Women's Activism in Latin America and The Caribbean

PART I
SETTING THE STAGE

Copyright © 2010. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.
Lebon, Natalie. Women's Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean : Engendering Social Justice, Democratizing Citizenship,
edited by Elizabeth Maier, and Nathalie Lebon, Rutgers University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gu/detail.action
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Introduction
women building plural
democracy in latin america
and the caribbean
nathalie lebon
The past four decades have witnessed the rapid and profound transformation of
women’s roles and gender ideologies in Latin America and the Caribbean, much of
which has revolved around women taking their destinies into their own hands,
individually and collectively. The resurgence of feminism and women’s activism in
the region since the seventies has been hard to ignore: women have been active on
a broad spectrum of political and cultural fronts, working for social justice and for
a more inclusive citizenship with attention to gender power differentials.
Over these four decades, the political and economic context has changed radi-
cally, transforming, often dramatically, the realities of women and men but also
shifting opportunities and challenges for activism. As the region moved from the
oligarchic, dictatorial regimes and state-led industrialization of the seventies and
eighties to the consolidated formal democracies and neoliberal market-driven glob-
alized economies of today, the focus and strategies of women’s individual and col-
lective action had to change. Given that the claims of social movements generally
include some measure of both redistribution (of resources across segments of

society) and recognition (of group identity and rights), emphasis in the relation
between the two shifted back and forth with these evolving political opportunities
and economic contexts (Fraser 1997; Richards 2004). The first involves greater
attention to the class-inflected gender needs of working-class and poor women.
Heretofore neglected social actors, such as Afro-Latina, lesbian, indigenous,
working-class, poor, and trade union women, are gaining presence and voice in the
heterogeneous social field that encompasses women’s movements in the region
today. The international and transnational environment has also changed, and
women are learning to navigate the various levels of policy making for social
action, from the local to the international.
This volume reflects the breadth and variety of contemporary feminist scholar-
ship and reflection in and on Latin America and the Caribbean. It brings together
political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, cultural critics, lawyers,
and activists, each distilling the lessons to be learned from these forty years of
agency and activism in a challenging and moving context.
Lebon, Natalie. Women's Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean : Engendering Social Justice, Democratizing Citizenship, 3
4 nathalie lebon
At this juncture, we hope that this book finds its place in the lineage of feminist
writings that have been providing the kind of “impertinent knowledge” Peruvian
activist Virginia Vargas refers to: knowledge that opens windows on how to con-
structively shake the established order, of which gender-equity policy making
has become a part (this volume). In other words, this book seeks to glean from a
wealth of past and contemporary experiences what we need to keep our critical
lens on to make the best of the current phase of the institutionalization of feminist
organizing.
These writings also attempt to capture—although this is surely a tall order—the
diversity of women’s experiences and organizing in the broad and varied terrains
that comprise Latin America and the Caribbean, whether as a result of geographic
or national contexts or of women’s positioning in their societies’ social structures
because of race, class, gender, sexuality, generation, or religion. All generalizations
in this introduction must be tempered by an awareness of this diversity. Still,
this introductory essay hopes to capture the main themes and concerns that run
through our authors’ analyses, as well as offer the background necessary to under-
stand the essays that follow.
Latin America and the Caribbean are characterized by their geographic,
ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural diversity. Yet the countries of the region
share important features, such as four hundred years of colonization and an
economic history epitomized by distorted land distribution, subordination to the
needs of (former) colonizing countries, and the presence of enduring economic
and political oligarchies. These factors go a long way to explain the region’s sad
distinction of having the most unequal income distribution in the world today:
a small but growing middle class is squeezed between a large low-income,
poor, and indigent majority and a tiny but extremely wealthy and politically
powerful elite. Continuing asymmetrical political and economical power
relations with the United States and the rest of the Global North also contributes
to the scenario that impacts women’s daily lives today, both in small, extremely
poor countries such as Haiti and in large, industrialized countries such as
Argentina, Mexico, or Brazil, which export manufactured goods and advanced
technology.
We strove to include the non-Spanish-speaking countries in this anthology
in the spirit of the Encuentros Feministas de América Latina y el Caribe (Latin
American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentros). Since 1981 and about every three
years after, feminists throughout the region have been meeting in broad-based,
massively attended, loosely themed gatherings to offer a plethora of workshops,
exhibits, activities, plenary sessions, and maybe most importantly, possibilities
for free exchange and dialogue: the Encuentro, a word with no good English
translation (Sternbach et al. 1992; Alvarez et al. 2003). Encuentros have
welcomed activists from French- and English-speaking islands, a process not free of
considerable tension, as racial relations dovetail with language differences (Alvarez
et al. 2003).
Introduction 5
Women’s Agency and Collective Action in Latin America

and the Caribbean: Learning from the Global South
Over ten years after the publication of Amrita Basu’s landmark collection, The
Challenge of Local Feminisms, it is worth reconsidering her statement that the vast
Western literature on women’s movements “ignores women’s movements in the
postcolonial world, considers women’s movements products of modernization or
development, and assumes a sameness in the forms of women’s oppressions and
women’s movements cross-nationally” (1995, 1). Indeed, women’s collective action
and agency in Latin America and the Caribbean, as in most of the rest of the Global
South, were long ignored, neglected, or misinterpreted by Western scholars and
feminists. Women often fell prey to ubiquitous representations as passive victims
of poverty and sexism and desperately in need of help. The strong colonial legacy
of these images can not be denied (Mohanty 1986; Narayan 1997): Latin American
“insurmountable machismo” is a case in point! Even the early work of North
American and European Latin Americanist feminists until the early eighties tended
to focus on the need for socioeconomic development rather than on women’s
rights and collective action.
Since the seventies, however, a rich literature by feminist scholars from Latin
America and the Caribbean, and later from elsewhere, developed exponentially, in
keeping with the growth of women’s organizing. In fact it is so vast that it is dan-
gerous to venture any generalizations, given the multiplicity of national knowledge
productions and the various disciplinary perspectives involved. As in the case of
scholarship on social movements generally, academic discussions have usually
trailed the debates in and among feminist and women’s movements themselves.
The vibrancy and effectiveness of women’s movements in the Global South
have been hard to miss. Yet the recognition of how much Western feminism can
learn from them has been slow. Latin American and Caribbean feminisms, along
with Indian feminisms, are arguably among the most diverse and mass-based
worldwide. Their theoretical production is equally remarkable, although generally

unknown in the Global North, in part due to the cost and difficulty of translation
but mostly as a result of the politics of knowledge production, which tend to repro-
duce international differentials in resources and determine who gets published
where. For this reason we chose to provide ample space in this anthology to native
speakers in translation.
Debates among academics over the nature of these movements, and in particu-
lar over which qualify as feminist, have taken many shapes through the years. In
the Latin American context, a distinction has often been drawn between feminism
and the larger women’s movement: feminism referring to women explicitly and
consciously organizing to fight the oppression and subordination of women, and
the women’s movement referring more inclusively to women organized to defend
their interests, often as women but not always. This distinction resurfaces in the
much-used concepts of strategic gender interests and practical gender needs,
originally formulated by Maxine Molyneux (1986). Examples of strategic gender
6 nathalie lebon
interests that feminists have organized around are equal pay for equal work,
domestic violence, and the right to legal abortion. Practical gender needs have been
understood as those concerns women experience as a result of their gendered roles
and duties (generally as mothers and wives) often in their daily life, such as the need
for child care or access to fuel and clean water to feed their families.
Most scholars agree that this dichotomy has outgrown its usefulness and recog-
nize that it is often difficult to disentangle the strategic from the practical: for
example, child care needs, as most others, reflect both a practical daily need for
working mothers but also a failure on the part of society to recognize the value of
women’s reproductive labor (hence it challenges women’s subordination). Also,
what seems practical to some may be strategic to others. Often what is seen as prac-
tical are the needs faced by working-class women, while what is defined as strategic
are the concerns of middle-class white or mestiza heterosexual women. Indeed, in
Latin America as elsewhere, the general tendency has been to equate feminism
with the white or mestiza, educated, urban, middle-class manifestation of women’s
struggle against subordination. Finally, no organization is homogenous enough for
all women to share the same motivations.1 Ultimately, these distinctions led to the
divisive question of “who is feminist enough.”
More recently, scholars have acknowledged that nation, race, class, and sexual-
ity shape women’s experience of gender oppression and the ways and spaces
women chose to resist and organize for change (Ferree and Tripp 2006; Naples and
Desai 2002; Ricciutelli et al. 2004). We are still striving to work out these biases, as
is clear from many of the essays in this book.
Four Decades of Latin American and

Caribbean Women’s Movements
Although Basu argues that in global terms “regional similarities are most evident in
Latin America, where women’s movements are closely connected to democratiza-
tion movements against authoritarian states” (1995, 4), the following outline of the
main developments of women’s struggles necessarily overgeneralizes and homog-
enizes. The economic and political systems, political culture, and gender relations
of each national context are related to its historical, ethnic, and class makeup, mak-
ing for a distinct set of characteristics. What follows is a broad-stroke sketch in
advance of the finely drawn analyses offered by the chapters, outlining the political
and economic context that has shaped progressive women’s activism.
Origins in Inhospitable Times

A multiplicity of strong and visible women’s movements developed in the 1970s as
a response to the economic policies and political repression of the authoritarian,
bureaucratic, or military dictatorial regimes of various stripes in places in the
Southern Cone, some Andean countries, and many Caribbean islands since the six-
ties. In Central America, protracted civil wars resulting from efforts to unseat cor-
rupt oligarchic regimes lasted until the early 1990s.2 While many were puzzled by
the emergence of feminist and women’s movements in the face of such repressive
Introduction 7
regimes, feminist theorists brought to our attention the contradictions between

state discourse and state actions: while military authoritarian regimes extolled the
virtues of nurturing motherhood and women’s vital role in the care of their fami-
lies and, indeed, their nations, they disappeared loved family members. Their eco-
nomic policies, first favoring industrial investments to “grow the pie before sharing
it,” inordinately profited the wealthy and later were derailed by the international
economic crisis resulting from the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks.3 Ordinary family
budgets shrank, making it increasingly difficult for mothers and wives to fulfill their
idealized roles (Chuchryk 1989; Alvarez 1990; Stephen 1997; Safa 1990). Two types of
women organizing appeared as a result of these challenges: women’s human rights
groups, such as the Argentinean Madres y Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo (Mothers
and Grandmothers of May Plaza), and poor women’s neighborhood organizations,
originally focused on basic needs such as housing and food.
Another contradiction was key to igniting women’s understanding of subordi-
nation. As they joined opposition organizations, at first often as underground
groups and later as legitimate political parties, women—moved by their discourse
extolling equality and freedom for all—could not fail but notice that their own roles
were often limited to serving coffee and cleaning up meeting rooms and that prin-
ciples of equality did not carry over in the home or the workplace. Indeed, in large
measure women’s movements were born out of the opposition sectors to military
dictatorships. Experiences with socialist egalitarian economic models in Cuba (after
1959) and Nicaragua (after 1979) promoted women’s activism by raising often unreali-
stic expectations about the capacity of revolutionary states to eradicate sexism.
Although we cannot disregard right-wing women’s organizing (González and
Kampwirth 2001), this volume is focused on women struggling to expand political,
social, and economic citizenship.
Parallel developments occurred in black movements, indigenous movements,
and urban and rural trade unions, where women started to raise questions about
unequal power relations between women and men. The common narrative about
feminism’s origins has often tended to emphasize the role of middle-class con-
sciousness-raising groups of women of mostly European or mixed descent, those
later called feministas históricas or historic feminists.4 We now know that black,
working-class, indigenous, and lesbian feminisms were present as early as—and not
a by-product of—what came to be seen as hegemonic feminism. They were organ-
ized on their own terms, often in mixed organizations.5 One difference is that the
first self-proclaimed autonomous feminist organizations were those of middle-class
women of mostly European or mixed descent.
The United Nations International Women’s Year (1975) and its conference in
Mexico City (itself in part a result of women’s activism) provided legitimacy to
women’s claims and in many countries prodded further organizing. By the late
seventies and early eighties, a number of politically engaged women who had lived
in exile in Italy, France, and other Latin American countries during the height of the
repressive regimes were returning, bringing back their experiences with feminist
organizing to reinforce already existing groups. Nonetheless, there are considerable
8 nathalie lebon
subregional differences, most obviously in terms of timing: movements began

earlier in the larger, more industrialized nations of the Southern Cone or Mexico
than in Central America, for example.
Weathering the Transition to Formal Democracy and the “Lost Decade”

In many countries, women constituted the majority of participants in urban popu-
lar movements organizing for decent housing, basic sanitation, and health care,
among others, which were at their height during the 1980s, also dubbed the “lost
decade” of Latin American development. As rural populations flooded to the cities,
economic chaos resulted from the deepening world crisis and the regimes’ inability
to repay an exponentially growing external and internal debt.6 Most countries
found themselves dependent on the dictates of international financial institutions,
such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to open their
economies to world trade and restrict their spending to refinance their loans.
Unable to compete with cheaper imported international products, numerous
national industries shut their doors, leaving many in urban areas unemployed.
Structural Adjustment Programs mandated states to cut food subsidies, health and
education budgets, and overall safety nets for the population, leaving families to
struggle for survival. Assembly plants (maquiladoras) in export-processing zones
mushroomed, first along the U.S.-Mexican border, where multinational companies
pay no taxes, can hire cheap labor—mostly women—and have free rein in terms of
environmental and labor regulations. These turned out to be particularly lethal
places for women, as they proved fertile ground for femicide.7
These economic hardships generated urban popular organizing and con-
tributed to the success of democracy in the sense that in many countries, military
dictators were forced to or chose to return to their barracks by the middle of the
decade. Women contributed considerably to the return of formal democracy, often
being among the first to publicly protest (Maier; Di Marco, ch. 5, both in this vol-
ume). The 1980s were thus a decade of transition as newly established, formally
democratic regimes found their way (this process did not take place until the 1990s
in Central America). However, the resurgence of party politics, as opposition
forces returned to the legal political arena, marginalized women and split feminists
along party lines. Debates raged as activists disagreed, often bitterly, about which
strategy was most appropriate: working within or without the party system. This
debate opposed políticas (women involved in party politics) to feministas (in favor
of autonomous feminist organizing without allegiance to party politics). Many
políticas argued that they engaged in double militancy, working to advance both
women’s interests and their party’s interests. Related to these tensions was the
debate over what came to be known as “the General and the Specific.” Some
activists believed that focusing on class inequalities (the general) and bringing
about economic and social justice was imperative and would in time lead to the
eradication of women’s oppression (the specific). For most of those who claimed
the feminist label, the struggle against women’s subordination should not be
considered specific or secondary but equally important. In time and in the face of
Introduction 9
the contradictions experienced by women in socialist regimes, most came to

understand that gender issues cannot be subordinated to class issues and, more
recently, to recognize how strongly class inequalities also shape women’s experi-
ence of gender subordination.
During this transition period, women, especially in areas where armed conflicts
occurred, won the right to be heard to varying degrees as a result of their participa-
tion in opposition forces to the repressive regimes. The relative fluidity of this
period of institution building also allowed organized women greater influence on
the sphere of politics. Women used this space to influence their national constitu-
tional processes, to set in place national women’s machineries (national-level state
institutions for women’s rights) and to experiment with innovative models, such as
special police stations in Brazil to address violence against women (Nelson 1996) or
electoral quotas for party candidates.
At the beginning of the decade, the movement was visible and strong. It started
networking at the regional level with the first Encuentro in 1981. By mid-decade the
first wave of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or professionalized feminist
organizations (with paid staffs) began to appear. Most shared roots in social move-
ments and a strong commitment not only to local and grassroots work but also to
class-related gender issues.
Toward the end of the 1980s some observers began to lament the lack of move-
ment activities (in Brazil for example). Popular movements no longer had the
capacity to mobilize large segments of the population into the streets for protest
now that channels of communication with the state were reopened. Middle-class
consciousness-raising circles, long considered the hallmark of early feminist organ-
izing, were on the wane. But as Lynn Stephen notes (1997), observers see what they
want to see. What they failed to see was the budding of new forms of feminist
activism in unexpected places as it interacted with the state through various forms
of advocacy and research. They also missed the greater visibility and formal organ-
izing of Afro-Latin, rural, lesbian, and popular feminisms—and later indigenous

feminism and autonomous groups claiming their respective identities—activism
with unexpected actors.
The 1990s: NGOs, Institutionalization, and Internationalization

