concerned with sexual and
domestic violence, for although some countries have criminalised such
acts, access to justice has been stymied by lack of resources, and by
sclerotic and ineffective legal procedures.
The Platform for Action that resulted from the 1995 Beijing Confer-
ence took its lead from the Vienna Conference and the philosophical
assertion that women's rights are human rights. Strategic Objective One
dealing with the Human Rights of Women tackles in unprecedented
depth the practical obstacles facing women in securing these hard-won
rights. It criticises the gap between the existence of rights and their
effective enjoyment and blames this, at national level, on the lack
of government commitment and resources, and weak enforcement of
family, civil, penal, labour and commercial codes and laws. In addition,
`overly complex administrative procedures, lack of awareness within the
judicial process and inadequate monitoring . . . coupled with the under-
representation of women in the justice system, inadequate information
on existing rights and persistent attitudes and practices perpetuate
women's de facto inequality' (paragraphs 217 and 219). Paragraph 227
identifies the lack of information as a key obstacle to women's enjoy-
ment of their human rights and identifies legal literacy and empowerment
of women in relation to their rights as major tools: `Achieving legal
literacy' is included as one of the key strategic objectives. A number of
important legal literacy programmes around the world predate the Bei-
jing conference (Schuler and Kadirgamar-Rajasingham 1992). However,
the Platform for Action gives this strategy a vital global dimension and
foregrounds the crucial and dynamic interplay between changes in the
normative text of laws, the democratisation of information about, and
access to, the justice system, and the introduction of tangible improve-
ments in the application of the law. In short, the better women under-
stand their rights as currently enshrined under national laws, and the
more they are empowered to demand those rights, the greater will be
their awareness of the shortcomings of both the legislation and the
justice system. As a consequence, pressure from below for real changes
to both will grow ever more powerful. Legal literacy should not be
understood merely as a means of passing on apparently neutral infor-
mation about the legal system to passive recipients, but rather as a
86 Gender and Rights in Latin America

process by which individual and collective consciousness is trans-

formed, often leading to eventual changes in the letter and application
of the law. Reforms to the law in Latin America, as we shall see, have
been wrought in part as a result of women's changing consciousness in
different political conjunctures, and in different phases of women's
movement organisation.

Women and legal reform in Latin America

Laws codify and legitimise women's status in society and the gender
roles allocated to each sex. The law both reflects social attitudes towards
women and contributes to the construction of those beliefs and preju-
dices. Therefore a change in the law not only entails a modification, in
practical terms, of the rights available to women, but also signals a
symbolic shift. Sometimes changes in the law lag far behind those in
social attitudes and sometimes the opposite is true. The 1982 Law of
Nurturing introduced in Nicaragua (Collinson 1990: 111), or the clause
inserted in the GoiaÂs state constitution in Brazil in 1989, both of which
require men to share equally in childcare and housework, are purely
declaratory and symbolic, effectively unenforceable and very distant
from public consciousness. The sexual division of labour in Cuba
remains virtually untouched by years of official revolutionary rhetoric
and by the 1975 Family Code (Molyneux 2000). Nonetheless, legal
change which may be spearheaded by a small group of reformers can
stimulate important public debate, especially if it airs a hitherto taboo
subject such as reproductive rights. In some cases, for example legisla-
tion on domestic violence, the spirit and logic of new laws can pull
prevailing opinion along in its wake, and a new public consensus can be
created. The 1980s and 1990s have seen widespread debate across Latin
America about gender-related reforms to national and subnational level
constitutions, as well as to the civil and penal codes.12
In Latin America during the colonial period and for most of the
nineteenth century, men held parental authority (patria potestad) over
children and rights over women. The emergence of liberalism in the
nineteenth century brought a reworking of the regulatory framework
which had protected and restricted women. Reforms enacted in the
later post-independence period were, however, of mixed impact on
women (Dore 2000). On the one hand, women's individual rights were
expanded. Women were protected from male violence and Mexico's
Civil Codes of 1870 and 1884 extended parental authority to widows
and single mothers.13 In several countries, unmarried women were
 Fiona Macaulay 87

released from parental authority and the age of majority was lowered.
On the other hand, women's property-owning rights were eroded and
civil codes in the region legalised adultery for men and criminalised it
for women (Lavrin 1995). This latter inequality was being removed from
the statute books in the last decade of the twentieth century.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, women came to act as the
protagonists rather than as the objects of legal reform. Women began to
organise to improve working conditions, changes to family and prop-
erty law, female suffrage and demand access to the labour market, the
professions and higher education institutions (Miller 1991). Increased
secularisation led Mexico to legalise divorce on the grounds of mutual
incompatibility in the Civil Code of 1884. Absolute divorce was permit-
ted in Uruguay in 1913 and in Mexico in 1914. Brazil's 1943 Consoli-
dated Labour Laws (ConsolidacËaÄo das Leis Trabalhistas: CLT) passed
under President Vargas provided for workplace creÁches and outlawed
sexual discrimination in the workplace. Women's demands that the
state dismantle patriarchal privilege were, however, met only very
slowly, and many of the issues on the agenda of these `first wave'
feminists remained unresolved, reappearing on the platform of the con-
temporary women's movement. For example, the provisions of the CLT
were never enforced, and the Brazilian women's movement in the 1990s
had to fight for additional legislation to operationalise laws already on
the statute books, such as that providing for legal abortion.
Transitions from authoritarian rule or from civil conflict to elected
governments in the 1980s and 1990s, combined with increased emphasis
on women's rights in transnational arenas, focused the attention of
women's movements in Latin America ever more on the institutional
and legal arena ( Jaquette 1994). National and regional networks formed,
functioning as an invaluable forum for exchange and cross-fertilisation
of ideas, often prompted by the process of consultation and debate that
preceded and accompanied the UN Nairobi, Vienna and Beijing confer-
ences. The Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of
Women's Rights (Comite de America Latina y el Caribe para la Defensa de
los Derechos de la Mujer: CLADEM) was founded in 1987 in Costa Rica
following the Nairobi conference. With national groups in 17 countries
in the region, it has in part been responsible for the establishment of legal
literacy programmes in the region, as it publicised the Peruvian experi-
ence (see below). Some national women's NGOs, such as the Feminist
Research and Advisory Centre (Centro Feminista de Estudos e Assessoria:
CFEMEA) in Brazil, have very effectively spearheaded lobbying efforts to
change domestic legislation (Macaulay 2000).
88 Gender and Rights in Latin America

One of the markers of regime transition is frequently the drafting of a

new constitution, signalling a symbolic discursive and normative break
with the preceding regime and its values.14 As a text which sets out the
definition of citizenship, the relationship between state and citizen, and
the boundaries between private and public spheres ± all of which are
underpinned by gendered conceptions ± they have been a focus of
women's mobilisation to insert articles which explicitly outlaw sexual
discrimination and extend women's rights.15 Some constitutions (Gua-
temala, Mexico, Paraguay) advocate the equality of men and women,
whilst others (Colombia, Honduras, Panama, Peru) explicitly forbid sex
discrimination.16 The Paraguayan Constitution of 1992, reflecting the
organised lobbying of the women's movement, outlines the state's spe-
cific responsibility to eradicate discrimination.17 Others have continued
to use the generic term `men'.18 In May 1999, after a long battle between
the political right and the women's ministry (Servicio Nacional de la
Mujer ± SERNAM), article one of Chile's 1980 Constitution was changed
from `All men are born free and equal in dignity and rights'19 to `all
people are born free',20 adding for good measure `Men and women are
equal in the eyes of the law'.21 The process of women's mobilisation and
public debate around the drafting of a new constitution often marks a
high point of networking and common cause amongst women's groups.
In Nicaragua, during the grassroots consultations (cabildos abiertos) held
nation-wide in 1985 and 1986 prior to the approval of the 1987 consti-
tution, women managed to insert more than ten articles on women's
rights (Collinson 1990: 112). In Brazil, the women's movement elected a
number of feminists to the Constituent Assembly of 1986±88 in order to
ensure women's input, and they scored significant victories as a result,
such as the extension of social security provisions to women previously
excluded, and a legally enforceable statement of equality (Verucci 1991).
Constitutional reform, however, has also resulted in a degree of anti-
feminist backlash, particularly over the controversial topic of reproduct-
ive rights. In a number of countries attempts have been made to nullify
existing provision for legal abortion by changing the text of the consti-
tution, adding the words `from the moment of conception' to the article
guaranteeing the right to life. This was mooted during the failed consti-
tutional revision of the mid-1990s in Brazil, whilst President Menem
attempted to change the Argentine Constitution in 1993 and later in
1999 article 15 of the Civil Code to this effect. In 1999 the state assembly
in Nuevo LeoÂn in Mexico approved such an alteration to the state
constitution, in contradiction to national legislation.22
 Fiona Macaulay 89

Some of the most discriminatory legislation on the statute books, and

the subject of feminist campaigns, concerns women's sexual rights
and physical integrity.23 All penal codes with the exception of Cuba and
Nicaragua until recently considered the social reputation of the female
victim to constitute a key definition of certain crimes and to determine
their punishment. The crimes of infanticide and abortion honoris causa
carried lighter sentences if the woman committed them in order to
conceal her dishonour. In the penal codes of a number of countries,
rape may still be punished less severely if the victim is not an `honest
woman' or is a prostitute. No penal code classified rape in marriage as a
crime (ValdeÂs and GoÂmariz 1995: 149) until 1998 when the Chilean
senate approved a bill criminalising rape, including rape in marriage.
In the same year Nicaragua was one of the last countries in the region to
decriminalise adultery. Prior to this, a woman could be accused on the
strength of her husband's word alone. Men, on the other hand, could
only be accused of the lesser crime of `concubinage' (amancebamiento)
which required witnesses as well as additional evidence of `scandalous'
behaviour. The honour of the woman is such a defining feature of these
penal codes that several still allow for charges to be dropped if the
offender in crimes with a sexual connotation (rape, statutory rape,
abduction) marries the victim. El Salvador repealed such a provision in
1996 whilst Peru was scandalised in 1998 by a gang-rape case in which
one of the attackers sought to take advantage of this loophole. Under
these codes, the violation was committed not against the woman's
individual bodily integrity or inalienable rights, but rather against the
woman's honour as a collective good. As a result, sexual assault tended to
be categorised as a violation of `public morality' or `decency'. Reforms to
the penal code to establish sexual violence as a crime against the person
have been passed in Argentina and Chile, and are pending elsewhere
(Brazil, Ecuador).
Domestic violence has also been the subject of much new legislation.
In the 1990s Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Puerto
Rico and Peru introduced it into the penal code as a specific crime,
whereas before only generic charges such as `bodily harm' could be
brought.24 Legal procedures have also been altered in favour of the
victim. Prior to the 1998 criminal procedures code, in El Salvador the
victim's testimony was inadmissible in cases of sexual or domestic vio-
lence, although the victim was most likely to be the only witness. A
number of other initiatives, such as women's police stations, women's
refuges, fast-track family courts and restraining orders have also in-
creased in practical terms women's protection and redress. However, as
90 Gender and Rights in Latin America

this is a relatively new area, both the law and judicial mechanisms are
still evolving.
Family relationships are governed mainly by Civil Codes. Women
generally have full legal capacity, except in matters of marital property
which is still the subject of legislation in Chile and Brazil. Most laws
accord children equal rights, but Chile continued to distinguish be-
tween `legitimate', `illegitimate' and `natural' children until 1998
when a new law gave all children equal legal status.25 Chile is also the
only country which does not allow divorce and subsequent remarriage
(divorcio vincular), resorting instead to a specious piece of legal trickery,
`annulment', according to which the marriage never actually took place
due to a procedural `error'. So controversial is this subject that a bill to
rectify the situation has been submitted by a group of legislators rather
than by the centre-left ConcertacioÂn government in conjunction with
SERNAM which together have submitted most other bills affecting the
family or gender relations since 1990. In June 1999, the UN Committee
on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, when consider-
ing Chile's Third Periodic Report on the country's implementation of
its commitments under the CEDAW, criticised Chile for its slowness in
tackling both divorce and reproductive rights,26 two controversial areas
in which the Christian Democrat dominated government is extremely
sensitive to pressure by the Catholic church.
Most constitutions guarantee the basic right to work although only
Cuba's and Peru's refer to women's specific equality in this respect. They
also establish equal pay for equal work without distinction of sex. The
relevant legislation of most allows for maternity and even paternity
leave, and frequently requires workplaces with over a certain number
of employees to provide a daycare centre, although this is rarely com-
plied with (ValdeÂs and GoÂmariz 1995: 154). However, employers often
oblige would-be women employees to take a pregnancy test or to pro-
vide a certificate of sterilisation. This practice was finally made illegal in
Chile in 1998,27 and has been the subject of both state and municipal
legislation in Brazil.

Legal aid and legal literacy

Legislative reform may have accelerated in the last decade, but multiple
obstacles still undermine women's effective access to the justice system.
Chief among these is women's lack of knowledge of their rights and of
the mechanisms of the law. The need highlighted in the Beijing Plat-
form for Action for legal literacy programmes and democratisation of
 Fiona Macaulay 91

information and empowerment, particularly for low-income and mar-

ginalised women, has been taken up by a number of organisations in the
region. Responses tend to fall into two main categories. On the one
hand, a number of national Women's Ministries or official bodies have
set up legal aid and information offices, employing professionals. In
1983 ± a decade before the Beijing Conference ± the Sandinista govern-
ment's women's organisation, AMNLAE (AsociacioÂn de Mujeres Nicar-
aguÈenses Luisa Amanda Espinoza) set up in Nicaragua the first women's
legal aid office (Oficina Legal de la Mujer: OLM) in Managua, followed in
1985 by others in EstelõÂ, LeoÂn, Granada and Masaya. The bulk of case-
work tended to concentrate on domestic violence, child maintenance
and custody, whilst the lawyers and social workers employed in the
centres offered counselling and reconciliation work. This was ground-
breaking work, and the professionals soon perceived the need for
training and awareness raising with the police and judiciary, as well as
for radical changes to the law, for which the OLM lobbied vigorously
until AMNLAE moved to tone down the OLM's politics (Collinson 1990:
149). In Chile, following the return to democracy in 1989, SERNAM set
up women's legal advice offices in every region. Analysis of the needs of
the users, noted earlier, then provided valuable information to SERNAM
as to the priority areas for legal reform.
The other response has consisted of grassroots initiatives involving
volunteer, community-based outreach workers and originated in femi-
nist groups or NGOs, in emulation of programmes adopted in countries
as diverse as the Philippines, Uganda and India. These `paralegals' (pro-
motoras legales in Peru, monitoras in Chile and promotoras legales populares
in Brazil) carry out educational and consciousness-raising work with
working class women about their rights and about how they can access
the institutional arena in order to make those abstract rights a reality
(Schuler and Kadirgamar-Rajasingham 1992).
In Latin America, the idea of training legal outreach workers first
started in Peru in the 1980s at the Flora TristaÂn women's centre (Themis
1998c). It was, however, forced to suspend its project due to the Sendero
Luminoso guerrilla movement's hostility to any form of community
organising it did not control. The Manuela Ramos centre also started
working, albeit with no legal background, with low-income women and
indigenous groups around the Glass of Milk (Vaso de Leche) project.
Meanwhile, other initiatives sprang up in Chile, Costa Rica, Rosario in
Argentina and Cochabamba in Bolivia. However, the most enduring and
arguably successful project in Latin America has been that set up by
Themis, a feminist NGO in Porto Alegre, the capital city of the southern
92 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It is this experience which I now

examine.

Themis

Named after the Greek goddess of justice, Themis (Legal Assistance and
Gender Studies) was founded in 1993 with the aim of bridging the gap
between gender perspectives and feminist concerns on the one hand,
and the mechanisms and institutions of the law, on the other. The
women's movement in Brazil has been active since the 1970s, emerging
as part of the opposition to military rule, then taking advantage of the
new democratic conjuncture to achieve some notable advances in social
policy regarding gender relations (Alvarez 1990). The first women's
police stations in the continent, now much copied, were set up in the
mid-1980s. The debate generated by the 1986±88 Constituent Assembly
underscored the inadequacy and discriminatory nature of current legis-
lation with respect to women's legal status, and brought home to the
eventual founders of Themis the urgent need for the women's move-
ment to intervene more proactively in legal arenas. A feminist lawyer,
Denise Dora, who founded and coordinated Themis until 1999, came
into contact with CLADEM's Women's Legal Training project (Capacita-
cioÂn JurõÂdica a las Mujeres) and the Peruvian experience through an
Inter-American Institute of Human Rights course in Costa Rica in
1990. In the run-up to the 1993 Vienna Conference, a preparatory
meeting of Latin American feminists in Costa Rica in December 1992
raised gender and justice, particularly issues of access, as an important
theme. Denise Dora and a group of feminists, including three lawyers,
further identified the need for a women's NGO in the south of Brazil:
hitherto the better known women's NGOs had been based in SaÄo Paulo,
Rio de Janeiro and Recife. They also believed it should be dedicated to
legal issues: existing women's NGOs or government advisory bodies
tended to concentrate on health and reproductive rights. Themis pro-
motes and defends women's rights principally through its Access to
Justice Programme which works in three main areas: democratisation
of information and the periodic publication of new feminist writing
on legal issues (Campos 1999, Dora and Silveira 1998, Dora 1997), a
training programme for paralegals, and a feminist-legal training pro-
gramme for legal professionals and feminist activists.
The organisation publishes regular twice-yearly summaries of
women's issues as they have appeared in the media for justice system
professionals (judges, prosecutors, legal aid lawyers, law lecturers), as
 Fiona Macaulay 93

well as for those bodies and individuals making public policies. Subjects
to date have included domestic violence, abortion, sexual violence and
sexual rights. In this respect Themis is akin to CFEMEA. However, where
CFEMEA concentrates on the preparation, debate and approval of new,
gender-related legislation and thus concentrates its efforts on the legis-
lature, Themis concentrates on the application of existing law. Its publi-
cations are also intended to further debate within the feminist
community and legal profession on key issues. A recent collection of
essays (Campos 1999) challenges an alleged overemphasis on criminal-
isation as a solution to sexual and domestic violence.
The paralegal programme was adapted from the Peruvian model to
Brazil, and began in 1993 when Themis trained 20 paralegals recruited
from low-income women in the Porto Alegre metropolitan area in the
basic precepts of law, the Brazilian justice system, constitutional rights
and human rights, violence against women, sexual and reproductive
rights, racial discrimination and workplace discrimination. Their meth-
odology has evolved over time, shifting from purely legal issues to
addressing the gulf between the letter of the law and women's lived
experiences, using specific problems as the starting point for seeking
viable legal solutions. Eventually, the course content broadened to cover
other issues such as income generation, and now comprises a mixture of
lectures and discussions28 offered on a pro bono basis by judges, prosecu-
tors and legal professionals, combined with onsite visits to key insti-
tutions of the criminal justice system, such as police stations, courts,
and the IML (Themis 1998a). Contact between the trainee paralegals
and officials in the system ensures some degree of mutual trust as well as
a personal point of contact once the paralegals begin working in their
communities and advising local women through the six Women's Infor-
mation Service offices (ServicËo de InformacËaÄo aÁ Mulher: SIM) based in
low-income neighbourhoods of Porto Alegre and in the town of Canoas.
The SIMs, first set up in 1996, offer a walk-in information service
where local women can get advice on domestic violence, sexual assault,
racial and workplace discrimination, paternity suits and family-related
matters. They do not, however, deal with matters related to separation
and divorce, such as alimony and child maintenance. This is a strategic
choice determined by relatively limited resources and their identifica-
tion of their priority areas as `controversial' ones in which there is little
support available within the mainstream justice system, and to which
Themis can bring more `value added' as a feminist organisation in
challenging existing prejudices within the general population and
among justice system professionals. Over six years Themis and the
94 Gender and Rights in Latin America

SIMs have assisted 5000 women, and over 300 cases have resulted in
civil or criminal court cases, of which 65 per cent concern sexual or
domestic violence.29
The paralegals themselves offer advice and sometimes material assist-
ance, may accompany the woman to the police station, IML or courts
and, where necessary, refer the clients to Themis lawyers who will then
assist in the prosecution of, for example, a violent partner or assailant.
With one cohort a year since 1993, by early 2000 Themis had trained over
200 paralegals, generally recruited by word of mouth through the friends
and relatives of other trainees.30 The trainees have a better than average
level of education and a high level of community involvement in their
neighbourhood.31 The personal links and individual aspirations increase
the motivation of the trainees, whilst their visibility in their community
gives them a greater degree of acceptability and status. One paralegal in
Restinga, Marlene Salete da Silveira Pinto, commented that, when they
went to the courts or police station to put a case, they were treated as
equals (Themis 1998b: 39). A number have gone on to be elected to
positions in the community, for example as members of the statutory
local Children's Guardianship Councils (Conselhos Tutelares), or as com-
munity delegates to the city's participatory budget discussions. The
training course is provided free of charge whilst the SIMs cover women's
travel and other expenses and compensate them for loss for earnings for
the time they spend working as volunteers. For most, however, the bene-
fits of working as paralegals are more intangible. Their experiences im-
prove self-esteem and confidence, and they learn skills such as basic
accounting, fundraising and office management which are easily trans-
ferable to the workplace and offer access to better-paid jobs.32 The SIMs
are housed for free in premises lent by community organisations, such as
the church, or by state or municipal government entities. Although
Themis could have opted for renting accommodation, their preference
has been for community partnerships which add legitimacy, increase the
profile of the SIM and reinforce the paralegals' self-image as providers
of an important local service.33 I witnessed a group of experienced para-
legals negotiating with the local military police commander and civil
police chief for use of a police-run community centre.34 In particular they
were obliged to explain their motives for this voluntary work, and to
clarify that they did not, and could not, substitute the police's work in
tackling violence in an area of high drug-related crime, although they
would form an important axis between the community and police.
Themis's programme is notable for its horizontal and democratic
structure. The paralegals have discretion to adjust their priorities to
 Fiona Macaulay 95

local needs. In one case a paralegal helped families involved in a land

occupation to engage in a community arbitration process which
resulted in the squatters deciding to prioritise women-headed house-
holds when allocating the land. The SIM offices form a community
network, and the paralegals have their own self-help, support and dis-
cussion group, quite autonomous of Themis. Several of the more experi-
enced paralegals have also set up their own community initiatives, and
in April 1999, the SIM in Restinga voted to become an NGO independ-
ent of Themis (Themis 1998b) and to focus their work on teenage
pregnancy and income generation. Having identified unemployment
as a key concern among women in her neighbourhood, one paralegal
left to set up a woman-run recycling depot. Others have become trainers
on the courses for new trainees.
The third plank of Themis' work is that of awareness-raising and
debate with professionals in the justice system who have come to appre-
ciate the paralegals' role as intermediaries between the local population
and the public institutions. A local judge in Canoas observed how few
cases of domestic violence ever reached his court and approached
Themis for assistance. In 1999 a number of local groups, including the
chamber of commerce, town council and bar association, clubbed to-
gether to send 32 local women on Themis' training programme.35 They
now work closely with the courts, liaising with court officials and
accompanying women to the hearings. This informal role as a court
assistant will be formalised and supported by the Ministry of Justice in
2000.
Themis has received considerable public recognition, enabling it to
consolidate institutionally. It has received several awards: in 1996 it won
the Ministry of Justice's National Human Rights prize for NGOs; in 1997
it was awarded a prize by the state Legislative Assembly; in 1998 it won a
prize from a popular women's magazine, Claudia. Themis has also con-
solidated its position as the leading local and national NGO. It engaged
in a number of activities: it coordinated the group representing women
and NGOs from Rio Grande do Sul (ArticulacËaÄo GauÂcha de Mulheres)
during the preparatory process for the Beijing Conference; organised the
regional meeting to debate and draw up the National Human Rights
Programme which was approved in May 1996; ran courses on accessing
the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in conjunction with Human
Rights Watch; and set up a training course for female candidates to city
councillor in the municipal elections of 1996 (in which a quota of 20
per cent women on every party list was introduced for the first time) in
association with the Brazilian Institute of Municipal Administration
96 Gender and Rights in Latin America

(Instituto Brasileiro de AdministracËaÄo Municipal). In 1997 it was con-

tracted by the Ministry of Justice to write the country's first periodic
report on progress in implementing the CEDAW. Themis also has plans
to expand horizontally, that is, to set up more SIMs in cities throughout
the state. Themis' paralegal scheme has already been successfully copied
by a women's group in SaÄo Paulo (UniaÄo de Mulheres de SaÄo Paulo,
1997), whilst the Ministry of Justice and UNDP is funding Themis to
replicate its experience in other states by collaborating with NGOs
working on a range of rights: children, the Black community, sexual
minorities and women.36 Eventually they want to set up a permanent
legal literacy school focused primarily on the methodology of training
and outreach.37
Themis's experience in running a legal literacy programme highlights
the dynamic relationship, noted above, between women's increased
knowledge of their rights and of the mechanisms of the law, and even-
tual campaigns to change both the law and the institutions of the justice
system. In Rio Grande do Sul, the activities of the SIMs and the para-
legals have stimulated debates about reform, for example, as to the
relocation of the IML within the police stations, the establishment
of a gender unit within the judicial apparatus and whether specialist
women's police stations should be replaced by women's units in every
station.

Conclusion

Legal reform in Latin America in relation to gender equity has been a

dynamic process over the last one hundred years, as both political elites
and women's movements in the region have responded to globally
evolving notions of equality, citizenship and subjecthood. Particular
historic moments have stimulated spurts in new legislation and revised
rights. The late nineteenth century saw concern with women's educa-
tion. The first decades of the centuries brought secularisation and
reforms such as divorce laws in some countries. The immediate post-
World War II period saw the spread of female suffrage across the contin-
ent. The most recent political conjuncture, that of democratisation, has
been accompanied by the accelerated concern of national and regional
women's movements to eradicate archaic and discriminatory legisla-
tion, especially in regard to the private sphere, that is, in family rela-
tions, sexuality and reproductive rights. Women's groups have also
recognised that, just as the welcome return to democracy did not neces-
sarily or automatically increase women's representation in political life,
 Fiona Macaulay 97

so too changes in the letter of the law do not inexorably lead to their de
facto application. Women have begun to demand modifications to the
very institutions which administer political representation and the law,
and to seek greater access through alternative channels. In the political
sphere this includes the quotas for women on party electoral lists or for
internal party positions now in operation in a number of countries.
In the ambit of justice and law, legal literacy and legal aid projects
such as Themis have both expanded access, especially for low-income
women, through knowledge-sharing and advocacy, and encouraged
certain practical initiatives within the justice system to respond
to women's needs, for example women's police stations and fast-track
family courts.
While the many deficiencies of the justice institutions of newly dem-
ocratised countries in Latin America have prompted some groups and
individuals to `take the law in their own hands' in violent and extra-
systemic ways, these feminist initiatives to change the law, to educate
women about their rights, and to challenge and demand access to
justice system services and institutions have served to strengthen local
civil society and render it less `uncivil'. In the long run, such a strategy
legitimises the bodies inevitably charged with upholding the rule of law
and bolsters democratic rights and values. By engaging with the legal
system, women's groups hope not merely to gain new rights as citizens,
but also to have them honoured in practice. Reform of the justice system
institutions within a democratic society is now on the agenda for the
twenty-first century. Groups such as Themis and its 200 trained para-
legals contribute to the creation of a `usable' state in Latin America, one
capable of delivering on its promises of equality and citizens' rights.

Notes
1 Remedies are actions (injunctions, damages or restitution) which a court may
take to enforce a ruling. Anti-remedies are actions to force a remedy or correct
an inadequate one.
2 Veja 11 Dec. 1996. Information supplied by the Supremo Tribunal Federal
(Supreme Court) and AssociacËaÄo dos Magistrados Brasileiros (Association of
Brazilian Judges).
3 In Brazil most pre-trial detainees cannot afford a private lawyer, and often wait
for several years to be allocated one of the few state-funded legal aid lawyers.
This shortage also affects their enjoyment of their legal rights once convicted,
such as parole and transfer to a lighter prison regime (Amnesty International
1999, Human Rights Watch 1998).
98 Gender and Rights in Latin America

4 Housing prompted 22.7 per cent and state benefits 20.7 per cent of widows'
enquiries, compared to 12.8 per cent and 4.2 per cent respectively for married
women (SERNAM 1994a, 1994b).
5 The Brazilian Penal Code abolished this defence in 1830.
6 A few years later, the STJ contradicted its first decision, upholding a jury's
acquittal of a wife murderer, arguing that the jury's decision was sovereign
and reflected public opinion and the community's social values. The use of
the honour defence appears to have crept back in (interview with Denise
Dora 18 July 2000).
7 Brazil is rare among federal systems in that the Supreme Court does not set
precedents to be followed by lower courts.
8 The exceptions are Chile, which banned abortion under any circumstances
in1989, one of the final decisions of the Pinochet government, and Colom-
bia which did so in 1980.
9 FeÃmea 6 (63), April 1998. Of the 26 state constitutions drawn up in 1989, eight
refer to the state's obligation to provide legal abortion via the public health
service. The city of SaÄo Paulo includes this provision in its Lei OrgaÃnica Muni-
cipal, and Law 1042 passed in 1987 does the same for the city of Rio de Janeiro.
(Pitanguy and Sarmento Garbayo 1995). However, the state constitution of
EspõÂrito Santo contradicts the penal code and outlaws abortion altogether. As
all the states in the Brazilian federation are subject to the same criminal law,
this declaration is merely rhetorical, and has no legal force (Informe Nacional
de Brasil: InvestigacioÂn sobre `El tratamiento legal del aborto en AmeÂrica Latina
y el Caribe', CLADEM website www.derechos.org/cladem/aborto). This web-
site contains studies of the legal and practical issues concerning abortion in 14
Latin American countries as well as a comparative summary.
10 Under socialist governments women have fared better. For example, in the
1980s in Nicaragua women came to comprise 33.6 per cent of the `people's
judges' (ValdeÂs and GoÂmariz 1995). In Cuba by 1993 women comprised
39.3 per cent of professional judges, 60.4 per cent of lay judges and held
32.1 per cent of senior management posts in the judiciary (FLACSO website
www.eurosur.org/FLACSO/mujeres/cuba/portada.htm).
11 Although there has been a certain `feminisation' of the lower echelons of the
justice system, female judges and lawyers tend not to be in criminal practice.
12 See Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (1998) for examples of
recent changes to the Civil Codes, as well as policies to combat violence
against women.
13 It was not until the 1928 Civil Code, which incorporated the 1917 Law of
Family Relations, that married women were accorded parental authority as it
removed the requirement for women to obey their husbands (Varley 2000:
242).
14 With the election of a new and controversial Constituent Assembly, women's
groups in Venezuela mobilised in 1999 to take part in a revision of the
existing Constitution (Mujer/Fempress 209, 211, 213).
15 Article 16 of the 1860 and 1994 Argentine Constitutions only forbids privil-
ege or distinction on the basis of social class `La NacioÂn Argentina no admite
prerrogativas de sangre, ni de nacimiento: no hay en ella fueros personales ni
tõÂtulos de nobleza' (`The Argentine Nation does now allow any prerogatives
on the basis of blood, or of birth; there are no personal privileges or titles of
 Fiona Macaulay 99

nobility'). Article 37 of the 1994 Constitution further guarantees women real

equal opportunities in access to elected office and party position via quota
systems. Note: all translations here are by the author.
16 For an up-to-date comparison of constitutions in the region see the website
www.georgetown.edu/pdba/Comp/comparative.
17 Article 48 `De la igualdad de derechos del hombre e de la mujer. . . El Estado
promovera las condiciones y creara los mecanismos adecuados para que la
igualdad sea real y efectiva, allanando los obstaÂculos qu impidan o dificultan
su ejercicio y facilitando la participacioÂn de la mujer en todos los aÂmbitos de
la vida nacional.' (`On equal rights for men and women . . . the state will
promote the conditions and create appropriate mechanisms to ensure that
equality is real and effective, removing obstacles which impede or hinder the
exercise of that equality and facilitating women's participation in all aspects
of national life.')
18 Chile and Costa Rica's 1949 Constitutions read `Todo hombre es libre en la
RepuÂblica . . . ' (`All men are free in the Republic'). In the late nineteenth
century women in Mexico, Chile and Brazil had already challenged the use
of the generic term `men' in their bid to exercise the franchise. In each case it
was ruled that the term `men' did not in fact include women who were then
explicitly excluded from voting.
19 `Los hombres nacen libres e iguales en dignidad y derechos' (`Men are born
free and equal in dignity and rights').
20 `Las personas nacen libres' (`People are born free').
21 `Los hombres y mujeres son iguales ante la ley' (`Men and women are equal
before the law').
22 Meanwhile, the authorities in Mexico City had been actually extending the
legal grounds for termination.
23 Information regarding the passage of gender-related legislation may be found
in the monthly regional publication Mujer/Fempress which is the source for
the data in this section, unless otherwise stated. Individual references have
been omitted for reasons of space.
24 Paraguay and Brazil were still debating such a reform as of early 2000.
25 The law was sanctioned by President Frei on 13 October 1998 (La Tercera 14
October 1998). Nicaragua gave all children equal rights and established equal
obligations for parents in 1982 (Collinson 1990: 111).
26 See the Committee's press releases on their website www.un.org/News/Press/
dosc/1999/19990622.wom1144 and 1145.
27 The original bill was submitted by the government on 28 November 1995.
28 The classes are designed for maximum interaction and student input, in
order to retain those who might have had a negative experience of formal
school education.
29 Data from Denise Dora and internal Themis information.
30 One cohort consisted of a woman and her two aunts, another three who
brought their adult daughters, two pairs of sisters, 13 employees of three
daycare centres and nine women who knew each other from Catholic church
activities (Themis 1998c).
31 Three anthropologists accompanied the third cohort of paralegals trained by
Themis. See their report dealing with the profile of the women and their
relationship with the local community (Themis 1998c).
100 Gender and Rights in Latin America

32 Author's interview with paralegals in Morro Santa Cruz in June 1999.

33 Denise Dora felt that, when SIMs ran in trouble, the women kept going
because of a sense of obligation to the community generated by these part-
nerships.
34 Morro da Cruz, June 1999.
35 DiaÂrio de Canoas 24 August 1999.
36 The project was put into effect in seven states in 1999.
37 This will be supported by UNESCO and by an internationally acclaimed local
literacy project GEEMPA.