At the national level, the 1990s meant the return of politics as usual. Institutions
regained stability. Much flexibility and wiggle room were lost for new ideas while
traditional political actors regained control over national institutions. During the
so-called consolidation phase, women had to retreat in most national political set-
tings. However, the seeds of institutionalization had been planted and started to
bear fruit, as well as bring challenges.
While the region’s economies recovered somewhat in the 1990s, it also became
clear that they were more vulnerable to global economic shocks due to their open-
ness to global markets. Argentina’s economy, for example, collapsed in 1999 as a
result of instability in Asia, Russia, and Brazil. Globalization and neoliberal policies
accelerated the bifurcation in the distribution of income and generated discontent
10 nathalie lebon
and poverty in many places throughout the 1980s and 1990s, although it has also
opened opportunities for others. The Chiapas uprising in 1994, for example, can be
traced to the long-lasting oppression of indigenous peoples in Mexico but was also
precipitated by the impending North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The dominance of neoliberal ideology, launched from Washington, was
strengthened by the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Latin American
states have always had limited means to devote to redistributive social policy.
However, social policy is now generally guided by principles of personal responsi-
bility for pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps and rolling back the state, while
leaving market forces, for profit, and nonprofit organizations to provide services.
Limited social programs target specific populations instead of warranting universal
access to services for all those who need them. Besides the dire consequences for
large segments of the population (and women in particular, as detailed in the pages
of this book), since the mid-1980s these policies have contributed to the disarticula-
tion of social movements’ demands. Redistribution demands made by low-income
popular movements were resisted, as demands based on recognition of group
identity and rights gained ground (Richards 2004).
In this context, focusing on legal reforms for women’s rights (generally
recognition-based claims) appealed to many middle-class feminist activists,
especially as new openings for action in this direction presented themselves at the
international level. The end of the cold war facilitated the attention of global gov-
ernance institutions to issues beyond security in the eighties and nineties. The
United Nations promoted discussions around these topics through world confer-
ences, bringing together state representatives in the official forum and civil society
in a “parallel forum,” the most notable of which were on the environment (Rio de
Janeiro 1992); human rights (Vienna in 1993); population and development (Cairo in
1994); social development (Copenhagen in 1995); racism, xenophobia, and other
forms of intolerance (Durban in 2001); and, of course, women’s issues (Mexico City
for the International Women’s Year 1975, Copenhagen in 1980, Nairobi in 1985,
Beijing in 1995). This political moment has facilitated a greater focus on a discourse
of rights and the construction of citizenship internationally, which reverberated at
the national level—often in an effort on the part of states to appear to stay abreast
of these international trends—as well as in civil society (Vargas, this volume).
The strength and vitality of the Latin American women’s movement was
demonstrated vividly by the size and impact of its contingent of activists at these
United Nations conferences. They contributed to redefining women’s rights as
human rights—making it clear that rape and domestic violence are human rights
violations, for example, and pushing the limits of reproductive and sexual rights.
This heightened international participation was not without conflict and tension, as
several essays explore in this book.
Against this backdrop of weakening popular movements, feminist organiza-
tions focused their energy on the increasing opportunities for advocacy, research,
and lobbying at the national and international levels, for which funding was now
available from international donor agencies, which actually sought to encourage
Introduction 11
this move. As this “technical-professional” face of NGOs (Alvarez 1999) and con-
comitant professionalization grew, it contributed to a distancing from community-
based women’s groups and increased differential access to resources (not only in
monetary terms but also in terms of time and information) and power in the
women’s movements, which increased tensions between their various segments
(Lebon 1996). This trend was intensified by the involvement at the international
level, which took activists literally farther away from local needs and realities.
Organizing at the grassroots level is certainly not inherently participatory, demo-
cratic, and inclusive and therefore should not be romanticized. Nonetheless, issues
of representativity and accountability are key issues that are complicated by the
politics of race, class, sexual orientation, gender, and other axes of identity and
inequality (Naples and Desai 2002).
New Millennium, New Trends

As fundamentalisms of all stripes—economic, political, and religious—have
gained ground worldwide, notably in the United States, stimulating the radicalism
of the religious right in the region (see Kampwirth; Tarrés, both in this
volume), feminists have strengthened their responses: Catholics for the Right to
Decide in Latin America continues to battle religious fundamentalism and largely
contributed to the legalization of abortion in Mexico City in 2007 (Navarro
and Mejía, this volume). The Tu Boca (Your Mouth) campaign by the feminist
NGO network Articulación Feminista Marcosur (MarcoSur Feminist Organization)
promoted the notion that speaking out is essential to defeat fundamentalism at
its core.
After almost two decades of an entrenched neoliberal agenda, people have
made their discontent heard nationally through the polls, which no doubt con-
tributed to what some have dubbed the Pink Tide, as well as internationally
through transnational social movements. The Pink Tide refers to a series of elec-
toral victories by center-left to left parties and/or coalitions in Venezuela (Chavez

in 1998), Brazil (Lula da Silva in 2002), Argentina (Nestór Kirchner in 2003 and
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2007), Uruguay (Vázquez Rosas in 2004), Bolivia
(Morales in 2005), Ecuador (Correa in 2006), Chile (Michele Bachelet in 2006), and
Paraguay (Lugo in 2008). Some may add Nicaragua (Ortega in 2006). The notion of
a Pink Tide may be misleading because, in reality, much differentiates these
regimes. Remarkably two of them are headed by women. Yet, how pink the Pink
Tide has been, in other words, to what extent have these governments been bene-
ficial to women and sexual minorities in particular and to the marginalized and the
poor in general, remains to be seen (Friedman 2007). Each has its own characteris-
tics; some have been characterized as neopopulist rather than as truly engaged in a
meaningful redistribution of national resources and wealth, others as blatantly
opportunistic, as in Nicaragua. Their social policies have been tied down by the dic-
tates of the international economy. In some cases though, as in Brazil, redistribu-
tive policies have started to begin to slightly impact income distribution
inequality.8 On the other hand, electoral alliances have led to antifeminist policies,
12 nathalie lebon
such as the ban on therapeutic abortion in Nicaragua under the second Ortega
administration (see Kampwirth, this volume).
The region finally experienced several consecutive years of sustained growth
rates in per capita Gross Domestic Product in the new millennium (an increase of
3.5 percent in 2005) (ECLAC 2006, 55). This growth contributed to “significant
progress” since 2004 in reducing poverty and indigence after two decades of rising
trends (58). However, we should not lose sight of the fact that it took the region
twenty-five years to reduce poverty back to 1980 levels (from 40.5 percent in 1980,
up to 44 percent in 2002, and back down to 39.8 percent in 2005) and that the
absolute number of people living in poverty has increased considerably (from 136
million in 1980, up to 221 million in 2002, and back down to 209 million in 2005) (59).
ECLAC expresses similar caution about progress made in terms of the reduction of
inequalities in income distribution, as stated in its Social Panorama of Latin America
and the Caribbean: “Although Latin America is still a highly inequitable region, the
deteriorating trend in income distribution evident at the start of this decade, at
least, seems to have been halted” (84).
Internationally, globalization has intensified the movement of people, infor-
mation, and ideas, as well as of consumer culture. This connectivity, as most strik-
ingly manifested by the Internet, has been crucial to the alter-globalization—as
opposed to the antiglobalization—movement. Alter-globalization is a worldwide
confluence of social movements working to promote a more people- and
ecofriendly form of globalization. Its vitality in Latin America and the Caribbean
may be a sign of the impact of the globalized economy on their people, including
the women. Regional spaces, such as the international socialist-feminist World
March of Women network (WMW) (Dufour and Giraud 2007) and especially the
World Social Forum (WSF), which since 2001 has brought together a broad spec-
trum of social movements, have become a crucial part of this mobilization. In other
words, this period of intense change that has undermined and unsettled institutions
and systems of power has provided openings: new political forces and new alliances
have emerged and new technologies are available for new strategies. Ultimately, a
global civil society is being created (Naples and Desai 2002; Vargas, this volume).
These two American initiatives (the WSF was born in Brazil and the WMW
in Canada) have contributed to redrawing power relations among women’s
movement segments within national contexts, gathering renewed strength for a
thoroughly class-informed, popular feminism and bringing back redistribution
claims on the feminist agenda.
Under these new circumstances, rural women’s movements, domestic work-
ers’ movements, trade union feminism, and popular feminism, along with black
women’s and indigenous women’s movements (these categories are not mutually
exclusive, as most indigenous women live in rural areas and women of color are
overrepresented among the working and poor classes) have become especially
dynamic segments of the larger women’s movement. Yet much work remains to be
done for a full acknowledgement of privilege on the part of middle- and upper-class
Introduction 13
women of mostly European or mixed descent, both in society and in movement-

wide forums.
It may be no surprise that this strengthening is occurring at the same time as
professionalized feminist and women’s organizations are contending with seriously
reduced international support. There has never been a great deal of funding for
women’s issues, but Latin America and the Caribbean are no longer considered a
priority for aid agencies, as they must now compete with Africa and Eastern
Europe. States in the region certainly do not have the capacity to step in, even if
they had the political will—which they often do not (Shepard 2007). As they have
done in the past, women’s movements are coming up with new ways to respond
to, and take advantage of, the current set of conditions they are faced with. The
chapters that follow brilliantly exemplify their flexibility and inventiveness.
The Chapters in This Book

There are many ways that the readings in this book could be organized. We have
chosen to arrange them into five sections beyond our introductory chapters. The
first group of authors sets the stage by examining the effects of the changing
political and socioeconomic context over the last four decades on the lives of
women, their work, and their families in our neoliberal and globalized world. The
next two sections present narratives of national and regional movement histories,
successes, and challenges: the second of the two highlights how “feminism’s others
articulate other feminisms” (Alvarez et al. 2003, 572). The fourth section focuses on
more pointed analyses of institutional design and the national context of women’s
machineries and gender-equity policy formulation and implementation. The last
section critically examines experiences of women’s organizing at the local as well as
the regional and international levels.
Status of Women: How Far Have We Come?

Women’s sense of self and their participation in family, society, and polity have
changed dramatically since the seventies. Regionally, women’s literacy and educa-
tional achievements have greatly improved. In many cases girls now enjoy more
years of education than their male peers. The region now compares relatively
favorably with the rest of the Global South: the ratio of the female youth literacy
rate to the male youth literacy rate is equal to or above one hundred in all but seven
countries (Elson and Keklik 2002, 22). In all but three countries do we now find
higher enrollments of girls than boys in secondary education, a pattern very similar
to that of the Global North (14).
However, expected consequences in terms of a reduced gender wage gap did
not pan out, as demonstrated by Alice Colón and Sara Poggio. Progress has been
uneven when taking ethnicity, race, and national contexts into consideration, as it
takes political will and resources to provide basic education. In Haiti, for example,
girls still trail boys in school enrollment by almost 9 percent, according to longtime
activist Myriam Merlet.
14 nathalie lebon
One essential transformation has been the dramatic increase in women’s labor
force participation, including in professional, technical, and clerical fields, where
women in 2005 exceeded men in numbers. Working-class and rural women and in
particular indigenous and Afro-Latin women have long been active in the produc-
tive sphere for sheer survival and/or as a result of the gender roles in their ethnic
community, but changes in paid employment have been nothing short of dramatic.
Women now represent 40 percent of the economically active population (Colón
and Poggio, this volume). South and Central America experienced the largest
increase worldwide in this regard between 1980 and 1997 (Chen et al. 2005, 37).
The positive impact of paid employment for women on their ability to make
decisions in all spheres of life is clear in the Cuban case, analyzed by economist
Marta Núñez Sarmiento. Having more independence, women are empowered to
negotiate and readjust male-female relations in the workplace, as well as in the
home. Anthropologist Helen Safa’s examination of female-headed households
in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean concludes that, with more options available,
women increasingly resist marriages that are not fulfilling materially or emotion-
ally, explaining in part the rise in the numbers of female-headed households.
Despite these gains, the sexist nature of gender relations persists. We no
longer believe that machismo and marianismo, that is, men’s belief in the inherent
superiority of males expressed through dominance, especially toward women, and
women’s long-suffering and sacrificial journey to moral superiority at the hands of
insufferable male partners, ever held that much sway in men’s and women’s minds
(Navarro 2002). Nevertheless, our contributing authors demonstrate again and
again the devaluation of all things feminine, in ways that ring close to home, be it
through the humiliation of boys who behave like girls, the reluctance of men to do
“women’s work,” or ubiquitous violence against women. Occupational segrega-
tion, which results sometimes in real ghettos, and a stubborn wage gap are further
examples (Colón and Poggio, this volume). The difficulties faced by women of
color, poor women, lesbians, and transsexuals in each of these instances are exacer-
bated by the intersection of these various axes of identity and inequality. Ironically,
ideologies that devalue women’s labor often hurt everyone. Safa, as well as Cólon
and Poggio, demonstrate this by showing that the sexist ideology that justifies pay-
ing women less is generously padding the profit margins of corporations. This ulti-
mately punishes all workers, since a supply of lower-paid women puts downward
pressure on overall wages.
Moreover, the positive effects of paid employment for women have been con-
siderably eroded by the conditions under which they have been integrated into the
labor market. Cólon and Poggio show how, with labor regulations reduced to a
minimum, the macroeconomic policies meant to integrate Latin American and
Caribbean economies to the global economy have afforded employers the best of
working-class women’s capacities as cheap labor power for manufacturing and
services, while these women have been increasingly ghettoized in these insecure,
low-paid jobs with few benefits. This is also true in other parts of the developing
world (Elson and Keklik 2002; Chen et al. 2005).
Introduction 15
Overall, national economies, including Cuba’s during the “special period” fol-
lowing the fall of the Soviet Union, have leaned on the survival strategies devised
by women to see to the needs of their families (Cólon and Poggio; Núñez
Sarmiento, both in this volume). On the other hand, Safa’s piece highlights the dif-
ficulties faced by men who, no longer able to fulfill their role as breadwinners due
to reduced employment opportunities, often prefer to leave their families behind.
The Many Faces of Women’s Struggles for Citizenship