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tion Politics, Princeton: Princeton University Press
Americas Watch (1991) Criminal Injustice: Violence against Women in Brazil, New
York: Human Rights Watch
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against Detainees, London: Amnesty International
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polõÂticas puÂblicas, CEPIA: Rio de Janeiro
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(des)ordem familiar, CEPIA: Rio de Janeiro
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Dora, D. (ed.) (1997) Feminino, Masculino: Igualdade e DiferencËa na JusticËa, Porto
Alegre: Editora Sulina
Dora, D. and D. Silveira (1998) Direitos Humanos, Etica e Direitos Reproductivos,
Porto Alegre: Themis
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America's long nineteenth century' in E. Dore and M. Molyneux (eds) The
Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, Chapel Hill, NC.:
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in Latin America, Durham, NC: Duke University Press
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mission of the special rapporteur to Brazil on the issue of domestic violence'
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ton, DC: IACHR
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(3) 551±67
5
In Pursuit of the Right
to be Free from Violence:
the Women's Movement and
State Accountability in Uruguay
Niki Johnson

In the 1980s and 1990s domestic violence became a focal point in the
agenda of Latin American women's movements. Multidimensional na-
tional and regional campaigns were carried out which included re-
search, awareness-raising and service provision as well as lobbying the
state. Women's movements' demands for greater state accountability
were backed by international legal definitions of domestic violence as
a violation of women's human rights and norms outlining states' duties
to protect women's right to be free from violence. By the end of the
twentieth century, women's movements throughout Latin America had
successfully transformed what had previously been considered a private,
personal problem into a public, political issue. In addition, in many
countries outdated legislation had been reformed and new legal meas-
ures had been introduced.1
This chapter reviews the campaign against domestic violence of the
Uruguayan women's movement. Uruguay stands out in the region for its
early concession of political (1932) and civil (1946) equality to women,
as well as a series of laws passed in the first three decades of the twenti-
eth century on divorce, maternity leave and women's labour and
education rights.2 These women-friendly policies formed part of a de-
velopment project premised on an interventionist role for the state, not
simply in terms of economic participation and regulation, but also of
welfare provision and policies to tackle social inequalities. However,
following the achievement of formal citizenship, the question of
women's rights disappeared from the political agenda. Consequently it

102
 Niki Johnson 103

proved difficult for the second wave women's movement, which

emerged in the early 1980s, to persuade the political establishment
that specific measures were required to ensure substantive equality for
women and to tackle previously invisible issues, such as domestic vio-
lence. In addition, in the post-dictatorship period the predominance of
neoliberal ideas advocating a reduced role for the state meant that
governments were reluctant to regulate the private sphere. This chapter
examines the strategies developed by the Uruguayan women's move-
ment to overcome these obstacles and to achieve legal recognition of
the specific gendered dimension of domestic violence, along with
greater state accountability for prevention and protection. The analysis
explores how the campaign was affected by the changing nature of the
relationship between the movement and the state, and also by the
interaction between the national campaign and regional and inter-
national developments.

Making the invisible visible

By the time domestic violence was placed on the political agenda in

Uruguay, participants at the first Latin American and Caribbean Femi-
nist Encounter (Bogota 1981) had designated 25 November as Inter-
national Day Against Violence Against Women (Ortiz 1997: 18).3 In
international arenas it was also beginning to be recognised as a matter
requiring attention. At the closing conference of the UN Decade for
Women in Nairobi in 1985, violence against women was identified as
an impediment to peace. In the same year the UN General Assembly
passed a resolution urging member states to implement preventive
measures, review legal procedures and provide services to victims (Fitz-
patrick 1994: 536).
In Uruguay the issue was pursued by women who were beginning to
engage in gender-based activism in political parties and autonomous
women's groups within the context of the transition from military
dictatorship during 1984±5. One of the proposed measures drawn up
by the Women's Committee of the left-wing Broad Front for its 1984
election manifesto was the penalisation of all forms of violence against
women and children and the creation of help centres for victims.4 The
specific problem of domestic violence was raised by the Working Group
on Women's Status, a coordinating body of female representatives from
all political parties and women's social organisations who had fought
successfully to be included in the National Consensus-Building Forum
(CONAPRO).5 The Working Group recommended that violence against
104 Gender and Rights in Latin America

women in the home be analysed `from a social and political perspective'

and that the government promote research and set up preventive and
awareness-raising programmes.6 However, despite being approved by
CONAPRO's executive body, the proposals met the same fate as the
majority of the CONAPRO agreements ± they were not followed up by
the Colorado Party government that took power in March 1985.
In the face of this inaction, the priority of the women's movement in
the first post-dictatorship administration (1985±90) was to break the
traditional taboo surrounding the subject of violence against women.
The recently established feminist press and feminist journalists writing
in mainstream newspapers highlighted how domestic violence was
made invisible by the fact that society at large ± including legal and
political establishments, and in particular the media ± regarded it as an
example of deviant behaviour. In contrast, feminist analyses saw it as a
structural problem, linked to the wider question of gendered power
relations.7 As in other Latin American countries emerging from authori-
tarian rule, the need for an urgent response to domestic abuse was
incorporated in the demand for a truly democratic society to be con-
structed in the aftermath of years of repression, encapsulated in the
slogan `democracy in the country and in the home'.
The lack of reliable statistics on domestic violence prompted feminist
organisations to carry out research and hold awareness-raising work-
shops. Some women's groups began providing support services for
victims, including self-help projects, legal and medical advice, therapy
and aftercare.8 In 1988 the first women's organisation to specialise in
domestic violence ± SOS Woman ± was founded and was joined later by
other specialist NGOs. Their work ranged from treating child, as well as
women, victims of domestic abuse to rehabilitation programmes for
male abusers.9 From 1987 public events were organised to mark 25
November, and one-off demonstrations were held on several occasions
to protest against the state's failure to protect abused women who were
assaulted or murdered by former partners.10

The first state responses

Until the early 1990s most feminist organisations prioritised grassroots

mobilisation over lobbying, and their attitude towards national govern-
ment tended to be denunciatory, criticising the lack of effective action
on gender issues. However, CONAMU (Uruguayan National Council of
Women), the liberal feminist organisation, pursued a policy of negoti-
ation and collaboration with the state, resulting in the first official steps
 Niki Johnson 105

to tackle the problem of domestic violence. In February 1988 CONAMU

set up a multidisciplinary research team working with NGOs and
government bodies to visit the first women's police station in the
region, established in SaÄo Paulo, Brazil, in 1985. CONAMU then success-
fully lobbied the Ministry of the Interior for a women's police station,
which opened in Montevideo in November 1988. The women's
movement welcomed this as a step in the right direction, but doubts
were voiced regarding the police station's effectiveness since it was
not allocated a separate budget and organisations working with victims
of domestic violence considered that its staff had not received
proper training.11 To further the campaign, in October 1988 CONAMU
organised a joint seminar on domestic violence with the National
Women's Institute, and in 1989 set up the Help Centre for
Abused Women in a collaborative project with the Ministry of Public
Health.
The National Women's Institute was founded in 1987 by the Colorado
Party government, with a remit to design, coordinate and monitor
policy on women. After the National Party took office in 1990 it did
not function for two years and was recreated as the National Institute for
the Family and Women (INFM) in 1992. From the start it designated
domestic violence a priority area, with activities including seminars,
training for police officers and members of the judiciary, the creation
of women's rights centres across the country and a Centre for the
Prevention of Domestic Violence and Victim Support in Montevideo.
Again, these measures were criticised by the women's movement for
being inadequate in scope and lacking proper backing. It is true that
the institute was limited in what it could do in practical terms because it
had no budget allocation until 1995, when the Colorado Party took
power again, and did not have the status of a ministry, which meant
that it had insufficient political weight in its dealings with other state
bodies. However, its work was also characterised by a lack of continuity,
with changes in personnel and renegotiation of agreements with other
authorities at each consecutive changeover in administration. This
meant that basic training on gender issues had to be repeated for new
staff and the completion of crucial projects ± such as a women's refuge ±
was delayed.12 The original National Women's Institute had functioned
as an interministerial council, but this structure was subsequently aban-
doned, hampering the elaboration of an integrated, cross-sector policy
on domestic violence. In addition, the council had included two repre-
sentatives from women's organisations, whereas during the following
two terms the INFM was marked by a reluctance to work with the
106 Gender and Rights in Latin America

women's movement, primarily for ideological reasons since members of

a number of NGOs had links with the left.13

The 1990s: networks, regionalisation and specialisation

By the beginning of the 1990s, regular contact had been established

between women's movements across Latin America and the Caribbean
through the Feminist Encounters encouraging an exchange of experi-
ences.14 Transnational initiatives were also emerging to exchange infor-
mation and mount regional campaigns on a range of gender issues.15 In
1988 Isis International, a women's documentation and communication
centre based in Santiago, Chile, launched a research project funded by
the UN Development Fund for Women to gather information about the
incidence of gender-based violence in the region and the organisations
working on the issue (Isis Internacional 1990). The process and results of
this project brought together women's groups from different countries
and in November 1989 the Southern Cone Network against Domestic
Violence was set up by NGOs in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. At the
Fifth Feminist Encounter in 1990 members of this network promoted
the idea of a wider coordinating structure to cover the whole region, and
in 1992 the first meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist
Network against Violence towards Women took place (Red Feminista
1996, Ortiz 1997).16 During this meeting an international petition to
the UN was circulated, which provided links to women's movements'
campaigns against violence outside the region. The petition requested
that women's human rights and gender-based violence be placed on the
agenda of the World Conference on Human Rights to be held in Vienna
the following year (Paredes 1993: 91).
In Uruguay the early 1990s were characterised by a generalised drop in
political and social activism, economic recession and more stringent
structural adjustment measures. At the same time a process of `NGOisa-
tion' began in the women's movement, with an increasing number of
organisations receiving international funding (Alvarez 1998: 306±8).
Internal restructuring took place and project work and provision of
services started to take priority over mobilisation and movement-wide
coordination. The resulting fragmentation of the women's movement
was accentuated by the dissolution of the two existing movement-wide
coordinating bodies.17 Meanwhile, the institutional response to the
problem of domestic violence remained inadequate, and NGOs provid-
ing services for abused women found themselves unable to meet the
growing demand. The development of new issue-based forms of coord-
 Niki Johnson 107

ination, drawing on the positive example set by the regional networks,

was seen as a possible way of overcoming these obstacles.
In November 1992 eight women's organisations founded the Uru-
guayan Network against Domestic and Sexual Violence (RUVDS), as a
means of sharing experiences of working with victims of domestic
violence and pooling resources in the organisation of awareness-raising
campaigns. The RUVDS also maintained links to regional developments
through its participation in the Latin American Network Against Vio-
lence. The following month Feminist Space was formed as `a forum for
reflection and action' by 60 feminists, both activists from a range of
organisations and individuals participating on an ad hoc basis.18 Domes-
tic violence was designated a priority concern, and a lobbying strategy
was developed to `take advantage of all the openings provided by the
legal system to exert pressure and introduce issues on to the agenda'.19
In 1993 members of Feminist Space formed the Interdisciplinary Group
on Violence Against Women with experts from outside the women's
movement.20 The group was conceived of as a specialist research and
lobbying organisation, whose objectives included:

the detection of failures or lack of responses in the intervening

systems; the formulation of public policy proposals . . . participation
in the drafting of a legal framework to promote articulation between
the actions of civil society and those carried out by state institutions.
Ä araÂn et al. 1997: 13)
(Ben

A primary aim of these three new organisations was to develop strategies

to press for greater state accountability in the prevention of domestic
violence and the protection of its victims; a goal that became particu-
larly urgent in the second half of the 1990s when international funding
for NGOs began to dry up. The elaboration of new strategies was facili-
tated by the increased knowledge generated by national and regional
networking, and was grounded in a rights-based discourse influenced by
advances in international law and feminist theory.

Arguing for domestic violence as a human rights question

The definition of domestic violence as a human rights violation was

linked to the global campaign by women's movements to `engender'
human rights and the law.21 The language and concept of universal
human rights had originally come under attack from feminist academics
in the North for ignoring the fact that `many violations of women's
108 Gender and Rights in Latin America

human rights are distinctly connected to being female' (Bunch 1990:

486, cf. Binion 1995). An important victory in the struggle to achieve
international institutional recognition of this reality was the declaration
made at the Vienna Conference that women's human rights are `an
inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights'
(cited in Amnesty International 1995: 13).
Between 1990 and 1993 increasing concern over the issue of domestic
violence was shown in international arenas (Heise et al. 1994: 1172). In
January 1992 the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
Against Women issued General Recommendation 19. This identified
gender-based violence as `a form of discrimination which seriously in-
hibits women's ability to enjoy rights and freedoms on a basis of equal-
ity with men' (cited in Fitzpatrick 1994: 534). Six months after the
Vienna Conference, the UN General Assembly issued the Declaration
on the Elimination of Violence against Women which defined such
violence in broad terms, signalling its basis in unequal gendered rela-
tions of power and situating it clearly within the area of human rights
(Carrillo 1997: 7±8). In March of the following year the UN Commission
on Human Rights appointed a Special Rapporteur on violence against
women. The UN's recommendations were restated in the accords signed
at the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995), and at
regional level in the 1994 Belem do Para Inter-American Convention
on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against
Women. To publicise this international recognition of women's human
rights and condemnation of gender-based violence, the global and Latin
American women's movements organised human rights `tribunals'
where cases of violations of women's rights were presented and judged.22
Following the international feminist position that domestic violence
should be considered a human rights violation (see Romany 1994,
Carrillo 1991), Uruguayan activists regarded the right to be free from
violence as a right with social, economic and political dimensions, in
that it affects women's enjoyment of all their other rights. The RUVDS
referred to violence against women as a `scourge that infringes women's
human rights and individual liberties, restricting the full exercise of
their citizenship',23 an analysis clearly paralleling CEDAW's Recommen-
dation 19. Feminist Space argued that the gender-specific, structural
nature of domestic violence made it a human rights issue per se: `our
aim is that violence against women be understood as a global political
problem . . . We consider this kind of violence to be systemic in nature,
which is what forces us to see it as a question of human rights.'24
Feminist Space sought to achieve greater legitimacy for this conception
 Niki Johnson 109

of domestic violence by insisting on the `responsibility of human rights

organisations to include violence against women in their campaigns'.25
However, this argument alone did not provide sufficient theoretical
justification to support feminist groups' claim that the state was ac-
countable for what were private acts of violence, not abuses perpetrated
by state agents.26

Conceptions of the state's role

Despite the long tradition of state intervention in Uruguay, the consti-

tutional foundation of the state is liberal democratic. Liberal democra-
cies have at their centre a paradigm of state±civil society relations that
establishes a theoretical separation between the `private/personal' and
the `public/political' spheres. By locating family relations in the former,
the model rejects the classification of domestic violence as a political
issue and thus refuses to see it as a valid area for state intervention (see
Chinkin 1995: 24, Eisler 1987: 291±6). Although in practice gender
relations and family life are widely regulated by the state, politicians
in liberal democracies have always been reluctant to be seen to be
`meddling' in the private sphere. After the experience of state invasion
of all areas of private life during the period of military rule in Uruguay
(1973±85), this non-interventionist stance was taken by parties right
across the political spectrum. The Broad Front refused to include in its
1984 electoral manifesto the Women's Committee's demand for `dem-
ocracy in the home', arguing that `the Broad Front could be accused of
trying to intervene in the domestic sphere or interfere in the privacy of
the home' (RodrõÂguez Villamil 1986: 15).
The notion of a restricted sphere of action for the state was shored up
by the neoliberal ideology and policies adopted during the last three
decades of the twentieth century, paralleling the pattern in other Latin
American countries. The economic crisis that had begun in the late
1950s was blamed on an inefficient and bloated state. From the early
1960s, and most systematically under the National Party administration
(1990±95), structural adjustment programmes were implemented to
reduce national spending, privatise public services and limit state regu-
lation of the economy and social inequalities (Finch 1998). As a result,
demands for greater state intervention and provision of services ± cen-
tral elements of the women's movement's campaign on domestic vio-
lence ± met with considerable resistance.
In their challenge to the political establishment's resistance to treat
domestic abuse as a human rights issue, Uruguayan feminists drew on
110 Gender and Rights in Latin America

CEDAW's Recommendation 19, arguing that the state could be con-

sidered to be condoning such violence if its agents did not make a
sufficient effort to eliminate or prevent it.27 By monitoring the way
cases were dealt with by state actors, Feminist Space identified instances
of state complicity `on the basis of omission on the part of members of
the police force, either because they trivialise the risk that women face,
or regard these incidents as minor offences, or unconsciously legitimise
this kind of male violence' (Dufau 1993: 2). The Interdisciplinary Group
further reasoned that since the state had the monopoly on punitive
action this imposed on it the obligation to provide the victim with the
same guarantees under the law that were afforded to the accused (Dufau
1993: 110). In other words, they claimed that domestic violence could
be regarded as a human rights violation ± and the state held accountable
for it ± since the legal system systematically discriminated against
victims by not guaranteeing their right to equal and effective access to
redress (cf. Romany 1994: 105, Thomas and Beasley 1993: 43).

Making the state accountable

In order to influence the policy-making process, the RUVDS, Feminist

Space and the Interdisciplinary Group targeted individual ministries
directly rather than channelling their demands through the INFM,
because they considered the latter to be ineffective. The presence of an
increasing number of `femocrats' in ministries facilitated participation
by the women's groups not only in the implementation of projects, but
also in policy design.28 In 1995 the Minister of the Interior invited all
three organisations to contribute their views on possible legislation on
domestic violence (see below). The following year the RUVDS and the
Interdisciplinary Group proposed a comprehensive project to tackle
domestic abuse involving both state and civil society actors that won
the backing of the female director of the National Crime Prevention
Office, Graciela LoÂpez MachõÂn. Implemented by the Ministry of the
Interior and funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB),
the project included training for the police and teachers, a public aware-
ness campaign, the financing of nine NGO-run projects and the creation
of a national database (Dufau 1999). In March 1998 an honorary Inter-
ministerial Committee to Formulate a National Plan for the Prevention,
Detection and Treatment of Domestic Violence was created, to which
the RUVDS was invited to nominate three delegates.29 The main focus of
its work in the first year was the drafting of a comprehensive bill for
presentation to parliament (see below).
 Niki Johnson 111

Uruguayan feminists also made use of international mechanisms in

an attempt to establish a legal precedent defining the state's obligation
to provide adequate protection for abused women. In September 1993
Feminist Space, backed by the Uruguayan Institute of Legal and Social
Studies (IELSUR), presented the first claim against a government for
failure to protect the human rights of a victim of domestic violence
under the provisions of the Inter-American Human Rights Conven-
tion.30 The case concerned a woman who was killed by her ex-partner
despite making three statements to the police that he was threatening to
do so. Feminist Space argued that the Uruguayan government had failed
in its duty under the convention to guarantee the victim's rights to life
(art. 4), protection of the family (art. 17), equal protection before the law
(art. 24) and judicial protection (art. 25.2). It also documented other
cases to demonstrate that this was not an isolated incident, but part of a
systematic violation of women's human rights.31 In its defence, the
Uruguayan government argued that the accused was not a state agent
and that the state had fulfilled its obligations by prosecuting and sen-
tencing him after the murder.32 Feminist Space responded with the state
complicity argument that `[t]he responsibility of the State does not only
apply when a public employee commits a criminal offence, but also
when their lack of action or negligence provokes an action that causes
harm',33 but no further proceedings were instigated. Although this case
did not have the desired outcome, it represented an important attempt
to transform international conventions from symbolic state rhetoric
into an instrument for change.

Women as subjects of rights and the biases of the law

Uruguay has a strong legalistic tradition, accordingly an important aim

of the women's movement's campaign was to promote the construction
of a legal framework governing domestic violence. The Interdisciplinary
Group supported the criminalisation of domestic violence, but did not
regard it as a sufficient response on its own:

[O]ur approach divides the problem into four broad and closely related
areas: values, formal and informal education, the media, etc.; prevent-
ive and protective measures; criminalisation; and rehabilitation meas-
ures. It implies the need to consider what is most appropriate in each
area, and the links between them; some will be measures which should
be enacted as laws, not all of them prohibitory.
(Dufau 1993: 3)
112 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Furthermore, laws were regarded as serving a purpose, but only if

women were active subjects of their rights: `None of [the legal instru-
ments which we women have at our disposal to defend and assert our
rights] will be of use if first we are not conscious of the fact that those
rights pertain to us and are unswerving in our will to assert them'
(AnaÂndez n.d.: 36; see also Ben ÄaraÂn et al. 1993: 1).
In order for women to know and claim their rights, it was necessary
for those rights to be defined in law. This meant recognition of the
specificity of gender-based violence and identification of the preventive,
punitive and protective duties of the state. In legal terms domestic
violence remained invisible in Uruguay until 1995 because it was not a
statutory offence. As such incidents were treated as common crimes of
violence, according to the seriousness of the injuries sustained (Ben ÄaraÂn
et al. 1997: 8). In addition, the law determined that certain violent
offences would be prosecuted only at the instance of the injured party.
Those supporting changes in the law ± including important figures in
the judiciary ± 34 argued that this requirement ignored the psychological
state of victims, who might not press charges for fear of reprisals (Balbela
de Delgue 1991: 76, LangoÂn Cun Äarro 1988: 75).
The law also failed to provide adequate protection for victims after
they had made their statement to the police. Under the Constitution the
home is `an inviolable sanctuary' which the police can only enter during
the day and with court authorisation (Art. 11), and the presumption of
innocence means that the accused cannot be detained. Respect for these
rights meant that in domestic violence cases the victim was left without
legal recourse to protection: `these . . . advances in the defence of the
rights of the accused create an imbalance between those rights and the
possibility of rapid and effective action in the case of crimes committed
within the home' (Balbela de Delgue 1991: 76, original emphasis). In
other words, the specificities of gender-based crimes challenged the
supposedly neutral and objective foundations of the law and advocates
of reform argued that the gender-blindness of the legal system needed to
be overcome if women's rights were to be properly protected.
Another discriminatory feature of existing legislation derived from
the fact that women had not originally been defined in law as subjects
of rights, because of the ideological configuration of society into public
and private spheres, and women's relegation to the latter. In Uruguay's
Penal and Civil Codes women were conceived of as equivalents of
minors whose sexuality and reproductive capacity were strictly con-
trolled. Neither the granting of civil equality to women in 1946 nor
the ratification in 1981 of the CEDAW was accompanied by a compre-
 Niki Johnson 113

hensive overhaul of the Codes (Dufau 1991); although by the 1990s

some discriminatory articles had been removed and others had fallen
into disuse. As a result, the legal right protected in many norms
governing sexual offences remained, not the woman's right to sexual
self-determination and reproductive autonomy, or bodily integrity and
personal security, but archaic concepts such as family honour or chas-
tity. In addition, despite enjoying one of the longest democratic trad-
itions in Latin America, a legacy of the twelve-year period of military
dictatorship was that the efficacy of the rule of law was undermined and
existing legislation was not always enforced.35 Uruguayan feminists
working on domestic violence did not, however, reject the potential of
the law as an instrument for the protection of women's rights ± a
position taken by some feminists in the North (see Smart 1989, Mac-
Kinnon 1987).

Protecting women's rights in national legislation

As part of its campaign to bring the state to account, Feminist Space

sought to establish the legislature's general responsibility to address the
question of violence against women. The case studies showing examples
of state complicity were presented to the Chamber of Representatives'
Human Rights Committee, chosen `for its specific jurisdiction and be-
cause its members are the most direct representatives of the citizen
body' (Dufau 1993: 2). Feminist Space highlighted the duties of the
legislature towards those who had elected it and the `supervisory func-
tion over other state powers assigned to it under the Constitution'. This
function, feminists argued, included guaranteeing `full respect for the
human rights recognised in the Constitution and national legislation,
and in the international agreements and conventions ratified by the
country' (Dufau 1994: 118). The Human Rights Committee made public
statements expressing its commitment to tackling the problem of do-
mestic violence but in practice the legislative process was slow and
problematic.
In the 1990s eight bills concerning domestic violence were presented
to the Uruguayan parliament, three of which were passed, although two
were not implemented (see Table 5.1). The first three bills were pre-
sented during the period, at the start of the decade, when the women's
movement was fragmented and lobbying was not a priority. This did not
mean, however, that the movement was entirely marginalised from the
process. The Institute for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and
Rehabilitation of Victims (IPRE) bill (CRR588/90) was presented by a
114 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Table 5.1 Bills on domestic violence presented to the Uruguayan Parliament,

1990±99

Date Bill number and description1 Status1

29/08/90 CRR588/90 Institute for Passed in modified form

the Prevention of Domestic as art. 102 of National
Violence and Rehabilitation Audit Law 16.462, 11/1/94.
of Victims (IPRE). Not implemented.
13/11/91 CRR1635/91 Shelved.
Criminalisation of sexual
and domestic violence.
11/12/91 CRR1718/91±CSS997/92 CRR passed CSS shelved.
Office for the Defence Re-presented as CRR101/95.
of the Rights of Victims
of Sexual and Domestic
Violence (Defence Office).
31/03/95 CRR101/95±CSS274/95 CRR passed.
Defence Office CSS shelved.
(re-presentation of
CRR1718/91).
04/04/95 CRR124/95±CSS192/95 Law 16.707, 12/07/95.
Public security. Art. 14:
criminalisation of
domestic violence.
15/08/95 CSS242/95±CRR622/95 Law 16.735, 05/01/96.
Belem do Para Convention Partially implemented.
ratification.
04/06/96 CRR1034/96 Penal Code Shelved.
reform. Art. 7: domestic
violence.
16/03/99 CRR3358/99 Detection Shelved.
and prevention of domestic
violence and victim support.

1
CRR ˆ Chamber of Representatives; CSS ˆ Senate.
Sources: Own compilation from parliamentary Diario de Sesiones and computing services data.

female Communist Party deputy, Carmen Beramendi, who had links to

the party's women's committee and the NGO Woman Now. She also
sought advice from feminist activists in drafting the bill. In contrast, the
first bill for the criminalisation of domestic violence (CRR1635/91) and
the two bills to establish the Defence Office for the Defence of the Rights
of Victims of Sexual and Domestic Violence (CRR1718/91±CSS997/92
and CRR101/95-CSS274/95) were presented by a male deputy from the
Broad Front, Daniel DõÂaz Maynard. His legislative record showed a
 Niki Johnson 115

consistent concern to eliminate the discriminatory norms remaining in

Uruguay's codes, but he did not seek advice on or approval for his
legislative proposals from the women's movement.36 However, the par-
liamentary committees studying the IPRE project and the first Defence
Office bill interviewed members of women's NGOs as part of the scru-
tiny process.37 In the second half of the decade, the women's movement
became more proactive in its monitoring of the legislative process. The
RUVDS, Feminist Space and Interdisciplinary Group requested inter-
views to discuss the 1995 Defence Office bill, and lobbied for the ratifi-
cation of the Belem do Para Convention (bill CSS242/95±CRR622/95), as
well as drafting the article on domestic violence for the 1995 bill on
public security (CRR124/95±CSS192/95). The wide-ranging 1999 bill
(CRR3358/99) was drawn up by the Interministerial Committee, on
which the RUVDS had representation, and was based on the multidisci-
plinary approach that had been promoted by the women's movement.
In spite of mounting pressure from the movement and the increasing
openness to the issue shown by the political establishment in the 1990s,
there remained serious obstacles to the construction of a legal frame-
work governing domestic abuse. The first criminalisation bill contained
radical proposals emphasising the rights of the victim in rape and
domestic violence cases, including the presumption of guilt against
the husband or partner when offences occurred within the home and
allowing the judge to convict when hard evidence was lacking.38 Al-
though these proposals are clearly problematic, the fact that the bill was
shelved without even being discussed at the committee stage illustrates
the level of institutional resistance to recognising the inadequacy of
existing norms for dealing with gender-specific crimes.
Similarly, the women's organisations' draft of the article criminalising
domestic violence in the public security bill was incorporated verbatim,
except for one small, but significant, change. Where the draft specified
women as the passive subjects of the crime, the law enacted did not
identify the sex of the victim; instead, a sub-clause established an
increase in the penalty when the victim was a woman. Therefore, the
Interdisciplinary Group argued, the basic definition of the crime could
only refer to two situations: female aggressor±male victim and male
aggressor±male victim. As a result, the law did not reflect the lived
reality of domestic violence ± that the majority of victims are women ±
and maintained the androcentric conception of human rights (Ben ÄaraÂn
et al. 1997: 122).
Attempts to define the state's responsibilities in the areas of preven-
tion, and protection and rehabilitation of victims, were impeded by the
116 Gender and Rights in Latin America

complex nature of the problem, which allows for multiple possible

responses requiring coordination between state actors in a wide range
of policy-making and law enforcement bodies.39 The IPRE bill was
finally passed after four years, but the original project was much reduced
in scope, and transferred from the Supreme Court of Justice to the
Ministry for Education and Culture: a location that would give it far
less status. The bill to establish the Defence Office (DefensorõÂa) was
passed by the lower house twice but shelved by the Senate (see Table
5.1), owing to unresolved questions concerning which state body
should have ultimate jurisdiction and bear the budgetary costs ± no
small matter at a time of reductions in public spending. The nomination
of the Interministerial Committee to draft the 1999 bill, which covered
conceptual definitions, procedures, jurisdictions and interinstitutional
coordination, represented an attempt to overcome such impediments in
the preliminary stages.40 Even so, the bill was automatically shelved at
the end of the legislative period (February 2000) without reaching dis-
cussion in parliament, indicating that domestic violence was still not
regarded as a priority issue.
Nor did the obstacles end with the passing of bills. The Ministry of
Education and Culture never carried out the IPRE project, despite lobby-
ing by Feminist Space. Similarly, the Belem do Para Convention was
ratified by parliament in 1995 (Law 16.735), but there was no systematic
implementation of its many recommendations. The criminalisation of
domestic violence in Law 16.707 was an important advance in that it
became a legally defined crime and judges were allowed to initiate
proceedings in these cases. However, judges' unfamiliarity with the
issue41 led to difficulties in applying the law ± in particular in interpret-
ing the clause that specified that the violence or threats should be
`repeated over a period of time'. Bill CRR1034/96 proposed the elimin-
ation of the problematic clause, a solution rejected by the Interdisciplin-
ary Group and RUVDS, which argued that it would undermine the
conceptual specificity of the offence that distinguished it from other
crimes of violence.42 In their view, the solution lay in adequate training
for the judiciary, not in modifications to the law's wording.

Conclusions

By the end of the 1990s clear advances had been made by the Uruguayan
women's movement in its campaign to defend women's right to be free
from violence. Domestic abuse was included in the Penal Code as a
statutory offence and the implementation of projects in various state
 Niki Johnson 117

agencies and ministries indicated that it was no longer considered an

individual, private issue. In addition, women's organisations specialis-
ing in domestic violence had achieved a degree of legitimacy as inter-
locutors in the eyes of some state actors. Despite these gains, the
movement's campaign to make the state accountable had not been
entirely effective.
The impediments to the enactment of the more complex legislative
initiatives presented in the 1990s indicate that in such cases lobbying
through established channels can have only a limited effect. It may be
that constructing alliances with key actors in the legislature ± as had
been achieved with some femocrats ± would improve the chances of
such projects being passed, by ensuring that they are promoted from
within. This may be more possible in the 2000±2005 term with the
increased number of female deputies elected in the November 1999
elections.43 On 8 March 2000 a group of these new MPs demonstrated
their willingness to engage in cross-party promotion of legislative initia-
tives by jointly re-presenting the bills on gender issues ± including the
one on domestic violence ± that had not been dealt with in the previous
term.
The fact that the only major state project in relation to domestic
violence to be implemented was financed by the IDB, signals the danger
that policies to tackle domestic violence will rely on the continued
availability of external funding. In order to avoid this dependence, key
instances and arenas of decision-making on the state budget must be
targeted to press for the allocation of permanent funds to tackle the
problem.44 Furthermore, the women's movement was unable to
broaden the state's policy focus, which was mainly limited to punitive
aspects involving the judiciary and police. Despite the movement's
emphasis on the importance of education, it did not carry out a con-
certed campaign to get the issue of domestic violence included in the
education reform programme initiated in 1995.
Lobbying has not only begun to occupy much of the women's move-
ment's time and human resources, but the activity itself is usually
regarded as the domain of experts. This, together with the focus on
service provision, which runs the risk of turning women into passive
clients, has reduced its potential as a mass-based, transformatory move-
ment empowering women to claim actively their rights. A final chal-
lenge facing the Uruguayan women's movement is to broaden the
debate and situate its demands relating to domestic violence within an
integrated campaign on sexual and reproductive rights.45 By the end of
the 1990s, issues such as the decriminalisation of abortion had not
118 Gender and Rights in Latin America

achieved the same level of legitimacy in the political agenda as violence

against women. Unless women's rights to sexual autonomy, reproduct-
ive self-determination and bodily integrity are respected in relation to
the whole range of women's life experiences, the concept of women's
human rights is seriously weakened and the gains made in the campaign
against domestic violence could come under threat.

Notes
1 By the end of the 1990s laws on domestic violence had been passed in Puerto
Rico (1989), Costa Rica (1990, chapter 4 of the Law Promoting Social Equality
for Women, and 1996), Peru (1993, 1997), Chile (1994), Argentina (1994),
Uruguay (1995), Ecuador (1995), Bolivia (1995), Mexico (1996), Colombia
(1996), Dominican Republic (1997).
2 This legislation was based on the philosophy of `compensatory feminism',
which aimed to redress the unequal balance of power between men and
women by forms of special protection or positive discrimination (Vaz Ferreira
1945).
3 In Brazil (Pitanguy 1995), Mexico (Duarte and GonzaÂlez 1994) and Argentina
(Chejter 1995) feminist organisations began campaigning on violence
against women in the 1970s and early 1980s.
4 Broad Front 1984 election document, `A las Mujeres Uruguayas'.
5 ConcertacioÂn Nacional ProgramaÂtica. CONAPRO was a forum of representa-
tives from political parties and civil society organisations whose aim was to
ensure a smooth transition from military rule by building consensus around
a minimum platform for the new government.
6 CONAPRO, `Documento Aprobado por la Mesa Ejecutiva de la ConcertacioÂn
Nacional ProgramaÂtica en el DõÂa 14 de Febrero de 1985. Tema: Orden Jur-
Âõdico', Part III: `Autoritarismo y Violencia'.
7 For example, Ofelia Machado Bonet, articles in El DõÂa cultural supplement (6
Aug. 1985 and 12 July 1986); Cotidiano Mujer, Epoca I, 17 (May 1987), 21 (Sep.
1987), Epoca II, 6 (Nov. 1991); the weekly women's supplement La RepuÂblica
de las Mujeres (first published August 1988), which includes a monthly sum-
mary of violent crimes against women.
8 Montevideo-based groups included the Uruguayan National Council of
Women, Uruguayan Women's Plenary, Woman Now, La UnioÂn Women's
House, Women and Society Institute; outside Montevideo, the Paulina Luisi
Movement, based in Melo, Cerro Largo.
9 In Montevideo the specialist groups New Moon and Maia Woman were
founded; outside Montevideo SOS Paysandu and Life Group (Salto); for
child victims, Rainbow; and for male abusers Corners and Rebirth.
10 These women include Flor de Lys RodrõÂguez, murdered on 12 November
1989; Silvia Mabel Ferreira, critically wounded on 2 October 1991; Silvia
RodrõÂguez Richieri, murdered on 26 March 1993.
11 `Mujer Ahora', Cotidiano Mujer, Epoca II, 6 (Nov. 1991): 18.
 Niki Johnson 119

12 The refuge was originally proposed by the INFM in 1992, but it was not until
1998 that the project was initiated in an agreement with an existing church-
run shelter for women.
13 In contrast, a more fluid working relationship developed between the NGO
community and the Women's Commission that was created in 1991 in the
municipal government of Montevideo (Intendencia Municipal de Monte-
video, IMM). This was facilitated partly by their closer ideological affiliation
± the capital's government was controlled by the Broad Front from 1990 ± but
more importantly by the fact that the women's movement had formal repre-
sentation on the Commission's council to define policy directions and moni-
tor programmes. In 1992 a help-line for victims of domestic violence was set
up jointly by the Commission and the Uruguayan Women's Plenary (IMM
ComisioÂn de la Mujer/PLEMUU, 1995). The Women and Society Institute
helped the Commission set up women's advice centres in outlying sectors of
the capital and provided awareness-raising and training on domestic violence
in the IMM's health, citizen action and educational programmes (Mazzotti
1996). The fact that the Broad Front remained in power for consecutive
administrations (1990±95 and 1995±2000) also allowed the Women's Com-
mission to develop a greater degree of continuity in its work than the INFM.
14 After the first in 1981, Feminist Encounters took place in Peru, 1983; Brazil,
1985; Mexico, 1987; Argentina, 1990. The latter was organised jointly by
Uruguayan and Argentinian feminists. For accounts of these and later En-
counters (El Salvador, 1993; Chile, 1996), see Sternbach et al. (1992) and
Alvarez (1998).
15 For example, the Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network
and the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of
Women's Rights (CLADEM).
16 Henceforth Latin American Violence Network.
17 The Women's Consensus-Building Forum (ConcertacioÂn de Mujeres) and the
Women's Coordination. As well as a lack of time and resources to devote to
movement-building, internal divisions had arisen from the conflicting pos-
itions adopted by movement members vis-aÁ-vis the December 1986 law
granting the military immunity for human rights abuses and the subsequent
campaign for a referendum to overturn the law.
18 Feminist Space document (11 April 1993).
19 Interview with Graciela Dufau (16 June 1997).
20 Its members included lawyers, a sociologist, a psychiatrist and a psychologist,
who was also a serving police officer.
21 For an example of this campaign in Latin America, see CLADEM (n.d.).
22 `Tribunals' were held at the global NGO Forums in Vienna and Huairou
(parallel to the Beijing Conference), and at the regional Sixth Feminist En-
counter in Chile.
23 RUVDS press release, La RepuÂblica de las Mujeres (1 Dec. 1996).
24 Feminist Space letter to Chamber of Representatives' Human Rights Commit-
tee (23 April 1993).
25 Feminist Space press release, La RepuÂblica (25 Feb. 1993). While mainstream
and motherist human rights groups supported the women's movement's
protests, they did not work on the issue themselves. This distance between
women's and human rights movements has been signalled by several authors
120 Gender and Rights in Latin America

as an important obstacle to the promotion of women's rights as human

rights (Thomas 1993: 87±8; Thomas and Beasley 1993: 57±8; Bunch 1990:
488).
26 For analyses of whether the claim for domestic violence to be regarded as a
human rights abuse is reconcilable with current conceptions of human rights
and the parameters of international law see Thomas and Beasley (1993),
Copelon (1994) and Roth (1994).
27 Analyses of this state complicity argument can be found in Roth (1994: 330)
and Romany (1994: 100±1).
28 For example, the Interdisciplinary Group helped draft a new domestic vio-
lence report form for the women's police station, and member organisations
of the RUVDS ran awareness-raising courses in police stations in the interior.
29 This Inter-ministerial Committee also had delegates from the Ministry of the
Interior, the Ministry for Education and Culture, the Ministry of Public
Health, the National Crime Prevention Office, the women's police station
and the INFM.
30 Interview with Gabriel Dufau (16 June 1997) and interview with Nea Fil-
gueira (15 Aug. 1997).
31 IELSUR letter to Inter-American Human Rights Committee (21 Aug. 1995).
32 Inter-American Human Rights Committee letter to IELSUR (14 July 1995).
33 IELSUR letter, op.cit.
34 For example, Minister of the Supreme Court of Justice, Dra Jacinta Balbela de
Delgue and Attorney-General Dr Miguel LangoÂn Cun Ä arro.
35 For example, Law 16.045 on equal opportunities and treatment for women at
work was passed in 1989 but not implemented by the Labour Ministry ±
headed for the first time in Uruguay's history by a woman, Ana LõÂa Pin ÄeyruÂa,
± until 1997.
36 When challenged on this matter by movement representatives, he replied
that he was under no constitutional obligation to consult them. Chamber of
Representatives' Human Rights Committee, Record of Meeting 1137 (17 Sep.
1992): 4.
37 They were invited in their capacity as representatives of the IMM Women's
Commission.
38 Diario de Sesiones de la CaÂmara de Representantes, 2235 (13 Nov. 1991): 154±5.
39 The multiplicity of approaches is illustrated by the varying nature of legisla-
tion on domestic violence in the region. See Binstock (1999), Gamba et al.
(1999), and Lamberti (1999).
40 For analyses of the bill, see Dufau (1999: 63±8) and Lamberti (1999: 163±6).
41 There is no trial by jury in Uruguay.
42 BenÄaraÂn et al. (1997: 124±7); RUVDS cited in La RepuÂblica de las Mujeres (24
Nov. 1996): 8.
43 As from 15 February 2000 there are 16 women deputies (12.2 per cent), up
from nine (6.9 per cent) in the previous legislature.
44 In particular the National Budget Law, presented in the first year of each new
administration, and the Budget and Planning Office, which has exclusive
control over the allocation of all state funds. So far, both have been ignored
as targets for lobbying by the women's movement.
45 At regional level there have been calls for this. See Red de Salud (1996).
 Niki Johnson 121

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6
Constructing Citizenship
in the PoblacioÂnes of Santiago,
Chile: the Role of Reproductive
and Sexual Rights
Ceri Willmott

Introduction

At a time when there has been a great deal of debate about women's
international rights and new areas of rights concerning women have
begun to be defined, my aim in this chapter is to consider how such
rights operate in specific class and cultural contexts. The area I shall
discuss is the poblacioÂnes (low-income settlements) of southern Santiago,
Chile. Whilst emphasising the particularity of cultural contexts, I also
argue that international rights are applicable across cultural contexts.
The process by which women interpret such rights and apply them in
their lives illustrates how `rights' and `citizenship' can be used as stra-
tegic tools in negotiating their position in different contexts.
Chile today presents itself as the jaguar1 of South American countries.
It prides itself on its economic success and positions itself as one of the
most modern powers in Latin America. In relation to women, it would
boast that it has a national agency, SERNAM (Servicio Nacional de la
Mujer/National Women's Agency), which deals with women's issues
ensuring that women's needs have been taken care of in the transition
to, and consolidation of democracy. Yet the reality of women's lives in
Chile bears little resemblance to this image. As this chapter illustrates, in
terms of women's rights, Chile is one of the more conservative countries
in Latin America and, culturally, certain pervasive ideas about women's
proper role continue significantly to limit women's ability to exercise
their citizenship.2 Two particular features of Chilean society lie behind
this reality. The first is the strength and conservatism of the Catholic
Church, which in Chile occupies a particularly dominant cultural pos-

124
 Ceri Willmott 125

ition. This has been the case historically and the left has not challenged
its position, in part because the Church gained credibility during the
dictatorship by setting up the vicaria, a bureau to monitor and protest
against human rights abuses. The second is the powerful and efficient
nature of the state in Chile. From the time of Diego Portales3 onwards,
governments have come and gone, but the state has never collapsed
(GoÂngora 1986).4 The close relationship between the Catholic Church
and the state5 means that between them they wield a great deal of
influence, both politically and ideologically. This has a great impact
on women's lives, most notably in the areas of reproduction and sexual-
ity, and has meant that certain notions contained in state and Church
discourse are particularly pervasive. These discourses help to position
women in a particular way, which, I argue, limit women's ability to put
their rights into practice. However, rather than depicting these domin-
ant discourses as totalising, I argue in favour of a more complex picture
in which women may be seen, on the one hand, to be complicit in their
own subordination by fulfilling the subject positions that these dis-
courses offer, but on the other they also adopt alternative discourses in
the negotiation of their daily lives. One example is the new feminist
discourse on human rights and the ideas emanating from feminist NGOs,
which focus on concepts of freedom and autonomy. Women may be seen
to reinterpret these alternative discourses in the course of applying them
to their own situations, accepting, rejecting and transforming them in the
process. In this way rights discourses may be seen to play a transformative
role in the content and practice of citizenship. The extension of the
concept of citizenship to incorporate new areas of rights, such as repro-
ductive and sexual rights, creates the potential for women to use these
conceptual tools to challenge traditional gender discourses that discrim-
inate against them and inhibit the exercise of their citizenship.
The chapter is based on research carried out in Santiago between
January 1995 and January 1997 amongst women's groups in the pobla-
cioÂnes of southern Santiago, including a study of the work of nongovern-
mental organisations working in this locality, in particular Tierra
Nuestra (Our Earth) and Domos. As well as collecting data in the course
of participant observation, I constructed life histories of 89 women aged
between 15 and 67.6 These were based on semi-structured interviews
and the women interviewed included leaders in the women's organisa-
tions, participants in women's groups and women who do not have a
history of participation. In addition, I carried out research at the local
civil courts in San Miguel, studying 107 cases involving the operation of
the new law against domestic violence. The study shows that although
126 Gender and Rights in Latin America

women's experience is situational and specific, in a way that acknow-

ledges the range of cultural, religious, economic and social concerns and
interests that blur theoretical categories, there are many areas of com-
monality which allow us to see an international dimension to women's
citizenship. 7

The Chilean state, citizenship and the new discourse of

international rights for women

It is the state that continues to prescribe the basis of citizenship, both

through its laws and policies and in terms of the gender discourses that
these embody.8 In Chile, I argue, the discourses emanating from the
state have tended to be closely interconnected with the gender ideology
promoted by the Catholic Church, forming part of a dominant `ideo-
logical core'9 which emphasises motherhood as women's `essential' role.
This high valuation of a self-sacrificing form of motherhood (see Mon-
tecino 1991), together with other factors such as female domesticity and
sexual chastity expressed in these discourses contributes to the main-
tenance of a particular sexual division of roles, which in turn delimits
the categories of male and female citizenship. These ideas and the
images associated with them incorporate what feminists in Chile, both
popular and professional, refer to as the deber ser of being a woman,
meaning what one, as a woman, `ought' to be.
There are many different state institutions in Chile that shape, and are
shaped by, gender relations: the legal system, the education system,
public health and population office to name but a few. These all have
`gendered' policies which reinforce some gender relations whilst chal-
lenging others (cf. Fraser 1989). But given the state's multifaceted form,
it is possible to see that while many of the ideas embedded in state
practices are extremely pervasive, the relationship between the state
and gender relations is not fixed and immutable. Discourses are repro-
duced over time only to the extent that individual men and women
invest in the subject positions that these discourses offer (Moore 1994:
61). Exposure to alternative ideas about gender creates the possibility of
investing in different subject positions and challenging received ideas
about gender. There are spaces for manoeuvre in which individuals and
groups can take an active role in the process of the construction of
gender identities and of citizenship (cf. Waylen 1996: 17). Operating
within these spaces women's and men's multiple activities have a
bottom-up effect on gender, politics and economics, disrupting state
constructions and cultural stereotypes (cf. Peterson 1996, Carroll 1989).
 Ceri Willmott 127

People are both constrained by and able to play with dominant dis-
courses that are around them, as we see below. In particular, discourses
centred around international human rights law and local feminist dis-
courses have provided alternative ideas with which to challenge en-
trenched views about gender which influence women's ability to
exercise their rights.10
The relationship between state and Church discourses has not
remained static. Different governments with different political agendas
have resulted in ever-changing tensions and disparities within this set of
dominant discourses. Over the last twenty years, and especially since the
end of the military dictatorship in 1989 fundamental forms of social and
economic restructuring have brought about changes in ideas about
gender roles. The process of democratisation and the appearance of
new social organisations, as well as the influence of the international
community, in particular new international rights directed at women,
have all contributed to these changes (Goetz 1995: 45). These processes
and the organisations involved in them incorporate new discourses on
gender, providing alternative constructions with which individuals can
challenge dominant gender ideologies. The state itself has increasingly
come under pressure to promote women's interests, such that it now has
SERNAM, with the result that the state itself has competing and contra-
dictory discourses within its own structure. The ideas and strategies
emanating from SERNAM frequently incorporate views about gender
that conflict with the discourses that the state employs in other areas.
In this respect, the state may be seen to be negotiating between the two
discourses described above: that of the dominant ideological core
focused around Catholicism and that of the new discourse of human
rights for women.
Nevertheless, change is slow, and the pervasiveness of many stereo-
typical ideas may be explained both by the close relationship between
the Church and the state and the strength of the state. Chile has long
been a country with a deep-rooted respect for the rule of law, to the
extent that even Pinochet used legal plebiscite, however skewed, to
maintain his hold of power. The coalition ConcertacioÂn government,
in power since the demise of Pinochet in 1990, has also reflected this
legalistic tradition by abiding by the Pinochet constitution, despite its
limitations, and choosing to reform it rather than writing a new consti-
tution. This legalistic approach makes Chile conservative and slow to
change. One of Pinochet's last acts was to protect life from the moment
of conception by amending the constitution and this change remains in
place.11 Even more unusual is the fact that divorce has never been legal
128 Gender and Rights in Latin America

in Chile and legislators remain nervous about changing the law, despite
the fact that many people acquire dubious annulments to be able to
remarry. The ConcertacioÂn government is a coalition of Christian
Democrats and Socialists giving it a centrist complexion. In its early
days it set up SERNAM, albeit without ministerial status, to promote
women's rights, but the pro-Catholic Christian Democrats reinforce
social conservatism, particularly in relation to reproductive rights
(Matear 1997: 256). These conservative policies are supported by the
Catholic Church. Although the Church was seen as politically progres-
sive in its defence of human rights during the Pinochet dictatorship
(Lowden 1993), it remains socially conservative. The Church is not as
influential as it once was, but it is still important; something that was
reinforced by its human rights activities.
This legalistic tradition also means that Chile engages with inter-
national legislation. Like many other countries in the region, Chile has
been quick to sign up to the many international declarations and con-
ventions as part of its democratisation process. This has offered many
opportunities for feminist and women's NGOs and some members of
parliament to use international discourses to extend women's citizen-
ship. But although Chile has signed the declarations of Beijing and Cairo,
extending women's sexual and reproductive rights is slow. SERNAM has
tended to emphasise women's participation as a neoliberal citizen of the
workplace and as a consumer, rather than other aspects of their citizen-
ship (cf. Craske 2000: 50). Less attention has been given to changing
reproductive rights, although some movement has been made with a
shift in the debate on abortion to place it in the ambit of public health.12
Nevertheless, by signing international conventions, Chile is committing
itself to changing laws to conform with the conventions, however grad-
ual this process may be. Currently an initiative is underway, led by three
members of parliament, for a new law in relation to sexual and reproduct-
ive rights. The proposed law has stimulated a great deal of debate and has
already met with opposition from the Church and right-wing parties. The
present head of SERNAM, Adriana Delpiana, recently reaffirmed the pos-
ition of the socialist President Ricardo Lagos, which is that there will be no
change in the law on abortion during this government, but that this did
not rule out new legislation concerning adequate education in relation to
sexual rights and responsible reproductive health.13
The signing of international conventions also serves to reinforce a
rights-based discourse, which is used by women to redefine their own
sense of their citizenship and subjectivity, as I demonstrate. In Latin
American countries, many of which have had the experience of violent
 Ceri Willmott 129

and repressive dictatorships, the discourse of citizenship and rights have

a lengthy history. In Chile, it has been central to the struggle for dem-
ocracy and, for the women with whom I worked, the language of `rights'
and especially `human rights' are a part of everyday life, though not
necessarily something they apply to themselves. Using case study ma-
terials from workshops I attended concerning sexuality and reproduct-
ive rights and interviews with women, I aim to show how the use of
these concepts is changing, and how the acquisition of new ideas about
rights and autonomy can make a difference to women's lives. Women
may be seen to contest dominant local understandings about their
rights with alternative discourses, some informed by international
human rights. The organisations and workshops that women participate
in may be seen as spaces within which women are able to create a
`culture of citizenship' ( Jelin and Hershberg 1996: 2).
I use the category `citizenship' in a broad sense, which emphasises the
relationship of the citizen with society as a whole, rather than focusing
solely on the individual's relationship with the state (Yuval-Davis 1997:
5). This multi-tiered notion of citizenship advanced by Yuval-Davis
(1997), extends the idea of citizenship beyond the relationship between
individuals and the state to include their affiliation to dominant or
subordinate groups in civil society. I argue that the international level
must also be incorporated into this approach. International organisa-
tions and collectivities now play a significant role in the construction of
citizenship, both in the process of the development of international
rights and in their application in different cultural contexts. An import-
ant example of this is the new area of reproductive and sexual rights,
which was elaborated at Cairo and Beijing. This enables us to see the
potential for individuals to make strategic use of rights that reinforce
alternative constructions to those that the state may endorse. While it is
difficult to measure the effectiveness of human rights pressures, as Jelin
points out, in a less visible but equally important sense, the human
rights movement is effective when it helps transform the cultural and
moral context ( Jelin 1996: 72). It is in this sense that human rights play
a transformative role in the content and practice of citizenship.

Reproduction: the struggle for bodily integrity

Applying the broad multi-tiered conceptualisation of citizenship out-

lined above involves examining the cultural factors that influence
women's ability to exercise their rights. In the state-endorsed configur-
ation where women's `proper' role is being a mother, women are
130 Gender and Rights in Latin America

positioned as primarily responsible for reproduction, but with no con-

trol over it, or by extension over their own bodies. Until recently, the
husband's signature was required if a woman wanted to obtain contra-
ceptives and his signature is still required, together with the permission
of two doctors, to allow a sterilisation. Chile is one of among only 16
countries worldwide in which abortion is illegal under any circum-
stance, that is, not even in cases of pregnancy resulting from rape and
incest, nor even when the woman's life is endangered (UN 1994). The
cultural emphasis on selfless motherhood translates in law into an
absolute prohibition against abortion. The message used to justify
state intervention is that a pregnant woman is a mother who should
think and act foremost to protect the health of the foetus she carries and
that she should do so not only to ensure a good future for the foetus, but
also for society. When the state regulates women as childbearers it
therefore legislates the ideology of motherhood. The legislature's deci-
sion to save foetal life by compelling pregnancy, even in cases where
such pregnancy might be harmful to the mother, can be interpreted as
contrary to a woman's human rights; but it both reflects and enforces
prevailing cultural conceptions of women's roles. Clearly, the values
represented in law are much broader than the specific laws and judicial
decisions that embody them and may be traced back to the dominant
ideological core discussed above.
This all has profound significance from the point of view of women's
position as political subjects; limiting as it does the most basic right of
bodily integrity, it demonstrates that women have a different relation-
ship to the state from men. The full force of each aspect of the dominant
ideological core comes into play in the case of abortion. The way in
which women talk about abortion also reveals the way in which Cath-
olic discourse, as embodied in the law against abortion, is constitutive of
gender. Gisela, a leader in a women's organisation, aged 46 with three
children, describes the treatment she received in the Barros Luco hos-
pital where she ended up after becoming infected after her backstreet
abortion. Her story reflects that of many others.14

A young doctor arrived and asked me what I had done to myself.

`Nothing', I said to him, I already knew that as long as you say
nothing they have no way of proving anything, because the woman
who carried out the abortion told me. I had already arranged with my
sister that if I was kept in hospital she must bring me antibiotics,
because if you don't confess to what you have done they don't give
you antibiotics. The next day the doctor came again. The tension was
 Ceri Willmott 131

terrible; it was torture. The doctor said to me, `Very well, if you don't
tell me what you did to yourself, I am not going to be able to treat
you, I'm not going to do anything and you are going to die.' He
treated me like an ignorant person. They kept me there until the next
day without treating me. I was suffering haemorrhages at brief inter-
vals; the pain in my stomach was terrible. I have a very healthy body,
the haemorrhaging stopped at 1 a.m. without the doctor having done
a thing. I was lucky.
At 6 a.m. the next day they carried out the curettage. I swear that the
doctor sought out those shifts to persecute me. I've worked in a
hospital and I know a doctor does not work more than two shifts in
succession, but this doctor was there three days in a row and each day
he came and said to me, `Tell me.' He would come and take my
temperature, which is what the nurses usually do. `Ah, you still
don't have a fever, you still don't have an infection, but it will soon
show itself.' He frightened me: `Because when the infection begins it
is going to be a disaster because I won't be able to do anything and
you are going to die, so tell me while there is still time, what did you
do to yourself? Who did it?' I kept denying everything. He looked at
me and said, `You know that this is a crime? You are going to get
infected and you are going to go to prison if you are lucky, because
you may well die, so tell me who else helped you.' He kept on and on
like this. The day before I was allowed to go home he brought a flask
with a foetus in it. He said, `This is yours,' I knew it wasn't because I
had looked at mine so much.15 Just as well it wasn't otherwise it
would have done my head in. I looked at it and looked away and
he brought it round to the other side of the bed. The only thing I
wanted to do was to cry and cry and to be with someone. I was alone,
alone. It was terrible how they treated me. I always say that that
doctor tortured me in the name of his precious God . . . After that
experience I began to get involved in the cases of women who wanted
to have abortions, in health workshops and so on. Women began to
tell me stories about abortions, because in groups women won't say if
they have had abortions or if they want to have an abortion. There I
began to realise how terrible the problem is.

Gisela's experience illustrates the indirect operation of the law against

abortion, which extends beyond the law courts. In this case the woman
is not brought before a judge and sentenced to jail but she is nonetheless
judged and sentenced, instead by a doctor. Her case also shows the way
in which the legal and medical professions become conflated in the
132 Gender and Rights in Latin America

process of penalising abortion, reflecting the dominant discourse under-

lying them both. The force of this ideology resonates in women's opin-
ions about abortion. Thus, ChõÂa, an occasional domestic worker, aged
33, married with six children, who had on one occasion tried unsuccess-
fully to provoke an abortion, said she did not believe that there should
be a right to abortion:

Because many women are just irresponsible, it's their problem if they
don't look after themselves. In my case it was different because my
husband maltreated me to make me lose the baby, as I already had
five children and this pregnancy was unwanted . . . but when the
injection didn't work I thought that if I did anything God was
going to punish me because it is He who chooses when to take a life
away, and I can't take a baby's life away, a human being the same as
me.

Dominant gender ideology clearly constrains the strategies that

women can adopt to negotiate their lives. But women nevertheless
find ways to manoeuvre the best they can in the circumstances. For
some women, this means trying to fulfil their understanding of the
categories and stereotypes contained in the dominant discourses and
use this to wield as much power over their children and spouses as
possible within the constraints placed upon them. But the possibilities
are limited, and many women express a tremendous sense of powerless-
ness in relation to reproduction and consequent anxiety. This stems not
just from the practical fact of limited access to contraceptives and
adequate support to ensure that they are properly used, but from cul-
tural and historical factors which restrict people's awareness about con-
traceptives and, especially in the case of younger women, inhibit
women from making use of them.
In the face of these realities, many women contest traditional gender
ideology, or parts thereof, questioning and challenging their relation-
ships at the level of the family, the community and the state. This may
involve deciding to use contraceptives in spite of their religious beliefs,
in some cases deciding to have children without getting married, some-
times deliberately getting pregnant to have something that they feel is
`theirs', working outside of the home in spite of the struggle this usually
involves with their husbands, or falsifying documents enabling them to
have sterilisations. In the course of negotiating their lives, women,
particularly those who have experience of participating in women's
organisations and who have therefore had greater exposure to alterna-
 Ceri Willmott 133

tive discourses, make strategic use of the concepts of `citizenship' and

`rights'.
A case in point is abortion. The fact that most women leaders I
interviewed and women who have a history of participation in the
women's movement believe that there should be a right to safe abortion
reflects the influence of alternative discourses in relation to gender and
rights. Of the 89 women I interviewed, 62 per cent believed that there
should be a broad right to abortion (Willmott 1998: 161). This figure
includes participants and leaders in the women's movement as well as
nonparticipants.16 It is also clear that women's views often change over
time as a result of experience and through participation in women's
organisations. This informs their active construction of themselves as
citizens with rights. Whilst participating in the School for Women
Leaders organised by the NGO Tierra Nuestra, I was able to witness the
process through which a couple of women who had at first been
staunchly against abortion on the grounds of their Catholic beliefs,
had changed their minds. Yolanda (50 L),17 who described herself as
very religious and against abortion when I first met her, went through a
process of change during her time at the School and through participat-
ing in the Open Forum for Reproductive and Sexual Rights.18 Her
changed views were demonstrated at a local meeting about parental
responsibility where she formed part of the panel, in a powerful and
extremely articulate rebuttal of the views of a pastor involved in `edu-
cating' young pregnant women. She emphasised the need for sexual
education: `Sexual education is strictly sanctioned, although in reality
sexuality exists and is exercised, and not only for reproductive reasons.'
She made use of the concept of citizenship to reinforce her argument
that women have the right to exercise control over their own bodies: `It
isn't possible to exercise citizenship in relation to the world if one hasn't
learnt to exercise citizenship in one's own life and to decide in relation
to one's own body.' In my second interview with her she still said she
would not have an abortion herself but felt strongly that each woman
had the right to decide for herself in relation to her body, mind and soul,
it was not the place of the church or the state to make such decisions.
She said that participating with other women had taught her to see
things from other women's point of view and not just from her own.
She has learnt to analyse the opinions she had and the views she held.
Towards the end of this interview she broke down in tears and told me
about an abortion that she had had 27 years previously. At the time she
already had four children, one of whom had suffered brain damage from
meningitis, and had felt so desperate that she took this course of action.
134 Gender and Rights in Latin America

She said that it was her guilt in relation to this abortion that had made
her speak out so vehemently against abortion for such a long time and
dedicate herself to teaching contraceptive methods. Yolanda's case
underlines the power of dominant discourse which is at the root of her
sense of guilt about having an abortion, at the same time she exempli-
fies the way in which an awareness of rights can inform and enable
people to challenge traditional ideas about gender and reproduction.
Other women who have participated in women's groups use language
that clearly positions abortion as an issue that severely limits women's
citizenship. Yamilia (33 L) thinks that some women have abortions when
they could have prevented the pregnancy. But she accepts that there are
reasons for having an abortion and that doctors take advantage in these
situations to treat women badly: `They punish them and criticise them.'
She thought it was unjust that women should be arrested for having
abortions. Although she would not have an abortion herself she said
that she thought that legalising abortion would make it safer: `It should
be safe like it is for rich women with money up there (in the wealthier
districts); they don't have abortions, they have ``operations''.'
Women's views about the ability to decide in relation to their bodies
challenge dominant ideas about selfless motherhood currently em-
bodied in a law which does not allow a woman to have an abortion,
even if her own life is in danger. Carmena (65 P) (who herself had four
abortions when she was younger) believes that women should have the
right to a safe abortion: `Women should decide in relation to abortion
because a woman does not always want to bring up a child.' She says she
thinks it is especially important in the case of young women who end up
completely ruining their lives and are also unable to provide a child with
the care that it needs. In her own case she says that she did not have
enough money to bring up a child and she knew that she also was not
going to have the support of a partner, `I was going to have to practically
kill myself working to manage.' Juana (39 P) refers to the power of the
Catholic Church in relation to abortion and the influence it exerts over
government: `The government decides for me whether I want to have a
baby or not.' She referred to the experience of a friend who is plagued
with guilt for having had an abortion, because she feels that she has
committed a crime and because `Society takes it upon itself to remind
you that you committed a crime.' She sees it as a great injustice that
women should be punished for having abortions. These examples
clearly show that awareness of reproductive rights informs the way in
which women negotiate their lives and position themselves vis-aÁ-vis the
state and the Church.
 Ceri Willmott 135

Nowhere is the transformative capacity of human rights more appar-

ent than in the discourse and actions of women leaders in the pobla-
cioÂnes. They occupy a pivotal position, influencing women in their
communities and representing women's interests at the level of local
politics and in national campaigns. Many women leaders have had close
involvement with feminist NGOs where they have developed an aware-
ness of gender issues.19 They make sophisticated analyses of the involve-
ment of the Catholic Church and the state in relation to abortion,
which incorporate notions of citizenship and reproductive rights. For
Carmen (38 L), the situation with regard to abortion in Chile is a task
that the women's movement must continue to work to rectify. Although
dismissive of the importance of fighting to change laws in other con-
texts, she said that in this case it was essential to campaign for such a
change in this case. For Luz (39 L) it is essential, that women should
have a right to a safe abortion, saying that `if women followed the
precepts of the Church and state we would have all those children, in
addition to the ones we already have, and how would we feed them all
when the state does not make itself responsible for this situation?'
Women leaders have a clear sense of their rights as citizens vis-aÁ-vis the
state. Manuela (49 L) sees abortion as a decision for each individual
woman: `It is for you decide what to do with your own body, I don't
accept other people deciding for me.' For Blanca (37 L), deciding
whether to continue a pregnancy is a matter for the individual, not
the state: `The state cannot meddle with each woman's body.' Angela
(45 L) recounts how she had a clandestine abortion and almost died as a
result. She succinctly sums up her own situation and that of other
women in Chile when she asks: `What citizenship are they talking to
me about, if I am not even master of my own body?'
Women's ability to deal effectively with health professionals and
other representatives of the state is influenced by their involvement in
women's groups and awareness of their rights. Julia (39 P) comments
that professionals and officials only respect your rights `when we
women demand them'. She describes having insisted that she be given
the contraceptive pill when the professionals at her local clinic wanted
to fit her with an IUD (inter-uterine device). Flor (49 P) also says that her
work in the women's organisation `has completely changed my life'.
Previously she spent all her time encerrada (closed indoors), but not now.
Now she has learnt to value herself and make others respect her rights: `I
don't conform anymore, I know how to fight and how to argue, I know
about laws, I'm more discerning.' As a result people treat her differently
and she sees herself as able to operate more effectively: `I ask all the
136 Gender and Rights in Latin America

questions I want to, even if it annoys them, because I know it's my right
to be informed, especially when it comes to my health.' Women also
talk about feeling more parada (standing upright), feeling more aware
and confident when dealing with professionals and officials.