Many of our chapters allow us to follow the varied beginnings, accomplishments,
and contemporary trends and challenges facing women’s movements in various
national contexts. An important theme throughout these stories is the quest for
visibility.
Women have had to gain recognition for themselves as activists and for their
issues and concerns within progressive political movements, be they guerilla move-
ments in Central America (Herrera; Carrillo and Chinchilla), labor unions, indige-
nous movements (Prieto et al.) and black movements (Caldwell), urban popular
movements (Maier), and in the most recent forms of workers’ movements in
Argentina (Di Marco, ch. 9). They benefited from the ideological and organiza-
tional ferment of other political movements, as sociologist Elizabeth Maier illus-
trates in her account of early women’s struggles, but also had to fight the sexism
of these movements. The example of Nicaragua is revealing in this sense: Karen
Kampwirth discusses the catalyzing character of the Sandinista Revolution for fem-
inism in the country, as the women involved gained organizational skills and
learned models to challenge traditional authority. Ultimately though, the ability of
women’s associations to challenge sexual inequality within the party was limited.
Making public the issues traditionally restricted to the domestic sphere has
been a major focus of feminist work, as illustrated by sociologist Montserrat
Sagot’s account of Costa Rican activists’ efforts to put domestic violence on the pub-
lic agenda. Vargas argues that the impossibility faced by feminists to interact with
the then authoritarian states pushed them early on to reinterpret reality by “poli-
tizicing the private.” Focusing on societal norms and cultural patterns, they made
previously private issues visible but “de costas al estado” (with their backs to the
state). However, sociologist Graciela Di Marco points out that not all of women’s
collective action can be categorized in this way. The militant motherhood of the
Argentinean Madres and Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, for example, was geared
toward the state (ch. 5). As a matter of fact, this group was among the first to con-
front the military regime. Similarly, the struggles of popular women described by
Maier and by Di Marco (ch. 9) around issues such as housing and work have all
addressed demands to public authorities. Yet, in many ways, they too politicized pri-
vate matters by stressing the social rather than individual nature of their concerns.
One could argue that these movements used the “prescribed,” nurturing roles of
motherhood to make demands on the state, while the others challenged the pre-
vailing sexist ideology related to control over women’s bodies and sexualities. The
distinction between the two is neither simple nor linear though, as discussed earlier.
16 nathalie lebon
Finally, our authors tell of the quest for visibility of the concerns and priorities
of women from the working classes (Di Marco, ch. 9; Maier), of indigenous women
(Prieto et al.; Carrillo and Chinchilla), of black women (Caldwell) and of lesbians
(Mogrovejo) within and outside of women’s movements. In her discussion of the
Latin American lesbian movement, lawyer and sociologist Norma Mogrovejo
refers to this period as both “the moment of universality,” in which women focus
on equal rights, and as “difference feminism,” which claims women’s difference
from men and the importance of establishing new values and a new symbolic
order. Both of these conceptions, however, make it difficult to articulate differences
among women. The chapters mentioned earlier reveal to what extent feminism in
the region has become a feminism of shifting identities. They shed light, some in a
more optimistic tone than others, on the ground gained over these past forty years
by the notion that other facets of a woman’s identity interlock with gender in her
everyday experience, in her interactions with others, and in how she is perceived
and dealt with by institutions. They also highlight how much more ground needs
to be gained. Also apparent from these chapters is the fact that sexism, racism, and
other forms of oppression all function on the same principle: a socially constructed
norm of the exclusion of those who differ. Vargas suggests that the body provides a
useful point of connection between social movements focusing on these various
struggles: be it women’s controlled bodies, the discriminated, racialized bodies
central to antiracist struggles, or the overworked or malnourished bodies that
are the focus of alter-globalization movements. This point is well illustrated by
Mogrovejo when she shows the importance for feminism of transgendered
people’s struggle in bringing to light the constructed nature of gender and how the
body of “women” has been colonized by patriarchal/heterosexual norms.
Working across class boundaries was the first challenge acknowledged by
middle-class feminists, given most of their origins in left-leaning political parties
and the very reality of class in their national environments. As Maier argues, this
process remains incomplete, although it contributed to the beginnings of popular

feminism. Di Marco’s inspiring story of women’s involvement in mixed workers’
movements in response to neoliberal economic policies in Argentina since the
nineties illustrates the strengthening of popular feminism and its appropriation of
demands that had long been those of middle-class women, such as the legalization
of abortion (ch. 9). Interestingly, fundamentalist forces have not failed to note the
political importance of this development and have hardened their stance against
women’s reproductive rights.
Anthropologists Kia Caldwell and Mercedes Prieto and her colleagues tell par-
allel stories of the development of women of color feminisms, given the reality of
racism and its denial in the region. The clear lack of connections of middle-class
mestiza women activists with indigenous women in the context of Ecuador led
indigenous women to find closer allies in the indigenous movement, although they
are increasingly becoming critical of gender inequity within indigenous communi-
ties and within the movement. Caldwell analyzes the dynamics of racism and sex-
ism in the development of Afro-Brazilian pro-women organizing and traces the
Introduction 17
participation of Afro-Brazilian activists from their early presence in the black move-
ment and a variety of other political and cultural organizations, including feminist
organizations, to the strong, broad-based networks of autonomous black feminist
organizations of today. She underscores their contribution to our understanding of
the intersectionality of oppression and a redefinition of citizenship.
Several authors consider that being able to work across differences is crucial
to the future of inclusive citizenship. Ana Lorena Carrillo and Norma Stoltz
Chinchilla’s account of feminisms in Guatemala shows a budding coming together
across class and ethnic lines for a more inclusive citizenship in a pluralist and mul-
tiethnic nation. Di Marco (ch. 9) suggests that we “build new ways of relating that
ensure mutual respect and acknowledgement” to facilitate the confluence of the
women’s movement and feminism. Very cogently she argues that such work is
essential to expand the circle of those who press for a feminist agenda, while also
broadening the nature of our demands. Our challenge is indeed to find out how to
deal with diversity, not only in a celebratory mode but in a way in which we truly
address power hierarchies among women.
Organizational Issues
Concerns with the centralization of power, representativity, and hierarchical forms
of organization have been present—some would say central—to feminist move-
ments since their inception. As Maier notes, “hierarchy was rejected as a mode of
operation, being considered a means of patriarchal reproduction,” while experi-
mentation with participatory models of decision making was favored. Such
concerns are echoed in a number of other chapters and in Nicaraguan feminists’
recent preference for flexible, less hierarchical networks, as opposed to coordinat-
ing committees.
Movements’ preferred strategies are influenced by, but also impact, their organ-
izational features. Both movement strategies and organizational forms changed
considerably over the years as the political scenario around them changed. Many
chapters, starting with the testimonies of the Madres and Abuelas of Argentina
(Di Marco, ch. 5), attest to the sheer power of consciousness raising, going to the
streets, and organizing broad-based movements to push for democratic change or
gender equity. Besides the new opportunities of regime democratization, the very
nature of processes of NGOization and professionalization, which started depend-
ing on the national context in the mid- to late eighties (Carrillo and Chinchilla;
Di Marco, ch. 9; Herrera), also reinforced the movement away from the streets and
toward legal reform and public policy.
Although many NGOs originated in women’s movements, Di Marco (ch. 9)
corroborates other accounts that a number of organizations emerged without a
feminist orientation and offer services, on a limited scale, for which the state should
be responsible on the basis of the economic and social rights of its citizens. Others
have shown that feminist organizations are also at times sucked into this process
(Alvarez 1999). Moreover, competition for resources among movement organ-
izations and concerns for organizational survival have now appeared, which
18 nathalie lebon
undermine the possibilities for building a strong movement, as noted by Carrillo

and Chinchilla.
Institutionalization and Gender Politics: Feminism Inside and Outside the State
Autonomy from mainstream state and international institutions, including political
parties and donor agencies, has been defended, more fiercely by some than others,
since the movement’s inception. But with a democratizing environment during
these last four decades, feminist understandings of, and approaches to, the state
have changed. As almost all the chapters in section four attest, the state is not a
monolith but instead a collection of decision-making nodes not always in concor-
dance with one another, which we can use to our benefit. Still, institutionalization
has not been without challenges.
structure and political context

Feminist sociologist María Luisa Tarrés and political scientist Fiona Macaulay
argue, in line with much of the literature on the topic, that to push the gender-
equity agenda forward, we need to take into consideration the structural features of
a particular state, as well as the political conjuncture. In her analysis of the Mexican
Institutos de la Mujer (Women’s Institutes), Tarrés demonstrates that when it
comes to women’s machineries, the context in which they operate is at least as
important in explaining their success or failure as institutional design in itself.
The furthest advances in terms of institutional design come from countries
with progressive administrations and strong women’s movements, such as Brazil
and Venezuela. One is the inclusion of a gender perspective in the budgeting
process. Governments seem to possibly be ready to put their money where their
mouths are! This has been done by the state government of Oaxaca in Mexico
(Tarrés, this volume) and at the federal level in Brazil since 2003, though not with-
out difficulties. Venezuela’s new constitution also boasts nonsexist language and
benefits from a gender perspective. Another exciting new trend is the mainstream-
ing of the gender-equity perspective throughout the executive branch. This means
that a central women’s machinery is no longer solely responsible for implementing
gender policies; instead, such efforts are coordinated throughout the various
departments.
institutionalization: how much and at what cost?

Research by Macaulay and by Tarrés illustrates how some institutionalized
women’s machineries are better able to withstand changes in ruling parties than
others. They do better in Brazil, where the party system is weak and often oppor-
tunistic. Both essays demonstrate how much an independent budget and staff is
necessary. However, in general, party politics still very much affect such agencies.
Macaulay’s discussion of women’s councils at the various levels of government
in Brazil highlights the benefits, such as broadening and invigorating debate, of
the institutionalization of representation and input by civil society. But how
much should such “gender units” be involved in guiding and/or stimulating the
Introduction 19
organizing efforts of civil society? Cathy Rakowski and Gioconda Espina, in the
case of Venezuela, illustrate the trade-offs when leadership switches from civil soci-
ety to the legislative assembly, as well as the negative consequences of a women’s
machinery’s attempt to take the lead in organizing civil society in a context of deep
politicization and ideological division.
Most of our authors are aware of other perils of institutionalization. Several
address the issue of what Morena Herrera calls the depoliticization of gender.
Tarrés refers to it as the “neutral and technocratic tone” of the gender perspective
adopted in policy circles, a perspective that no longer requires a reorganization of
power relations between men and women and that allows new, postfeminist actors
to appropriate the discourse on gender. The best concrete example is offered by
Sagot’s discussion of Costa Rica’s legislation on violence against women: gender-
neutral language in the final legal text ignores the fact that women bear the brunt
of violence as a result of gender power differentials. In the end, this legislation takes
an assistentialist focus instead of granting women their rights “as citizens with a
right to . . . integrity, justice and to live without violence.” It assumes women as
passive beneficiaries of good will rather than deserving of these rights. Mogrovejo,
an autónoma—as feminists who prefer to work outside formal power structures
choose to identify themselves—writes a critique, enlightened by a lesbian perspec-
tive, adding that this gender perspective continues to define women in relation to
men. Institutionalization and its focus on legal rights are also faulted for the obvi-
ous lack of implementation of the laws on the books. Herrera’s answer to this prob-
lem is the need to rebuild a movement able to push for this implementation.
Implicit or explicit in these authors’ analyses is thus the notion that our efforts
should not be limited to a focus on public policy. Herrera reminds us that the
public sphere is the general space of debate and discourse so vital to democracy.
Influencing changes in discourse and cultural norms is thus essential to gender
equity. Through the media or the political arena, it is possible to debate the contra-
dictions in state or hegemonic rhetoric, such as the Costa Rican state’s discourse on
“peace abroad” and lack of commitment to “peace in the home.”
On the other hand, both Mogrovejo and Herrera make a point of mentioning
the problems of a position exclusively outside of the national and international
institutional framework, such as the one advocated by those sectors of the move-
ment who identify themselves as autónomas. Despite all that an emphasis on auton-
omy can bring to the movement, Mogrovejo identifies a tendency to the creation
of ghettos (even within the movement) and fundamentalism, as well as a certain
arrogance and intolerance on the part of these sectors, which make it difficult for
them to work with others and build a strong movement.
Most authors in this volume agree that a two-pronged strategy of feminist
activism both from within and outside the state and other institutions, such as
international organizations, is warranted to move a gender-equity agenda forward.
Giving up on participating in policy making would be tantamount, as Herrera
argues, to disregarding the fact that “the public sphere [is] one of full human real-
ization from which women have been excluded only because of their gender.”
20 nathalie lebon
Going one step further than the two-pronged inside/out strategy, many
authors press for the need for spaces for dialogue and interaction. Indeed, the
book gives numerous examples of coalitions, mutual support between políticas,
autonomous women’s organizations, and women in government structures. It pro-
vides several examples of collaboration of feminists across party lines (see, for
example, Kampwirth, Merlet, Carrillo and Chinchilla, and Herrera). Rakowski and
Espina’s analysis of coalitions in Venezuela since the 1970s identify some contribut-
ing ingredients: “The coalitions formed later were opportunistic; women took
advantage of them to create new political opportunities or to mobilize to confront
a perceived threat.” They were voluntary, used consensus decision making,
focused on legal reform and public policy, and “often used international accords to
pressure lawmakers.” Despite the deep and growing antagonism between Chavez
supporters and others in the Venezuelan women’s movement, the successful expe-
riences of the seventies and eighties and the long-time feminist networks existing
across political divides contributed to successful collaboration on specific issues.
Yet, such broad coalitions carry the serious disadvantage that those feminist
demands perceived as the most radical, such as abortion and lesbian rights, might
be left out, as in the case of the Minimum Agenda presented to political parties by
Nicaragua’s cross-partisan, cross-class Coalición Nacional de Mujeres (National
Women’s Coalition).
Organizing at the Local, National, Regional, and International Levels

Women activists have become increasingly savvy about navigating the various lev-
els of institutional policy-making arenas and making the most of regional and inter-
national civil society forums. Our authors point at the advantages and trade-offs
involved.
the institutional sphere and the politics of scale

Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) have demonstrated the efficacy of what
they call the boomerang effect: when policy advances at the international level are
brought back by activists to the national level. More recently, scholars have begun
to pay attention to moves in different directions, as activists take advantage of
strength at one scale to influence an outcome at another (Vargas, this volume;
Blackwell 2006).
Our authors demonstrate that the benefits of international institutional work
are not limited to policy making but also lead to increased gender consciousness
and provide greater legitimacy to feminist discourse and ideas in larger society.
In Costa Rica, for example, the feminist discourse around violence against women
gained greater legitimacy through the international reformulation of the concept of
human rights to include women’s rights.
A number of chapters also attest to the catalyzing effect of United Nations con-
ferences on women’s organizing. The annual national Encuentros in Argentina
started in 1986, after some participants went to Nairobi in 1985. Numerous issue-
specific networks were formed after initial contact at such conferences. The latest
Introduction 21
and most exciting example of such connection was how the preparatory process for
Santiago ⫹5 conference in 2005—the regional meeting for the follow-up on the
Durban conference on racism—brought together indigenous and Afro-descendant
women. Such a catalyzing effect is not automatic though: Mexican activists with
concerns about movement autonomy in 1975 decided not to participate in the
International Women’s Year (Lau 2006). In the end, participation in these various
international arenas have brought women to the WSF, one of the most exciting
poles of alternative thinking about our political and social world, with some of the
highest levels of experience at international networking and organizing (Vargas, this
volume).
The national preparation processes related to the United Nations conferences
also clearly contributed to the institutionalization of the gender perspective, through
the establishment of national gender-equity machineries, such as in Venezuela as
early as 1975, or more recently in Mexico, as the government attempted to ensure
implementation of the Beijing Platform of Action. Also note that in Venezuela, the
women’s machinery’s call for support for the elaboration of their official report for
the Nairobi conference in 1985 led to the first large-scale coalition of women’s
organizations in civil society, highlighting how institutional arena and civil society
organizing influence each other.
On the other hand, in a trend that many have found less positive,
United Nations activities also led to the professionalization of the movements
through the legitimacy and funding they made available for gender-focused
work. These activities have also influenced the kind of work and the issues feminist
organizations focus on. In her critique, Herrera does not deny the importance of
participation, apprenticeship, and skill learning from these processes that focus on
legal rights but argues that the lack of political will to change social norms
makes their implementation difficult. Indeed, she cogently argues that, in the face
of the crisis of the state and the lack of implementation of gender-positive legisla-
tions, it is essential to focus our energies at the municipal level, the closest to our
day-to-day lives.
civil society
As this book goes to press, feminists throughout Latin America and the
Caribbean are preparing to meet for the eleventh regional Encuentro, to be held
in Mexico in March 2009. According to Vargas, these large-scale regional
meetings have played a crucial role in the development of feminisms. The chapters
on Central America attest to the push that the Taxco Encuentro (1987), for
example, provided for feminist activism by inspiring consciousness raising
(Guatemala), the creation of independent feminist organizations (Nicaragua) and
help for feminists to move forward to a propositive stance toward the central gov-
ernment (El Salvador). Interestingly, the Encuentros have been a place not only for
all women to come together but also where differences among women were often
ignored but also later discussed and negotiated: Mogrovejo tells this story for les-
bian feminists.
22 nathalie lebon
Other civil society forums have played similar roles for women organizing
on axes in addition to gender: indigenous women have benefited from greater
negotiating power with donor agencies, alliances with sectors of the indigenous
movement, and strengthening of their organizing at the national level through the
Encuentros Continentales de Mujeres Indígenas (Continental Encuentros of Indige-
nous Women) (Prieto et. al, this volume, Palomo Sánchez 2006).
Conclusion
Throughout this book, again and again, the authors bring to our attention the need
for working across differences and for alliances and coalitions. It seems appropriate
then, in conclusion, to highlight the importance of pluralism for democracy, what
Teivo Teivainen refers to as demodiversity (demodiversidad), or the “peaceful or
conflictive existence of different models and practices of democracy in a given
social field” (quoted in Vargas, this volume). We have reasons to be hopeful that
this is the direction in which we are traveling, both among women’s movements
and between women’s movements and other movements for social justice.
Indeed, acknowledgement of this necessity among women’s movements is
apparent in the description by its organizers of the tenth Encuentro, held in Brazil
in 2005:
[Participants] are autonomous feminists or linked to organizations, networks,
coalitions, or universities; they are indigenous, black, young, lesbian, sex
workers, rural and urban working-class feminists, etc. The X Encuentro wishes
to provide a space for dialogue, debate, conflict, controversy, and coalition
building for the region’s various lineages of feminist thinking, which it
brings together. (Tenth Encuentro Organizing Committee e-mail, October
10, 2005)
Although the organizers did not anticipate that the demands for inclusion that
most shook up the meeting and divided the participants that year would be male-
to-female transsexuals (Pizarro 2005; Tinoco 2005; De Cicco 2005), once again the
Encuentro gave strength to and articulated the voice of the most recently formally
organized sector in the movement and served as a platform from where the bound-
aries of inclusion are negotiated and pushed further outward.
Finally, the efforts of feminists to keep interacting with democratizing forces
outside of feminism within the World Social Forum, fighting for gender equity and
for a gendered analysis of the realities of our times, bring another source of hope.
Such efforts seem to be one of our best chances to ensure respect for the funda-
mental social and economic rights that affect both men and women, but the viola-
tion of which relegates women to the very bottom of the social hierarchy, as is
vividly illustrated in the Haitian case by Myriam Merlet.
acknowledgments
I would like to thank Liz Maier, Scott Hill, Jane Jaquette, and especially Jean Potuchek for their
insightful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
Introduction 23
notes
1. For a more in-depth discussion, see Stephen (1997).
2. Armed violence in this region was fueled by U.S. involvement after the successful
takeover of Nicaragua by the Sandinistas in 1979. The Sandinistas, or Frente Sandinista de
Liberación Nacional (Sandinista Front for National Liberation), are a leftist political party,
named after Augusto César Sandino, leader of a revolt against the U.S. military presence in
Nicaragua in the 1930s. For more, see Kampwirth (this volume).
3. Oil prices rose sharply on both occasions due to the concerted efforts of oil-producing
countries. For various reasons, this financial bounty did not translate in the hoped-for improve-
ment of living conditions for the few oil-producing Latin American countries, such as Mexico
and Venezuela.
4. National identity discourse and pride focused on mestizaje (race mixing) or “racial democ-
racy” have contributed to downplaying racial inequality in most of the region until the new
millennium (Lebon 2007; Safa 2005).
5. See Thompson (2002) on this argument for the U.S. narrative.
6. The inability to pay was largely due to out-of-control international interest rates on the
loans international banks had been more than happy to provide during the fat cow years of the
previous decades to build infrastructure and industry.
7. The term femicide has been used to describe the murders of (young and poor) women in
Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (more than 400 murdered since 1993) and in Guatemala (2,500 since
2001, including 600 in 2006), where simply being a woman largely explains the killing.
8. One-third of the recent improvement in Brazil’s still highly inequitable income
distribution—the second highest in the region—can be attributed to the government’s income
transfer policies (ECLAC 2006, 92).
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Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in inter-
national politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lau, Ana J. 2006. El feminismo mexicano: Balance y perspectivas. In De lo privado a lo público:
30 años de lucha ciudadana de las mujeres en América Latina, ed. Nathalie Lebon and Elizabeth
Maier, 181–194. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno.
Lebon, Nathalie. 1996. Professionalization of women’s health groups in São Paulo: The trou-
blesome road towards organizational diversity. Organization 3 (4): 588–609.
———. 2007. Beyond confronting the myth of racial democracy: The role of Afro-Brazilian
women scholars and activists. Latin American Perspectives 34 (6): 52–76.
Mohanty, Chandra T. 1986. Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses.
In Third world women and the politics of feminism, ed. Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo, and
Lourdes Torres, 51–81. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Molyneux, Maxine. 1986. Mobilization without emancipation? Women’s interests, state and
revolution. In Transition and development: Problems of third world socialism, ed. Richard Fagen,
Carmen Diana Deere, and José Luis Coraggio, 280–302. New York: Monthly Review.
Naples, Nancy, and Manisha Desai, eds. 2002. Women’s activism and globalization: Linking local
struggles and transnational politics. New York: Routledge.
Narayan, Uma. 1997. Dislocating cultures: Identities, traditions, and third-world feminism.
New York: Routledge.
Navarro, Marysa. 2002. Against marianismo. In Gender’s place: Feminist anthropologies of Latin
America, ed. Rosario Montoya, Lessie Jo Frazier, and Janise Hurtig, 257–272. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Nelson, Sara. 1996. Constructing and negotiating gender in women’s police stations in Brazil.
Latin American Perspectives 23 (1): 131–154.
Palomo Sánchez, Nellys. 2006. Las mujeres indígenas: Surgimiento de una identidad colectiva
insurgente. In De lo privado a lo publico: 30 años de lucha ciudadana de las mujeres en América
Latina, ed. Nathalie Lebon and Elizabeth Maier, 236–248. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno.
Pizarro, Ana María. 2005. Décimo Encuentro Feminista de América Latina y el Caribe: Femi-
nismo y Democracia. América Latina en Movimiento, October 12. http://alainet.org/active/
9458&lang=es (accessed July 3, 2008).
Ricciutelli, Luciana, Angela Miles, and Margaret H. McFadden, eds. 2004. Feminist politics,
activism, and vision: Local and global challenges. Toronto: Inanna.
Richards, Patricia. 2004. Pobladoras, indígenas, and the state: Conflicts over women’s rights in Chile.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Safa, Helen I. 1990. Women’s social movements in Latin America. Gender and Society 4 (3):
354–369.
———. 2005. Challenging mestizaje: A gender perspective on indigenous and afrodescendant
movements in Latin America. Critique of Anthropology 25 (3): 307–330.
Introduction 25
Shepard, Bonnie. 2007. Patterns of northern donor support: Implications for sexual and repro-
ductive rights advocacy NGOs in Latin America. Paper presented at the Twenty-seventh
International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Montreal, Canada,
September 5–8.
Stephen, Lynn. 1997. Women and social movements in Latin America: Power from below. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Sternbach, Nancy S., Marysa Navarro-Aranguren, Patricia Chuchryk, and Sonia E. Alvarez.
1992. Feminism in Latin America: From Bogotá to San Bernardo. Signs 17 (2): 393–434.
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feminism. Feminist Studies 28 (2): 337–360.
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feminista ya nada tiene que ver con el feminismo. www.creatividadfeminista.org/
articulos/2005/fem_encuentro%20chuy.html (accessed July 2, 2008).
1 Accommodating the Private
into the Public Domain
experiences and legacies
of the past four decades
elizabeth maier
One of the most distinctive characteristics of Latin America over the past four
decades has been the increasing visibility of women as collective actors in the pub-
lic domain of politics, clearly contributing to the gradual forging of a regional cul-
ture of rights. Whether propelled onto the political arena from the tensions of
gender inequality that historically have shaped the lives of over half of the popula-
tion, or having emerged from the dense national narratives of dictatorial repression
in the Southern Cone and the insurgent uprisings that polarized Central America
during the seventies and eighties, or having coalesced around the material wants of
the great majority of the population, women’s organized presence on national
sociopolitical scenes has fashioned new representations of the feminine in the
collective imaginary of the region. In the case of Mothers’ and Grandmothers’
committees for the disappeared, for example, these new representations resignified
traditional gender roles of mother and homemaker, while renegotiating power
relationships between partners and within the family. Through multiple expres-
sions of sociopolitical participation, Latin American and Caribbean women have

achieved a more complete citizenship, while also promoting the democratization
of family, society, and nation.
In this chapter, I will revisit some of the female collective actors who mobilized
during those early years of Latin America’s second-wave feminist movement, with
the intention of exploring their objectives, modes of organization, strategies,
and the intensity of their mission.1 Highlighting the dialectics between structure,
identity, agency, and strategy (Alvarez et al. 1998, 318), my aim is to review the
multiple ways in which feminist and nonfeminist women’s agency of this period
has facilitated the gradual deconstruction of gender inequality. I propose to do so in
the spirit of not only rekindling the memory of these notable figures of contempo-
rary Latin American history, their passion for the cause, and their impact on the
moment but also reflecting on their value for the current phase of feminist shaping
of public policy. What can women’s strategies and methodologies of previous
decades offer to the contemporary, institutional ways of conceiving gender politics
and honing gender policies?
26 Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean : Engendering Social Justice, Democratizing Citizenship,
Lebon, Natalie. Women's
The Private into the Public Domain 27
The Joy of Beginning

Since the first International Women’s Year focused attention on the subaltern con-
dition of the world’s women in 1975, Latin America and the Caribbean discovered
new female, symbolic representations on its political stage. Educated, middle-class
feminists, female guerrilla fighters, activist Mothers, and militant urban homemak-
ers from class-oriented, grassroots organizations injected seemingly private griev-
ances, needs, and demands into the public arena.2 While feminists underscored the
deconstruction of the sociocultural production of body-identity, rejecting sexual,
socioeconomic, and political restrictions that disciplined a subordinate and docile
female body, other women anchored their participation to the traditional roles that
historically reproduced patriarchal gender orders. Still others migrated to the habit-
ually masculine terrain of war and arms. The mobilization of tens of thousands of
women in these public expressions of new femininities created synergies that
decentered the customary Latin American female image from its marianist dis-
course of abnegation, obedience, devotion, surrender, dependence, and shame
(Vuola 1993, 12). Their objectives and the ways in which they transgressed typical
gender roles, their motivation (and destination) in leaving the private sphere, and
the strategies chosen varied according to structural conditions, cultural patterns,
and political realities. Particularly relevant was the scope of democracy in each
country. In democratic countries with solid industrial development, feminism
rooted itself in reduced sectors of a growing middle class as a cultural-identity
movement, dedicated to achieving gender equality through the modification of
structural and legal impediments, and the renovation of women’s symbolic repre-
sentations in the collective imaginary.3 For some, the feminism that sprang up in
Latin America at the beginning of the seventies was an exotic and luxurious import,
far removed from the needs and interests of the majority of women of a region
with almost half its population living in poverty. For others, especially left-wing
organizations, feminism’s exogenous birth certificate stoked a postcolonial, anti-
imperialistic distrust of the foreign, while suggesting a threat to the unity of their
class-based, strategic objectives. These and other factors linked to the radical nature
of the renegotiation of social power inherent to feminism staked new frontiers in
the dispute for sociocultural meaning that the suffragist movement had initiated
decades before in the majority of these countries.4
Feminist effervescence during the early years of the second wave was intensely
experiential, largely unaware of the historical and economic factors that gave rise to
the movement. There was little awareness of how industrial development and the
consequent reorganization of class and gender relations during the first half of
the twentieth century had consolidated a small but dynamic sector of middle-class
women ready to broaden their horizons and ignite their opportunities. Though in
reduced numbers compared to highly industrialized countries, these well-educated
Latin American women enjoyed economic well-being and autonomy, lived
freedom-oriented lifestyles, and were anxious to transgress and transform the
sociocultural discourses that informed economic, social, and political practices
of gender subordination and discrimination. While modern feminist organization,
28 elizabeth maier
mobilization, and theorization surfaced initially in the advanced industrial nations,