`Body absent, body present': changing ideas about sexuality

It's bad for women (not to feel sexual pleasure). They get ill. But you
have to respond to the traditional marriage. That is what our educa-
tion, the Church, the system, tell you: that a woman is not a human
being and so she cannot feel. If you begin to feel then you are a bad
woman. That is how the culture has made you. ( Luz (39 L) )

The idea that sexuality can be a source of pleasure and satisfaction

for women is a relatively new one amongst women pobladoras. Women's
sexuality, as may be seen in the cases material below, has been closely
tied to a powerful discourse that emphasises their maternal role and
the denial of sexual feelings or desire. As a result women have seen their
sexuality as being at the service of their husband's or partner's plea-
sure rather than their own, and as being defined by their partner's
needs rather than their own. In this sense women's sexuality has been
limited to an extension of their maternal role, through which they offer
their husbands a further source of nurture and affection. This limited
exercise of sexuality also defines women as `decent' in contrast to `in-
decent' women who use their bodies without inhibitions as sexual
objects (cf. Lamadrid Alvarez and Mun Äoz Gouet 1996: 81). For Monte-
cino (1991), women's inhibited sexuality is connected with the attempt
to overcome the tension between virginity and motherhood and the
opposed poles of Eve and Mary in dominant Catholic discourse. The
abnegation of the suffering mother, which serves to resolve these ten-
sions, extends to the denial of sexual pleasure.20 This denial of sexuality
also represents the female counterpart of the male that controls female
sexuality in the Mediterranean honour/shame complex, which also
forms a part of this discursive matrix.
Against this backdrop, data obtained from interviews with women
and from sexuality workshops organised by local women, shows
how new ideas about sexuality and sexual rights can be introduced.
The data reflect that women are receptive to these new notions.
As well as finding them liberating, women are able to connect them
with their own experiences and apply them in their personal relation-
ships.
 Ceri Willmott 137

Case studies of workshops concerning sexuality, reproductive

and sexual rights

Participating in workshops concerning sexuality, I was able to see how

women applied reproductive and sexual rights to their lives, negotiating
their meaning in the process. One example was a series of seven work-
shops given by a matrona, or midwife, who is also director of a local
clinic in San JoaquõÂn and who had contacts with the Open Forum for
Health and Reproductive Rights.21 There were about 35 participants.
At the first of these workshops the women participants started out
expressing the common themes identified above in relation to sexuality,
but during the progress of the workshops they began to talk about
sexuality in different ways. All the women, when asked to draw them-
selves on the first day that they menstruated, drew themselves fully
clothed. At the second workshop women made collages out of cuttings
from magazines to show what they understood sexuality to mean. Many
of them selected pictures of babies or pregnant women, which reflected
their tendency to see sexuality as inseparable from reproduction. Sexu-
ality is often equated with sexual intercourse with a man in the language
women use. One chose a picture of a bride saying that this depicted the
beginning of sexuality at the moment of getting married. Others chose
images that suggested shame and embarrassment. An image of a woman
in a long nightgown, which one woman felt represented the commence-
ment of menstruation, was chosen to express her understanding of
sexuality. Underneath the image she had written, `My first period ± a
taboo'. Their perceptions often reveal their strong identification as
mothers, which permits them to talk in terms of reproduction, but not
in terms of sexuality as a notion that embraces pleasure and sensuality.
This accords with the argument that the dominant discourse centred on
motherhood involves a denial of female sexuality. Typically women
selected pictures representing the role of men as el hombre protector
(man the protector) and of women as la mujer bonita (the pretty
woman). Many referred to sex as an obligation or referred to mistreat-
ment or aggression, which accords with the high incidence of marital
rape.
At a later workshop in the series the matrona introduced a list of
reproductive and sexual rights produced by the Open Forum for Health
and Reproductive Rights. The discussions around each of these rights
illustrate the way in which women negotiate the meaning of these
rights in applying them to their own situations. All the women said
that they could relate to the contents of a right concerning voluntary
138 Gender and Rights in Latin America

sexual relations, including in the context of the marriage. Several spoke

up about their experiences, saying that they used to or still did have
sexual relations when they did not want to. One young woman said that
although she felt that it was wrong for her husband to have relations
with her when she didn't really want to, she wasn't aware that she had a
right not to: `Things will be different now', she said. When introduced
to a reproductive right concerning abortion, Alicia (29 P), having
listened carefully to what the matrona said, concluded that basically
women do not have any right to decide over their bodies. In relation
to another right, concerning competent and respectful health person-
nel, the women were quick to joke about the contents of this right
saying ironically that this was, of course, just how things were. They
mimicked the way that the personnel actually treat them, telling them
to hurry from one queue to another. In relation to being offered infor-
mation about all the different methods of contraception they joked
about being offered `a Copper T or a T of Copper.' They also recognised
the importance of transmitting their newly acquired knowledge to their
daughters, even if they felt it was too late to benefit from these rights
themselves. MarõÂa (35 P) observed that although she felt that she had
not had the benefit of these kinds of rights, she had daughters and, for
this reason, she felt it was important to learn about such things.
At the end of the series of workshops women's notions about sexuality
had changed. The women split into groups to evaluate the workshops.
In response to the question: what is sexuality? They responded: `recog-
nition of the body and contact with it'; `knowing our bodies'; `I would
like to receive more affection from him, but he doesn't respond'; `it has
to do with our bodies and feelings'; `it is ours', `it is everything'; `the
recognition of our body'; `it is everything combined together, a feeling,
something physical, psychological and emotional, involving the whole
body, skin, smells'; `it is the personal development of a woman in
relation to her sex'; for many it is `something learnt aged 30 or more';
`the right to know about your body and to decide in relation to it';
`affection, kisses, caresses'. Women's awareness about their bodies had
also changed, although quite a few still described their bodies in nega-
tive terms. Responses to the question: How is your relationship with
your body now? included: `at times my relationship with my body is
good, I like myself, but I also feel tired and mistreated'; `it is good, I look
at myself in the mirror and touch all of my body, now I know myself
well'; `I don't feel ashamed [anymore], after this workshop on sexuality I
no longer turn off the light'; `I am aware my body is tired, it aches, I
want to be caressed by someone'; `all my life I have been a mujer objeto
 Ceri Willmott 139

(an object), now after this workshop I like to look at myself and touch
myself.' Women also reported that the workshops made them realise
that there was a shared experience amongst them in relation to their
bodies and feelings. This is reflected in the tendency to use the second
person plural at the end of the workshops: `We learned to know our
bodies and to value ourselves as women' said one group.
Learning to say `no' is also something women acknowledge in the
evaluation of the workshops. One group of women said, `Before we all
found it difficult to say ``no'' when we did not want to have sexual
relations, we felt obliged. But now we say ``NO!''.'
On another occasion, two women leaders, Elena (49 L) and Rosario
(49 L), presented a one-off workshop entitled `Sexuality as a human
right' to a taller, women's group of about twenty women. Here, too,
women showed themselves to be receptive to notions of reproductive
and sexual rights, immediately adapting and applying them to their
own lives. A selection of reproductive and sexual rights had been written
on pieces of paper and put in a bowl and each woman was asked to
choose a right, read it out and explain what she thought it meant. After
each woman had done this Elena (49 L) made her a present of that right
saying it was `hers'.
Constanza (39 P) began with: `The right to exercise sexuality without
having genital relations.' Constanza said that this meant that you could
have sexual relations in many ways, looking, talking, touching. She said
that she and her partner talked and she touched him and he touched
her: `He feels good, we both feel good', she said that she liked this right.
LucõÂa (59 P) read out her right: `The right to have voluntary sexual
relations, including within marriage.' LucõÂa said that this was now
possible, but in her time it wasn't. When Loreto (40 L) asked her if she
felt she had the capacity to say `no' she said that she did now, but that
during her marriage she complied with her husband's sexual demands as
a duty or obligation. Several women recounted their experiences and
said they felt that women were still a long way off from being able to
exercise this right, which they believed was very important. Lola (34 OP)
said that men still felt that they had the right to have sex with their
wives whenever they felt like it and that women had to try to re-educate
them. When Elena (49 L) told LucõÂa that she could keep this right as a
gift, Katy (26 P) asked if she could have that particular right. She ex-
plained that she wanted to give it to her husband. Even though when
she says `no' she means `no', she says she wants to stick it to the head of
the bed to refer to when necessary. She then read her right: `The right to
exercise sexuality with autonomy in accordance with the needs,
140 Gender and Rights in Latin America

principles and desires of each individual, taking into account the rights
of the other.' When Katy (26 P) said that she didn't understand what this
meant, Nancy (37 P) suggested that they explain what the word `auton-
omy' meant to start with. LucõÂa (59 P) helped out saying that autonomy
was about freedom: `It is about doing what you want to do', she added,
`without anyone telling you what to do.' Elena said that when she
desires something, they are her desires, separate from her husband's
desires. She said it was important for her to make this distinction to be
able to feel pleasure. Katy said that she and her partner respected each
other and talked things through, including when they wanted to go to
bed to make love. Elena quipped: `Do you always do it in bed; never in
the sink, on the table, in the shower, in the car?' Jana (38 L) added `on
the table's good!' All the women laughed.
Gina (68 L) read out the right that she had picked: `The right to count
on an adequate legislation in relation to abortion, which sees abortion as
a public health problem and which prioritises women's lives.' Elena asked
Gina what she thought about abortion. She replied that she was against
it; she thought that it was bad, and that if a woman gets pregnant she has
to resign herself to it and have the baby and bring it up. She herself had
had 10 children. Elena asked her what she thought about other women
that had had abortions; would she condemn them? Gina said that she
would tell them to think about it. Now there were ways of preventing
unwanted pregnancies whereas before that was not possible and the
mamitas, little (young) mothers, were obliged to abort. When I asked
about the case of rape, Gina conceded that she agreed with abortion in
this case because it was by force and not in the context of a relationship.
Elena then asked what she thought about a situation where it was the
husband that had raped the woman, because it is sometimes the husband
that takes the woman by force? Gina said that she had not thought about
that. She said that she herself had experienced this problem and for that
reason she had rejected affection from her children and her husband
because he made her do things that she didn't want to. Elena pressed
her: `so you don't condemn abortion in women who have been raped?'
Gina answered, `Yes, it is like you are saying, but I don't really know what
to answer, but in the other case of rape by force, yes, she can have an
abortion, because in that case there is no affection.'
At this point Loreto (40 L) addressed the group as a whole saying that
there was a reality behind the demand for this right and that she wanted
to draw attention to the 150 000 abortions which took place each year:
`we poor women have abortions in the worst conditions. That is the
reality regardless of whether we are in agreement with abortion or not.'
 Ceri Willmott 141

Elena added that because of this fact we needed a law that protected
women. The majority of women who died as a result of abortions which
were badly carried out in miserable unhygienic conditions were `like us',
poor women and not rich women, who pay to have a safe abortion in an
expensive clinic.
Nancy (37 P) said that she accepted that if abortion were to be legal-
ised it would not be pan de cada dõÂa, something that is just like the bread
you eat everyday. She thought that abortion was a matter for the couple,
but that if you wanted to have a good time and not get pregnant, you
had to take preventive measures. She believed that young women were
not as innocent as they were in days gone by: `they have information'.
These days there were not just one or two ways of preventing pregnancy
but `a thousand ways', although the form of prevention chosen should
be by mutual agreement and, if the woman gets pregnant, both of them
should accept responsibility. She said that, for her, the life of a young
being was very important and we did not have the right to prevent it
being born; `I wanted to have children, I had three, I didn't want any
more, so I take preventive measures.' She believed that the authorities
ought to increase awareness amongst young people, but accepted the
need for a limited law in relation to abortion.
Rosario countered Nancy's assertion that there were `thousands' of
methods of contraception'. She pointed out that a 15 or 16 year old girl
would be embarrassed to go to the local clinic to find out about contra-
ceptives. She would have to arrive at 6 a.m. like all the other patients to
get a number and wait to be seen and if another woman saw her there
she would get embarrassed. Jana (38 L) agreed and highlighted the fact
that adolescent pregnancies had not decreased; the figures were the
same as before even though there was supposedly so much more infor-
mation available. She said that she also felt that abortion was her right.
She said that she respected Nancy's opinion, which may be religious or
moral, but what would happen to her if she had a partner, decided to
have children, got pregnant and then the relationship failed? She would
have to continue a pregnancy which she knew was going to result in the
birth of an unwanted child, knowing also that unwanted children were
the most likely to become delinquents or drug addicts. Jana asked Nancy
to consider those women who decide one way or another to end a
pregnancy `with the ultimate right to decide in conscience what she
wants or doesn't want with her body, with her pregnancy and with her
future with a child.' LucõÂa (59 P) asked, what about that `life that is
coming?' Jana responded by saying that she had every respect for the
position that you don't have the right to take away anybody's life, but
142 Gender and Rights in Latin America

that her perception of the situation was different. Nancy agreed that it
should be a question of personal choice.
Jana went on to explain that all the sexual and reproductive rights
that they were discussing were about how things ought to be, they don't
reflect the reality of women's lives at present:

I too am a part of all these women who live sexually oppressed and I
know that I (we) don't live this way (ie. as the rights suggest things
should be), because I carry with me a whole history that causes me to
repress myself.

There was silence. The women all looked deep in thought. VeroÂnica (55 P)
finally broke the silence by reading out the right that she had picked out:
`The right to education policies which promote from infancy onwards the
valuing of sexuality as an important aspect of life which needs to be lived
in a pleasurable way without fear or guilt.' VeroÂnica said that she agreed
that this was very important. She had a daughter who was a nursery school
assistant who had tried to explain to the children that babies were not
brought from Paris by a goose, or born from bread or a little cabbage, or an
egg from the mother, as they had been told at home. But some of the
children's mothers came to the school to complain. Elena explained that
this was what happened to `us women' as adults, that `we are frightened
and lie to ourselves because we were frightened of the unknown and we
don't realise that our children will learn from our ignorance too unless we
start learning something new'. Soraya (26 P) said that in her children's
school the children were taught about the development of babies from
when the baby began to form and how it was born, showing them normal
and caesarian births and forceps deliveries on video. Loreto acknow-
ledged that this represented some progress but `what about what happens
before that?' She also observed that, whilst there was much talk about
condoms and other contraceptives, in the AIDS adverts on TV they had
censored any mention of condoms and nobody taught young people
what kind of condom they should use or how or when they should put
it on and remove it. Thus the fact that something is talked about publicly,
she said, does not necessarily imply it constitutes `information'. Not even
parents teach their children these things, added Elena. Lola (34 OP) said
that they should pressurise the authorities to include sexual education in
the school curriculum; the others agreed.
Isabel (29 P) read from her piece of paper: `The right to be valued as a
person and not only on the basis of maternity; that women be recog-
nised as having an identity of their own with capabilities and potential
 Ceri Willmott 143

beyond their reproductive capacity.' Isabel said that she thought this
meant recognising women with all their rights and not just on the basis
of their capacity to reproduce. Loreto expanded on this saying that it
meant that women should be recognised and valued as people, not just
as `an incubator', which tends to be the greatest value given to women
and the basis on which they are respected. Elena said, `It meant that you
should be valued as Isabel, intelligent, smiling, and recognised with all
the qualities that you have, not only as the mother of your children.
That your partner values you and tells you that you do nice things and
that you are gorgeous, that is what it means.' All agreed on the import-
ance of this right.
Nancy (37 P) read out the next right: `The right to have education
policies in relation to public health that promote sexual and reproduct-
ive health on the part of men and their active participation in contra-
ception.' Nancy explained that this referred to men taking responsibility
in relation to contraception so that it was no longer just the responsi-
bility of the woman. Elena pointed out that women have to go to the
clinic, they have to take contraceptives or have them fitted, they have to
go to have PAP tests, while the men are sitting comfortably at home
watching television: `we do it all on our own'. Jana added, `and then you
get pregnant and they (the men) tell you off!' Rosario felt that another
problem in relation to public health was the lack of information: `they
don't ask what we want or tell us what they are going to put in place as
contraceptives'. Nancy said that the problem was that a lot of women
didn't dare to ask things. Loreto made the point that men are fertile all
the time and yet it is us women, who are only fertile a few days each
month, that take contraceptive pills or have IUDs. She said that we
should think about why this might be, why is it that it is not men
that are taking the pills? She said that this had to do with society and
culture.
The workshop finished an hour later than it was meant to, as no one
had wanted to go home. Several women said that while it was one thing
to discuss these rights with other women, it was another to make them
work in practice in their own relationships. Constanza (39 P) said that
they would have to support each other to put these rights into practice.
They all expressed a wish to do more work on the theme. As well as
taking home with them their `right', each woman was also presented
with a little homemade card as a souvenir of the workshop and the fact
that it was 25 November the International Day Against Violence Against
Women. With a picture of a large, naked, smiling woman on the front of
it, inside the card read:
144 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Woman: Defend your sexual and reproductive rights because they are
the basic elements of justice, dignity and happiness for you as a person.

Conclusion

As the links between civil society and the state have begun to be rebuilt
in Chile, women have created spaces in which to reflect and develop. In
this process they make use of and adapt alternative ideas and discourses
and challenge dominant ideas about gender identities that discriminate
against them and inhibit the exercise of their citizenship, in their per-
sonal lives, in their local communities and vis-aÁ-vis the state: in effect
generating their own ideas about what citizenship should mean. The
new international discourse on women's rights and, in particular, the
extension of the concept of citizen to incorporate new areas of rights
such as reproductive and sexual rights play an important role in this
process. The international discourse on reproductive and sexual rights
may be seen to provide a moral resource that women can draw upon to
assert their citizenship in different contexts. Seen from this perspective,
women's activities can have a bottom-up effect on gender, disrupting
state constructions and cultural stereotypes, and redefining the content
and practice of citizenship.
In this context citizenship and rights discourses may be seen to be of
strategic use, providing alternative conceptions of gender and a basis for
individuals to be able to negotiate and operationalise their rights. Rights
discourses, including human rights, can play a transformative role in
the content and practice of citizenship, just as the concept itself be-
comes redefined in the process of its strategic use. Reproductive and
sexual rights may be seen to help women to gain control over their
bodies, both a prerequisite to and a defining element in the exercise of
citizenship. In this way women begin to assert the basic right of bodily
integrity, and to challenge and transform discursive ideas that inhibit its
exercise. In effect women are constructing their own notions of citizen-
ship drawing on rights discourse in the process.
Whilst particularising the experience of Chilean pobladoras, I argue
that their reality also reveals the pervasive axes in women's experience
that make internationally endorsed rights in respect of reproduction
both necessary and applicable. Women say that these rights are import-
ant and they are able to apply the concepts of reproductive and sexual
rights to their own experiences, as well as connect their understanding
of these rights to ideas about citizenship. It is clearly necessary to
understand the cultural specificity of their experience in order to com-
 Ceri Willmott 145

prehend the effect this has on women's ability to operationalise their

rights as citizens. In Chile this means understanding a specific and
particularly pervasive discursive framework which combines ideas
from the Chilean Catholic Church, the Mediterranean honour/shame
complex as well as indigenous antecedents. In spite of this particularity,
however, universal rights are applicable for two reasons. First, because
women are able to interpret them and accommodate them to their own
experiences, and second, because whilst women's experience is situ-
ational and specific, there are many areas of commonality which serve
to form the basis of such rights (such as domination by men, childbear-
ing, sexual degradation and violence). It is these areas of women's lives
that define them as different kinds of citizen to men.
Despite the advantages, international rights discourses have limita-
tions. Schild and others are right to point up the danger of the state
coopting feminist ideas and strategies. In particular there is a risk that
the discourse of citizenship could be adopted by the Chilean state as a
`powerful mechanism of integration' and used to form the basis of an
`economic liberalism' which is reconnecting the fabric of state±civil
relations in a different way (Schild 1997: 605±6). Rights discourses can
easily be coopted and manipulated. But the idea of cooptation is compli-
cated. Modern processes of policy-making consist in so many actions
and counteractions, influences and counter-influences, that it is diffi-
cult to identify the initial or the ultimate decision-makers. These factors
emphasise the importance of the ongoing project of developing subver-
sive female citizens. Women cannot ever hope to negotiate with the
state from a position of equal bargaining power. But, in a situation
where dichotomies are increasingly breaking down between state and
nonstate, there is a need for women to have the tactical tools to maxi-
mise the opportunities open to them to live their lives as fully and as
freely as possible at a personal level, in their local communities, in
relation to the state and as members of the global community.

Notes
1 The term jaguar is used in Latin America as a self-conscious translation of the
Asian phenomenon of tiger economies in the late eighties and early nineties
denoting the rapid economic growth of countries like Singapore, Malaysia and
South Korea during that period.
2 Presently (2001) Chile has one of the most severe abortion laws in the world
(United Nations, 1994). There is also no right to divorce in Chile.
146 Gender and Rights in Latin America

3 Diego Portales was the dominant figure in Chilean politics in the 1830s and
one of the most influential figures in the founding of the Chilean state. He
ended the civil wars and inspired the constitution of 1833, which, with
minor changes lasted until 1925.
4 The historical literature suggests that this stability has only been achieved by
a pattern of state-sponsored violence and coercion (see, for example, Jocelyn-
Holt Letelier 1997).
5 There was a history of Church±state conflict until 1925, when a constitution
was passed separating the Church from the state, which in fact enabled a
closer relationship between the two. Prior to this politics had been defined by
whether you were anti-clerical, and hence liberal or radical, or pro-church
and hence a conservative. See Collier and Sater (1996) for a detailed discus-
sion of the history of the relationship between the Church and the state.
6 I had originally hoped to include data on men as well as women. However,
whilst participating in women's groups gave me access to many women, my
access to men was limited, with some exceptions, to more superficial rela-
tionships. I was also concerned that, whilst I could have made greater efforts
to build relationships with men, this may have compromised my position in
relation to some of the women I was working with. Also, in many cases it
would have been difficult to conduct interviews with men once I had begun
participating with these groups as it marked me in some men's eyes as
feminist and therefore anti-men.
7 For the full study see Willmott (1998).
8 The Chilean state, like all others, is not a unitary structure. Rather it is a
differentiated set of institutions, social policies, laws and discourses, which
themselves are the product of a particular historical, political and cultural
conjecture and which are not reducible to `the state'. Nevertheless, as Yuval-
Davis and Anthias (1989: 6) point out we should not lose sight of the state as
a separate sphere, `a body of institutions which are centrally organised
around the intentionality of control within a given apparatus of enforcement
at its command or basis' (cf. Yuval-Davis 1997: 13).
9 I have borrowed this term from Stùlen (1996: 251) who developed it in
relation to her work on Argentina.
10 See Willmott (1998, ch. 3) for a description of these competing discourses.
11 The constitution states `. . . the right to life and physical integrity of the
person. The law protects the life of those about to be born [del que esta por
nacer].'
12 There are, of course, limitations with this. It ceases to be about a woman's
right to choose to control her body and becomes a technical criterion.
13 El Mecurio, Cuerpo C, 17 October 2000.
14 All translations from Spanish by author.
15 Her friend had found her wandering round and round her house with the
foetus in her hand.
16 A survey by the Grupo Iniciativa Mujeres found that abortion was seen as
permissible by a majority in the cases of malformation of the foetus (69 per
cent), danger to the woman's life (78 per cent), and when the pregnancy
resulted from rape or incest (59 per cent). Only 20 per cent of women
interviewed thought abortion should be legal on economic grounds but
conversely 30 per cent thought that abortion should be permitted when
 Ceri Willmott 147

the women asked for it. Encuesta Nacional: opinioÂn y actitudes de las mujeres
chilenas soibre la condicioÂn de geÂnero.
17 Women's involvement or non-involvement in women's organisations is in-
dicated by the categories: leader (L), participant (P), occasional participant
(OP), and non-participant (NP).
18 A collective of organisations and individuals dedicated to promoting repro-
ductive and sexual rights.
19 Tierra Nuestra ran a school for women leaders, which included classes on
patriarchy and the history of the women's movement in Chile, as well as
practical courses on planning and administering projects.
20 The studies reviewed by Lamadrid Alvarez and Mun Ä oz Gouet suggest that
poverty reinforces these social representations. In addition, as they point out,
living in precarious economic conditions is not conducive to the develop-
ment of sensuality (1996: 80).
21 The theme of sexuality was considered so important to women in the coord-
ination of pobladoras in San JoaquõÂn, that as well as presenting their own
workshops on the theme they applied for funding from the Ministry of
Health to arrange a series of workshops presented by professionals.

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change' Women's Studies Forum, 12 (1) 3±24
Craske, N. (2000) Continuing the Challenge: the Contemporary Latin American
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bridge University Press
Fraser, N. (1989) Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary
Social Theory, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
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XIX y XX, Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria
Jelin, E. (1996) `Citizenship revisited: solidarity, responsibility, and rights' in
Constructing Democracy: Human Rights, Citizenship and Society in Latin America,
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Citizenship and Society in Latin America, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press
Jocelyn-Holt Letelier, A. (1997) El Peso de la Noche: nuestra fraÂgil fortaleza histoÂrica,
Santiago de Chile: Planeta
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7
Indigenous Women, Rights
and the Nation-State in the Andes
Sarah A. Radcliffe1

Introduction

Through a focus on the Andean region, this chapter argues that the
rights granted by states ± and those fought for by peasants, by indigen-
ous peoples and by women ± have not adequately guaranteed indigen-
ous women's rights. The multifaceted and contested identities of
indigenous women have rather been made invisible in the separate
rights associated with class, `race'2 or gender. Indigenous women's
fluid and multifaceted identities remain only contingently and incom-
pletely guaranteed by the legislation and political demands made in
Andean countries over recent decades. In other words, indigenous
women fall between the edifice of rights constructed by the states and
political movements of the region.
In the classic liberal interpretation, rights are universal and inhere in
each morally equal citizen. In practice however, the social differenti-
ation of subjects ± and, historically, the denial of citizenship to groups of
women and illiterates ± has resulted in uneven access to rights for
particular social subjects (Wilson 1997, Freeman 1995, Mendus 1995,
Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992). Historically, Latin American nation-
states have been slow to legislate for women's rights, not least because
of the gender hierarchies informing state actions and legal systems
throughout the region (Dore and Molyneux 2000). Moreover, even as
peasants or as ethnic peoples, indigenous women have not found their
rights to autonomy written into state constitutions until recently, and
then unevenly, as the recent attempts by indigenous groups to gain
collective rights make clear (Hindley 1996, Stavenhagen 1996). Histories
of the Andean state and political protest by rural and peasant groups ±
often indigenous peoples in the highlands ± reveal the contested nature

149
150 Gender and Rights in Latin America

of citizenship which has varied over time and place, depending on

regime type, organisations and political ideologies (Degregori 1998,
also Gledhill 1997, Hindley 1996). Subordinate class and social groups
have organised to demand the application of rights that exist only on
paper, or to extend the range of individual rights enshrined in the
constitution, but have often done so in ways that marginalise indigen-
ous women.
In social, economic and political terms, Andean republican states and
societies have not considered indigenous women to be citizens in the
full sense of the term, that is as valid claimants of rights, despite their
subordination, and their own agency in demanding rights.3 Although
human rights issues are reworked constantly in a national and trans-
national context, indigenous women remain excluded from the social
categories to whom rights are awarded or enforced (cf. Wilson 1997: 11).
By examining first the way in which states and societies incorporate
indigenous women, this chapter examines the political-economic and
social-cultural dimensions of indigenous women's situation; that is their
`first' and `second' generation rights. The discussion then moves to
examine the extent to which indigenous women's rights have been
worked into political movements' agendas. Case studies of class-based
union movements, ethnic identity movements and the women's move-
ment are discussed to illustrate themes of exclusion, while the conclu-
sion assesses the potential future direction of indigenous women's
rights.

Indigenous women in economy and society

Rural and urban labour markets are structured around race and gender,
shaping indigenous women's opportunities and keeping them in low-
paid and low-status work (Andreas 1985, Bourque and Warren 1981). In
rural subsistence-oriented communities, indigenous women often had
rights under bilateral forms of inheritance to resources, including live-
stock and land. They have powers over the use of domestic-related
materials, and to some extent joint decision-making with husbands
over education, investment and sales (see, among others, Miles and
Buechler 1997, FernaÂndez Montenegro 1986, Bourque and Warren
1981). Nevertheless by comparison with men, women's access to eco-
nomic resources is restricted, due to unequal inheritance practices (ex-
acerbated by agrarian reform as discussed below), limited access to credit
and cultural constraints on spatial mobility. With insecurity and pov-
erty, indigenous women's urgent concerns tend to be viewed by com-
 Sarah A. Radcliffe 151

munal patriarchies and by development organisations as primarily do-

mestic and therefore not central to livelihood decisions. Throughout
the Andes, Mothers' Clubs for the distribution of food aid confirm this
domestic role, while village decision-making structures (cabildos in
Ecuador, comunidades campesinas in Peru) have had the added effect of
muting women in the voicing of their demands (Bourque and Warren
1981). Patriarchal discourses and practices that denigrate women's pol-
itical contributions undermine their confidence to speak out, thereby
restricting their rights to participation in community development.
Although women as a whole make up between 19 per cent, 25 per cent
and 27.5 per cent of the adult labour force in Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru
respectively,4 their contributions are often under-counted, especially in
agricultural areas where indigenous women have historically been con-
centrated. Census counts of indigenous women's labour in rural econ-
omies systematically underestimate their contribution. For example,
women's participation in the agricultural job market was officially de-
clared to be 42 per cent in Ecuador, a figure revised upwards to 72 per
cent in the 1990s (BID 1995: 59). Gender asymmetry in indigenous
households results in the differential valuing of male and female labour
contributions. Normative definitions of work tend to prioritise male
over female contributions, with negative consequences for women's
rights to household resources, as for example in Peruvian peasant com-
munities where `female' tasks are consistently deprived of tools, credit or
labour power. In family livelihood strategies, women are allocated the
least prestigious jobs, such as cooking and weeding whether in Ecuador,
Peru or Bolivia (Miles and Buechler 1997: 4). In Peruvian Andean vil-
lages, patriarchal calculations make young women's labour invisible,
leading to their migration into domestic service, as older women are
not seen to require help (Radcliffe 1986). In Ecuador where men migrate
to the cities leaving indigenous women with small farms, female respon-
sibilities are associated with the `backward' subsistence sector, and the
gruelling task of managing impoverished family budgets (McKee 1997).
As many rural women have perceived themselves primarily as unpaid
reproductive workers (Bourque and Warren 1981), the census bias is
exacerbated, resulting in indigenous women's invisibility in agrarian
policy and politics, despite their long working days. Attempts by states
to modernise agriculture have often reinforced the relative invisibility of
indigenous and rural women. In the Peruvian Agrarian Reform of 1969
introduced by a progressive military regime to alleviate rural poverty
defined in class terms, indigenous women ± the majority of temporary
workers on estates ± lost the right to land (Deere 1986). With institutional
152 Gender and Rights in Latin America

and social bias against rural women limiting their insertion into agricul-
tural development and land tenure security, the benefits of reform did
not reach temporary female labourers. Rural women's share of the agri-
cultural labour force continues to increase, not least with the develop-
ment of export production of flowers and fruit (Arriagada 1995) ±
but wage differentials with men and mestizo (mixed race) groups
remain.
The devaluation of female labour, together with changing craft pro-
duction patterns, leads many women into domestic service work. Over a
quarter of the urban female economically active population is in domes-
tic service, a feminised sector which employs largely racialised women
(black, indigenous and mulata (indigenous-black) ).5 Reflecting gender
ideologies of domesticity in a class-divided and racialised society, do-
mestic service compounds indigenous women's lack of rights to autono-
mous work choices and a full wage. By contrast, export flower
production in Ecuador attracts many rural women for precisely these
reasons, that is, autonomy and work choices. Another urban labour
market with many indigenous women is that of street-vending and
marketing, where lack of access to capital for business expansion and
the machismo of market unions tends to undermine women's ability to
defend effectively their economic and political rights (Lawson 1999).
Petty commodity production can also offer income to indigenous
women in the city, although the overcrowded sector and women's
invisible home-based work restrict access to a secure income. Addition-
ally, most women in this sector tend to identify themselves neither in
class nor feminist terms (Buechler 1986), referring instead to their
family-centred interests (McEwan Scott 1994).
Men and women's differential insertion into expanding market econ-
omies affects their racial labels, which in turn reflects ± and exacerbates
± indigenous women's lack of rights within systems of resource distribu-
tion. The link between a gendered pattern of racialisation and exclusion
from socioeconomic opportunities can be illustrated by a Peruvian
example. In the highland rural community of Chitapampa, male migra-
tion and semiskilled work in the nearby cities provided inhabitants with
social status, and the economic networks that led to their description as
mestizo (mixed `race', with connotations of a higher social and national
status). By contrast, women from the same village were increasingly
engaged in field-based labour and subsistence activities which made
them `more indian' (de la Cadena 1995). In the village, women had no
effective relations with the urban sector, thus placing them as `the last
link in the chain of social subordination', articulated through race, class
 Sarah A. Radcliffe 153

and gender (ibid: 333). As elsewhere in Latin America, the `reproduction

and reinforcement of class inequality [takes] place through the interplay
of racial discrimination and gender hierarchy' (Wade 1997: 102). While
masculine interpretations of racial hierarchies and definitions of `profi-
cient urban relations' are applied in Andean Peru, indigenous women's
perspectives on these hierarchies are silenced: their rights to income,
status and security are denied.
Whereas motherhood is a gendered `right' that Latin American repub-
lics have endorsed enthusiastically in their maternal health programmes
and discourses, indigenous women are viewed as problem mothers. In
Andean republics, racialisation entails different experiences of mater-
nity for different women.6 In Ecuador, rural and indigenous women
were viewed by policy makers and popular opinion as producing `too
many' children, that is, giving birth to `indian' children rather than
nationalist mestizo offspring (see Vargas, Chapter 9 this volume).
Summarising the position of indigenous women illustrates the mar-
ginal place accorded them in Andean society, in which their rights as
members of a rural community are made invisible by masculine inter-
pretations of value. In urban society, indigenous women as workers are
often invisible, labouring in workshops or private homes, and are dis-
criminated against by institutions awarding credit, business contacts or
union support. In this context, to what extent have states ± in their
uneven and contested policies over rights and citizenship ± pursued
indigenous women's rights?