it quickly spread throughout the Latin American and Caribbean region. A feminist
critical mass coalesced in many countries, negotiating its place on the national
scene within the structural, political, and cultural specificities of each country. Its
international scope has characterized second-wave feminism as the first globalized
social movement of late modernity.
While World War II reconfigured the social geography of gender in the devel-
oped countries and women replaced absent soldiers in the national economy, in
Latin America the phase of industrialization known as import substitution trans-
formed the industrial base and expanded the state apparatus of most nations,
increasing opportunities for stable, well-paid urban employment with labor bene-
fits for a small but growing sector of privileged employees. Starting in the forties,
rural-urban migration overflowed into the cities, satisfying the demand for labor in
factories, government offices, and the private service sector. A minority urban
middle-class was consolidated, creating a demand for luxury goods, specialized
services, and quality higher education, resulting in more skilled employment for a
growing sector of women. The advent of a consolidated urban middle class
reshaped customary, rural gender norms that traditionally excluded women from
educational opportunities, professional training, and economic autonomy. This
restructuring of class geography paved the way for one of the most transcendent
cultural readjustments of twentieth-century Latin America: the gradual establish-
ment of conditions for full women’s citizenship through increasing recognition of
the need to transform pervasive gender inequality.5
“The personal is political” was the emblematic motto of the feminist second
wave. It refers to the traditional division of society into two universes, public and
private, considered to be separate and independent dominions. Gradually, through
collective reflection and analysis, second-wave Latin American and Caribbean
feminists discovered the mechanisms by which the personal and intimate had been
tattooed on the cultural representations of the feminine. Woman, private and inti-
mate, had been symbolically fused in a world of hierarchical and sublimated human
relations, apparently loving, complementary, and harmonic. Early second-wave
exploration of female identity also revealed the lack of social valorization of the
private sphere and concluded that women had been excluded from public power
because they lacked a collective voice that compellingly expressed their gendered
perspective of life and validated their needs and proposals (Ardener 1986, 36). They
also found that in the masculine collective imaginary of the region, their bodies had
been symbolically fragmented into binary identities of sexuality or reproduction,
erotica or maternity, which limited their individual and collective development.
They identified the category of patriarchy as the prime theoretical instrument for
the production of new cultural meaning, given its ability to inform understanding
of the myriad forms of gender oppression and exclusion.
Thus, the idea of the “personal is political” represented a truly radical proposal
that rendered visible the sexual division of society into private and public spheres,
pinpointed its historical and social nature, and unveiled its negative impact on
women’s lives. At the same time, the notion of the personal as political highlighted
the intimate dialectic between the two spheres, while emphasizing the need to
socially value both dimensions equally. Thus, the feminist motto induced an expe-
riential exploration of the multiple linkages between women’s everyday lives, their
subordinate gender position, and the mechanics of power within contemporary
Latin American patriarchal systems, patterned on the dynamics of the urban middle
classes. Furthermore, the affirmation that the “personal is political” in the passion-
ate public protests of the seventies and the influential feminist publications and
media coverage of the era credited the subjective dimension as the command cen-
ter for the reproduction of gender identities.6
Consciousness-raising groups brought together small numbers of women to
explore their gender condition, embodying a methodology of collective scrutiny,
interlocution, and accountability among peers. Through sharing personal histories;
examining their socialization as children and adolescents; revising school and
work experiences as women; exploring likes and dislikes, friendships, loves, and
sexual adventures; or reflecting on past social and political participation, a common
acknowledgement of the social nature of their gender identity was revealed.
Gradually, the political economy of the power relationship implicit in the gender
binary was laid bare, until then veiled by the essentialist discourses of sexual identi-
ties. This methodology of collective contemplation unraveled customary beliefs,
interrogating the social mechanisms that sustained women’s subordination and
identifying concrete areas and forms of discrimination that required attention and
intervention.
In a sense, these groups functioned as autonomous territories ruled by prin-
ciples of similarity and equality. Hierarchy, considered a means of patriarchal repro-
duction, was rejected as a mode of operation, and horizontal forms of organization
and decision making were encouraged. Concerns over power and representation
were founding considerations of feminists in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Early strategy proposed substituting “power over” with “power among,” or what
was called “power to,” promoting a direct form of democracy where each individ-
ual exclusively represented her own person. However, second-wave feminists often
tended to essentialize patriarchal power, conceiving that one sole model of patri-
archy applied to all social classes, cultures, and historical times. Michel Foucault’s
demonstration that power is found in the day-to-day playing out of all social rela-
tionships and in the network of resistances created by subordinate actors (1977,
112–125) was not initially understood by Latin American feminists, but rather it was
thought that gender trumped all other social exercises of power. In that sense, early
second-wave feminism replaced the productive determinism of economic material-
ism, omnipresent in Latin American social sciences at the time, with a gender deter-
minism that positioned the social relations of reproduction at the center of all
historical and social interpretation.7
The initial feeling of victimization that accompanied the discovery of the
mechanics of gender oppression acted as a factor of identity cohesion that pro-
pelled and consolidated this new sociopolitical actor. However, while increasing
30 elizabeth maier
comprehension of gender discrimination also sensitized feminists to the social

exclusion of other collective actors, the reductionism of their interpretation of gen-
der as the hegemonic model of all social relations hampered the process of identifi-
cation with women belonging to other expressions of social marginality and failed
to recognize how compounded dimensions of exclusion nuance the experience of
gender. However, within just a few years, the questioning of binary metanarratives
at the end of the cold war, together with new theorization on complex identities,
lessons learned from women’s diversified sociopolitical participation in Latin
America, and the impact of total immersion in the era of structural and cultural
globalization, all contributed to the renovation of feminist perspectives.8
Autonomy and the Constitution of Collective Subjects

Autonomy was always strategic for foundational Latin American feminism: auton-
omy from the state, political parties, social organizations, and from male domina-
tion itself. Latin American and Caribbean governments’ frequent use of a patronage
system to control social organizations and political parties, along with their
co-optation of leaders, close ties to national oligarchies, and the presumed corrup-
tion of a significant part of the political class, had historically defined the state as an
untrustworthy adversary for most social movements. Moreover, feminist charac-
terization of the state as patriarchal made it a threatening institution for women
who were barely initiating a process of self-recognition as subjects of their own
lives, agents of social transformation, and sociopolitical power players. They had
just begun to realize that political parties and other social movements had forged
their strategies in the andocentric paradigm that historically had muted the voice of
women’s experience and needs. In preparation for honing that voice and making
it heard, autonomy became the keystone of an initial strategy of empowerment.9
It fenced off a symbolic space where feminists could construct collective self-
esteem, validate “the right to have rights” (Arendt 1973, quoted in Jelin 1997, 67) as
the essence of subjectivity and modernity, discover areas and expressions of exclu-
sion, inhabit new representations of the feminine, and access the abilities to suc-
cessfully transit the public sphere in conditions of equality.
These early second-wave feminists elaborated powerful countercultural dis-
courses that progressively revised and resignified theoretical concepts so essential
to the interpretation of social life: history, power, politics, the private and public,
democracy, equality, human rights, and, of course, citizenship. At first, the feminist
movement focused its efforts on raising awareness of gender inequality. They cen-
tered their prime demands on the reappropriation of the female body, stressing
sexuality, reproduction, the right to abortion, and an end to gender-based violence,
while also highlighting the need for socioeconomic conditions of greater equality.10
These demands signified a symbolic earthquake for mainstream Catholic culture,
which was based on a feminine binary of the good woman, an obedient, demure,
maternal keeper of the hearth, and the bad woman, an independent, uninhibited,
public, sensual being: a paradigm that informs a litany of gender prohibitions,
restrictions, permissions, and privileges.
This gender rebellion was fully enjoyed by the historic feminists of the seven-
ties. It was a time of sisterhood based on similarity, without the tensions that set in
with recognition of difference. The political strength of identity cohesion, the illu-
sion of utopia, and the clarity of the tension between us and male others converged
in the definition of the movement’s central objective, the deconstruction of patri-
archy and the devaluation of its cultural expressions and representations. This
essentialist phase of Latin American and Caribbean feminisms was characterized by
its radicalism, energy, and transgression, and its focus on the relationship between
the private and the public domains. As such, feminism situated women’s rights not
just in the area of gender relations but also in the reconsideration of what is public
and what is private ( Jelin 1997, 69).
Political conditions in each country, the quality of life, and specific needs of
diverse social classes and subordinate cultural groups informed distinct modes
of women’s participation. The articulation of premodern, modern, and postmod-
ern socioeconomic contexts (Vargas 2002) and significant racial-ethnic-cultural
heterogeneity determined that the interests and priorities of women were not
homogeneous, as feminists had initially thought. Thus, parallel to the emergence of
feminism in certain nations, women with different objectives occupied the public
squares and collective imaginations of countries with dictatorships or authoritarian
governments, revealing through the diversity of their demands and strategies the
complexity of the female condition in Latin America.
The Mothers
In Latin American dictatorships of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, state
brutality—as Homi Bhabha (1994, 6) calls extensive and indiscriminate repression—
prohibition of alternative sociopolitical agency, and the edification of traditional
gender values, roles, and representations as a personal demonstration of patriotism,
all influenced feminist prioritization of the antidictatorial struggle. The repressive
experience under authoritarian military regimes made it clear that the right to life
and the liberty of opinion and association were an indispensable precondition to
begin the struggle for women’s rights and citizenship (see Pitanguy 1998). It is in
this sense that Maxine Molyneux asserts, “The subject 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” (2002, 8).
The discourse of dictatorship situated the trinity of mother-family-home as
the cornerstone of a conservative political-religious-social control that collided
head-on with feminist philosophy. This authoritarian discourse on women’s place
in society also interrogated the activity of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of
May Plaza), a new political actor that, in the name of traditional motherhood,
emerged from the horrors of repression to publicly demand the devolution of their
sons and daughters. Their children were victims of the emblematic tactic of state
terrorism, the forced disappearance of persons, which characterized all the unde-
clared, dirty wars of Latin America. As collective expressions of maternal pain and
tenacity, Mothers’ committees erupted onto the political scenes of countries with
32 elizabeth maier
military—or civilian—authoritarian regimes, unexpectedly, inadvertently, and pro-

gressively uncovering how the application of a military strategy of national security
took a toll of between 90,000 and 120,000 disappeared persons in the region.11
Driven by the mandates of traditional maternity—which their highly public and
political actions inadvertently transgressed—these women left the comfort of their
homes, taking their pain to the streets, police stations, military camps, and public
squares to confront these patriarchal, authoritarian governments with the symbol-
ism of their personas and their nonnegotiable demand: “You took them alive; we
want them back alive.” In Buenos Aires every Thursday the Argentinean Mothers
risked their lives marching around the Plaza de Mayo, with white scarves on their
heads and a photo of their son or daughter over their heart (Maier 2001, 56). In San
Salvador the members of Comadres tracked down clandestine cemeteries with the
desperate hope of finding the remains of their loved ones and documenting the
terrifying state in which they had been buried (Schirmer 1993, 38). In Mexico City
the Mothers of the Comité Eureka crucified themselves one Mother’s Day, tying
themselves to enormous crosses that they erected in front of the National Palace, in
a symbolic conversion that expressed the pain of the Mother as one with that of her
son or daughter crucified by disappearance (Maier 2001, 192).
In the sinister national scenarios of terror, torture, and death, the Mothers of
the disappeared symbolically spoke as equals with the authoritarian fathers of the
nation, interrogating them with their presence as though the women were arche-
typical figures of a Greek tragedy, who, in subtle and surprising ways, blurred tra-
ditional gender schemes with the force of their empowerment. They appeared to
somehow be protected by an intense, primordial maternal power, still alive in the
depths of the collective masculine unconscious, which left both patriarchs and fem-
inists uncomfortable, although for totally different reasons. For the authoritarian
regimes, the transgression of the privacy of traditional maternity threatened the
reproduction of sociopolitical control, while some feminists questioned the gender
implications of this public and political participation in the name of traditional

motherhood, arguing that it only reinforced customary female roles and subordi-
nation in the family ( Jelin 1997, 2).12 Although feminists viewed the Mothers with
admiration and solidarity for being the first women’s organizations to take a politi-
cal role and the first public expressions of opposition to state authoritarianism in
Latin America, the Mothers’ committees nonetheless represented a challenge for
feminism, with their emphasis on the centrality of maternity in the cultural con-
struction of femininity. Situated on the interstices between traditionalism and
transgression, the members of this collective expression of militant motherhood
experienced important personal transformations as a result of their participation.
As the president of the Committee of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo asserts “To
me, the Mothers are women who have broken with many aspects of this system we
live in. First, because we went into the streets to confront the dictatorship and
we were capable of doing things that the men couldn’t do” (Fisher 1989, 157).
The Mothers’ committees in Latin America were differentiated by factors
such as the extension of the theater of national conflict, the degree and type of
repression, the alliances that each committee established with other opposition
movements, participation in national and international networks of solidarity, the
margins for legal political activity, and the cultural characteristics of each country
(Macleod 1985). While the committees in Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and
Mexico evolved spontaneously and autonomously, in countries like El Salvador,
Chile, and Brazil they were championed by the Catholic Church. What they all
shared, however, was a valiant, tenacious, public, collective, and activist mother-
hood that gradually progressed from their initial demand for the return of their
loved ones to their later advocacy for human rights and the return to constitutional
legality. Finally, they became a sort of collective guardian of historic memory and
social ethics, with their uncompromising insistence on identifying and punishing
those responsible for these perverse national narratives as a necessary preamble to
the establishment of an informed democracy.
The Mothers’ committees sowed the seed for the Latin American human rights
movement, training their members as the first regional forensic experts and special-
izing in methodical practices of investigation, documentation, and denunciation of
massive human rights abuses. They expressed concern not only for the fate of their
own children but also for the children of all other mothers in the same situation,
thus redefining the individual nature of maternity (Maier 2001, 45) while collectiviz-
ing the practice of citizenship (Schirmer 1993, 48). Through their sit-ins, protests, and
hunger strikes, the Mothers mothered in the streets in an upside-down world that
had violently torn them from the privacy of their homes to fulfill their maternal
obligations in parks, squares, governmental offices, and international organizations.
Doing so, they unintentionally incarnated the feminist motto “the personal is politi-
cal” and symbolically resignified motherhood as a collective, public, and political
practice, while imbuing the notion of citizenship with a new, intimate reference.
Even when their sociopolitical participation outside the home did not corre-
spond to what Molyneux (1985) has termed “women’s strategic interests,” referring
to gender-based struggles, the amount of time and commitment employed in their

activism and—in certain cases—their personal experiences of official repression led
to gender consciousness for many Mothers. Being away from home frequently
caused tensions with their husbands and children, and in many cases, those tensions
led to a new understanding of the sociocultural influences on the sexual division of
society. In other cases, the effects of political rape—employed officially as a weapon
of war against them—were transformed in time from silent shame into conscious-
ness about gender violence against women. That was the experience of the
Comadres of El Salvador after the war, when they were finally able to face and
process the meaning of this form of official repression that had marked so many of
their bodies with the stamp of this historical gender torture. Examining those expe-
riences through a gender perspective in times of peace led to the further explo-
ration of the problem of domestic violence in their lives and to the formulation of
other gender-centered projects (Schirmer 1993; Stephen 1994).
Although they based their agency on traditional motherhood, the Mothers
went beyond the limits of customary maternal identity, positioning themselves as
34 elizabeth maier
primary political actors during and after the authoritarian period. Paradoxically,
their political participation in the name of motherhood created conditions in which
they could see many of the discriminatory facets of gender and identify new possi-
bilities for renegotiation and transformation. This is one of the lessons that Latin
America offers to international feminism: the diversity of contexts and agencies not
based on gender that ultimately allows women to recognize the profound injustices
of their gender condition.
“Popular” Feminism: The Gender-Class Perspective