The Andean nation-state and citizenship rights for

indigenous women

If peasant and indigenous groups in the Andes have long remained

`unimagined' by their states, indigenous women are even more invisible
although they appear at crucial political moments to do ideological
work underpinning the specificity of indigenous cultures (which of
course does not grant them rights) (Radcliffe and Westwood 1996).
Indigenous women have generally been subsumed into state legislation
as class subjects, or as women, but rarely in their own right as complex
subjects uniting all facets of their identity. In the application of mod-
ernist development policies, Andean states in the post-World War II
period conceptualised racialised groups as brakes on development, re-
sistant to the modernising thrust of nationhood and thus not valid
claimants of rights (Orlove 1993). Being both indigenous and women
meant that indõÂgenas were particularly nonmodern and non-national
154 Gender and Rights in Latin America

(Radcliffe 1996). Ongoing notions of `racialised' and gendered citizen-

ship entailed a failure to see indigenous women as legitimate claimants
of rights; instead, states have frequently attempted their incorporation
into mestizo development and masculinist political models.
In terms of suffrage, the female right to vote was granted in 1929 in
Ecuador (the first Latin American country to do so) and in 1955 in Peru.
Unlike men however, Ecuadorian women were not required to vote until
1967, as the political establishment feared the Catholic church's influ-
ence over women's vote (Navarro and Bourque 1998: 177). In both these
countries, the right to vote was granted only to literate subjects, thereby
excluding indigenous women (and men) who made up the bulk of
illiterates in their respective countries. Suffrage was extended to the
entire adult Peruvian population in 1979, thereby including many indi-
genous women for the first time in formal citizenship. Similarly, Ecua-
dor granted voting rights to nonliterate populations, comprising largely
indigenous women, on the return to democracy at the end of the 1970s.
In other spheres of state action, indigenous women were subsumed
within wider categories ± whether as peasants, women or as ethnic
subjects ± rather than as a group with specific, and cross-cutting, inter-
ests. While Peru arguably began corporatist modernising development
in the late 1960s, Ecuador's development patterns reflected a later in-
corporation of `nonmodern' groups into nationhood. Velasco's modern-
ising corporatist regime in Peru (1968±75) proposed to draw women
directly into `development' in a state-run programme of promotion
and equal rights, although it did so without questioning the specific
structural and cultural bases of campesina (broadly rural, peasant)
women's situation (Ruiz Bravo 1987, Bourque and Warren 1981). As
noted above, the major agrarian reform of land redistribution was un-
successful in consolidating rural women's rights, as it excluded them
from beneficiary status and from representation within new local polit-
ical structures (Radcliffe 1993). Only 2 per cent of beneficiaries of the
1969 Agrarian Reform were women (Deere 1985). As in Chile, indigen-
ous (and rural) women were excluded from land tenure rights by the
definition of beneficiaries as heads of households, a status that women
held without recognition and in smaller numbers than men. Moreover,
women were subsequently excluded from membership of agrarian units,
as this depended on land-holding status and male cultures of public
speaking in meetings (Deere 1986).
Other state institutions attempted to bring women into the workforce
as class subjects, defining indigenous women as rural workers. In 1972,
the Peruvian Association for Cooperation with Peasant Women (ACO-
 Sarah A. Radcliffe 155

MUC, AsociacioÂn de CooperacioÂn con la Mujer Campesina) was created

as a parallel body to the ± by default ± `male' institution of the CNA
(ConfederacioÂn Nacional Agraria, National Agrarian Confederation).
Through ACOMUC, the state viewed indigenous and rural women pri-
marily as another workforce and interest group in which the `double
day' of productive and reproductive work was taken for granted, without
recognition of the racialised labour market (cf. Andreas 1985: 225).
ACOMUC aimed `to promote the fundamental values of the peasant
family through the education of family members, [and to encourage] all
women to participate in society through the setting up of daycare
centres and training programmes' (quoted in Deere 1985: 27, also
Dibos Cauri 1976)
In this way, rural women's rights were linked to (patriarchal) families
and in effect, as discussed above, silenced female gender concerns at the
community level. Moreover, the state persisted in treating indigenous
women as a problem, not as a constituency with its own rights. In terms
of women's rights, the Plan Inca of 1974 in Peru proposed equality for
women in rights and obligations, their promotion to high office, the
elimination of discrimination, coeducation and common property
rights in marriage. Beyond formal recognition, these rights largely
remained unimplemented although rural coeducation was a widely
executed measure, which improved rural women's citizenship rights
by making them literate (cf. Bourque and Warren 1981: 184). Rights
outlined in this ambitious plan remained on paper due to a combin-
ation of lack of political will, local resistance to changing gender rela-
tions, and indigenous women's lack of support.
Other measures taken by the Peruvian government to increase
women's rights largely bypassed indigenous women. In 1974, the mili-
tary government created a National Commission on the Peruvian
Woman (CONAMUP) to analyse legislation, oversee small development
projects and initiate a series of planning proposals. While this Commis-
sion had only marginal impact on rural (indigenous) women, it may
have raised the profile of female leaders at the urban and national levels
(Anderson 1985). Both the Plan Inca and the CONAMUP were
hampered by lack of personnel, resources and political will, as well as
by the change in regime from 1976. While women's rights to work,
education and assistance in reproductive labour were partially con-
sidered in this legislation, patterns of racism and ethnic discrimination
operating in communities, national society and labour markets were not
addressed. Racial difference between participants and staff further em-
phasised the passive role offered to indigenous women. Later Peruvian
156 Gender and Rights in Latin America

governments under BelauÂnde (1980±85) and GarcõÂa (1985±90) effect-

ively continued with assistentialist programmes in which gendered ex-
pectations around maternity and female work (the latter under GarcõÂa,
especially with the PAIT programme) outweighed any emphasis on
rights (Radcliffe 1993). As indigenous women were viewed as problem-
atic mothers (due to racism) and not-quite workers (due to gender
discrimination), their ideological and structural position remained one
of marginality. In the interplay of responsibilities and citizenship,
women's responsibilities came higher on the agenda than their rights.
In Ecuador, similar rural programmes were put in place and indigen-
ous women were again perceived as non-modern, requiring incorpor-
ation into development to overcome poverty and marginalisation. After
the Andean Mission had reported that rural women were bearers of
tradition, development programmes attempted to bring these largely
indigenous women into market-led `modern' society (Radcliffe 1996).
Rural development programmes such as FODERUMA in the 1970s and
SEDRI in the 1980s, viewed women as passive beneficiaries of small-scale
credit and work creation programmes, rather than as citizens with
rights. During the 1990s, government development plans began to
distinguish between different groups of women (and their rights),
whereby urban mestizo women gained rights at work and in society,
while indigenous women were increasingly controlled and under sur-
veillance.
In summary, indigenous women's political and social rights have been
subsumed within nation-state policies in ways that emphasise their
gender or their class position, rather than grant them rights as ethnic,
class and female subjects simultaneously. Gender bias in class-defined
programmes means women are passed over, while an urban/racial bias
in gender programmes means rural, indigenous women are not in-
cluded. Consequently, indigenous women have failed to gain rights
granted to male indigenous (land rights) and to other women (paid
work), while receiving other rights as a byproduct of redefinitions of
citizenship (full adult suffrage). Indigenous women can thus be pictured
as marginal recipients of rights, rather than as fully recognised claimants
of rights.

Demanding rights: the contradictions of ethnicity, gender

and race

The contradictory and contingent relations of `race' and gender are

particularly evident when we examine three major types of political
 Sarah A. Radcliffe 157

movement that have ± in various ways and with varying success ±

attempted to address the multifaceted rights of Andean indigenous
women. These movements include class organisations, cultural identity
movements and feminist movements, all of which have mobilised to
fight for political and social rights in Andean countries. Each organisa-
tion articulates rights in distinct ways, reflecting their positioning vis-aÁ-
vis the state and with regard to Marxist or `indianist'7 ideologies, or a
feminist politics respectively. However, the degree to which these spe-
cific movements engage indigenous women's interests is highly variable,
as the discussion below illustrates. The class-based union organisation is
exemplified by the peasant confederations of 1980s Peru, reflecting the
wider saliency of class politics at the time. By contrast, the ethnic politics
of the 1990s, found throughout the Latin American region, is illustrated
by reference to Ecuador where indigenous organisations brought identity
politics into the centre of political debate.8 As Degregori (1998) makes
clear, the trajectory of Andean political organisation and state response
varies substantially with, broadly, class politics dominating in Peru, and a
more indigenous politics in Bolivia and Ecuador. The feminist movement
was, from the start, a more international movement yet the problematic
insertion of indigenous women and their rights into the agenda of the
movement remains notable.

Class-based organisations in Peru

The class-based articulation of indigenous women's rights can be exem-
plified by the Peruvian Peasant Confederation (ConfederacioÂn Campe-
sina del PeruÂ, CCP).9 Within the political project articulated by CCP
male and female leaders, gender was secondary to class, framed within a
wider contestation of the state's legitimacy. As the Peruvian ACOMUC
declined in the late 1970s, women's demands for community decision-
making rights and equal wages increasingly became the issues around
which nonstate groups mobilised. As women's demands gained space in
the CCP programme, women's rights were written in as a discrete elem-
ent in the peasant-class organisation. At the First National Meeting of
Peasant Women organised by the CCP in 1987, women's rights were
summarised:

. [we demand] that the state create a policy of campesina promotion

free from paternalism and politicking, with rights to access to land
and/or a productive job; the option of credits and fair prices for
products; [and] the provision of basic support services for productive
and domestic work;
158 Gender and Rights in Latin America

. that there be equality of conditions and opportunity with men in

communities, cooperatives and agricultural units;
. that the peasant movement be informed of women's recognised
rights, and for there to be an educational campaign between men
and women to achieve the revaluation of women in work and in the
home. (CCP 1987: 14±7, author's translation)

In order to inform and establish women's rights at confederation and

local levels, the CCP created Women's Affairs officers, and argued for a
new `combative consciousness' of women. These demands and actions
were couched in a socialist notion of equal rights, whereby women's
concerns were allocated to a second rank of priorities after class. In
practice, women's officers tended to be isolated in regional union
offices, and gender concerns were perceived as discrete and minor (if
not diversionary from the `true' goal), rather than as relevant in all
union work (fieldnotes 1986, 1988). In one respect, the inclusion of
women's rights in CCP policy reflected the struggles of a small number
of female union members, whose experience of discrimination began in
the 1970s land-invasions. In order to clarify their emerging sense of
injustice, these activists drew on a number of ideas about women's
rights including the United Nations Declaration against Discrimination
against Women. Some campesinas also developed the ideas of rights
expounded in liberation theology in order to articulate a politics of
gender rights (fieldnotes from Peru, 1985, 1988).
However despite these attempts, the prevailing union ideology of
struggle ± against state and dominant class interests ± made women's
rights a lower priority in their organisations. The emphasis on con-
sciousness for example reflected the confederation's vanguard Marxist
politics and was replicated in discussions about women's rights, as
illustrated by the following quote. CCP leader ConcepcioÂn Quispe elab-
orates on the importance of indigenous women's right to education,
seeing it as the route to class, gender and ethnic consciousness (in that
order of priority):

The [indigenous] woman needs contradiction to educate herself and

become conscious of her own values and to learn from her own
experiences. For this, it is necessary for the country to plan educa-
tion, not only as a mechanism of instruction, but as a means of
ethnic realisation, in her own language, and with meaningful con-
tent and its own values. This is to be done in tactical alliance with
other cultures in order to lead to a consciousness of class, gender and
 Sarah A. Radcliffe 159

ethnicity, within a determinate political project. (ZuÂn

Äiga 1987: 40±1,
author's translation)

Within this class-rights agenda, women were increasingly seen as a

crucial group of potential supporters by both leadership and the grass-
roots. By the late 1980s, indigenous women were ambivalently part of
union decision-making structures (such as the CCP Commission for the
Organisation of the Peasant Woman that brought together eight female
leaders for policy development), yet still faced numerous personal and
structural forms of discrimination. Even as class actors, indigenous
women were not accorded a full place within the CCP and other
organisations. The subordination of gender (and ethnic) interests to
the class-based politics of this period served to make it more difficult
for peasant-indigenous women to articulate their own agenda, while
simultaneously placing gender concerns low down on the list of union
priorities. Overall, the class-rights based logic of the CCP was exclusion-
ary of gender issues and marginalised indigenous women's rights.

Cultural identity, politics and gender

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of a new
generation of educated indigenous leaders, Andean rural politics was
transformed. Throughout the region, the class politics of the 1970s
shifted into movements that demanded indigenous rights, in a move
that combined elements of a union structure with a predominantly
ethnic rights base and cultural politics (see Bengoa 1998, Stavenhagen
1996).10 Rather than demanding rights as land-poor workers, the indi-
genous movements claim rights to cultural distinctiveness, bilingual
education and administrative autonomy, often on a collective basis.
Such a politics takes rights issues from the individual level to the prob-
lematic and often unlegislated arena of collective rights (Stavenhagen
1996). Recent constitutions in the Andean republics ± as elsewhere in
Latin America ± have incorporated a mention of some collective rights,
thereby placing on paper the right to cultural distinctiveness, bilingual
education and in some cases, territory. All of these rights were incorpor-
ated into the new Ecuadorian constitution of 1998 for example. How
has this emphasis on cultural and collective issues affected indigenous
women's rights? As we shall see below, the evidence suggests that indi-
genous identity politics continues to view women's demands as second-
ary to a set of primary and largely `gender-neutral' ethnic demands.
The Ecuadorian indigenous movement comprises diverse `indigenous
nationalities' that mobilised around demands for ethnic recognition,
160 Gender and Rights in Latin America

culturally-sensitive bilingual education and territories, as land repre-

sents the basis for both social cohesion and production (Bengoa 1998,
Santana 1995, Van Cott 1994). During the 1990s, this cultural strategy
brought about substantial changes in political procedure and cultures as
the ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous Rights was ratified, and the
1998 constitution recognised the country's multiethnic character for
the first time. Moreover indigenous representatives, including the influ-
ential indigenous lawyer Nina Pacari, were elected to the national Con-
gress and to provincial administrations in the elections of 1996, 1998
and 2000. In the wake of these electoral and legislative gains, what has
been done about indigenous women's rights?
The ILO Convention 169 on indigenous rights highlights some of the
issues. Dating from 1989, the Convention 169 presses governments to
ensure that development actions protect the rights of indigenous
peoples, and recognise the rights of indigenous groups to possession
and ownership of traditional lands and associated natural resources.
Ratified by Ecuador in April 1998 (and by Bolivia and Peru in the same
decade), the convention goes a long way to recognising indigenous
rights, by extending and amplifying the ideas in the 1992 UN Declar-
ation on Minority Rights. Convention 169 states that indigenous
peoples have rights, and that the social inequality under which they
live violates citizenship and human rights (see Hindley 1996). Rejecting
the status of a `minority' (the language of the earlier UN Declaration),
indigenous groups ± and, in principle, the governments who ratified the
convention ± demand specific collective rights vis-aÁ-vis the states in
which they find themselves (Stavenhagen 1996). However, thinking
about collective human rights entails the twin problems of identifying
the subject of these rights (Freeman 1995) while not essentialising the
collectivity itself (Gledhill 1997: 95±8). Collectivities can violate the
human rights of individual members, as the group may be defending
an identity or `essence' for itself in face of discrimination or injustice
(Freeman 1995). This `double bind' ± of essentialism and of violation of
human rights within the group ± applies to indigenous women, whose
rights are made invisible by the very position they hold within indigen-
ous society. The ILO Convention falls into the same trap, by not men-
tioning indigenous women as a particular oppressed subgroup within
indigenous populations.
The cultural and collective demands of the Ecuadorian indigenous
movement position women and their rights very differently to the CCP
class-based unionism. Central to the main indigenous confederation
CONAIE11 and its component organisations lies a complex symbolic
 Sarah A. Radcliffe 161

politics. This rests upon an interplay between ethnic difference (encom-

passed by the term `indigenous nationality') and the essentialism of a
pan-indigenous identity that ± crucially for our discussion ± reinforces
gender difference. Ethnic identity is presented as being of equal validity
for all members of the indigenous population, regardless of gender, age
or location. Despite differential gender experiences in indigenous vil-
lages, as described above, the collective rights demanded by the confed-
erations are presented as gender-neutral. Moreover, gender politics are
viewed by many indigenous leaders as a western import unknown in
indigenous complementary gender relations. For example, the conclu-
sions to a 1989 indigenous women's meeting in Bogota summarise the
view that:

The communal life, the harmony and respect between men, women
and Nature, the fraternity and solidarity and profound spirit of resist-
ance are values to recuperate and construct in our indigenous
peoples, blacks and other mixtures arising from the rich process of
Latin American mestizaje. Equally, to recuperate and achieve the
recognition of our values and identities as women. (Bengoa 1998: 46)

Feminism is seen as `bourgeois' and western, although gender sensitivity

is often incorporated into indigenous organisations' proposals for for-
eign funding.
The indigenous collectivity, however, defines itself ± makes its essence
± through female gendered icons. Indigenous women represent the
collective, without their specificity within the collectivity being recog-
nised beyond the cultural dimension. Whereas men and women in the
indigenous movement are increasingly engaged in a cultural hybridity
that combines urban/rural, mestizo/Andean, modern/traditional elem-
ents, women are positioned as the core of indigenous society. As I have
argued elsewhere (Radcliffe 1997), indigenous cultural authenticity rests
with women who are expected to retain `traditional' clothing, remain
the guardians of indigenous culture and resist any moves to mestizo
status (Weismantel 1988: 82). By reflecting a `true' indigenous identity,
women represent the collective to be protected by the movements'
demand for rights. Within the cultural politics of the indigenous move-
ment, indian femininity stands as a symbol of indigenous resistance to
the urban mestizo nation-state.
Nevertheless, formal efforts have been made in recent years to involve
women and women's issues to the Ecuadorian indian organisations. In
the Levantamientos IndõÂgenas (indigenous uprisings) in Ecuador in
162 Gender and Rights in Latin America

1990, 1994 and 1999, which brought the country to a standstill for days,
indigenous women played an active part in road-blocks and market
closure (ValdeÂs and GoÂmariz 1995: 106, fieldnotes 1999). By the early
1990s, several organisations from the provincial to the national level
had Women's Secretariats to oversee the inclusion of women's demands.
Among them were the national confederation CONAIE (whose
Women's Secretariat started in 1986), and regional federations such as
the Amazonian group CONFENAIE12 (from 1986), ECUARUNARI13
(1985), while the Ecuadorian Federation of Evangelical Indigenous
(FEINE) had several female leaders. Building on these developments,
meetings were held through the late 1980s and early 1990s to draw
upon an ever-increasing number of female leaders from around the
country. In 1986, CONAIE held its first Congress of Indigenous
Women, following this with the foundation of its `Dirigencia de la
Mujer' (Women's Directorate), through to the Third National Meeting
in December 1990 (ValdeÂs and GoÂmariz 1995: 104±6, 115).
One of the founding federations of CONAIE, the Shuar Federation
(FederacioÂn de Centros Shuar, FCS) established its Gender Commission
(ComisioÂn de GeÂnero) in 1997 alongside other commissions on health,
land titling, education and economic development projects. While
gender issues had previously been promoted sporadically, the appoint-
ment of a female director, Ernestina Chuindia, represented a new stage
in the evolution of a particular gender politics in the organisation. The
director was a veteran of grassroots women's organisation in Amazonian
communities, with extensive education qualifications,14 all experiences
that she brought into the Federation.
Despite these developments, gender issues remain secondary to the
cultural politics of the indigenous movements, where the persistence of
a complementary dual model of gender underpins a traditional and
symbolic role for indigenous women. Where women have gained a
formal position within indigenous organisations, they are generally
not granted the resources, decision-making powers and autonomy ne-
cessary to articulate an agenda that reflects their gender, class and racial
position. Indeed, critics outside the movement argue that the formation
of gender commissions and women's secretariats within federations is
primarily driven by international donors' agendas, rather than by indi-
genous organisations themselves.
In human rights theory, it is argued that collective and individual
rights are not adequately combined by the mere `right to exit' from a
collectivity if it violates the rights of individual members (Freeman
1995: 39). In the Andes, indigenous women would not necessarily wish
 Sarah A. Radcliffe 163

to relinquish their indigenous identity in order to pursue individ-

ual rights, even if those gender and class rights had been better guaran-
teed by existing legislation. What is clear however, is that the
construction of women's rights within the indigenous movement re-
flects the particular interpretation of (collective) rights prevalent in
Ecuador.

Feminist politics and indigenous women

Events during the UN Decade for Women (1976±85) raised the profile of
women's rights in public debates, and reflected the long history of
feminist struggles in the region. Liberal feminism prevalent at the time
demanded legal parity with men, primarily focusing on rights to equal-
ity in pay, civil status and freedom in reproductive issues, and such
issues were variously incorporated into international declarations and
national legislation on this basis. Multilateral agencies also encouraged
states to include women in development policies under the prevailing
`Women in Development' (WID) paradigm, in which racial and class
differentiation were not considered. In feminist debates, the dangers of
essentialising women as a homogeneous group increasingly came to the
fore. In Latin America and beyond, the dangers of treating all women as
if they were the same were raised, as nonessential conceptions of femi-
ninity were developed.
Expanding international networks among Latin American feminists
began to debate difference, although initially the racial and ethnic
diversity of women was not systematically discussed. However, in the
Second Regional Latin American Meeting of feminists in 1983, held in
Lima, racism in women's everyday lives and in the feminist movement
became an ongoing topic for discussion (Sternbach et al. 1992: 413,
426). However, tensions between movimientos de mujeres (popular
women's movements) and veteran feminists over the nature of gender
demands and their different priorities also revealed that Latin American
feminisms were highly diverse, and that racial difference was difficult to
incorporate fully into the spectrum of feminist concerns.
Just as development had long lacked a systematic gender analysis,
feminist movements in Latin America lacked a systematic multicultural
analysis. Symbolic measures ± such as the naming of 11 October as
Indigenous Women's Day ± reflected growing region-wide coordination,
but limited space for indigenous women as active social subjects within
the feminist movement. Moreover, these measures barely obscured the
tensions and contradictions between indigenous women and other
strands of the Latin American women's movement over priorities.
164 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Indigenous women remained concerned about their rights to economic

security in conditions of crisis and recognition of ethnic distinctiveness,
often feeling alienated from feminists' exclusive focus on gender. The
complex combination of class, ethnic and gender rights demanded by
indigenous women was neither widely formulated by themselves, nor
generally acknowledged by other strands in the women's movement.
The women's movement collective could not take on board the differen-
tial identities ± and demands for rights ± of indigenous women.
The 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing represented
a further stage in the contradictory and often conflictual relationship
between feminist organisations and female indigenous representatives.
Discussions in Beijing arguably placed ethnicity and race more centrally
within the international women's movement than ever before.15 Cer-
tainly, the preparatory document for Beijing written by the Ecuadorian
women's movement acknowledged racism and articulated a politics
around indigenous women. Their document positioned the govern-
ment's maternal-infant politics and the underprovisioning of the
Women's Directorate (DINAMU) within the context of a neoliberal
development agenda that was unconcerned with feminist issues and in
which rural women were largely invisible (CEIMME/Foro Alternativo
1995: 17). In this document, it was argued that `indigenous women
have gender-related problems arising from their own culture and from
their articulation into wider society' (ibid.: 39). According to the docu-
ment, indigenous women were centrally important in productive and
family relations, and had specific demands relating to recognition for
themselves and indigenous men, recognition of their domestic work,
and to equal participation and decision-making rights at all levels of
organisation (ibid.: 40). The document further recognised that women
were only a minority within the indigenous leadership.
At meetings in the run-up to Beijing however, indigenous women
articulated demands that were at odds with the main thrust of the
Ecuadorian NGO preparatory document. In a meeting of indigenous
women from 22 Latin American countries held in September 1995,
one Ecuadorian indigenous leader, Carmen Tene, demanded a defence
of pluriculturalism, as well as indigenous women's own voice. As coord-
inator of Ecuador's indigenous women's movement, she argued that
they faced specific discrimination due to being `indian, mother and
female' (Hoy, 6 September 1995). In a further comment, Tene attacked
the lack of distribution of funds to indigenous women, which remained
with the state bureaucracy or with development agencies.16 Preparatory
documents did not, moreover, overcome exclusions in the conference
 Sarah A. Radcliffe 165

itself. CONAIE's female representative at Beijing felt marginalised by the

meeting. As an NGO forum participant, indigenous woman Carmelina
Porate argued that `we were invited but had neither voice nor vote [ni
voz ni voto]' (Comercio, 6 July 1996: B6). As a government representa-
tive, Blanca Chancoso felt similarly excluded from decision-making
(Comercio, 27 September 1995).
Despite this lack of a shared agenda and indigenous women's exclu-
sion, the campaign against violence has by contrast united indigenous
and nonindigenous women in Ecuador. National organisations and
transnational advocacy networks pushed the campaign against violence
against women up the political agenda during the 1990s, to such an
extent that the state instituted changes in its policing and welfare
measures along the lines recommended by feminist organisations
(Keck and Sikkink 1998). Indigenous women were involved in the cam-
paign for these gender-specific rights during the national level mobilisa-
tion. With public information campaigns, indigenous women became
better informed about the issues of domestic and intrafamilial violence.
At a meeting in January 1994 involving numerous indigenous represen-
tatives (including leaders from women's cooperatives), one woman said,
`We are learning from our experiences and we shall take back ways of
helping our compan Ä eras [friends] who suffer mistreatment from their
husbands' (El Comercio, 10 February 1994: B7).
Although campaigns against gender violence appear to have included
indigenous women and reflected their demands, there are other dimen-
sions of the feminist agenda that fail to represent indigenous women's
concerns. Indigenous women have been reluctant to identify as feminist
(seeing it as bourgeois and foreign to their culture), while the women's
movement itself has only recently begun to address questions of racism
and difference.

Conclusions: reconciling gender, class and ethnic rights

As the above discussion shows, Andean state legislation for peasants (by
class), indigenous groups (by `race'), or women include rights applicable
to indigenous women by default or in a gender-neutral capacity. By
treating indigenous women as coterminous with a community of peas-
ants or indians, the role of community patriarchal hegemony in deny-
ing (economic, social and political) rights to women has not been
considered by the state. Similarly, the political movements around
class, indigenous rights or women's rights ± exemplified here by material
from Ecuador and Peru ± have incorporated indigenous women into
166 Gender and Rights in Latin America

their programmes and agendas, but largely in the margins. Indigenous

women's rights are perceived and presented in these movements as
`additional' to the main demands, or as equivalent to men's rights.
The unidimensional articulation of rights illustrated by state legislation
and political movements fails to capture the multifaceted subjectivities
of indigenous women, and their diverse (and unfixed) social, economic
and political interests. Rather than being reducible to one facet of
identity or another, indigenous women's rights `fall between several
stools'.
Rights and demands for rights are contextualised by the identity
attributed to ± and assumed by ± indigenous women. In other words,
for women to identify themselves as indigenous ± or for other actors to
see them as such ± reflects the social forces that constrain or define that
identity. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (1996: 5±6) understand identity as

the meeting point, the point of suture, between on the one hand the
discourses and practices which attempt to `interpellate', speak to us
or hail us into place as the social subjects of particular discourses, and
on the other hand, the processes which produce subjectivities which
construct us as subjects that can be spoken.

If identities adhere to the social subject within wider discourses, then

indigenous women ± with all their multifaceted identities ± are not
`hailed' as subjects in citizenship rights or in the place of the nation.
Moreover, in the daily interactions that shape their subjectivities and
actions, many indigenous women internalise an identity that disavows
their particular combination of gender, class and `race'.
The structuring of nationalism around hierarchies of race, gender and
class provides links between gender, ethnicity and class thereby struc-
turing identities and social position. Being perceived as `nonmodern',
indigenous women have been subject to attempts by the nation-state to
integrate them into the market and nationhood on terms defined by
their class status, disregarding gender and ethnic rights. Indigenous
women were thereby represented not as full claimants of rights, but as
subjects whose nonmodernity precluded them from complete participa-
tion in the nation. Moreover, as noted above, social mobility can be
associated with changing racial-national identities with self-identified
mestizo-`white' migrants and urban dwellers laying claim to the nation
and the constructs of rights in national citizenship. Indigenous women
are arguably more likely than men to pursue an identity through this
claim to mestizo-white identity. In research carried out in a lower-middle
 Sarah A. Radcliffe 167

class neighbourhood of Quito, Ecuador, women were more likely to

identify as `white' than men, and were more ambiguous about a mestizo
or indigenous identity (Radcliffe 1999). In gendered racial-national
identity, rural indigenous women erase their specificity as racialised,
discriminated women from rural areas, rather identifying with the top
of Ecuadorian racial, gender and class hierarchies. Given this disavowal
of their identity, urban indigenous women are unlikely to demand
rights associated with being indigenous, poor and female, and neither
are they granted them on this basis.
Although in economic, social and political terms, Andean indigenous
women are among the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in
society, the rights legislation has only patchily dealt with their concerns.
Rights for indigenous women go to the heart of questions about how to
reconcile one identity with others, when each facet of identity requires
certain rights that may or may not be compatible with others. In the
words of Susan Mendus (1995: 18), the issue of human rights revolves
around the question of `the ways in which one identity or set of iden-
tities, may be reconciled with others'. Recent discussions have high-
lighted how in practice rights are linked to contested and fluid
boundaries around communities, individual subjects and even nations
(Mendus 1995: 18±21). While the application of collective rights law in
Andean Latin America in recent years has seemingly brought what
Mendus terms the `acknowledgement of difference' (ibid. 23) into state
legislation, several risks still remain not least for indigenous women.17
The inscription of racial/cultural difference in legislation fixes such an
identity, thereby denying the dynamics of change or the contradictory
nature of `submerged' identities within such difference. Indigenous
identity is particularly vulnerable to the fixing of a `victim' identity
(Gledhill 1997, Wilson 1997) that deflects attention away from the
communal hegemonies through which indigenous culture is repro-
duced. Specifically, the collective rights awarded to Andean indigenous
populations in the 1990s cannot obscure the issue of communal patri-
archies that restrict or deny indigenous women's rights within those
collectivities (cf. Stavenhagen 1996, Freeman 1995).
Indigenous women's multiple positions require that the routes to
empowerment are equally diverse (Miles and Buechler 1997: 9). It is
unlikely that different groups of Ecuadorian, Bolivian and Peruvian
indigenous women would fight for the same rights, not least as the
states and societies with which they must deal have varied histories
and agendas. Gender consciousness is not given in the abstract, as the
Latin American feminist movement has discovered, but rather is formed
168 Gender and Rights in Latin America

in `concrete, quotidian situations of women' (Vargas 1991). It is by tying

together these multiple strands of identity into an effective politics that
Andean indigenous women's rights can be achieved.

Notes
1 The Economic and Social Research Council (grant No. R000234321), the Nuf-
field Foundation and the American Friends Service Committee generously
supported the various research projects on which this chapter is based. A
preliminary version of the paper was presented at the 1998 Workshop on
`Gender, rights and justice in Latin America'. I would like to thank Nikki Craske,
Maxine Molyneux, an anonymous reviewer and Pilar Larreamendy for helpful
suggestions and comments. Any errors or misinterpretations are my own.
2 `Race' is considered here as a social interpretation of bodily difference in
historically ± and geographically specific ways, in which racism constructs
the body for ideological ends and becomes naturalised (on the Latin American
context, see Wade 1997, Stepan 1991). Indigenous `racial' labels depend as
much on social markers of success/poverty as they do on appearance, because
`the absence of reliable phenotypical markers places special emphasis on
clothing, hairstyles, speech and body language to determine who is Indian
and who is not' (Weismantel and Eisenman 1998: 131).
3 The majority of examples discussed here are drawn from fieldwork on the
peasant unions and domestic service (Peru) and the indigenous movement
and nationalism (Ecuador).
4 Census data do not include information on the racial-ethnic identity of
respondents, making it difficult to estimate indigenous women's share of the
workforce.
5 For life histories of Peruvian indigenous women entering domestic service, see
Valderrama and Escalante (1996), and Sindicato de Trabajadoras del Hogar
(1982).
6 In Peru, the recent controversy over fertility control programmes illustrates
the sensitivity of the issue. The misapplication of sterilisation measures led to
women suing the government, on the basis of the right of the individual to be
treated with respect.
7 `Indianist' refers here to a pro-indigenous ideology claiming certain essential
features of indigenous life, although increasingly indigenous social move-
ments are expressing a hybrid discourse reflecting a variety of influences (see
Bengoa 1998).
8 The choice of case study organisations and countries also reflects my own
research trajectory over those decades, as the focus shifted from the proble-
matics of female organising in campesino unions during the 1980s in Peru, to
questions around ethnicity and nationhood in Ecuador in the 1990s.
9 For a discussion of the class-based Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario
(MNR, Revolutionary National Movement) in Bolivia, see Ardaya Salinas,
(1986). In the MNR or the later `Housewives Committees' of miners' wives,
class-based politics relegated women to supporting male activists.
 Sarah A. Radcliffe 169

10 For the life history of a female indigenous leader in the early identity-based
Mapuche movement of Chile, see Bunster (1980).
11 Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador.
12 The Confederation of Nationalities Indigenous to the Ecuadorian Amazonia.
13 `The Awakening of Ecuador's Indians' in Quichua.
14 In this respect, she is similar to the new generation of Latin American indi-
genous leaders (Bengoa 1998), where the leadership is increasingly well-
educated, often to university level. Ernestina Chuindia herself was educated
through the EBI bilingual intercultural education programme.
15 Gina Vargas, personal communication, at the Institute of Latin American
Studies, University of London, conference on `Gender and Rights in Latin
America', October 1998.
16 In Ecuador, disagreement over the nature of ethnic group representation held
up the distribution of international funds to indigenous development initia-
tives (Fieldnotes, Ecuador, 1999±2000).
17 Gledhill (1997: 98±9) notes that neoliberal states can also grant rights to
identity groups in order to appropriate these subjectivities, as in Mexico
with its indigenous legislation (also Hindley 1996).

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8
Economic and Social Rights:
Exploring Gender Differences
in a Central American Context
Jasmine Gideon1

Introduction

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) recognises two sets

of human rights: civil and political rights, and economic, social and
cultural rights. Two separate Covenants were adopted by the United
Nations (UN) when the Declaration's provisions were transformed into
legally binding obligations: The International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). This chapter will focus on the
latter.
The main argument of my analysis is that economic and social rights
should be central to human rights. At present the only international
agreement in this area, the ICESCR, is highly gendered making its
usefulness as a mobilising tool extremely difficult. Furthermore, eco-
nomic and social rights are frequently more difficult to `pin down'
leaving much open to interpreting the spirit and the letter of the law.
This creates both opportunities and costs for nongovernmental organ-
isations (NGOs) using rights-based discourses. The combination of the
`slipperiness' of these rights and a gendered interpretation of the econ-
omy means that the ICESCR is of little practical use for women since
many are excluded from the conceptualisation. This has been the case in
Central America where the impact of the Covenant has been negligible.
The ICESCR was drawn up in 1966 and ratified in 1976, and it sets out
a formal understanding of economic, social and cultural rights. It is
important, however, to consider the context in which it emerged. It
was developed in an era in which there was near-universal consensus

173
174 Gender and Rights in Latin America

regarding the Keynesian approach to controlling and maintaining high

and stable levels of employment in the economy.2 Moreover, economic
and social rights were added to the UDHR in order to appease the
Communist States who stressed the importance of such provisions.
This therefore raises the question of the usefulness of the ICESCR and
its understanding of economic and social rights today. In particular,
how useful are such concepts to women? At the time of ratification of
the Covenant there was only a limited understanding of the role of
women in economic development and research in the area was still
not in the mainstream. By the 1980s there was a reintroduction of
ideas regarding optimal qualities of the market and the failure of gov-
ernments to influence them in ways which were socially improving. The
influence of these ideas has continued into the present and therefore
generates new questions about economic and social rights. Research
into women in development has now grown extensively and the im-
portance of a gender and development perspective is now widely ac-
knowledged. Gender-aware approaches to understanding rights have
also emerged since it has become apparent that women are not able to
access their rights as easily as men (see for example Whelan 1998,
Schuler 1995).
This chapter seeks to explore economic and social rights from a
gender perspective. Critics have argued that the ICESCR contains a
built-in gender bias since its understanding of economic and social
rights is one of rights which are only realisable in the paid economy
through access to employment in that sector. Since many women are
not employed in the paid economy, they have no access to these rights
(Peterson and Parisi 1998). Furthermore, the ICESCR does not take into
account women's unpaid work but, at the same time, assumes that
households operate as individual units. Consequently, there is a need
to consider the ways that intra-household arrangements may hinder
women's access to economic and social rights.
In order to have a gender-aware conceptualisation of economic rights,
it is first necessary to broaden our notion of the economy. We need to
understand it as a set of gendered institutions and also to incorporate
the unpaid work of social reproduction. Such an analysis can help us to
understand more clearly why men and women do not, in practice, enjoy
the same economic rights.
This chapter starts with a review of the existing literature on economic
and social rights and considers the limitations of the ICESCR in the
context of economic reform. It considers why a gender analysis of the
economy is important for the realisation of economic and social rights,
 Jasmine Gideon 175

and illustrates the argument with reference to how the ICESCR applies
to Central America. The analysis is confined to six articles from the
ICESCR: the right of all men and women to enjoy their economic, social
and cultural rights (article 3); the right to work and the full realisation of
this right through access to the necessary training (article 6); the right to
fair wages, including equal remuneration for work of equal value, with-
out discrimination of any kind and the right to paid holidays (article 7);
the right to an adequate standard of living (article 11) and the right to
the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (article
12). Although all five Central American countries have ratified both
CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination
against Women) and the ICESCR, evidence from the region indicates
that marked gender differences can be seen in the ability of men and
women to articulate and enjoy their economic and social rights. Finally,
some conclusions are drawn and proposals put forward for ways in
which women's groups can use the ICESCR to claim their economic
and social rights.

Giving substance to economic and social rights

While rights theorists have now acknowledged economic and social

rights alongside the political and civil as core components of human
rights, considerable debate still exists in the literature. This section
addresses some of the key questions and paradoxes that are central to
this chapter. Firstly I consider the extent to which the ICESCR contains a
list of aspirations or rights. If it is agreed that these are in fact rights, how
can states guarantee them to all of their citizens? Moreover, in the
context of economic restructuring, the ability of states to do so becomes
even more complex. Indeed, the introduction of a new economic model
alongside shifts in gender theory also raises the question of whether it is
now necessary for economic and social rights to be redefined.
Steiner and Alston (1996) maintain that the inclusion of economic
rights as core universal human rights settles the argument regarding
whether they are `really' rights, at least with regard to international
law. Neoliberal opponents of economic and social rights argue that
they can at most be a statement of goals or aspirations, rather than a
set of rights, which begs the question of which aspirations might be
considered rights. Some rights, such as freedom from torture, are easily
agreed upon, but others come about through consensus building. What
transforms aspirations into rights is that they are guaranteed by a third
party ± usually the state. But, they are only effective when they have
176 Gender and Rights in Latin America

generalised acceptance.3 In state-centric terms all contracts give rights.

The ICESCR contains both rights and aspirations and is therefore a
particularly complex agreement.
It is also necessary to consider the extent to which economic rights
should be conceptualised separately from social rights. Marshall (1950:
11) for example considered civil, political and social rights in relation to
his understanding of citizenship but excluded economic rights. In his
view (ibid.: 28), social rights emerge in a particular historical context
and reflect the society in which they operate. Yet there is often universal
awareness of economic rights, unlike social rights, especially in an era
when particular views on the economy are dominant globally. Eco-
nomic rights are generally understood as incorporating the right to
labour, capital, goods and education. Economic rights can therefore be
understood as referring to the right to resources. Yet what does this
really mean? Does it refer to the right to use one's own labour or the
right to have resources, for example owning property? Does it include
the right to access resources, for example through having a job; does it
include the right to consume resources, for example through education,
and if so, is this in exchange for producing other resources? Seen in
these terms, economic rights are therefore reducible to the idea of
having, or having access to, resources. So, how do social rights differ?
Social rights deal with the use of resources, such as education and social
security, and can therefore not be guaranteed without giving people
access to resources. The analysis here argues that since both sets of rights
are reducible to resources it is not possible to make a clear distinction
between economic and social rights. In essence all these rights are
concerned with the way in which the economy works and the ways in
which people are guaranteed resources. This implies that all people must
have a minimum claim on resources and this raises a number of ques-
tions regarding the ability of free market economies to guarantee these
rights universally. However, as previously stated, this chapter argues
for a broader understanding of the economy than that often used by
economists. The rights incorporated in the ICESCR refer only to the
formal, paid economy and as will be discussed below this is pro-
blematic from a gender perspective. Moreover, since these rights are
human rights it can also be argued that they are rights of individuals
and can not be attached to households. If indeed economic and social
rights are human rights they must be applied to all citizens, female and
male.
Politically, the effective realisation of economic and social rights
would require a redistribution of power and resources both within
 Jasmine Gideon 177

countries and among them, which might explain why governments are
far less enthusiastic about their realisation. Beetham (1995) and Steiner
and Alston (1996) agree that the greatest challenges are now the identi-
fication of effective approaches to the implementation of the rights
and development of ways in which states can be held accountable to
fulfil their obligations. This too poses a number of problems. Commen-
tators have suggested that the wording of the obligations of states in
enabling citizens to realise their economic and social rights is very open-
ended, with the effect that this obligation is almost meaningless.
Alston (1987: 351) argues that one of the most striking features of
the Covenant is the vagueness of the normative implications of the
various rights it recognises. In particular, much of the debate has
focused around Article 2 (1) of the ICESCR which states that state parties
must:

take steps, individually and through international assistance and

cooperations, especially economic and technical, to the maximum
of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the
full realisation of the rights recognised in the present Covenant by all
appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative
measures.

Critics have commented extensively on the phrases `to the maximum of

available resources' and the `progressive realisation' benchmark. Rights
theorist Audrey Chapman (1996: 31) highlights Article 2 of the Inter-
national Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In contrast to the
ICESCR, this states that state parties have an immediate obligation to
respect and ensure all stipulated rights. Chapman argues that the `pro-
gressive realisation' benchmark assumes that valid expectations and the
concomitant obligations of state parties under the Covenant are not
uniform or universal, but must be seen instead as relative to the levels of
development and available resources. Furthermore, the standard of `pro-
gressive realisation' cannot be used as a measuring tool for evaluating
compliance without first clarifying what the phrase `maximum of avail-
able resources' entails in specific circumstances. Steiner and Alston
(1996: 274) also comment on these points. On the one hand it is
suggested that the nature of the obligation is so onerous that virtually
no government would be able to comply. Yet, on the other hand, it is
argued that the relative open-endedness of the concept of progressive
realisation, particularly in the light of the qualification related to the
availability of resources, renders the obligation devoid of any meaningful
178 Gender and Rights in Latin America

content. In turn this means that governments can present themselves as

defenders of economic and social rights without their policies and behav-
iour being constrained in any way and this paradoxically undermines the
spirit of the Covenant itself.4
With more complex rights, where interpretation is central, it is worth
considering negative and positive concepts of justice. A negative con-
ception merely requires us not to harm people. A positive conception,
on the other hand, requires that we do or provide something in order to
comply with the spirit of the law. The ICESCR clearly embodies a con-
cept of the rights which requires redistributive action. It is often argued
that poor states can't afford such guarantees and neoliberals argue that
to guarantee basic economic and social rights to all citizens would
require extensive compulsory taxation and an over-bureaucratic and
paternalistic state (Beetham 1995: 42). But the real question is about
spending priorities. The 1990 United Nations Human Development
Report (cited in Steiner and Alston 1996: 290) states:

[D]eveloping countries are not too poor to pay for human develop-
ment and take care of economic growth. The view that human
development can be promoted only at the expense of economic
growth poses a false trade-off . . . Most budgets can, moreover, accom-
modate additional spending on human development by reorienting
national priorities . . . Governments can also do much to improve the
efficiency of social spending by creating a policy and budgetary
framework that would achieve a desirable mix between various social
expenditures, particularly by reallocating resources . . . Such a restruc-
turing . . . will require tremendous political courage. But the alterna-
tives are limited, and the payoffs can be enormous.

Beetham reaches a similar conclusion arguing that politically, the effect-

ive realisation of economic and social rights would require a redistri-
bution of power and resources both within countries and between them.
Governments, therefore, are not enthusiastic about their realisation.
However, institutions are not solely responsible:

[B]ehind institutions stand people. If institutions whether Northern

or Southern states or IFIs (international finance institutions), are
unable to fulfil their responsibilities it is partly because not enough
people to whom they are accountable are sufficiently convinced of
any obligation to aid those in need.
(Beetham 1995: 58)
 Jasmine Gideon 179

In the context of globalisation and neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s

the realisation of economic and social rights has become even more
unsure. Molyneux (1998: 240) argues that `the double transition to
economic and political liberalism has led to a formal restitution of
civil and political rights, but the process of economic restructuring has
had mixed results. While certain macroeconomic indicators have im-
proved, social inequalities have deepened and poverty levels are
expected to rise in many countries.' In this climate how can states
guarantee economic and social rights to all their citizens? The impact
of structural adjustment programmes on the poor has now been widely
acknowledged (Cornia, Jolly and Stewart 1987), and in conjunction
with the burden of national debts this millstone can lead to a denial of
economic and social rights at the local level (Clarke and French 1995:
111). In addition, the spread of international and regional trade agree-
ments has forced governments to reconsider labour market policies.
This may further limit governments' abilities to secure economic and
social rights for their citizens, and consequently many states are forced
to accept a trade-oriented redefinition of economic and social rights
(Lamarche 1995: 100). It is not enough to provide employment or
income-earning opportunities if these cannot satisfy the basic needs of
the income earners, or if the conditions of employment or income
earning violate other basic rights such as the rights to health and the
rights of children.

Why a gender-aware respecification of the ICESCR is

necessary

The principle of gender equality is recognised by the UN Human Rights

Charter and enacted in several fundamental human rights instruments,
notably the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimin-
ation Against Women (CEDAW 1979) and the Vienna Declaration and
Plan of Action (1993), which recognise women's rights as human rights.
Despite this, the principle of gender equality is not systematically inte-
grated into all parts of these agreements and is generally consigned to
particular paragraphs. Furthermore, much of the focus is on antidiscrim-
ination rather than gender equality. For example, article 7 of the
ICESCR calls for equal pay and equal opportunities. Neuhold (1998: 7)
maintains that such agreements often affirm the principle of nondiscrim-
ination yet simultaneously assert the overriding importance of the
family. This is problematic since there is an inbuilt assumption that
promoting women's needs is consistent with promoting family welfare.
180 Gender and Rights in Latin America

This raises another contradiction; on the one hand, within the rights
instruments, women are positioned in relation to their families, yet
neoliberal policies all too often ignore women's role in the family.5
Human rights instruments also do little to challenge the conditions
under which families are maintained by women. Since much of
women's time is spent carrying out unpaid reproductive work, this
limits their ability to enter the formal labour market and political
arenas. In turn this limits women's ability to claim their rights (Lister
1997).
The ICESCR, ratified in 1976, follows this pattern. While explicit
reference is made to women in a number of areas ± for example, refer-
ring to the equal rights of both men and women to enjoy all economic
and social rights and supporting equal wages for work of equal value
without discrimination of any kind ± women are only recognised
through their labour market participation (in paid work), without also
acknowledging their unpaid productive and reproductive work. Further-
more, the Covenant presumes a male head of household and much of
the document is directed to `him' or `he' (Williams 1998: 14). Although
the ICESCR recognises the right of women to paid maternity leave this
right is only applicable to women who are already integrated into
the paid economy. The ICESCR fails to recognise that many women
are excluded from the paid economy and tend to carry out work in the
unpaid economy. Yet since their work here is not recognised, they are
not entitled to any economic and social rights.
The problem of a built-in gender bias is one that is applicable to the
rhetoric surrounding all human rights. As Peterson and Parisi (1998:
141) argue, in their critique of human rights over the last fifty years,

existing human rights are in fact men's rights; it is `citizens' (impli-

citly male/masculine) who enjoy civil and political rights. As a con-
sequence women may enjoy these rights only to the extent that they
become like men. [Most importantly] . . . unlike men (especially, elite
men) women are not constructed as agents/subjects/persons in their
own right or as full adult/decision-makers.

As a consequence women are marginalised and not treated as `human'

agents in relation to economic and social rights; furthermore these
rights are construed as pertaining exclusively to the public sphere and
paid work (ibid.: 142). This is of particular concern when looking at
gender differences in the realisation of these rights. Since the conceptu-
alisation of human rights is mainly applicable to the public sphere,
 Jasmine Gideon 181

which encompasses both the public and private sectors of production as

understood by economists, the identification of women as mothers,
who are dependants of male providers, limits their claims to socioeco-
nomic rights; because male breadwinners are expected to provide for the
basic needs of their dependants, women are less able to claim such rights
on their own behalf. Peterson and Parisi (1998: 148) conclude that this
can contribute further to the marginalisation of women since the public
realm of the male is protected while the private realm of women's
unpaid work is obscured. Williams (1998: 14), too, argues that this
gender bias casts doubt on the ability of the human rights system to
respond to the needs of women.
Ruth Lister (2000) suggests that in order to challenge women's exclu-
sion from full citizenship a necessary starting point is the rearticulation of
the public/private divide. The value of care as an important contribution
towards citizenship needs to be acknowledged. In addition, challenging
women's exclusion from these rights necessitates a reconceptualisation
of the economic, which requires a broader notion of the economy. This
can be done by looking at the economy through women's eyes
and understanding it as a gendered structure (Elson, Evers and Gideon
1997).

The economy as a gendered structure

Looking at the economy as a gendered structure means considering both

the conventional view of production, which emphasises production
for the market, and also what Elson, Evers and Gideon (1997) have called
the reproductive economy. This enables us to identify particular eco-
nomic constraints and vulnerabilities that women experience which
differ from those which affect men. It is these gendered constraints
and vulnerabilities which limit women's potential relative to men, to
realise their economic and social rights.
The productive economy is market-oriented and encompasses infor-
mal as well as formal sectors, including all paid work, as well as unpaid
work in small family farms and enterprises producing goods and services
that are, or easily could be, marketed, either regularly or from time to
time when surpluses become available. The reproductive economy is the
unpaid economy that supports social reproduction and human devel-
opment through the provision of care for family and community
members ± care that is overwhelmingly provided by women and girls.
The reproductive economy produces labour, the crucial input into the
productive economy, and it maintains the daily well-being of the
182 Gender and Rights in Latin America

population through activities such as housework, water collection and

food preparation.
The interactions between the sales-oriented productive economy and
the needs-oriented reproductive economy are central to this analysis.
The System of National Accounts (SNA) counts the productive economy
and aggregates it to produce the Gross National Product (GNP). How-
ever, the unpaid reproductive economy is excluded, by definition, from
the accounts. Since women do most of the work in the reproductive
economy, this means much of their work is not counted, and not simply
because of the difficulties of collecting information. In principle, the
reproductive economy can be measured separately, producing a `satellite
account' for unpaid household and community work (Elson, Evers and
Gideon 1997). In practice however, productive and reproductive activ-
ities physically overlap, especially in regions such as Central America
where much of the productive economy is household-based in family
farms and businesses (Elson and Gideon 1997).

Gender-based institutional bias in the economy

Gender-based institutional bias occurs where economic institutions op-

erate in ways that tend to reflect male priorities. Institutions function in
accordance with laws and norms that are gendered in a number of ways.
They fail to value and recognise reproductive work; they show a prefer-
ence to men and exclude and discriminate against women as clients,
recipients, stakeholders and participants; they `feminise' women's par-
ticipation to re-establish their secondary, supportive and dependent roles
in public services and markets; they treat the household as a single unit
and women as dependants of men within the household; and, finally,
they reflect gendered incentive and accountability systems (Acker 1992,
Goetz 1995, 1997). The presence of gender differences and inequalities
means that gender-blind institutional practices will have different
impacts on men and women or boys and girls, which can in turn increase
gender inequality. For example, gender-biased norms in the allocation of
public expenditure result in patterns of expenditure that reproduce
rather than diminish gender inequality. Such patterns will typically result
in only small allocations to social infrastructure, such as health and
education, and to the kinds of physical infrastructure that are critical
for supporting women's activities in production and social reproduction
(such as housing, water, sanitation, and small-scale transport). This pat-
tern is not intended to be male-biased: it simply results from gendered
norms about priorities and procedures (Elson and Evers 1998).
 Jasmine Gideon 183

Since institutions tend to reflect the needs of the paid economy and
ignore the unpaid economy, this also means that institutions only
recognise the rights of those in the paid economy. The lack of recogni-
tion of the unpaid, reproductive economy where women are over-
represented results in undermining their economic and social rights.
Consequently services remain directed towards the needs of the pro-
ductive economy and women therefore continue to lack access to the
tools which could help them claim their rights. For example, public
expenditure could be restructured to take account of the needs of the
reproductive economy and switching to expenditure on services that
will reduce the number of hours women work. Cuts in public expend-
iture in areas such as the health sector can result in a transfer of costs to
the reproductive economy. Gender-sensitive public expenditure would
mean improving public provision of services such as water and sanita-
tion, transport and health, that can directly affect women's workload
(Elson and Gideon 1997: 36).

Economic decision-making and rights

Any analysis of economies as gendered structures must also examine the

gender balance in economic decision-making. This subject is particu-
larly important because it focuses on women's empowerment in the
process of economic growth and development. Raising the question,
`who decides?' highlights the distinction between participation in the
production process and control over production. When the gender
balance in economic decision-making is examined, we find that, when
compared to men, women lack voice in all the key institutions of the
economy. These absences enable male-biased norms to prevail. The
exclusion of women from, or their subordinate position within key
institutions, means that they are hindered from articulating and
claiming their economic and social rights.

The Central American context

Central America is a region of small, economically vulnerable and trade-

dependent countries, surrounded by larger and more industrialised
ones. In an attempt to integrate the economies into the world market,
economic reform packages have been introduced across Central Amer-
ica. The reforms have had varying impacts. The first country to undergo
adjustment was Costa Rica, where a stabilisation programme was initi-
ated in 1983. Guatemala initiated a programme in 1986, El Salvador in
184 Gender and Rights in Latin America

1989, Honduras and Nicaragua, under the FSLN, in 1987. In each coun-
try the package included adjustment and stabilisation measures, espe-
cially exchange rate devaluation, a liberalisation of markets, cuts in
public expenditure and investment, tightening of credit controls and a
reduction of the role of the state.
The uncertain economic situation of the region has clear implications
for the population. As the data in Table 8.1 illustrate, with the exception
of Costa Rica, the region suffers from severe social inequality with
widespread poverty in highly divided societies marked by violence of
all kinds. Guatemala and El Salvador have suffered civil wars and Nicar-
agua underwent a revolution followed by counter-revolution. Ethnic
difference is also an important axis of social inequality within Central
America society, especially in Guatemala where the indigenous popula-
tion constitutes around 60 per cent of the total population. In Guate-
mala, Honduras and Nicaragua around half the population lives below
the poverty line, infant mortality rates are high as is the number of under
weight children. Fertility levels in Central America are among the highest
in Latin America and many women, especially poor women, start to have
children at a young age. The figures presented in Table 8.1 hide

Table 8.1 Social imbalances in Central America: key indicators (mid-1990s)

Costa Rica El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua

Real GDP per capita

(PPP$) 5,969 2,610 3,682 1,977 1,837
Real GDP per capita of
poorest 20% (PPP$) 1,136 n.a. 357 399 479
Population below
national poverty
line (%) (1) 11 38 58 53 50
Total fertility rate
(1995) 3.1 3.3 5.1 4.6 4.1
Annual population
growth rate (%) (2) 2.8 4.8 2.9 3.2 2.8
Infant mortality
rate (3) 13 34 43 29 44
Underweight children
under 5 (%) 2 11 27 18 12
HDI rank 34 114 111 119 126

Notes:(1) ˆ 1989±94; (2) ˆ 1970±95; (3) ˆ per 1000 live births; n.a. not available.
Source: UNDP 1998.
 Jasmine Gideon 185

much of the variation that occurs between social classes and between
rural and urban areas.
Despite high fertility rates, women in Central America are active in
both the productive and reproductive economies (see below). In line
with global trends, the region has seen an increase in women's employ-
ment in the paid economy. In general this has been a response to the
economic crisis and restructuring in the region. However, women are
more likely to be in lower paid, lower status jobs than men. As the
indicators in Table 8.2 show, the share of income earned by women is
on average around 27 per cent of the share of income earned by men. In
addition, women are over-represented in the informal sector (Elson and
Gideon 1997: 12). Women also lack access to the necessary inputs for
production, and in particular, as a result of both legal and cultural
norms, they do not have equal access to land.
Another important consequence of the shifts in economic conditions
in the region has been changes in household size, composition and
headship and today around one-third of households in Central America
are headed by women.6 It has also been argued that despite changing
economic roles of men and women in the region, gender-based roles

Table 8.2 Gender differences in Central America: key indicators (mid-1990s)

Costa Rica El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua

GDI rank 39 103 113 114 115

GEM rank (1) 22 44 46 39 34
Seats in parliament
held by women (%) 15.8 15.5 12.5 n.a. n.a.
Female share of earned
income (%) 26.9 33.6 21.3 24.4 28.3
Male share of earned
income (%) 73.1 66.4 78.7 75.6 71.7
Households headed by
women (%) (2) 20 26.6 16.9 20.4 24.3
Combined 1st, 2nd,
3rd level gross
enrolment
ratio ± female 68.3 58.1 41.7 61.3 65.7
Combined 1st, 2nd,
3rd level gross enrol-
ment ratio ± male 59 52.2 46.5 56.2 59.7

Notes:(1) Figures are for 1995; (2) ˆ 1990±92; n.a. not available. GDI = Gender Development
Index; GEM = Gender Empowerment Measure.
Source: UNDP 1998, UNDP 1995, Chant 1999.
186 Gender and Rights in Latin America

and identities have remained strong. Nevertheless, these norms have

been challenged across the region and demands have been made for a
redefinition of gender roles (Elson et al. 1997). The implications of these
changes regarding rights are now discussed.

Economic and social rights in Central America

This section draws on the theoretical framework to explore gender

differences in economic and social rights in Costa Rica, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. The analysis focuses on three
key issues. Firstly, it assesses the implications of the legal `fuzziness' of
economic and social rights for poor women and men. Secondly, it looks
at the way in which difference in time use between men and women has
an impact on their ability to enjoy these rights. Finally, it considers the
impact economic restructuring in the region has had on access to rights
by low-income groups, highlighting the gender differences that have
emerged.
Some indication of the status of women's rights in the region is
possible through existing measurements such as the UNDP gender em-
powerment measurement (GEM).7 However, while such indicators are
useful, they do not fully reflect women's enjoyment of their economic
and social rights. Moreover, for all the countries except Costa Rica,
estimates of labour market data are used which casts some doubt on
their validity, especially since these tend to underestimate the size of the
informal sector; with particular implications for women who predomin-
ate in the sector (UNDP 1995).

Article 3: the right of all men and women to enjoy their economic,
social and cultural rights
Despite the commitment made by governments to ensure that all men
and women can enjoy their economic and social rights, in many cases
legal norms exist which place women in a subordinate position and
constitute them as dependants of men. While the constitution of a
country may guarantee rights to all citizens, this is often undermined
by civil laws. In Guatemala, for example, the Civil Code allows the
husband to object to the wife engaging in activities outside the house-
hold, and restricts her right to personal fulfilment outside her function
as wife and mother (Initial Report of Guatemala 1991, submitted to the
CEDAW committee, cited in Steiner and Alston 1996: 890).8 This is
reinforced by social and cultural norms. Male and female identities
based on traditional notions of reproduction and sexuality are still
 Jasmine Gideon 187

dominant and the gendered division of labour in the reproductive

economy ± in which women are responsible for looking after children
and carrying out housework ± is still firmly in place. However, women
are also expected to undertake income generating activities alongside
these responsibilities.
Understanding the economy as a gendered structure helps us to realise
how the burden of work in the reproductive economy hinders women's
ability to articulate and claim their economic and social rights. Evidence
from around the world shows that women work longer hours than men;
as a result women are more susceptible to `time poverty' (Lister 1997:
133). In Central America data show that women work longer hours than
men: available time budget studies from each country reveal that poor
women work up to seventeen hours a day (paid and unpaid) while poor
men work around nine hours a day. A study in rural Guatemala con-
cluded that women's average work-burden was 17 per cent greater than
men's (UNDP 1995: 91). One result is that women tend to have less
leisure time than men. Women's lack of leisure time is a crucial dimen-
sion of gender equity and can impinge on both their mental and phys-
ical health. Women are also not able to participate equally in cultural
activities; such activities are stressed in the ICESCR. As Lister (1997: 133)
argues in another context, time is a resource that either constrains or
facilitates choices in a highly gendered way. Since many women have
less free time than men they are less able to access many of the rights set
out in the ICESCR.
The economic reform programmes introduced across Central America
have to some extent brought new opportunities for women. A large
number of jobs have been created as a result of the increase in the
production of nontraditional agricultural exports (NTAEs). However,
economic restructuring can jeopardise economic and social rights and
may particularly affect women. Studies suggest that although NTAEs
may put limited additional income in women's hands, they do create
more work for women. A UNICEF study (1994: 162) in Guatemala
highlights the fact that women involved in the production of NTAEs,
now work four hours more per day than previously. This may be because
increased market-based demands mean that a higher output must be
produced. Longer working days may not only risk women's own health
and nutrition, but with the continued gender division of labour also
affects the education, health and nutrition of their children.
Gender differences in time use may also impede women's ability to
participate in decision-making arenas. Their reproductive responsibil-
ities leave them less time for these additional activities. Furthermore,
188 Gender and Rights in Latin America

many families continue to function according to patriarchal norms,

where men play a dominant role in decision-making processes and
women remain marginalised (Faune 1995: 8). Women therefore con-
tinue to lack voice in economic and policy debates and often fail to
ensure their needs are met. Economic policy-making is dominated by
the Ministries of Finance and the Central Banks, where women remain
relatively scarce. Government institutions responsible for women's
issues in Central America have only limited decision-making abilities,
and none participates in the design and implementation of economic
policy reform. These institutions vary in rank: for instance, in El Salva-
Äo de Desarollo de la Mujer
dor, the recently created Instituto Salvadoren
is headed by the President of the Family Secretariat and includes repre-
sentatives from different ministries and women's groups. In Guatemala,
however, the National Office for Women is a low ranking body con-
tained within the Ministry of Labour. Women do participate to some
extent in the higher echelons of political, judicial and administrative
power across the region (although this participation is quite limited in
Guatemala); however, they tend to be concentrated in areas associated
with women's traditional reproductive role, such as health and educa-
tion, rather than in macroeconomic policy arenas (cf. Htun and Jones,
Chapter 2 this volume).
In Central America, the majority of cooperatives, trade unions, NGOs,
and trade and commercial organisations remain male-controlled, even
where female membership is high. Active movements of women do
exist in the region; however, they tend to focus more on social issues,
such as domestic violence and human rights, than on issues of eco-
nomic policy. Studies from the region illustrate the ways in which
men dominate household decision-making, most notably through the
control of resources (see for example Rojas and RomaÂn (1993) on Costa
Rica; Chiriboga, Grynspan and PeÂrez (1995) on Central America; Renzi
and Agurto (1997) on Nicaragua).

Article 6: the right to work and the full realisation of this right
through access to the necessary training
Central American women are active in the paid economy yet their work
is often unrecognised, especially in statistics. Official statistics suggest
that agriculture is a male-intensive activity. Yet this is not consistent
with evidence found in case studies from the region (IICA/BID 1993).
These suggest that women work between four and five hours daily on
family farms, and that their contribution rises at harvest time. Statistical
surveys are clearly failing to make visible women's contribution to
 Jasmine Gideon 189

agriculture, especially their unpaid family work. This calls for the right
to work to be reassessed to take account of these gender imbalances.
Incorporating the reproductive economy in our analysis also enables
us to see that women suffer more constraints than men in their ability to
participate in the productive economy. Unpaid work may limit women's
participation in paid work, and may also mean that they are less able to
attend training courses, particularly if these are not timetabled at hours
that are convenient for women. Although some progress has been made
in closing gender gaps in technical training in Central America, in an
ILO study in Nicaragua, carried out in a number of training centres and
factories with 55 male respondents and 46 female respondents, 33 per
cent of the women cited their caring duties as the major factor inhibit-
ing their participation in training programmes (ILO 1992).

Article 7: the right to fair wages, including equal

remuneration for work of equal value, without
discrimination of any kind

The wording of this article, in particular the right to fair wages, high-
lights the `slipperiness' of some of the concepts included in the ICESCR.
However, it is worth considering how gendered norms mean that
women's work continues to be undervalued. Even where it is recognised
in the paid economy women are more likely to be employed in low paid,
low status jobs. The operation of markets links household and firms into
the national economy. Yet as argued above, gender-based institutional
bias means that men and women do not enjoy equal access to markets
since they operate according to rules and norms that ignore the repro-
ductive economy. In the labour markets wage gaps persist. An examin-
ation of the urban informal sector in Central America has revealed that
the male-female wage gap is widest in the informal sector where most
women are concentrated (Funkhouser 1996: 1746). In Honduras, the
informal sector differential is around 40 per cent, although in the other
countries it is around 25 per cent; whereas the formal sector gender
differential across the region is generally around 10 per cent. Although
there are few studies estimating the extent to which wage gaps are due to
discrimination, one study in Nicaragua (Behrman and Wolfe 1991) has
demonstrated that gender bias accounted for 70 per cent of the differ-
ence in male and female earnings in the period 1977±78.9
Labour markets are characterised by a gender imbalance in occupa-
tional structure. Women across the region are located in low paid,
low status posts, while men dominate the higher ranking positions.
190 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Professional and management sectors are male intensive while women

are concentrated in personal services such as domestic workers, cooks
and clerical workers (Elson et al. 1997). Tzannatos (1992) emphasised
that it does not make economic sense to maintain gender discrimin-
ation in patterns of occupation and pay. If they were eliminated, not
only would women's income increase considerably, but also national
output could be increased by up to 5 per cent because of more effective
allocation of labour. Furthermore, the expansion of global markets has
forced governments to reconsider labour market policies and can limit
governments' ability to secure economic and social rights for their
citizens. This may have important gender implications since key stages
of the production process of many NTAEs are often female intensive. In
Central America NTAEs now include shellfish and horticultural products
and fruit. Here a fairly rigid gendered division of labour is noticeable,
the production phase is generally male intensive, while the processing
and packing is a female-intensive activity (Faune 1997).
In Costa Rica, the production of horticultural goods, pineapples and
citrus fruit, is contracted out mainly to female smallscale production
units. As contract workers women have little control over income from
the sale of these products, since marketing tends to be organised by
medium and large-scale enterprises which may be owned and controlled
by foreign investors (Faune 1997). Benefits gained from increased
income may not be commensurate with the amount of extra work that
is created for women. Equally, when production takes place in small-
holder production units, women are often unable to market the product
themselves and therefore have no control over any income accrued;
whereas if women are working as wage labourers for commercial firms
then issues regarding job security and health and safety measures re-
quire consideration. Women are therefore likely to have little direct
access to export markets, which is of particular concern since NTAEs
are likely to provide the basis for future expansion of exports.