The takeoff of industrial development in the forties brought with it the progressive
rural-urban migration of peasant families, who arrived in the cities of Latin
America with nothing more than hopes for a better life as the centerpiece of a new
strategy for family survival. They settled on the peripheries of the cities, where they
appropriated uninhabited, undeveloped plots without infrastructure. Through
hard work, they broke ground; cleared underbrush; collected scrap; pieced together
rudimentary, fragile homes; and began the long process of environmentally,
socially, and legally colonizing these spatial configurations that would soon come
to be known as the symbol of Latin American poverty. With each passing decade of
incessant immigration, these marginal settlements multiplied and became more
demographically concentrated, creating extensive urban ghetto areas with count-
less structural and day-to-day necessities to resolve. The multiple and complex
bureaucratic procedures dealing with these problems were resolved more effec-
tively through collective intermediation. Thus, in the sixties and seventies, neigh-
borhood organizations sprang up in response to the clamor for better living
conditions.
Although housewives accounted for approximately 85 percent of total mem-
bership, the leaders were always men, frequently running these organizations in an
authoritarian, hierarchical, paternalistic, and caudillo-like fashion, while gradually
satisfying needs for basic infrastructure and services. Lack of infrastructure—

electricity, water, sewage—was always hardest on women, extending and intensi-
fying their domestic workday. They joined these neighborhood organizations as a
strategy to ease the demands of their precarious living conditions, as the ones in
charge of daily and generational family reproduction within the traditional sexual
division of labor. Wanting a better life, they organized, had periodical meetings,
mobilized, and negotiated, pressuring government agencies to attain more favor-
able structural conditions for their family and domestic work. Their husbands
usually consented to their participation, even though it took place in the public
arena, because they considered resolving daily household problems to be
“women’s work.”
As such, women’s popular-sector activism embraced a class-based perspective
that informed their negotiations with the state.13 At the same time, their activism
was informed by the gender implications of their traditional role as caretaker of
household and family. Molyneux (1985) calls this amalgam of working-class
women’s needs and demands practical interests, referring to demands that emerge
from women’s traditional gender roles without consciousness—initially, at least—

of their own subordinate social condition. Years of organizational and reflective
dialectics have called into question the rigidity of Molyneux’s distinction between
women’s practical and strategic interests. It’s now understood that gender con-
sciousness is produced in multiple contexts and through a variety of practices.
Thus, as in the case of the Mothers of the disappeared, women’s community
activism also promoted awareness of gender hierarchy, as well as of the sociocultu-
ral nature of the gender division of labor, and so this became a valuable place to
identify the mechanics of gender oppression in everyday working-class lives.
The negative impact of the foreign-debt crisis that became apparent in many
countries at the end of the seventies and the corrosive consequences of neoliberal
economic policies of state constriction and privatization during the eighties
reduced the quality of life even more for growing segments of Latin American and
Caribbean society (Stephen 1994, 114). The weight of the crisis was especially borne
by women. Researchers have shown how Latin American and Caribbean women
have subsidized neoliberal globalization, pointing to the intensification and exten-
sion of domestic and family labor since the beginning of the application of free-
market measures, in compensation for the elimination of government subsidies
and programs. They have also noted an increase in female-headed households
stemming from male unemployment, migration, and abandonment, as well as
women’s growing participation in the formal and informal workforce; increased
feminization of the most insecure, volatile, and exploited labor markets; and the
subsequent feminization of poverty. Women have been overburdened with double
and triple workdays that have been exhausting and overwhelming, rather than
liberating. The 1980s witnessed increased poverty in Latin America, and grassroots
neighborhood organizations became mechanisms of self-defense, as well as collec-
tive survival strategies.
During the decade of the eighties, small groups of feminists, originally from the
left of the political spectrum, formed the first associations dedicated to addressing
the specific needs of women from the most vulnerable strata of urban society.
Committed to social justice and convinced that the secret to a mass women’s
movement in Latin America lay in the intersection of gender and class, popular
feminists saw the women of the neighborhood organizations through the lens of
gender-consciousness solidarity and with prospects of growing the movement.14
One of the most important differences between the feminism of highly industrial-
ized countries and that of developing countries was the relative importance of
the middle class. While industrialized feminisms were rooted in a majority middle
class and constituted a robust mass movement, feminisms of developing countries
emerged from a minority middle class, without possibility of major growth unless
based on an interclass movement.
Thus, popular feminists decided to accompany low-income women in their
fight for better living conditions, hoping to discover how the confluence of gender
and class would reorganize feminist demands. They were particularly interested in
the connection between gender and economic and social rights, emphasizing the
36 elizabeth maier
right to a decent quality of life, equal pay for equal work, recognition of the social
value of housework and family care, health care (especially reproductive and sexual
health care), the right to participate in and lead social organizations, and the right
to education and training. The Women’s Decade, from 1975 to 1985, and the signing
of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW) in 1979 were ultimately invaluable resources, although in the
first years of popular feminism, their impact was barely noticeable. Rather, this ini-
tial stage of the feminist alliance with women from grassroots organizations was
built on the premise of solidarity among women and on the belief—on the part of
feminists—that all true social transformation had to be based on the deconstruction
of masculine dominance and gender hierarchy. The enthusiasm of feeling part of a
more radical and holistic utopia served as the driving force in the search for com-
munication across class lines. At the same time, it promoted the exploration of a
gender-class linkage that resulted in new political agendas, which, based on the
needs and interests of low-income women, helped create a new Latin American
culture of rights (Molyneux 2002, 1–10).
Specific programs for low-income populations and women’s role within them
varied according to the country, the size and strength of grassroots movements,
their aptitude for negotiating with the state, the type of projects agreed on, and
their modes of administration. In Peru, for example, the state promoted the
Programa del Vaso de Leche (Glass of Milk Program) in working-class neighbor-
hoods, with the instrumental participation of neighborhood women’s organiza-
tions. In Mexico, on the other hand, the leadership of neighborhood organizations
administrated the distribution of tortibonos (tortilla stamps) sponsored by a state
program of social welfare, as well as allocating plots of land—and after the 1985
earthquake, houses—negotiated with the government.
In all cases the methodologies used by popular feminists rested on the shared
identification, systematization, analysis, and comprehension of women’s personal
experiences as the source of collective knowledge about the meaning of gender,

which then served as the reference for the development of political agendas based
on a gender-class perspective. Through weekly get-togethers, workshops, forums,
and conferences, these methodologies prompted processes of self-discovery, self-
esteem, entitlement, and a fuller understanding of the mechanics of gender in daily
life. They also facilitated the cathartic examination of painful gender-based experi-
ences that many women had deeply buried until then, letting shame dictate a
feminine language of silence that had served as a means of reproducing gender
subordination. For the first time for many of them, gender violence and sexual
abuse could be named, recounted, shared, and understood not only as instances of
personal pain but also as social power that harms the health and well-being of
women, and hinders their freedom.
At the same time, attendance at feminist public events and marches swelled
with the participation of working-class women. Indeed, in many countries the
intersection of gender and class had impelled a massive presence of women in
search of multiple forms of social justice. Their demands were frequently linked to
the structural needs of community activists, and they especially worried about
unemployment, rising prices, the lack of stable and well-paid jobs, unequal pay for
equal work, and the dearth of quality child-care centers and collective kitchens
for working women and their families. In countries such as Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica,
Nicaragua, and Mexico, they also demanded the elimination of violence—public
and private—against women; individual and family health care coverage, with par-
ticular emphasis on reproductive and sexual health; and more male responsibility in
parenting. Thus, informed by class experiences that reformulated the original
agenda of founding middle-class feminists, working-class women contributed to
expanding the liberal notion of democracy by including economic, social, and
family practices as references.
The lessons of popular feminism have been veiled by the profound transforma-
tional implications of the watershed events of the 1990s: the debilitating effects on
social movements from the abrupt economic, social, political, and cultural reor-
ganization brought about by neoliberal globalization; the radical changes inherent
in the inauguration of the information age, as Manuel Castells (2000, 4) calls it; and
the geopolitical reconfiguration imposed by the collapse of socialism. The estab-
lishment of democracy in all Latin American countries was, at the same time, an
expression of the will of the people; a condition of the new, stabilizing phase of free-
market economics; and a result of increasing regional, economic integration. It con-
stituted a new arena of political action and set new rules of the game, giving many
feminists the opportunity to initiate a novel form of social protagonism within insti-
tutionalized politics. Concurrently, the convergence of economic restructuring and
the loss of the traditional capitalist and socialist ideological referents that con-
structed modern social subjects (Touraine 1997, 45) debilitated grassroots organiza-
tions in many Latin American and Caribbean countries. Given that the state had
been reduced in its function and orphaned of its charge of social responsibility, the
methodology of mass mobilization, political pressure, and negotiation no longer
achieved the same results as before. The lack of ideological referents and the shift
of feminist agency toward the complex terrain of formal democracy and public
policy left popular feminisms with shrinking economic resources. As international
funding priorities changed, the grassroots subject of social change of the twentieth
century was suddenly replaced at the beginning of the 1990s by a better-trained and
more professionalized subject of social transformation: civil society organized in
NGOs. Many of the 1980s popular feminist groups followed this road of profession-
alization, fully committed to the new strategy that Sonia Alvarez (1998) has defined
as “the NGOization of the movement.”
A more encompassing evaluation of popular feminist activism, and its implica-
tions for this new stage of feminist agency, was muted by the impassioned and
conflictive debate over the new institutional approach that the majority of Latin
American feminist supported.15 The accelerated events of our cybertechnological
phase of globalization and the enormous challenges of learning the institutional
ropes for feminist bureaucrats, advisers, and politicians appear to have blurred the
political importance of nurturing an alliance with a growing critical mass of women
38 elizabeth maier
from majority sectors, who had increasingly become gender conscious and had
begun to dispute the cultural meanings of patriarchal hegemony in their everyday
lives.
Conclusion
The Latin American and Caribbean socioeconomic contexts of the 1970s and 1980s,
in which the social actors reviewed in this chapter emerged and flourished, were
transformed rapidly and profoundly in the nineties because of four macrotenden-
cies: neoliberal globalization, the cybernetic revolution, the demise of the socialist
bloc, and the (re)establishment of democracy as the political model of the region.
This transformation brought with it new landscapes for political intervention and
new forms of agency that forged new sociopolitical feminist actors, who institu-
tionalized the promotion of gender equity on a national, regional, and local level.
The experiences, strategies, and methodologies of the initial phase of women’s con-
sciousness raising on the injustices of gender nourished an evolving process of
social visibility and participation, along with the recognition of women’s subordi-
nate social position. Added to the resignification of traditional gender roles implicit
in the sociopolitical activism of mothers and homemakers and to the reorganiza-
tion of the Latin American collective imagination to include new symbolic repre-
sentations of womanhood, a propitious environment progressively came into being
in which women’s concerns could be transformed into public policy and laws. The
intersection of social struggles for women’s needs, interests, subjectivities, entitle-
ments, and rights progressively informed more complex gender-equity strategies in
all the countries of the region.
However, rooted in the many discontinuities of the Latin American and
Caribbean social fabric as a result of the intense economic, technological, cultural,
and political changes of the nineties (Guzmán 2002), the roadmap for the advance-
ment of women’s rights also experienced fractures. Symbolic barriers now exist in
the collective feminist imaginary that divide strategies of the recent past from the
present, marking a general tendency to ignore the importance of women’s pre-
institutional experiences. What lessons could women’s and feminists’ agency
from the Women’s Decade offer to the actual institutional mode of promoting
gender politics? In my opinion, past contributions to contemporary strategies of
mainstreaming are to be found in three basic levels of knowledge—the conceptual,
the political, and the methodological—contributing to an interpretation of the
gender perspective that is rooted in its original radical, all-encompassing, holistic
meaning.
In that sense, the category patriarchy that characterized early second-wave
feminism encloses historical and hierarchical dimensions that inspired the construc-
tion of gender as a concept and defined its relational content. While the concept of
patriarchy may lack historical and cultural specificity, recognizing the reality of a
male-centered and male-privileged social order is essential for understanding the
social condition of women. The present disuse of the term in institutional gender
discourses leads to a multiplicity of imprecise definitions behind gender politics on
local and national levels in Latin America and the Caribbean. “It just means men and
women,” responded a Mexican congressperson to a young woman who asked her to
define gender. Redeploying patriarchy as an analytical-political category infuses the
gender perspective with the notion of the power that arranges all androcentric social
orders and, at the same time, helps the understanding of the mechanics of women’s
marginalization from full economic, social, and cultural benefits.
On the other hand, the category of gender-class that popular feminism fashioned
underscores the need to overlap two or more dimensions of identity to effectively
respond to the needs and interests of the vast majority of low-income, racially
and ethnically diverse Caribbean and Latin American women. Mainstreaming
gender in public policy is an excellent vehicle for intersecting subaltern identity
axes. The premise of the indivisibility of human rights—defended by the Mothers’
committees—also offers a matrix for weaving an integral approach that views
economic, social, and cultural rights from a gender perspective. Presently, the
gender-class outlook opens possibilities of strategically reimagining a new working-
class, feminist critical mass that integrates the viewpoint and priorities of diverse
female collective actors positioned in local and national political arenas.
The methodologies of small group consciousness raising and of popular educa-
tion, used during the sensitizing phases of liberal and popular feminisms, should
be revived again to explore women’s shared knowledge regarding their actual
needs, interests, demands, entitlements, and rights. Funding could make it possible
to apply a proven methodology to the urgent examination of the impact of global-
ization on the lives and identities of women of the region, detecting measures to
address their situation while garnishing the political will to support necessary
changes. Equally, the adaptation of the second-wave practices of autonomy, self-
representation, and accountability to current globalized conditions provides a
mechanism to make the inner workings of institutional gender politics more trans-
parent, while building bridges between civil society and feminist bureaucrats and
politicians. Public officials would have direct input to give voice to the concerns of
women from popular sectors at the same time as this popular-feminist critical mass
would defend gender policies, which is all the more important in the face of the
current aggressively antifeminist posture of religious fundamentalisms.
Finally, the main lesson that these female collective actors bring to the gender-
equity challenges of present-day Latin America is that many forms of activism can
have an effect on the reformulation of the symbolic representations of women in
the collective imaginary of their cultures, emphasizing the multiple paths to achiev-
ing a gender consciousness that empowers women to believe in their right to
have rights. This is a lesson that fully applies to today’s gender-equity challenges—
highlighting the need for policies to finance projects that bring together distinct
expressions of women’s rights activism in local, national, and regional autonomous
caucuses—to mutually recognize, listen to, and negotiate with each other, while
informing and defending gender-oriented public policy that also responds to differ-
ent women’s specific interests. That is how women will actively continue to enrich
the notion of citizenship and democracy in Latin American and Caribbean societies.
40 elizabeth maier
notes
1. My emphasis on these particular representations of recent Latin American history is not in
any way meant to lessen the influence of other female collective actors on the process of trans-
forming gender. Rather, I chose these examples of women’s collective agency to illustrate the
ways in which private and public realms have intersected in women’s activism.
2. In contrast to first-wave feminism’s struggle for the basic right of citizens to vote, second-
wave feminism refers to the period from the midsixties and on, in which women’s growing
consciousness of gender oppression and discrimination informed the determination to achieve
equitable social, economic, and cultural conditions.
3. Touraine distinguishes cultural movements from social ones, asserting that the former
develops collective actions to transform representations of a subject by emphasizing the acqui-
sition of cultural rights that protect this social actor and dispute, sometimes in a conflictive
way, hegemonic cultural significance (1997, 112).
4. Alvarez and others correctly point out that social movements are complex, multidimen-
sional processes that involve the production of alternative sociocultural meanings, the consti-
tution of new collective identities, and the struggle for material conditions (1998, 319).
5. I do not wish to ignore the influence of industrialized feminisms in the fomenting of Latin
American feminisms but rather assert the importance of the relationship between context,
identity, and agency in the constitution of sociocultural actors in particular places and
moments. Thus, I am stressing that the existence of a sector of women, receptive to and in need
of the meanings proposed by feminist discourse, corresponds to the specific conditions of each
country.
6. It is important to stress the extraordinary symbolic influence of second-wave Latin
American feminists, especially in the media, universities, and the political arena. The extension,
depth, and velocity of the progressive penetration of the feminist discourse into all areas of
sociocultural production of meaning, on one hand, and the virulent reaction it produced in the
most conservative sectors of national societies, in particular the Catholic Church, were totally
disproportionate to the small number of activists at the time. From the beginning of the second
wave, the feminist discourse circulated as a genuine challenge to the hegemonic interpretation
of reality. This dispute over cultural meaning not only referred to women’s rights and citizen-
ship in process of evolution but also framed contemporary contentions about the very para-
digm of modernity, enriching the meaning of liberty, social justice, citizenship, and the idea of
the individual.
7. In contrast to liberal feminism’s exclusive focus on patriarchal social relations and the
need for a “women’s liberation,” Latin American and Caribbean socialist feminists posed a
more complex interpretation of gender discrimination, calling for “women’s emancipation”
from the synergy of patriarchy and capitalism, as a mutually reinforcing dialectic of subordina-
tion. Understanding the differential impact of the intersection of gender and class and identify-
ing examples of that linkage in working-class women’s everyday lives constituted a first step in
fomenting a more nuanced comprehension of gender in the region (De Barbieri and de Oliveira
1986; Tarrés 1998; Randall 1981; Maier 1985; Molyneux 1985; Stephen 1994; Lagarde 1990).
8. For more on the theorization on complex identities, see Foucault (1977), Butler (1990),
Bhabha (1994), and Mouffe (1999); for greater detail on women’s diversified participation, see
Stephen (1994), Schirmer (1993), and Vargas (2002); for the impact of total immersion in the
era of globalization, see Castells (2000), Giddens (2003), and Soja (2000).
9. The term empowerment came into use without a precise reference. Due to its growing pop-
ularity and imprecision, Trotner and Smith suggest that the concept has become “contentious
and controversial” (2004, 5). In this article, I refer to the United Nations’ definition, which
states empowerment to be “women’s feeling of self-value; their right to have and decide on
options; their right to have the power to control their lives, within as well as outside the home;
and their capacity to influence the direction of social change to create a more just national and
international social and economic order” (Trotner and Smith 2004, 12).
10. The value of the workforce marked a fundamental difference between feminisms of
industrialized countries and those of Latin America. With a cheap and abundant workforce,
middle-class employment of domestic workers postponed renegotiation of the sexual division
of labor between men and women. A substantial part of the second workday was left to these
less privileged women, thus avoiding more radical questioning of sexual roles within middle-
class families.
11. These statistics reflect figures of Amnesty International (1982) and the Federación de
Familiares de Desaparecidos (Federation of Relatives of Disappeared Persons) (FEDEFAM
1982), respectively.
12. A theoretical debate contingent on the Mothers’ committees created two distinct ten-
dencies within Latin American feminist praxis. The maternalists, an offshoot of cultural femi-
nism, sustained that the nurturing and altruism associated with the experience of maternity
informs a new and superior political ethic that is evident in women’s political participation
(Ruddick 1989). In contrast, antimaternalists argued that those cultural characteristics associ-
ated with maternity, such as the altruism of being a “body for others,” (Bassaglia and Kanoussi
1983; Lagarde 1990) sustain women’s subordination. This contention questioned the signifi-
cance of the Mothers’ transgression of the traditional geographies of the sexual division of soci-
ety to engage in politics in the name of motherhood ( Jelin 1997; Lamas 1987).
13. Sojo (1985) defines the term popular as including the multiple representations that consti-
tute the Latin American working class.
14. Popular feminism refers to a gender-perspective interpretation of low-income women’s
needs, interests, and demands. During the 1980s middle-class feminists worked with women
from popular organizations to specify the components of a gender-class perspective. At that
time popular feminism evoked two distinct images: one referring to middle-class feminists
linked to these grassroots movements and the other referring to the women from those move-
ments who participated in gender-oriented activities. Over the years the impact of changing
gender representations and discourses on women’s gender awareness has resulted in more
women in grassroots movements with gender consciousness and demands. This has redefined
popular feminism as exclusively referring to the gender rights–based vision and agency of those
women activists.
15. The significance of women’s grassroots militancy was addressed by authors such as
Schmukler, when she asserted that the public agency of Argentinean women in the name of
their traditional roles ultimately brought about family democratization (1994). On the other
hand, Barrig argues that the participation of the Peruvian women in community kitchens
of working-class neighborhoods, or in the Programa del Vaso de Leche, served as a means of