Article 11: the right to an adequate standard of living

Gender differences are also apparent in the ability of men and women to
claim their right to an adequate standard of living, a concept that is
itself difficult to define. Gender norms force women to look for income
generating activities that allow them to combine both their productive
and reproductive roles, but this tends to confine women to activities
which provide for survival, but not for improvements in growth and
living standards. Faune (1997) found that in Costa Rica, 58 per cent of
 Jasmine Gideon 191

female-headed households had a household-based enterprise compared

to 16 per cent of male-headed households; in Nicaragua these figures
rise to 87 per cent for female-headed households and 70 per cent for
male-headed households (Renzi and Agurto 1994). Similarly, Funkhou-
ser (1996) found that female household heads are more likely to work in
the informal sector than women in male-headed households or men.
Given women's status as secondary or complementary workers, they
are excluded from the resources necessary to improve their standard of
living. Despite women's high involvement in agricultural production
across the region, they do not have equal land ownership rights. Legal
norms regarding land ownership and access to land have resulted in
marked gender differences in all five countries (Chiriboga, Grynspan
and PeÂrez 1995, FundacioÂn Arias 1996). Laws may implicitly prevent
women from gaining access to land through failing to recognise them as
agricultural workers. In Nicaragua, although women were in principle
given access to land during the Sandinista period, the assumption that
women were not agricultural producers meant that land was not granted
directly to them, either as members of cooperatives or as smallholder
farmers. This bias has remained and between 1992 and 1994, as land
redistribution continued, only 9.8 per cent was given to women. Fur-
thermore, the average size of land plots given to women has been
smaller than that given to men (AsociacioÂn de Mujeres Profesionales
1996: 26). If women do not own land they are also excluded from
accessing other inputs necessary for production, such as credit and
agricultural extension services.
Available data from all five countries highlight the gender barriers
women face in access to formal credit market. The rules of participation
in financial markets and the structure of loan management tend to
favour propertied male producers and to exclude most women (cf.
Goetz 1995). Although a number of special credit schemes have been
introduced across the region which explicitly target women, the gender
imbalance in credit allocation remains extremely wide. At most women
receive 22 per cent of formal credit loan in Nicaragua. In addition, loans
to women are likely to be smaller and may be between 40 and 70 per
cent of the size of loans given to men (Renzi and Agurto 1993).10
Although it is possible that women ask for smaller loans, institutional
bias often means that formal lending services are not set up to adminis-
ter small loans. Women therefore accrue higher transaction costs as a
percentage of their total loan due to the fixed costs associated with
lending. Another problem is that collateral is necessary to receive
loans from formal sector institutions, again prejudicing women's access.
192 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Article 12: the right to the highest attainable standard of

physical and mental health

Another right emphasised in the ICESCR is the right to health and this
has a number of important gender dimensions. A central element of the
economic reform programmes has been a cutback in public expenditure.
Public expenditure on physical and social infrastructure is critical for
improving the productivity of women's labour in both the productive
and reproductive economy. Yet at a regional level, government expend-
iture is declining in real terms (Elson and Gideon 1997). This means that
the real costs are likely to be transferred to the unpaid reproductive
economy, where women's labour is already overutilised. In Guatemala
and El Salvador, where health spending is only 1 per cent of GNP, this is
of particular concern (Elson et al. 1997). Throughout the region the
emphasis on health care spending has been on curative rather than
preventative care. In addition, the introduction of user charges in Hon-
duras and Nicaragua in the early 1990s suggests further restrictions of
access to health services. The current pattern of gender relations means
that women are likely to be left to make up the shortfall in health care.
Another concern is the consequence of incomplete sharing of income
within households on health and well-being. Evidence from Latin Amer-
ica shows that male household heads do not contribute all their wages
to household needs, but keep varying proportions for discretionary
personal expenditure on leisure items (Chant 1996: 8, LoÂpez de Maizier
1997). This type of inequality has important consequences and can
increase gender differences in well-being and good health. According
to the World Bank, `evidence from Guatemala has shown it takes fifteen
times more spending to achieve a given improvement in child nutrition
when income is earned by the father than by the mother' (World Bank
1993: 41). In Nicaragua, one survey found better nutritional status
in female-headed households, compared to male-headed house-
holds (Renzi and Agurto 1994). With the exception of Costa Rica,
there appears to be a considerable lack of large-scale sets of gender-
disaggregated household data available. This should be a major priority
for improvements of statistics that can contribute to the monitoring of
economic and social rights.

Conclusions: strategies for change

To date much of the work in the area of gender and economic and social
rights has discussed issues of citizenship, centring on how we must
 Jasmine Gideon 193

extend the notion of citizenship. Here, the analysis has focused on

extending the notion of the economy to include the reproductive econ-
omy, to make women's exercise of their economic and social rights more
effective.11 The evidence from Central America clearly shows that if
women are to enjoy their full economic and social rights there must
be a rearticulation of the productive and reproductive economy so that
women are not penalised by their obligations. This means acting to
transform all key institutions of the productive economy, whether
they are firms, banks, marketing systems or public sector organisations,
in order that they should recognise the value of women's unpaid repro-
ductive achievements.
In developing strategies that women's groups can adopt to bring
about these changes, it is useful to look at the work around CEDAW.
Activists have used their government's commitment to CEDAW as an
advocacy tool to campaign for change in the position of women's rights
in a number of countries around the world (Landsberg-Lewis 1998).
Most recently they have been central to the move for the adoption of
the optional protocol to CEDAW. Once approved,

the protocol will give women the right to complain to the Commit-
tee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women about vio-
lations of the Convention by their Governments. It will provide for
better enforcement of women's rights and will enable the Committee
to conduct inquires into serious or systematic abuses of women's
rights in countries that are party to the protocol. It will also provide
an avenue for women to obtain remedies for breaches of their human
rights. (DAW press release, 12 March 1999)

Similarly women's groups in Central America can draw on this experi-

ence to campaign for an optional protocol to be adopted by the ICESCR.
This will enable them to demand better enforcement of their economic
and social rights. Groups can also use their governments commitment
to the ICESCR as an advocacy tool and develop local and regional
movements around these issues. Although, as Dairiam, the director of
International Women's Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific warns, the
existence of a positive legal framework for women's rights does not
automatically confer rights on women; it does however legitimise
women's claims for rights and make possible women's transformation
from passive beneficiaries to active claimants (Landsberg-Lewis 1998: 9).
Similar arguments apply to the women's claims for their economic
and social rights.
194 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Women's movements exist in all five countries, and they have been
involved in ensuring their governments maintain their commitment to
CEDAW, reinforced in Beijing. Much of this work could now be further
developed to incorporate economic and social rights. Organisations
such as FIDEG (FundacioÂn Internacional para el DesafõÂo EconoÂmico
Global) in Nicaragua have already carried out considerable research
that highlight gender imbalances in the economy. In proposing new
strategies to overcome this, FIDEG have produced a gendered analysis of
the Nicaraguan economy (Renzi and Agurto 1997). This could be the
first step in developing a satellite account which would highlight the
value of women's unpaid work to national economic productivity and
development. Similarly, in Costa Rica the Comite de AmeÂrica Latina y el
Caribe para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer (CLADEM) has used
the constitutional court to challenge successfully the practice of requir-
ing a husband's consent to carry out medical sterilisation (Landsberg-
Lewis 1998: 24). Moreover, in Costa Rica other long-term developments
have taken place and the question of gender equality has been addressed
at state level. In 1995, for example, the Plan Nacional para la Igualdad de
Oportunidades entre Mujeres y Hombres (National Plan for Equal Op-
portunities between Women and Men) was a high profile government
attempt to integrate gender equality into public policy.
Information generated from these types of initiatives can be used to
prepare `shadow reports' for the Committee on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights in the same way that women's groups have prepared
shadow reports for the CEDAW Committee (Landsberg-Lewis 1998: 35).
Countries are expected to submit reports to the Committee on the status
of economic and social rights every five years and input from NGOs is
welcomed. This could provide an important entry point for women's
groups to begin to hold governments accountable over not only their
civil and political rights, but also their economic and social rights.

Notes
1 The author wishes to express her thanks to Diane Elson, Barbara Evers and
John Salter for their helpful comments on this chapter. She would also like to
thank the editors for their suggestions.
2 Keynes argued that it was the responsibilities of governments to maintain
adequate levels of employment and ensure that all those who wished to
have a job could do so, furthermore he envisaged that this would require
some socialisation of spending.
 Jasmine Gideon 195

3 It is necessary to make two additional points here. Firstly, it must be remem-

bered that these decisions were made in a particular cultural context. Rights
are only meaningful if people exercise them and recognise their existence for
others. Secondly, it is important to note that not all citizens are aware of all of
their rights and are therefore not necessarily in positive agreement with
them.
4 In light of these problems a project is currently underway to develop a
standard formatting for documenting violations of certain economic and
social rights. The project has been initiated by the Washington-based Science
and Human Rights programme of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science and Human Rights Information and Documentation
Systems, International (HURIDOCS), an NGO based in Geneva. In 1996 the
group began to develop a `violations approach' to monitoring economic and
social rights, based on the ICESCR. The project has developed a resource
manual for monitoring the right to education, the right to food, the right
to health, the right to housing and the right to work. Although these
manuals do not claim to attempt to quantify these rights per se, they do
provide specific and practical strategies for monitoring rights. While a dis-
cussion of this is beyond the scope of this chapter more details of the project
can be found at their web address <http://shr.aas.org.escr>. A critique of their
work from a gender perspective can also be found in Gideon and Elson
(1999).
5 See e.g. Molyneux (1998) for further discussion of this.
6 The calculation of the number of female-headed households has been dis-
puted by some authors (see e.g. Varley 1996).
7 The gender empowerment measurement (GEM) measures the ability of
women and men to actively participate in economic and political life and
take part in decision-making. It focuses on three variables, reflecting respect-
ively women's participation in political decision-making, their access to
professional opportunities and their earning power (UNDP 1995: 72).
8 Certain articles in the Guatemalan Civil Code have recently been challenged
by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Case 11.625: MarõÂa
Eugenia Morales de Sierra). The case, initiated in 1995, on the grounds that
the Civil Code establishes a legal regime defining the role of spouses within a
marriage that creates distinctions between men and women which are dis-
criminatory and violate the American Convention on Human Rights. This
points to the need for reform of the Civil Code as well as the ways in which
women can use legal means to challenge their subordinate status within
society. Full details of the case are available in the 1997 Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights annual report, available on the website:
<www.cidh.oas.org/annualrep/97eng/97ench3Lan.htm>.
9 While these are old data, a more up-to-date study was not located by the
author. This highlights the need for more research in this area.
10 It would be interesting to know whether more women than men are refused
loans although the author was unable to locate this information.
11 Feminist consultant Maruja Barrig commented that rights discourse is less
used in Central America than other parts of Latin America. Furthermore,
many women activists in Latin America are not aware of the ICESCR (cf.
Craske 2000).
196 Gender and Rights in Latin America

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9
The Struggle by Latin
American Feminisms for
Rights and Autonomy
Virginia Vargas1

Editors' note

We end this volume with a chapter by Virginia Vargas, a feminist activist of

the `historic' generation who has participated in the struggle for democracy and
women's rights at the national (Peru), regional and international levels. She is
a founding member of the feminist NGO Centro Flora TristaÂn in Lima, and
was Coordinator of Latin American and Caribbean NGOs for the fourth World
Conference of Women. She has participated in debates and discussions in
many countries both as activist and academic/researcher. In Peru she has
long been engaged in the struggle for democracy and was candidate for Con-
gress in 1985. In recent times she has been an outspoken critic of President
Fujimori and was one of the leading activists in a coordinating organisation
Women for Democracy (Mujeres por la Democracia). Here Vargas offers a
critical evaluation of the emergence and use of the rights-based discourse in
Latin America over recent years. In so doing, she highlights many of the issues
raised by the other contributors, drawing our attention to a theme we high-
lighted in Chapter 1: that democratisation and the struggle for women's rights
cannot be separated. Furthermore, she also emphasises that rights must be
understood in the broadest terms in order to enhance their strategic usefulness.
In this respect she sees the state as an important terrain on which to pursue the
various struggles around rights, as long as social movements retain their
autonomy and work in other `spaces and places'. So whilst she acknowledges
the important advances made by women in their dialogue with the state,
regional and international institutions and other women's movements nation-
ally and regionally, she cautions that too much emphasis on the formal

199
200 Gender and Rights in Latin America

embodiment of rights can detract from more substantive questions and can
undermine certain cultural changes necessary for genuine democratisation.
This caution in regard to the conditions under which rights are fought for,
reflects the difficult experiences that Peru has undergone over the last quarter of
the twentieth century. It has not only suffered a high degree of civil violence
during the days of the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla movement, but has been
cursed with inefficient administrations, and, latterly, the increasingly authori-
tarian and demagogic government of Fujimori. But, as the other chapters in
this volume indicate, her words have resonance beyond the Peruvian context as
well as offering a testimony to the dramatic political events in Peru.

Continuity and change

Towards the end of the twentieth century, second-wave feminism in

Latin America was confronted by a series of profound transformations
in national, regional and global contexts. These changes affected,
altered and disarticulated the different forms of feminist organising
that had emerged and been consolidated in most countries in the region
in the 1970s and 1980s. The Latin American feminisms that had de-
veloped during these decades questioned cultural visions and political
paradigms which concealed the complexity of underlying power rela-
tions between men and women in socioeconomic, political, cultural and
sexual life. Different types of feminist organisations were founded, from
action oriented collectives to nongovernmental organisations (NGOs),
coalitions and issue- and identity-based networks, both formal and
informal. From the start, the networks provided a link between national
level issues and experiences, in an empowering exchange which gener-
ated regional perspectives and channels for lobbying. The actions of
these various groups were underpinned by sustained work in grassroots
women's movements ± a two-way learning process that had a perman-
ent impact on the feminist agenda. During this period feminist cam-
paigns were mainly concerned with revealing the political nature of the
private and promoting the cultural transformation of society's
`common-sense' belief systems, by politicising women's uneasiness
about their subordinate situations in daily life and with antidemocratic
gender arrangements (Tamayo 1998).
These transformations were initially pursued within the framework of
an approach which prioritised feminist identity and declared the shared
experience of gender subordination to be the keystone in the construc-
tion of unity among women, leading to undifferentiated policies of
feminist `sisterhood'. The movement's vision of autonomy, which
 Virginia Vargas 201

centred on the claim to its own space and discourse, allowed it to

establish its limits, build its identity and subsequently `demand to be
heard' (Nun 1989). This claim to a voice and a space of its own trans-
lated into collective action, street demonstrations and the introduction
of new topics for reflection and public debate. As a result, women
became visible as social subjects and the conditions were created for
the dissemination of feminist proposals within society.
Early on, a large number of feminist organisations adopted a `double
role' both as work centres and active participants in the feminist move-
ment, which took the form of voluntary work. This parallel development
proved to be enriching and empowering. The individual organisations
acted as conduits for the broader movement's ideas and encouraged an
increasing efficiency in the production of knowledge and proposals.
The transition from the 1980s to the 1990s heralded a series of trans-
formations in political, ideological, economic and cultural spheres. The
feminist movement was both influenced by and contributed to these
transformations. One of the most important changes was the recovery
of democratic government in Latin America. New spaces and debates to
do with consensus-building and the acknowledgement of differences
were emerging. At the same time, states were prioritising reforms, both
institutional (state and judicial reform) and in relation to questions such
as governability and decentralisation, which were being promoted by
civil society.
These changed circumstances heralded increased possibilities for the
consolidation of democracy and greater leeway to pursue women's mul-
tiple interests. Women's issues steadily became more visible in society,
and governments started to demonstrate an unprecedented concern to
tackle gender-based discrimination. In consequence, it appeared more
likely that the transformations to the existing order that had been
pursued by feminists in the 1980s could be accomplished. Many femi-
nist demands were, in fact, addressed in legislation or through the
institutionalisation of women's issues. There was also the introduction
of affirmative action and quota policies to ensure a greater female
presence in deliberative and decision-making arenas (see Htun and
Jones, Chapter 2 this volume). The notion that women `deserved to
have rights' began to be asserted.
These advances were taking place at the same time as the neoliberal
economic model was being widely adopted by governments throughout
the region (and globally). The neoliberal system aimed to resolve the
economic instability of previous decades by attempting to reduce infla-
tion and stimulate economic growth. Such `amendments' to earlier
202 Gender and Rights in Latin America

economic failures were, nevertheless, unable to reduce social inequality

and poverty, and existing gaps between social groups widened along
the lines of race, ethnicity, age, class and geographical location. As a
consequence, women's room to manoeuvre and their autonomy
were restricted. However, it appeared that the new feminist transform-
ational discourses were unable to articulate a response to these two
contradictory dynamics: namely, the advances in the concept of
women as the bearers of rights and the steadily worsening standard of
living.
The 1990s also witnessed realignments on the international stage, a
result of the ambiguous process of globalisation and the revision of
the UN's mandate. Feminists began to establish a presence in spaces
that were opening up at regional and global levels. In this way, they
aimed to influence an international agenda that was addressing a
range of situations of exclusion and subordination (affecting girls,
women, the poor) and was redefining the great problems of our era:
human rights, the environment, population, development to name
but some. A significant number of feminist institutions participated in
the `debates' on the content and future perspectives of each of these
issues. Feminists thus started to become fundamental actors in the
construction of democratic spaces within regional and global civil
society.2
These innovative incursions at national and supranational levels were
encouraged by the new accent on the multiplicity of possible sites of
struggle (Phillips 1993). Without abandoning the micro level of democ-
ratising everyday life (democratisation of the intimate), it became ap-
parent that different feminist currents were emerging and consolidating
their presence and proposals at the macro level. These new currents
focused their attention and energies on the question of women's mem-
bership of the political community, exploring ± as Anne Phillips might
say ± issues of inclusion and exclusion and challenging the universalist
pretensions of modern political thought.
In line with this evolving approach , the new core concepts of democ-
racy and citizenship began to be discussed. Both notions implied the
need for a much closer dialogue between states and civil society than
had existed in the previous decade. These questions came to be regarded
as fundamentally important following the processes of dialogue, nego-
tiation and political participation that were promoted by a broad-based
feminist movement within the framework of the UN world summits and
conferences of the 1990s. Feminist approaches to the questions of citi-
zenship and democracy were underpinned by a range of strategies which
 Virginia Vargas 203

sought to ensure the continued progression towards gender equality in

the future, by defending the advances already achieved and further
expanding women's citizenship rights. The rights discourse ± both
public and private ± therefore became essential for consolidating the
gains that had been made over the preceding 25 years.
The public sphere of social and political intercourse was also affected
by the changes in the nature of feminist organising. Many of the
organisations that, in the 1980s, had been able to combine movement
activism with the creation of work centres or nongovernmental organ-
isations began to appear more like the `institutionalised' face of femi-
nism. Institutionalisation did not take place only within feminist NGOs.
Another example was the establishment of gender studies departments
or courses in universities, which signified a huge step forward in terms
of the production of knowledge and the creation of new feminisms. In
the case of feminist NGOs, however, it appears that the experiences of
institutionalisation and negotiation with states and governments led to
a sharper focus on questions that were linked less to women's move-
ments and civil society, and more with the need to develop effective
strategies in their dealings with public authorities. This tendency was
reinforced by the fact that greater emphasis was placed on the public
political sphere, agendas were being pared down and energies were
concentrated on developing successful lobbying tactics. As a result,
central feminist concerns were marginalised and dialogue with other
actors in the public arena was weakened.
In these changed circumstances and in line with the new directions
being taken by feminisms, many of the concerns that had first been
raised in the 1980s began to enter public debate and institutional
agendas, distancing them from their original contexts. The incorpor-
ation of some feminist proposals from the 1980s into state programmes
undoubtedly implied an advance for a significantly greater number of
women. Nevertheless, it also led to increased uncertainty regarding the
nature of the transformations that feminists wished to achieve, in con-
trast to the clarity of objectives that had accompanied the movement's
development during the previous decades and its establishment as a
political and social actor.3

Civil society and government: the `shared' rights discourse

It is clear that the restoration of democracy in Latin America facilitated

the adoption of the rights-based discourse by the main sectors of the
feminist movement. In tandem, the recently installed governments
204 Gender and Rights in Latin America

consolidated their democratic credentials by employing a similar rhet-

oric and emphasising the construction of citizenship. In practice, how-
ever, these two sets of actors adopted quite different approaches to the
rights question. Feminists started from the assumption ± at least in
theory ± that the meaning of rights should be discussed from the stand-
point of women. This implied questioning the supposed universality
of traditional concepts of democracy and citizenship, and drawing at-
tention to their formal, partial and exclusionary nature. In addition,
it meant presenting inclusive and subversive proposals, not only to
the state, but also to civil society, for the latter both to implement
and promote. Evelina Dagnino (1998) notes that the starting point is
not a legal approach to winning formal, abstract rights or the imple-
mentation of existing rights, but rather the affirmation of the `right to
have rights'. As well as admitting the possible specification of new
rights, this formulation includes equality and the right to be different.
The notion of the `right to have rights' implies acknowledgement of
their shifting nature.4 In other words, it allows for the expansion of
rights and the identification of previously unrecognised ones from the
viewpoint of social actors, rather than their limitation to those that have
already been defined. This perspective can therefore include concepts
that until now have been devalued within the formal logic of rights;
for instance, the social dimension of citizenship (economic rights) or
a broader concept of civic citizenship which incorporates sexual
rights. This understanding of the question of rights contributed to the
elaboration of clearly differentiated and autonomous feminist agendas,
which were used as the basis for action and for negotiating with govern-
ments.
A key development of the 1990s was the emphasis that governments
placed on the rhetoric of rights and the `recognition' of women's citi-
zenship. By adopting this position, governments found themselves ob-
liged to respond to the pressure from women's movements to define and
grant a set of rights to women (while simultaneously restricting other
rights, such as economic ones). This was regarded as part of the unfin-
ished task of modernisation and of the concept of good governance as it
had evolved over the preceding decade. At the same time, the wide-
spread application of the neoliberal economic model increased social
inequalities and widened the gaps between citizens based on ethnic,
gender, class and geographical differences. In practice, the neoliberal
viewpoint does not recognise the different dimensions of citizenship
(civil, political, socioeconomic, cultural). Instead, it tends to promote
the construction of citizenship starting from a minimalist conception of
 Virginia Vargas 205

democracy, and equates rights with individual access to the market. As

Barrig (1998: 7) points out, the perspective adopted by governments
illustrates two problems with current forms of democracy in the
region: `the devaluation of democracy to a simple electoral exercise,
denying its participatory dimension, through which the articulation of
different social voices could enrich government policy; and a practice
embedded in the political system that regularly transforms citizens into
clients.'
The fact that the `consensus' regarding the importance of citizens'
rights proceeded from different starting points and perspectives meant
that feminists were faced with a contradictory and ambiguous situation.
On the one hand, it presented increased scope for negotiation and
opened up new possibilities for addressing some of the most extreme
aspects of women's subordination. This was evident from the debates
held and gains made in the international arena of the UN conferences,
and the establishment in most Latin American countries of institutional
machineries dealing with women's issues. The objective of these
women's offices was to incorporate the question of `gender equality'
into public policy-making and in several cases they successfully pro-
moted affirmative action laws or measures, such as electoral `quotas'.5
Moreover, in many countries feminists began working in these new
governmental institutions,6 which meant that there was a greater likeli-
hood of a more flexible understanding of women's rights. These experi-
ences demonstrated that the state is not a homogeneous or unitary
structure, but a differentiated set of institutions, agencies and dis-
courses, shaped by specific historical and political contexts, which
means that it is also a valid site of struggle for social movements (Waylen
1996). In contrast, the feminist movement's point of departure necessi-
tates the formulation of multiple strategies to seek improved conditions
for negotiation. This means making the rigid and exclusionary space of
formal politics more flexible and participating in debates on conceptual
meanings and the whole range of public issues. Otherwise there is a real
danger that the feminist presence and proposals may disappear and
long-term transformations may no longer be promoted.7

The Gordian knot of autonomy in negotiation

Without doubt, feminist movements have a political and historical

responsibility to mediate and consolidate the gains made by and for
women. It is also essential to recognise that such interactions take place
in a setting of unequal power relations and contrasting perspectives.
206 Gender and Rights in Latin America

These facts bring us to one of the most problematic and inescapable

tensions affecting the feminist (and every other social) movement: how
to maintain the transformational radicalism of feminist thought and
action when entering public, political spaces to negotiate and define
agendas that affect women.
For the diverse currents of the feminist movement that had emerged
and consolidated their identity in opposition to the state during the
1970s and 1980s, the opportunity to exercise the right to make demands
on and draw up agreements with public authorities, and to take advan-
tage of the openings in the system, represented an important step
forward. This was because it not only improved women's capacity for
negotiation, but also enhanced the democratic nature of society by
making women visible in those arenas previously monopolised by
men. The multiplication of potential sites and modes of participation
increased the possibilities for the wide range of women's interests to
develop politically and become part of the public agenda. On the other
hand, this process entailed the risky business of negotiating from a
subordinate position and dealing with the impenetrable workings of
government. The movement also faced the ever-present dangers of
losing its identity as an expression of democratic civil society and the
depoliticisation of women's agendas.8
In order to avoid these pitfalls, the autonomy of feminist agendas
must be preserved. The bias of existing views on rights and the `natural'
assumptions regarding women's status as second-class citizens must be
challenged. The independent nature of feminist projects is what per-
manently underpins the `struggle' over the meanings and contents of
existing processes. It is not, however, a question of reasserting a defen-
sive and confrontational autonomy, such as that which characterised
the first phase of the movement's evolution.9 The rights-based discourse
that emerged in the 1990s implied the development of a much broader
universe of relations for feminist movements, with a wider range of
interests, more flexible identities and unprecedented forms of inter-
action between state and civil society. In this context, the meaning of
autonomy became more complex and less rigid.
Autonomy has always been one of the central political issues for
second-wave feminisms. Both conceptually and in practice it has proved
fundamental for the consolidation of an independent platform. The
political dimension of autonomy is expressed in the capacity to define
one's own agenda, as an emancipatory strategy which allows interaction
with society and the state. Since autonomy is a personal and collective
practice that occurs within a specific context, its meaning has altered,
 Virginia Vargas 207

becoming open to a wider range of interpretations, in line with the

expansion of feminist interventions.
The autonomy of feminist movements in the 1990s tended to be
based on a position that promoted dialogue and negotiation, while
questioning the limits of existing systems. But this process of challen-
ging boundaries requires that feminists' political autonomy be re-
affirmed through the presentation of a radically different project for
society, expressed in a language and agenda of its own. From this basis
feminist movements can start to build up the necessary support net-
works and alliances, and at the same time maintain a critical view of the
limits of actually existing democracies. The only way to incorporate the
needs, knowledge, rights and utopian visions of those who are not part
of the mainstream is that they themselves present proposals and exert
pressure.
It is important to bear in mind that we are discussing exploratory and
open-ended processes, which do not start from a single truth or defin-
ition of autonomy. As Paoli and da Silva Telles (1998) point out, the
Latin American contexts, as well as being marked by inequalities, grow-
ing poverty, discrimination, violence, and the persistence of hierarchies
and authoritarian social relations, are characterised by a high degree of
uncertainty regarding the potential for change. However, this unpre-
dictability also implies a range of new openings for emergent civil
society to investigate. In view of this, the complex implications of the
practice of autonomy should be taken less as rigid norms, and more as
`guiding tensions'; particularly in the face of the ambiguities of democ-
racy, the perils involved in entering unfamiliar spaces, and the uncer-
tainties surrounding the end of the millennium. These `guiding
tensions' can therefore serve to point the way towards how and when
to negotiate, and how and with whom to make alliances. They can,
moreover, demonstrate how advances made with respect to one dimen-
sion of autonomy may delegitimise, weaken or negate other aspects, and
thus they help to maintain a balance between ethics and compromise.
However, for the uncertainty and ambiguity to become `guiding
tensions', it is essential that we analyse the potential dangers of these
interventions for feminist strategising today.

The risks of the discourse of rights for feminism today

The most important political recourse employed by feminists in the

1990s was the policy of negotiation with actors in the public political
sphere, with the aim of increasing women's participation and improving
208 Gender and Rights in Latin America

their legal status.10 However, it gave rise to a series of tensions and

conflicts because it neglected other strategies which could widen
women's access to democracy, or promote alternative dimensions of
women's autonomy and citizenship. As such, feminism depends upon
the support of a broader movement in civil society to bolster its
minority position and help create a critical mass, which would help
counterbalance the impact of its interaction with institutional logic
(GuzmaÂn 1996). This base of support, however, has weakened in recent
years.
Many feminists, both in Latin America and elsewhere, have high-
lighted these problems. For instance, Loes Keyser (1996: 2) states, with
reference to the progress made at the World Conference on Population
and Development in Cairo (1994), that `the gains have not been without
costs'. In her view, the transformational potential of the feminist project
is threatened by an agenda on reproductive rights and health that does
not combine the campaign for women's rights to self-determination and
well-being with the struggle for socioeconomic and political transform-
ations that will enable women to exercise those rights. Another cost,
according to Kayser, is the legitimisation of official discourses that
modify government agendas but have no real impact, while feminist
projects are neglected. Barrig (1997), in her paper on feminist NGOs in
Chile, states that `the movement is not moving forward and there is
little renewal in its ranks'. Moreover, in relations with the state, elem-
ents of the feminist movement exercise self-censorship and have lost the
motivation and need to define its own agenda, since there is no space to
build a critical mass (ibid.). Giulia Tamayo (1997) recently warned
against the

extreme turn being taken by feminist activism it its attempt to influ-

ence government policies and mechanisms . . . which neglects the
strengthening of citizenship and is especially problematic in the case
of governments that are trying to appear democratic when in fact
they are not.

Similarly, in their analysis of the Brazilian case, Shumaher and Vargas

(1997: 141) argue that

if we refer to public policies in a strict sense ± in other words, as a series

of interlinked measures that represent direct government actions in
particular areas which aim to intervene in specific social realities ±
then we must accept that the agenda of the [governmental Women's]
 Virginia Vargas 209

Councils was limited to targeted interventions and localised actions

that did not lead to the implementation of public policies.