reproducing women’s traditional roles, rather than signifying real change in gender content
or renegotiation (1994, 151–173). However, the paradigmatic shift of the nineties unsettled a
sense of feminist continuity, leaving popular feminism without a comprehensive analysis that
could have informed a methodology of integration with the current institutional strategy.
Along with a study of its achievements and shortcomings, it is necessary to understand the
dynamics of autonomy and empowerment within structural situations in which women are not
able to be economically independent. A precise analysis of the differential power relations
among women resulting from class, ethnicity, and race, among other factors, is needed, as well
as the identification of ways to render these relations visible, deal with them, and go beyond.
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PART II
WOMEN, WORK, AND FAMILIES
The Structural Context of Globalization
2 Women’s Work and
Neoliberal Globalization
implications for gender equity
alice colón
sara poggio
Even after thirty years of active women’s movements and advances in gender
equity, we are still far from full citizenship for women in Latin America. We need
not detail the impressive increase in women’s education, their declining fertility,
or their growing social, economic, and political participation, all of which have
changed their lives over the past decades. However, these years also saw changes in
the world capitalist order, impelling policies of neoliberal globalization that trans-
formed Latin American social, economic, and political structures and intensified
poverty and inequality throughout the region. It is increasingly evident that without
social and economic equity enabling the exercise of rights, the viability of citizenship
is undermined for a majority of people, and particularly for women in the region.
Since the 1980s, external debt crises and subsequent structural adjustment poli-
cies have led to declining real earnings, massive unemployment, privatization, and
cuts in social services and target programs, all of which forced poor households to
engage in multiple strategies for subsistence, depending most heavily on women’s
contributions and intensified work (Arriagada 1998; González de la Rocha 2001).

Since the 1990s measures of industrial restructuring geared to opening Latin
American economies to international trade has virtually institutionalized precarious
work (Mazza 2004; Benería 2006; González de la Rocha 2001). Women became even
more central to such economic and globalizing trends as their increasing economic
activity became part of growing precarious labor (Arriagada 1998; Mazza 2004).
It is impossible in this chapter to go into a detailed account of every country, sub-
region, or particular ethnic and racial group. We concentrate on the broad trends
generally accompanying neoliberal policies and economic globalization in Latin
America, including the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. We also discuss the economic,
social, and political impact for women and men in the region and see how the exclu-
sionary effects of these policies have hindered women’s social and political advances.
Industrial Restructuring and Precarious Labor

With the retrenchment of state benefits and limits to employment in the public sec-
tor since the 1980s, neoliberal policies have made the private economic sphere and
48 alice colón and sara poggio
the labor market more central for subsistence and social inclusion (Mazza 2004).
Economic security and social inclusion have to increasingly be attained through
private, familial resources rather than from governmental or social organizations.
The same structural trends that made remunerated labor more important, how-
ever, pushed employers to seek greater flexibility in their use of workers as a means
to become more competitive in a globalizing economy. With the weakening of
both workers’ bargaining position and the states’ capacity to regulate employment
conditions, it became easier to fire workers and to impose more precarious labor
conditions. Through legal regulations and established practices, the new labor
regime has been characterized by the increase of insecure, unstable, low-paid jobs,
which do not provide the rights, guarantees, and benefits that were considered the
standard working conditions of formal employment (Leiva 2000; León 2000).
It is in this context that women have become a growing proportion of the
region’s labor force. Working-age women’s participation increased from 34.5 to 39.3
percent between 1995 and 2005; only in Argentina, Mexico, and Costa Rica was it
consistently lower than 50 percent in urban areas throughout this period (CEPAL
2006, 2007). Male labor force participation, on the other hand, remained at nearly
72 percent, declining or remaining relatively stagnant in most countries since the
1990s (Montaño 2007a, 2007b; CEPAL 2006, 2007). With male employment declin-
ing and female participation growing, women exceeded 40 percent of the econom-
ically active population by 2005.
Health, education, and other social services were the sectors that increasingly
incorporated higher-educated women into the Latin American and Caribbean
modernization process throughout the twentieth century (Colón and Reddock
2004). Incorporation into global markets included the expansion of commercial and
producer services—activities servicing economic production such as finance,
accounting, scientific research, specialized design, and other business support—
that provided further professional, technical, and office jobs. The proportion of
women working in professional and technical occupations and in clerical and

related services surpassed that of men in practically all countries in 2005 (CEPAL
2006, 2007). Nonetheless, women still remain concentrated in the less economically
valued educational, health, and social service professions, as well as in lower-level
administrative office and commercial positions, while men take greater hold of
higher-status scientific, technical, administrative, and managerial jobs (CEPAL
2006; Giacometti 2005, 2007; León 2000; INMUJERES 2005).
It is thus ironic that until 2002 we found the widest earnings gap precisely
between the higher-educated men and women, despite the fact that the pattern
seemed to be changing in close to half of the Latin American countries by mid-
decade (CEPAL 2007; Colón Warren 2003; Montaño 2007a, 2007b). Moreover, in
practically all countries, women tended to be more concentrated than men in the
public sector, threatening women’s economic opportunities as government jobs
declined throughout the region during the period between 1990 and 2005 (CEPAL
2007; Arriagada 1998). Nonetheless, the closing of the earnings gap between higher-
educated men and women since 2002 in most countries suggests some advance-
ment in gender equity in these social sectors (CEPAL 2007; Montaño 2007a, 2007b).
Women’s Work and Globalization 49
Poor Latin American women have also been main participants in the
globalizing labor market. If continuing groups of women entered the labor force
impelled by aspirations of personal and social fulfillment, many were also propelled
by economic pressure, particularly as they faced men’s declining employment
and earnings (INMUJERES 2005). While higher-educated women continued
to have higher levels of economic activity than lower-educated women, it was
the latter group who tended to accelerate more in their labor force participation
since the 1990s. It was these poor women who moved into an increasingly
precarious labor market (Arriagada 1998; Mazza 2004; Montaño 2007a, 2007b;
CEPAL 2007; Bravo 2004; Espinosa 2005a, 2005b; Giacometti 2005, 2007; Lara 2006a;
Sanz 2007).
To the old categories of precarious labor—traditional agriculture, paid domes-
tic work, and unskilled self-employment—neoliberal trends added new precarious
jobs characterized by their low productivity, low quality, and low pay and associ-
ated with invisible pauperization (Leiva 2000). Such work is usually done in smaller
enterprises, through self-employment or in the informal economy, subcontracted
to what appear as independent producers or to those in jobs without formal con-
tracts. This work is also increasingly found in the flexible, part-time, short-term
work arrangements that have become part of the formal sector. Further undermin-
ing workers’ security, these jobs tend to offer less access to social welfare and secu-
rity, which in the region have been particularly tied to formal, stable employment
(Arriagada 1998; Leiva 2000; León 2000; Montaño 2007a, 2007b).
Of the traditional precarious job spheres, live-in domestic service has tended to
decline in most countries. Yet poor women still provide this service in higher-status
homes, in many instances under conditions akin to servitude. The proportion of
paid domestic workers actually increased in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico from
1990 to 2005 (CEPAL 2007; Montaño 2007a, 2007b). They represented between
10 percent of economically active women in urban areas in Venezuela to more than
20 percent in Paraguay; in countries such as Puerto Rico, they remain hidden from
official statistics as part of an unregistered informal economy (CEPAL 2006; Colón
Warren 2003). Although domestic workers’ mobilization has won some improve-
ment in their rights and working conditions, they still lack legal protection in terms
of hours worked and social benefits recognized to other workers and remain
vulnerable to arbitrary firings (Montaño 2007a, 2007b).
Agriculture, considered more precarious than urban labor, still employs over
one-fourth of women in poorer Andean countries and Paraguay (CEPAL 2006).
The proportion in agriculture is probably underregistered in other countries, par-
ticularly those with large indigenous populations that share a tradition of female
agricultural work. The presence of women appears more important as global mar-
kets threaten and degrade subsistence agriculture, and women have become de
facto heads of household as men migrate in search of economic alternatives (Bravo
and Zapata 2005; Calla 2007; Correia and Van Bronkhorst 2000; Giacometti 2006;
Hopenhayn and Bello 2001; Lara 2006b).
Although they represent a smaller proportion of agricultural workers in
other countries, women have also become a major labor supply for nontraditional
agricultural exports of the region’s global trade. Catering to the year-long demand
for fresh produce in the North, numerous producers from Mexico to Chile provide
fruit, vegetables, and flowers (Barrientos 1999; Gideon 1999; Friedemann-Sánchez
2006; Montaño 2004). Although there is evidence of some changes in Colombia
(Friedemann-Sánchez 2006), women in nontraditional agricultural production have
been concentrated in the lower-paid, lower-status posts, particularly in processing
and packing, where they may face intense long hours of seasonal work without
legal contracts and under unhealthy working conditions during long periods of
unemployment (Barrientos 1999; Gideon 1999). Making use of women’s flexible
labor, the smaller producers have adjusted employment to the fluctuations in
consumer demand and to the particular risks of agriculture, including weather
conditions affecting crops. Larger export companies and retail importers in core
countries are spared the risks, while remaining in economic control through the
marketing of products (Barrientos 1999).
Economic integration with the U.S. markets through mechanisms such as free
trade zones, the North America Free Trade Agreement, and the Caribbean Basin
Initiative have also promoted, since the 1980s, the further expansion of existing
maquiladoras (export-oriented assembly line factories) throughout Mexico, the
Caribbean, and Central America. The expansion has favored female economic activ-
ity so much that the industry has come to employ one-fifth or more economically
active women in most of these countries (CEPAL 2006; Alvarenga Jule 2001; Safa
1995). Export production provides not only traditional goods such as textiles and
clothing but also more modern electronics, professional instruments, automobile
and mechanical parts, software, and even data processing (Colón Warren 2003;
Gideon 1999; Freeman 2000; Fussel 2000). Maquiladoras may offer greater stability
than self-employment to women lacking higher education, but these jobs remain
lower paying, require more intense work than other jobs, and are sometimes
oppressive in terms of rights and working conditions. No contract, no extra pay for
night work, and restrictions to effective unionization are but some of the conditions
objected to by maquiladora workers (Alvarenga Jule 2001; Benería 2006; Fussel 2000;
Safa 1995). Low pay and intense labor are found even among data processing work,
which, although “modern” in style and emulating office employment, subjects
workers to the same pressure as factory assembly lines (Freeman 2000).
Moreover, economic trends have restrained the long-term tendency of
women’s employment. Women’s participation based on labor-intensive manu-
facturing has not been irreversible but is bound by the same setbacks, fluctuations,
and tendencies to reduce labor costs that characterize capitalist production in gen-
eral (Colón Warren 2003). Since the 1970s, as workers gained bargaining power and
higher wages in countries such as Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Mexico, enterprises
have moved to lower-paid areas within the same nation or to other countries of the
region or beyond, as seen in the recent industrial expansion into China. Industries
have continued moving and displacing workers even when they have not faced ris-
ing salary levels (Báez 1998; Colón and Reddock 2004; Fussel 2000). The slowdown
in labor-intensive manufacturing may explain the decline in economic participation