Sonia Alvarez (1997), for her part, states that the previously clear div-
ision between civil society and governments, and between the ap-
proaches taken by each, is being eroded. Increasingly, social actors are
adopting an exclusive focus on realisable strategies, without even any
mention being made of what is really desirable.
Thus, it would seem that feminist incursions into the sphere of formal
politics privileged strategies that aimed at strengthening some of the
political dimensions of citizenship, whereas little attention was paid to
the contents of what was `under discussion'. Likewise, less energy was
directed towards demanding a greater institutionalisation of democracy,
and no new strategies were developed to pursue political and cultural
transformations or to construct alternative spaces of opposition within
civil society. There are many aggravating factors, which do not only
relate to how priorities are set in negotiations or how agendas are
defined. Other relevant factors include more global changes, the char-
acteristics of political cultures in Latin America, the new forms of femi-
nism that are taking shape, and the ways in which feminist campaigns
interact with other democratic struggles within society.
Feminism has changed, and not simply as a consequence of its expan-
sion and decentralisation in multiple arenas and sites of action. As
Alvarez (1998) notes, these processes have been accompanied by the
accentuation of imbalances between women who act at distinct levels
and occupy different spaces. The field of feminist activism, she con-
cludes, is characterised by unequal power relations, which reveal a
growing division between two foundational elements of the transform-
ational project of the 1970s and 1980s: its ethical-cultural and struc-
tural-institutional dimensions. As a result, the movement's presence
appears greatly weakened and, paradoxically, the priority assigned to
debating contents and meanings in formal political spaces has meant
that in many cases the movement's visibility as an oppositional force
within society has faded.
The advancing process of fragmentation and erosion is partly related
to the cycles experienced by social movements and to the negative
effects of the dynamics of globalisation and neoliberalism.11 It is also
linked to what several authors (Alvarez, most insistently) have called the
`NGOisation' of the feminist movement. The term refers to the fact that
in the 1990s Latin American feminisms expressed themselves basically
through the work and agendas of feminist NGOs. These had access to
210 Gender and Rights in Latin America

external funding (although this is now drying up) and employed full-
time professionals, placing them in a privileged position to define the
most visible feminist actions and strategies. The NGOs tended to ascribe
particular importance to negotiation with the state, reducing the space
for the development of strategies relating to the modification of gender
stereotypes, awareness-raising, cultural transformations, the inclusion
of social diversity and the construction of alliances with other oppos-
ition sectors. The approaches developed in the 1990s changed the ori-
ginal `double role' and increased the `institutionalisation' of feminist
organisations, thus curtailing the multifaceted expressions of the move-
ment as a whole.
As GuzmaÂn (1996) identifies, the relationship with women's move-
ment and other democratic movements was also undermined, which
resulted in a weakening of the connections they had established with
women who were even more marginalised from power. Consequently,
those networks that were established during the 1980s were isolated
and became invisible in analyses and debates. This, in turn, undermined
feminisms' openness and responsiveness to issues emerging from
other social arenas. Without the alliances and interactions which work
to transform political culture, the social base of the feminist movement
disappears, thus limiting its chances of `gaining' recognition and
its capacity to influence civil society and the government.12 The poten-
tial value of the rights-based approach is also reduced and its ambiguity
becomes fully evident, as many authors have warned. Even while
we acknowledge its political and practical usefulness in widening
women's frames of reference and in encapsulating the idea ± as Fraser
and Gordon (1997) might say ± of having the right to something rather
than receiving it as `charity', this discourse can be misleading because it
reinforces one type of rights, namely, formal, political ones (and
one dimension of autonomy) at the expense of others. Birgin (1997)
argues that it masks real differences between rights that are being
claimed (increasingly by women), recognised rights (always restricted
in number) and fully awarded rights (even fewer). Molyneux (1998)
points out that there are similar risks entailed in the notion of an active
citizenship if it is not linked to strategies that are part of a long-term
project covering not only political but also economic and social reforms.
The equivocal nature of citizenship therefore becomes clear. It is
revealed as a `true lie', in that it contains the promise of equality
in the face of great inequalities, but in practice concedes a purely
formal equality to those who are in fact not substantively equal
(Franco 1997).13
 Virginia Vargas 211

Perhaps the most problematic effect of the rights-based approach is

one that has already been mentioned at several points in the chapter:
the disappearance of the feminist movement's own agenda. This has
reduced the opportunities for building a broad base of support for the
feminist struggle within civil society, which could exert the kind of
pressure needed to achieve the objectives of political and cultural
change. In consequence, feminist movements lack the capacity to influ-
ence public policies or to contribute to the re-evaluation of democracy.
That is to say, `experts' or lobbyists alone cannot transform demands
into public issues. As GuzmaÂn (1996) points out, the stronger and more
visible the actors who make demands and push for negotiation, the
greater the chances are that the responses will correspond more closely
to their original proposals. Fraser (1993) refers to a similar notion when
she speaks of the construction of `oppositional' or subaltern audiences,
who inject new cultural and political meanings into public debates. This
is an experience that is already underway; it began with the discussions
concerning the weaknesses of existing democratic systems and the de-
velopment of alternative understandings and visions of democracy. The
ability to act as an `oppositional audience' has been one of the most
important characteristics of Latin American feminisms, which has
allowed their struggles and proposals to become more visible and has
opened up a democratic arena par excellence in which to project women's
interests and desires.

The Peruvian case

The case of Peru reveals in a paradigmatic way the risks and ambiguities
contained in the current feminist discourse of rights. Furthermore, the
nature of relations between the feminist movement and the govern-
ment in this country provides a clear example of the tensions affecting
feminisms in the region. The Fujimori government, which was indisput-
ably authoritarian, had an increasingly unsustainable record of viola-
tions of human and citizens' rights. There is no room here to recount
all the details of this lengthy process, so reference will be made only
to some of the most flagrant abuses committed. In 1992 Fujimori
organised an executive coup backed by the military and, with the
support of a civil±military alliance, dissolved Congress, in order to retain
power beyond the limits established in the 1979 Constitution. In 1993,
during the breakup of his marriage, Fujimori used all the means at
his disposal to isolate and publicly humiliate his wife, which provoked
the immediate condemnation of feminists. In 1995 he was re-elected
212 Gender and Rights in Latin America

president with a huge majority, partly as a result of the crisis affecting

the traditional parties and political class. Another decisive factor was his
achievement, during his first term in office, of the `pacification' of Peru
and the ending of the internal war that had terrorised the population.
This was accomplished at the cost of blatant human rights abuses and a
reduction of the autonomy and the appropriation of resources of local
authorities, bringing to a halt the process of decentralisation. In 1996
the Constitutional Court, an autonomous supervisory body, was re-
moved by simple decree because some of its members had declared
that Fujimori's bid for re-election in the year 2000 was unconstitutional.
In 1997 the public learnt of the assassination of a National Intelligence
Service (SIN) agent and of the torture which resulted in the physical
disablement of Leonor la Rosa, another SIN agent, who denounced the
murder and confirmed what was by then public knowledge: that the
armed forces were fully committed to guaranteeing Fujimori's perman-
ence in power. The Channel 2 TV station publicly denounced these
events, as well as the massive SIN operation to tap the telephone lines
of opposition politicians (among them PeÂrez de Cuellar, formerly Secre-
tary General of the UN and a presidential candidate in Peru). In reprisal,
Baruch Ivcher, a major shareholder in Channel 2, was stripped of his
Peruvian nationality and had his shares confiscated. At the beginning of
1998 it became known that the state Family Planning Programme was
using sterilisation much more widely than any other contraceptive
method, especially among rural and indigenous populations. Finally,
in mid-1998 the Congress ± controlled by a government majority ±
rejected an initiative presented to call a referendum on whether the
president should be allowed to stand for re-election. The initiative is a
constitutional right and, in this case, was supported by one and a-half
million signatures; that is, 300 000 more than those required. Still, it was
ignored.
At the same time, however, during Fujimori's administration `women's
issues' received more attention than at any other time in Peru's history,14
and he also appointed a record number of women to both political and
technical posts in ministries and the state bureaucracy. By 1998, several
new state bodies working with and for women had been created: the
Ministry of Women and Human Development (PROMUDEH), which
included an office dealing with gender issues; the Parliamentary
Women's Commission; and the Women's DefensorõÂa (Ombudsman),
a subsection of the People's DefensorõÂa (of these three new institutions,
only the latter had a clearly democratic structure). The government
also set up an advisory committee at ministerial level, which included
 Virginia Vargas 213

feminists among its members. In addition, it signed a series of agree-

ments and `contracts' for the implementation of specific projects with
various feminist NGOs, chosen for their proven track record. Many
proposals presented by feminist groups were turned into laws or govern-
ment programmes targeting women. Significant legislative and policy
advances were made, such as the law against violence against women
and the family planning programme, which was initially supported by
feminists. The implementation of this programme led to a head-on
confrontation with the church hierarchy.
Given the authoritarian context in which these measures were imple-
mented, it is not surprising that they tended to originate through cli-
entelistic channels, with no established system of consultation with
women's organisations, nor that they were applied in a poverty allevi-
ation framework, rather than as part of an egalitarian approach. Many of
these new laws and programmes were opportunistically `adapted' to suit
the government's requirements ± such as re-election ± and also often
represented a double-edged sword for women. For example, the changes
introduced were frequently so minimal as to have no real effect; laws
passed affirming women's rights to control over their own bodies and
fertility, were subsequently violated by policies of forced sterilisation (cf.
Radcliffe, Chapter 7 this volume); and the laws against domestic vio-
lence and in defence of the family in fact ignored existing power rela-
tions and restricted women's physical and emotional autonomy. All of
this took place within a wider context of minimal conditions of respect
for citizens' rights, and maximum exclusion and isolation of `women's
issues' from the construction of democracy.
In the light of these factors, some features of feminist interaction with
the government give cause for concern. A study carried out by Rosa
MarõÂa Alfaro for the Calandria Association shows that relations between
feminists and the government were generally contractual, clientelistic
and personalised, linked to efficiency and to the logic of both the
market and international cooperation. The relations established were
unstable, lacked continuity, did not constitute strategic agreements and
were not underpinned by the feminist organisations' own agendas. In
general, the issues varied widely and the initiative was taken by
the government (Alfaro 1997). In this context, feminist discourses and
proposals tended to become specialised and fragmented. This frequently
contributed to the `depoliticisation' of demands, the disappearance
of the feminist agenda and the weakening of the relationship with
other women's groupings and social movements. The potential pitfalls
were multiplied because there was no discussion of, or answers to, the
214 Gender and Rights in Latin America

questions `how, in what terms, with what tactics, around what out-
comes' the strategies vis-aÁ-vis the state had been conceived (Pringle
and Watson 1994); a situation made even more problematic by the
authoritarian context and prevalence of unequal power relations.
It is true that in order to counteract the government's authoritarian
policies, Peruvian feminism developed alternative strategies. These in-
cluded mobilisations, public denunciations, attempted alliances with
other democratic forces and the creation of spaces within civil society
for collective negotiation, such as the `broad women's movement' and
Women for Democracy, two clearly feminist spaces that included other
democratic actors. But these actions were neither constant nor unani-
mous in their defence of democracy. Some feminist demands, such as
those relating to economic justice and sexual rights (in particular abor-
tion and freedom of sexuality) were relegated in the widening process of
the re-evaluation of democracy. The changing nature of the links with a
debilitated and dispersed popular women's movement was also a feature
of the new reality.
Towards the end of the 1990s these factors highlighted the vulnerabil-
ity of the development of feminism in Peru, and were threatening the
rich and varied character of the movement. If feminism lost its explicit
commitment to democratic dynamics, it would not only obstruct the
expansion of democracy in Peru, but could also halt the progressive
acceptance in official arenas of the principle `right to have rights'. This
is because it might be interpreted as feminists only having an interest in
`women's interests'. Similarly it might be used to promote higher levels
of female representation and to introduce new legislation, but in a way
which could constrain them. It could limit their ability to adopt an
autonomous position or demand transparency in political processes,
through the establishment of a democratic institutional setting and
democratic relations with civil society. Under these conditions, even
limited expert support given to government initiatives and women-
friendly legislation could, for instance, be interpreted in much
broader terms as implying that feminists support the authoritarian gov-
ernment.

Pointers for the future

Feminism was one of the subversive movements to emerge in the twen-

tieth century. Simply by existing, feminisms contributed to democra-
tisation, because they expressed a radical confrontation with the ways
and spaces in which power is distributed and exercised in society. The
 Virginia Vargas 215

struggle of the feminist movement, and of many others which fought to

put an end to exclusion, discrimination and repressive sexual and moral
norms, has been described by Jose Nun (1989) as the rebellion of the
chorus: the rebellion `of those who, by speaking when they are not
supposed to and by escaping from the place assigned to the chorus . . .
violate the ritual of discrimination and acceptable behaviour in order to
situate themselves at centre stage and demand to be heard.' This rebel-
lion is epitomised, Nun concludes, by the movement for women's liber-
ation.
The achievements of feminism in terms of advancing democracy
are many: women have become visible and empowered as social actors;
progress has been made in the complex and unfinished process towards
the recognition of diversity; society's traditional belief systems have been
modified; laws have been passed and the parameters of citizenship have
been expanded. However, the most important advance, which underpins
and reinforces the successes so far, as well as pointing the way forward,
consists in having revealed the dynamic of inclusion and exclusion as an
organising principle of power relations within our society. The shift from
a needs-based to a rights-based approach, without doubt, played a funda-
mental role in making this dynamic evident, in widening women's hori-
zons and increasing their levels of autonomy, and in consolidating the
gains already made on the threshold of the new millennium.
Nevertheless, it is essential that the struggle for rights acknowledges
and incorporates the full diversity of voices, subjects, identities, ethnic
groups and spaces where the dynamic of exclusion is still expressed in
hidden ways. Citizenship struggles which do not assimilate the experi-
ences and realities of women's daily lives, including issues such as sexual
rights, will be unable to subvert current male-biased conceptualisations
of citizenship. Those who campaign for political rights while neglecting
or ignoring social or cultural rights (for example, economic justice and
recognition of both diversity and the power relations that negate it)
sustain and legitimise the exclusionary character of existing democra-
cies and formulations of citizenship. For this reason, feminist agendas
should not simply limit their struggle to the recognition of rights, but
should expand their focus to include citizenship in a broader sense and
its relationship to human rights. In addition, they need to be fully aware
of the fact that the expansion of women's citizenship cannot be evalu-
ated in isolation, but only in permanent relation to the quality of
democracy in the region.
Historically, feminists have engaged in a radical campaign against
the subordination and exclusion of women. However, it is increasingly
216 Gender and Rights in Latin America

evident that this endeavour is not, nor can it be, separated from
other sectors' and movements' democratic struggles for equality within
our societies. Consequently, the construction of a `democratic and femi-
nist pole' within civil society, to advance these efforts and lay the foun-
dations for negotiations with the public, political sphere, is urgently
required. In this way it becomes clear that civil society's autonomy vis-
aÁ-vis the government is precisely what makes its contribution enriching
and ensures the creation of strong political, social and economic insti-
tutions to control and balance the way public power is exercised in
people's lives.
The pursuit of women's rights must therefore be accompanied by a
strategic vision of the future in which the autonomy of feminist agendas
does not mean defending a discourse and space of their own. Instead
autonomy should be seen as the articulation of these agendas with those
of other democratic social forces, and the construction of a civil society
that contains multiple spaces for reflection and action, in which to
process not only what is possible, but also what is desirable. Finally, it
is clear that this arena for coalition-building with other movements also
represents a `site of struggle' in which to incorporate the perspective of
women's rights into democratic agendas.

Personal political postscript

On 16 September 2000, less than two months after the inauguration

of his third period of government in Peru, following a fraudulent elect-
oral process, President Fujimori found himself obliged to call new
elections. The long struggle for democracy, national mobilisation and
international pressure, in addition to the dictatorial nature of the
regime, had together finally provoked results. It was a victory for
democracy and a victory for women. In this process of resistance against
dictatorship, women played a significant role through various initia-
tives. One of these, and one which is the most comprehensive
and extensive, is the political movement `Women for Democracy'
(Mujeres por la Democracia, MUDE). This is an inclusive and flexible
forum, which combined feminist concerns with the struggle for democ-
racy.
From my own personal political viewpoint, MUDE's attempts to link
feminist struggles with the construction of democracy highlighted
the possibility of articulating a response to the ambivalence that has
been part of the feminist struggle for equality in a country like Peru.
That is to say, the attainment of citizen's rights for women, as I discussed
 Virginia Vargas 217

in the chapter, responds not only to feminist demands but also to

our countries' incomplete process of modernity, a process in which
women have played a pivotal role. The semblance of a shared rights
discourse between the state and feminism manifested its clearest limita-
tions in Peru. With the government's promotion of women's citizen-
ship, particularly its political dimension, came a fundamental
contradiction. On one hand the government seemed to encourage
state institutions in favour of women and recognition of their citizen-
ship, and on the other hand this `equality' was being achieved at the
cost of women's dignity: rights changed into gifts and charity, and votes
were swapped for food or money. We discovered, to our cost,
that democracy and citizenship did not necessarily go hand in hand.
Without a democratic space, citizens' rights could not be put into
practice.
Concern about democracy is not new to feminisms. It has had a sub-
stantial impact on their development. However, it came from a different
perspective: in the urgent struggle for women's recognition, feminisms
adopted the view early on that `what isn't good for women, isn't good for
democracy'. This position was sustained in many painful experiences of
exclusion, not only from state politics, but also from different sectors of
civil society including those that proposed alternatives to the existing
democracies. Our concern with democracy also came about because we
knew that we had much to contribute. Our viewpoint proved to be
accurate, but insufficient. Inverting the sentence brought with it a turn-
around in direction, in the politics of alliances and in the definition of a
new centrality to feminist struggles. `What isn't good for democracy, isn't
good for women' was the phrase that summed up this turnaround and it is
the slogan with which MUDE reclaims that intrinsic link between rights
and democracy. And even if they are two sides to the same coin, there are
moments when the emphasis on one or other dimension can profoundly
modify the meaning of feminist struggles: when, as in Peru, what appears
to be good for women is not good for democracy. With this shift, there
began a constant revision of how the construction and expansion of
women's citizenship is not an isolated process but one which develops
in permanent relation to the equality of democratic processes.
For me this is `Women for Democracy'. It constitutes a gamble, a
search and a constant entreaty against the temptations of equality
which continue to plague feminisms and which, unwittingly, many
times have run the risk of giving modernising legitimacy to a dictatorial
government.
Lima, September 2000
218 Gender and Rights in Latin America

Notes
1 The author would like to thank Niki Johnson for assisting with style and
Anne-Marie Smith for translating the postscript.
2 The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna was, without doubt,
the `touchstone' for the consolidation of an integral perspective on rights: it
was there that it was recognised that `women's rights are human rights'. The
1994 World Conference on Population and Development in Cairo progressed
further along the same line with the recognition of reproductive rights, thus
leaving the door open for the recognition of sexual rights. The 1995 Fourth
UN World Conference on Women in Beijing and the parallel NGO Forum
reaffirmed this perspective, by incorporating in the Platform for Action a set of
recommendations for governments which included proposals presented by
global level women's movements.
3 Beginning in 1981, Latin American and Caribbean feminists organised re-
gional `encounters' (encuentros) to discuss the advances made by and the
multiple expressions of feminism, and the diversity of the transformational
strategies being pursued. The encounter held in Chile in 1996, a year after the
Beijing Conference, was especially conflictual and critical of participation in
and negotiation with governments. Within the vast heterogeneity of femi-
nism, this encounter revealed the existence of a polarity between one current
that defended an autonomy expressed in terms of a discourse and space of its
own, and a range of currents that supported the dynamic of dialogue with
governments, although the latter differed among themselves with respect to
the strategies for negotiation and the contents of the agenda of transform-
ation.
4 Editors' note: this cultural and psychological shift is discussed in relation to
reproductive rights in Willmott's Chapter 6.
5 Editors' note: see Chapter 2 by Htun and Jones, and Chapter 4 by Macaulay for
further discussion of these issues.
6 Many feminists who used to work, or continue to do so, with the government
± either in Women's Offices or in the elaboration of public policies on women
± have analysed the tensions that exist between themselves and feminists
outside the government. These relate to the lack of mobilisation of support
for certain measures, to the differences between the government's and the
movement's approaches, and to the issue of representativeness (see e.g. Mon-
tanÄo 1999, Bonder 1995, Valenzuela 1995). It would appear that the possibility
of forming a `triangle of empowerment' between feminists within the state,
feminist members of the bureaucracy (femocrats) and feminists in move-
ments, such as has been achieved in many European countries, is a process
still underway in Latin America. Its successful completion depends, among
other things, on the advance of democratic institutionalisation. On the
triangle of empowerment, see Lycklama aÁ Nijeholt, Vargas and Wieringa
(1997).
7 Clearly, it is not to be expected that governments will adopt movements'
agendas wholesale, nor that the feared cooptation of movements is inevitable.
Alvarez (1997) points out that in the interaction with governments, proposals
presented by movements or pressure groups undergo a process of partial and
selective `adaptation', according to their interests and political aspirations.
 Virginia Vargas 219

7 Nevertheless, this adjustment does not mean that movements cannot gener-
ate conditions within civil society to exert pressure, with respect to those
aspects of the feminist agenda that governments are unwilling to take on.
8 As Evers (1984) pointed out some years ago, this tension does not affect only
feminist movements. It has always been a point of conflict within social
movements and still complicates the process of defining strategies: social
movements are confronted by a choice between either gaining some spaces
of power in dominant structures, with the attendant risk of continued sub-
ordination, or maintaining an autonomous identity and refusing to negoti-
ate, which carries the risk of remaining weak and marginalised. The
challenge lies precisely in finding the strategies that will allow the movement
to find a balance between the two extremes.
9 This `defensive' autonomy was undoubtedly justified during the difficult
process of growing as a movement and as individuals, and learning to exist
and develop codes of its own. Gramsci (1975) calls this process the `moment
of political rupture'.
10 Editors' note: this multi-faceted negotiation is particularly evident in Chap-
ter 2 by Htun and Jones, Chapter 3 by Friedman, and Chapter 5 by Johnson.
11 These complexities and limitations cannot be attributed solely to problems
inherent to feminism. They also correspond to current conditions in which
not only governments, but also civil societies, are undergoing changes.
Lechner (1997) illustrates these shifts clearly by pointing out how social
movements' room for manoeuvre is restricted by transformations in the
public and private spheres. As such, economic reforms restrict the govern-
ment's field of action, and at the same time promote an irresistible tendency
towards the privatisation of social behaviour within consumer society, which
holds even in the case of marginalised sectors. Individuals evaluate and
calculate the time, energies and financial costs of engaging in public activ-
ities in a different way. Calls for solidarity become irrelevant unless they take
into account this ego-led culture which is suspicious of collective commit-
ments.
12 Editors' note: whilst these tensions are visible in many of the chapters, the
difficulties of changing culture, even at the personal level, are highlighted by
Radcliffe in Chapter 7 and Willmott in Chapter 6.
13 Editors' note: Gideon (Chapter 8) addresses the difficulties of getting
socioeconomic rights onto the political agenda and the limitations of inter-
national agreements in this respect.
14 Fujimori was the only president in the world to attend personally the Beijing
Conference, where he publicly defended women's right to control their
fertility.

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Appendix
Table A.1 Selected data on women's status in Latin America 2000

Country Human Gini Gender-related Gender Female GDP Male GDP Female Women in
development coefficient development empowerment per capita per capita EAP (%) parliaments
index(a) index(a) index(a) (%)

Argentina 0.827 (39) 0.46 0.814 (37) n/a 4,835 15,976 24.9 26.5
Bolivia 0.652 (112) 0.52 0.641 (94) n/a 1,589 4,187 30.1 11.5
Brazil 0.739 (79) 0.63 0.733 (67) 0.367 (70) 3,813 9,205 25.9 5.7
Chile 0.844 (34) 0.57 0.832 (33) 0.449 (54) 5,853 19,749 32.1 10.8
Colombia 0.768 (57) 0.58 0.765 (51) 0.515 (31) 4,725 8,945 32.1 11.8
Costa Rica 0.801 (45) 0.46 0.795 (42) 0.550 (23) 3,643 9,575 24.1 19.3
Cuba 0.765 (58) n/a 0.762 (53) 0.556 (21) 2,013 4,181 37.8 22.6
Dominican 0.726 (88) 0.50 0.716 (75) 0.528 (25) 2,374 7,186 26.1 16.1
Republic
Ecuador 0.747 (72) 0.53 0.728 (70) 0.516 (29) 1,925 7,927 20.7 14.6
El Salvador 0.674 (107) 0.50 0.667 (89) 0.491 (41) 1,688 4,120 28.9 9.5
Guatemala 0.624 (117) 0.59 0.608 (101) 0.482 (44) 1,861 6,298 20.1 8.8
Honduras 0.641 (114) 0.59 0.631 (98) 0.450 (53) 1,130 3,293 22.7 9.4
Mexico 0.786 (50) n/a 0.778 (48) 0.511 (33) 4,594 12,216 25.7 16.0
Nicaragua 0.616 (121) n/a 0.609 (100) n/a 1,169 2,835 27.3 9.7
Panama 0.791 (49) 0.57 0.786 (47) 0.467 (47) 4,140 10,135 28.8 9.9
Paraguay 0.730 (84) 0.52 0.717 (74) 0.405 (65) 1,918 6,009 22.0 2.5
Peru 0.739 (80) 0.44 0.726 (71) 0.421 (63) 2,335 7,061 22.1
Uruguay 0.826 (40) 0.42 0.823 (36) 0.441 (56) 6,305 12,275 36.2 12.1
Venezuela 0.792 (48) 0.44 0.786 (46) 0.484 (48) 5,006 12,661 27.2

Sources: UNDP report Globalization with a Human Face except for Gini coefficient which is from Inter-American Development Bank (http://www.iadb.org/int/sta/
ENGLISH/staweb/index.htm#bsed) and Women in Parliaments which is from the Interparliamentary Union (http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm).
Index

abortion, 10, 49, 82±3; in Brazil, 87, 88; children's rights, 81, 90, 179
in Chile, 128, 130±1, 133±6, 140±1; Chile, 5, 13, 91; constitution, 88;
in Mexico, 19; in Uruguay, 117; in democratisation process, 57; divorce
Venezuela, 66; rates of, 19 laws, 90; women's legal advice, 81,
Alianza DemocraÂtica, 42 91
Alianza Republicana Nacionalista citizenship, 18, 88, 97, 149±50, 181,
(ARENA) (El Salvador), 44 192±3, 204±5, 210±11, 214±15; and
anti-feminism, 88 democracy, 202±3, 204; and
Argentina, 7; quotas, 32, 39, 42, 43, economic rights, 176; and
44±9, 53 indigenous women, 166; and rights
AsociacioÂn de Mujeres Nicaragu È enses discourse, 144±5
Luis Amanda Espinoza (AMNLAE) clientelism, 7, 65, 213
(Nicaragua), 91 Cold War, 8
AsociacioÂn Republicana Nacional Colombia, 32, 48
(ANR) (Paraguay), 42 Colorado Party, 104, 105
ComisioÂn Bicameral de Derechos de la
Beijing: Conference, 10, 11, 21, 58, 84, Mujer (Venezuela), 71
95, 108, 128, 164; Declaration, 15; ComisioÂn Femenina Asesora de la
Platform for Action, 11, 23, 33, 34±5, Presidencia (COFEAPRE)
85, 90 (Venezuela), 70
BeleÂm do Para Convention, 11, 84, ConcertacioÂn Nacional de Mujeres por
108, 116 la Democracia (CNMD) (Chile), 57±8
Bolivia, 5, 6, 91 ConcertacioÂn de Partidos por la
Brazil, 5, 6, 17, 18, 24, 37, 50, 80 Democracia (Chile), 57, 127±8
ConsolidacËao das Leis Trabalhistas
Cairo Conference on Population, see (CLT) (Brazil), 87
United Nations contraception, 132, 135, 143
Caldera, Rafael, 67, 70 Convention on the Elimination of all
Castro, Fidel, 63 forms of Discrimination Against
Catholic Church: and abortion, 134±5; Women (CEDAW), 10, 18, 33, 67, 71,
in Chile, 90, 124±5, 126, 145; in 84, 90, 96, 108, 110, 112, 175, 179,
Ecuador, 154; in Peru, 154, 213; 193±4
relationship with state, 127±8 Coordinadora de Organizaciones
Central America, 5, 175, 183±7, 193; No-Gubernamentales de Mujeres
economic reform, 187 (CONG) (Venezuela), 60, 61±3,
Centro Feminista de Estudios e 65±74
Assessoria (CFEMEA) (Brazil), 87, 93 corruption, 33; and democracy, 7±8;
Centros de informacioÂn de los and justice system, 79
derechos de la Mujer (CIDEM) Costa Rica, 14, 19, 37, 40, 91, 92,
(Chile), 81 190
Children's Guardianship Councils Cuba, 5, 18; Family Code, 86; penal
(Conselhos Tutelares) (Brazil), 94 codes, 89

223
224 Index

democracy: consolidation and Guatemala, 19, 187; Civil Code, 186;

transition to, 3, 11, 17, 58, 84, 124 health care, 192
democratisation process, 2, 7, 8, 12, 57,
127, 128, 201; and women's Honduras, 6, 189; health services, 192
movements, 4, 96 Human Development Index, 5, 19
dictatorship, 3, 103, human rights, 2, 10, 12, 127, 129, 135,
domestic violence: and justice, 80±1, 167, 179±80, 188; abuses of, 4,
85, 94±5; legislation, 48, 89; in 211±12; and domestic violence, 107,
Mexico, 49; and public/private 109±10, 111; international
debate, 109; and regional networks, movement, 9, 129
14, 165; in Uruguay, 18, 113
ILO Convention, 160, 169
Ecuador, 7, 19, 37, 151, 154; women's indigenous rights, 5±6, 20, 24, 149,
representation, 52±3 157, 159±61, 162
El Salvador: democratisation and indigenous uprisings (Ecuador),
women, 57, 58; health care, 192; 162
penal codes, 89; women candidates, Institute for the Prevention of
44 Domestic Violence and
Encuentros (regional feminist Rehabilitation of Victims (IPRE)
meetings), 13, 63, 103, 106, 163, (Uruguay), 113
218 Inter-American Development Bank
(IDB), 110, 117
FederacioÂn de Centros Shuar (FCS) International Convention on
(Ecuador), 162 Economic and Social Rights
FederacioÂn Venezolana de Abogadas (ICESCR), 21, 173
(FEVA) (Venezuela), 59 International women's day, 58
feminism: and Catholicism, 16; in Isis International, 106
Chile, 126; and civil society, 208;
and democratisation, 215±16; first Latin American and Caribbean
wave, 87; and human rights, 9, 125; Committee for the Defence of
and identity, 161, 163±5; in Peru, Women's rights (CLADEM), 14, 87,
214; professional, 63; second wave, 92, 194
3, 103, 200, 207; women politicians, Latin American and Caribbean
49±50 Feminist Network against Violence
feminist press, 104 towards Women, 106
Flora TristaÂn women's centre (Peru), Ley de cupos, see Argentina, quotas
22, 91, 199 Lusinchi, Jaime, 63
Frente Farabundo MartõÂ para la
LiberacioÂn Nacional (FMLN) (El Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, 4
Salvador), 43±4 Marxism, 157, 158
Frente Sandinista de LiberacioÂn maternity rights, 68±70, 72±3
Nacional (FSLN) (Nicaragua), 43±4 Menem, Carlos, 8, 52, 88
Fujimori, Alberto, 8, 22, 24, 216; and Mexico, 6, 7, 8, 13, 37; gender-related
women's issues, 211±12 policies, 18, 48±9; legal reform,
86±7; population, 5; state and
GarcõÂa, Alan, 156 women's organisations, 22
Glass of Milk project, 91 Ministerio para la ParticipacioÂn de la
globalisation, 2, 6, 200, 202; effects of, Mujer en el Desarollo (Venezuela),
24±5 63
 Index 225

Ministry of Women and Human Platform for Action, see Beijing

Development (PROMUDEH) (Peru), poverty, 6±7, 25; in Central America,
213 184
motherhood: and the church, 17, 126,
134, 136; and legislation, 130±1; quota laws, 15, 33; in Brazil, 16, 34, 42;
and indigenous women, 153; in Bolivia, 39; in Costa Rica, 39; in
versus sexuality, 136; and work, 60, Mexico, 39; in Paraguay, 39, 42; in
67 Venezuela, 39; see also Argentina

National Commission on the Peruvian Sandinista government, 91

Woman (CONAMUP), 155 Sendero Luminoso, 91, 199
National Consensus Building Forum Servicio de InformacaÄo a Mulher (SIM)
(CONAPRO) (Uruguay), 103 (Brazil), 93±5
National Institute for the Family and Servicio Nacional de la Mujer
Women (INFM) (Uruguay), 105 (SERNAM) (Chile), 22, 88, 90, 91,
neoliberalism, 6, 7, 21, 103, 109, 179, 124, 127±8
180, 202, 210; and feminist issues, social movements, 17, 18
164 South East Asian crisis, 6
Nicaragua, 5, 44, 88, 89, 91, 189, 191; state accountability, 8, 25, 177; in
abortion laws, 82; health services, Uruguay, 109±13, 117;
192; Law of Nurturing, 86 structural adjustment policies
Nongovernmental organisations (SAPs), 4, 6, 21, 25, 106, 109,
(NGOs), 64, 106, 188, 194, 200, 203, 179, 183±5
208; and feminist movement, 210, student movements, 3
213
non-traditional agricultural exports Themis, feminist NGO (Brazil), 91±7
(NTAEs), 187, 190, 173
United Nations (UN): Cairo
Oficina Legal de la Mujer (Nicaragua), Conference on Population, 10, 128;
91 Commission on Status of Women,
Oficina Nacional de la Mujer 10, 21; Decade for Women, 8, 10, 60,
(Venezuela), 64±7 63, 103; Declaration of Human
Organisation of American States (OAS), Rights, 9; Development Fund for
5, 12 Women, 106; Human Development
Report, 178; Nairobi Conference, 14,
Partido Revolucionario Institucional 60, 61, 63, 84; Special Rapporteur on
(PRI) (Mexico), 22 Violence against Women, 81, 108;
PeÂrez, Carlos AndreÂs, 70 Vienna Conference, 10, 84, 108
PeroÂn, Eva (Evita), 3, 43 Uruguay, 6; law on domestic violence,
Peronist Party, 43 116; legal reform, 17; Penal and Civil
Peru, 13, 37, 151, 211; agrarian reform, codes, 112
151, 154; military government, 155 Uruguayan National Council of
Peruvian Association for Cooperation Women (CONAMU), 104±5
with Peasant Women (ACOMUC), Uruguayan Network against Domestic
154±5 and Sexual Violence (RUVDS), 107,
Peruvian Peasant Confederation 108±9
(CCP), 157±9
Pinochet, Augusto, 22, 57, 127 Venezuela, 7, 37; Civil Code, 59, 64;
Plan Inca (Peru), 155 labour code, 16, 17; labour law
226 Index

Venezuela (cont.) 194; and indigenous women,

reform, 57, 59, 60, 66, 69; penal code 164; and racism, 165; regional
reform, 66 and international networks,
Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of 8, 10, 13±14, 15, 23, 60, 61,
Commerce and Production 96, 106, 108, 163, 165, 200,
(FEDECAMARAS), 67, 72 210
women's police stations, 81, 92,
women's movements, 1, 5, 7, 17, 97, 105
21, 102, 106; in Central America, World Bank, 17, 192