among poorly educated Salvadoran women, and why, in Honduras and Puerto
Rico, women represented a lower proportion of the economically active popula-
tion in 2004 than in the previous decade (CEPAL 2006; Montaño 2007a, 2007b).
Women’s employment opportunities may also be affected by competition from
male workers. Under the pressure of declining or stagnant male employment, and
as some groups of women become less available or more demanding, men have
also been incorporated into the most diverse factory production. Such jobs become
redefined in gender terms so that they are no longer typified as “female” but main-
tain their “feminine” low pay and insecure working conditions (Freeman 2000; Safa
2002). In the same vein, the touted move toward more technologically advanced or
capital intensive industries as a strategy of development, observed, for example, in
Mexico or Puerto Rico, has limited poor women’s working opportunities to the
extent that industries tend to employ not only fewer workers but a greater propor-
tion of men and higher-skilled labor (Colón and Reddock 2004; Fleck 2001).
Women’s growing economic activity is thus facing a declining or stagnant labor
market and increasing levels of open unemployment for those actively seeking jobs
in the formal sector (Mazza 2004). While the modern formal sectors may be con-
sidered relatively competitive in terms of global trade, they have been unable to
absorb the available labor supply that presently includes a growing proportion
of women (Bravo 2005; Giacometti 2005). Even when a move toward economic
recovery in all but the poorest countries, such as Paraguay and Bolivia, contributed
to a decline in unemployment after 2002, in 2005 unemployment was still similar
or higher than in 1990 in a great majority of countries. It remained in the double
digits in the Southern Cone countries, Brazil, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela
(CEPAL 2006, 2007; Montaño 2007a, 2007b). Unemployment levels remained
higher for women in all countries but Mexico, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, ranging
from 3 percent in Mexico to 16 percent in Colombia (CEPAL 2006).
Open unemployment remains but the tip of the iceberg in terms of the lack of
adequate jobs. The pressure of joblessness has furthered the acceptance of precari-
ous employment and underemployment, already common in Mexico, Central
America, and the Caribbean (Mazza 2004). Beyond the aforementioned agricultural
and manufacturing sectors, this has meant the growth of low-level services, includ-
ing small-scale commerce and personal services, as well as an expanding tourist
industry, promoted as an alternative for the region’s faltering economies (Freeman
2000; Montaño 2004; Colón and Reddock 2004). Trends of restructuring in the
diverse economic sectors have included not only reorganizing and reducing the
larger enterprises but pushing for further flexibility of labor relations. Such flexibil-
ity allows for the adjustment of employment levels to fluctuations in product
demand, while avoiding the payment of higher benefits provided to more stable
workers (Alvarenga Jule 2001; Leiva 2000; León 2000). This has included practices of
irregular employment—part-time and, most often, temporary work—as well as the
subcontracting of small enterprises or independent and home-based producers,
who are really disguised salaried workers but do not receive the benefits of formal
employment (Gideon 1999; Leiva 2000; Mazza 2004; Ministerio de Desarrollo Social
Panama 2007).
A study of twelve countries in the region shows the proportion of formally
employed women with indefinite contracts declined from 19 percent to 13 percent
between 2002 and 2005, or a reduction in one-fifth of the long-term, stable jobs
(Montaño 2007b). Labor displacement meant a move to lower-quality jobs, even in
countries with better indices of recovery, such as Chile and Brazil (León 2000). The
loss of jobs and the immersion in precarious sectors probably explains why the pro-
portion of working women with earnings below poverty levels has been higher
than the proportion of men in practically all countries (Mazza 2004; CEPAL 2007).
In a resurgence of forms of work that were presumed to have disappeared with
capitalist development, a high proportion of both men and women, including
employers and salaried workers of microenterprises, were found working in low-
productivity sectors in both paid domestic work and in unskilled self-employment.
These sectors continued to expand in a majority of countries after 1990, becoming
the occupation of up to 40–50 percent of women by 2005 in more economically
advanced South American countries, Panama, Costa Rica, and the Dominican
Republic, and around two-thirds or more in poorer Andean and Central American
countries (CEPAL 2007; Montaño 2007b). Following a historical pattern, only in the
Dominican Republic and in Venezuela did we find a higher proportion of employed
men than of employed women working in such low productivity jobs (CEPAL
2007; Machinea et al. 2005; Montaño 2007b).
As salaried employment declined, unskilled self-employment and the informal
sector remained as survival mechanisms for the working poor population (Mazza
2004; Bravo 2005; Bravo and Zapata 2005; INMUJERES 2005; Lara 2006a; Ministerio
de Desarrollo Social, Panama Republic 2007; Sanz 2007). Self-employment has
increased in most countries since the 1990s, ranging from about 20 percent of occu-
pied women in Argentina, Chile, and Panama to more than 50 percent in Bolivia
and Peru in 2005 (CEPAL 2006, 2007). The proportion of men who were self-
employed among employed men in 2005, on the other hand, ranged from around
20 percent in Mexico and Costa Rica to nearly 60 percent in Nicaragua. The pro-
portion of self-employed men surpassed the proportion of self-employed women
only in Nicaragua, the Southern Cone, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic
(CEPAL 2006). The expansion of such work underscores the sluggishness of the
formal economy in generating adequate jobs and the resulting pressures and
vulnerability experienced by working women and men.
In addition to the pressures of gender inequality, indigenous and Afro-
descendant women suffer from ethnic and racial exclusions that keep them propor-
tionately indigent and less educated, holding the most precarious jobs. Indigenous
and Afro-descendant women appear disadvantaged in terms of literacy, school
attendance, and educational levels compared to white men and women. In some
cases, this disadvantage holds even when compared to indigenous and Afro-
descendant men (Calla 2007; Duryea and Genoni 2004; Montaño 2004). Ethnic and
racial differences in overall economic activity may be less pronounced, so Afro-

descendant women surpass white and mestiza women in labor force participation
(Safa 2005) and indigenous women surpass white women’s participation in some
Andean countries (Calla 2007; Duryea and Genoni 2004). Afro-descendant and
indigenous women, however, tend to be most concentrated in low-paying and
informal jobs, not only in agriculture but also in menial services, small-scale com-
merce, domestic service, and street vending in the informal sector (Mazza 2004;
Montaño 2004; Montaño 2007a; Sanz 2007; Giacometti 2007). The disadvantage in
the labor market reinforces their poverty and inequality so that, for example, in
Guatemala 24 percent of indigenous women were indigent, compared to 6.5 per-
cent of mestiza and white women, and in Brazil 22 percent of Afro-descendant
women were indigent compared to 8 percent of white women (Montaño 2007b).
Migration and Transnational Aspects of Precarious Labor

With intensified global economic, cultural, and political linkages, and constraining
job opportunities in their home countries, women have also become a substantial
part of the migrant workers who are the counterpart of mobile capital (Sassen 1988)
and a majority of Latin American migrants in practically all countries of the region.
Women’s migration is defined not only by their gendered and familial responsibili-
ties at home but by the gendered labor demand at places of destination. A sector of
migrant women have responded to the demand for higher-skilled workers, such as
nurses from the Caribbean employed in the United States, leaving their home
countries with an unmet need for their labor (ECLAC et al. 2004). The vast major-
ity of migrant workers from Latin America and the Caribbean are, nonetheless,
constituted by poorer women. Their low pay has allowed for the persistence of
restructured manufacturing industries in the United States, which offer meager
earnings and poor working conditions. Women have also catered to the need for
personal and other menial services in hotels, restaurants, offices, and other build-
ings required by the higher- and middle-status populations in North American and
European cities (Montaño 2004; Sassen 1988).
Most often, poor migrant women are employed in paid domestic services, pro-
viding traditionally female household or care work no longer done by employed
middle- and upper-class women (Benería 2006). In what has become a transnational
chain of care work, Mexican, Central American, and Dominican women care for
the children and the aged in the United States and European countries, particularly
in Spain, while their family members or other poor women do the same for the
migrants’ families in their home countries (in Mexico, the Dominican Republic,
etc.). The transnational chain is also being reproduced within the region as, for
example, Paraguayan women provide domestic service for Argentinean women,
Nicaraguans for Costa Ricans, or Dominicans for Puerto Ricans (Montaño 2007a,
2007b). Along with those involved in domestic services, precariousness and vulner-
ability is perhaps most evident among migrant women entangled in what has
become a diverse and complex transnational trade of sexual services (Montaño
2007a, 2007b; Colón and Reddock 2004).
Implications for Social and Gender Equity

It has been widely acknowledged that women have carried the heaviest brunt of
neoliberally inspired economic and social policies. Through personal and collective
survival measures—including adjustments in consumption, the exchange of goods
and services, and networking with family and community members—they have
made up for the lost social services and declining earnings that have accompanied
structural adjustment and economic restructuring. In addition to adjustments
within households, women have engaged in “collective survival strategies,” such as
communal kitchens, informal child-care groups, “self-built” housing projects, com-
munity or village banks, microenterprises, and consumer groups (Craske 1999). If at
first these were only extensions of individual responses as the economic situation
worsened, women’s organizations have become politicized, engaging in strikes and
demonstrations and making demands on the state for programs that would support
their domestic responsibilities. Programs developed in Peru, Ecuador, Argentina,
and elsewhere, have recognized the contribution of women’s work, assigning funds
directly to women responsible for ensuring their children’s health and education or
caring for other dependents (Montaño 2007a, 2007b; Ministerio de Desarrollo Social,
Panama Republic 2007; INMUJERES 2005; Hays-Mitchell 2002; Giacometti 2005).
While such autonomous projects or government programs have offered
women some economic respite and the possibility of providing for their families
and children’s immediate needs, they also afford more than economic advantages.
Women have gained a sense of the worth of their ascribed social functions and
their potential capabilities, a heightened political identity, and an assessment
of their organizational skills, all of which led them to resist neoliberal reforms
(Craske 1999; Hays-Mitchell 2002). Neighborhood organizations became spaces in
which women contested sexism and power in gender relations, enabling some
changes in their status in the family and their engagement in feminist actions
(Di Marco 2006). Nonetheless, such programs and organizations still tend to make
the family, and particularly women, responsible for the intensified domestic and
caring work that accompanies the prevailing economic policies (Hays-Mitchell
2002; Montaño 2007a, 2007b).
Women’s increasing employment has also been central in paving the way for
Latin American economies’ incorporation into global markets. As the labor
demand for export-led production and other economic sectors expanded, women’s
flexible work and lower earnings provided employers with additional workers at
lower costs (Arriagada 1998; Mazza 2004). Women’s earnings also “made ends
meet” within families and in some cases helped them live beyond the level of
poverty or indigence, allowing for the adjustment to conditions of unemployment
and underemployment imposed by neoliberal policies.
This increase in women’s economic activity has implied a redefinition of female
status and roles, with possibilities for advancement in gender equity. Studies have
found that if women maintain control of their earnings, they may command
greater recognition in the household and enhance their mobility and participation
in decision making in the family, weakening some of the most open patterns of
male authoritarianism (García and de Oliveira 2007; Safa 1995). Still, what possible
advancement women may obtain from having control over their own earnings
must be considered in relation to the prevailing conditions of poverty and socio-
economic inequality pervasive in the region. If highly educated women have
shown some improvement in their social and economic conditions, for a much
larger group of women, the flexibilization of the labor market has meant precarious
work, insecurity, and overt or hidden poverty. Strategies of family survival based
on increasing the number of members in the labor force, mainly women, were
premised on conditions of great vulnerability. Given their lack of skills and the
labor conditions, women are pressured to accept any available job in the formal or
informal sectors.
Official documents suggest that since 2002 there has been some alleviation of
the most abject conditions of indigence in most countries of the region, which
could be related to the increase in additional earners and multiple earning activities
within households. Nonetheless, if the increase of newly remunerated members at
least replaced the income lost by unemployed men, the alternative of precarious
work generally did not improve the quality of life of families. Even when at one
point they may not appear as poor, the unstable earnings impose greater levels of
risk and indebtedness, affecting consumption patterns. Families must intensify their
work and engage in additional survival strategies as they spread out resources over
periods when there are fewer or no earners (Benería 2006). In the most developed
countries of the continent, even middle classes have had to face unprecedented
unemployment and underemployment.
As Lourdes Benería (2006) notes, precarious work entails the intensified vulner-
ability of an economically disadvantaged population, whose earnings may at one
point appear to place them above official poverty levels, but which provide no secu-
rity for the future. For working-class sectors, lacking access to regular earnings hin-
ders other support and subsistence strategies. As suggested by Mercedes González
de la Rocha (2001), the move from the resources of poverty to the poverty of
resources entails not only a lack of adequate employment and intensified work but
also the loss of social exchange and self-help.
For women particularly, the precarious labor regime includes not only a drain
on material resources but an increasing “poverty of time,” as they need to engage
in more intense work with longer hours, including both paid and unpaid labor
(Gideon 1999; Montaño 2007a, 2007b; Benería 2006). This undermining of energy,
time, and regular earnings has been found to affect poor women’s consumption
patterns and their capacity to maintain the health, nutrition, and social cohesion of
their families, resulting in conditions that test the limits of their social inclusion
and well-being (Montaño 2007b; Gideon 1999; González de la Rocha 2001). To the
extent that poor women are more likely to be in precarious jobs, earn less, and tend
to suffer more interruptions to their paid work to fulfill their domestic responsibil-
ities, they face a cumulative chain of disadvantages and discrimination throughout
their life, which leads to the lack of pensions, economic destitution, and insecurity
in their old age (Giacometti 2005; Montaño 2007a, 2007b; Machinea et al. 2005).
Resources are also drained as prevailing socioeconomic conditions tend to frag-

ment family and community networks, straining their possibilities of social sup-
port. Among other processes, stagnant male employment and women’s access to
their own earnings may pose a challenge to stable marital unions if changes in tra-
ditional gender roles are not accepted. This may become a factor in the increasing
divorce and separation rates, as well as in cases of domestic violence (Safa 1995;
Colón and Reddock 2004). Male migration, demographic factors, or simply the
increase of unemployed men help account for the multiplication of women heads
of households among the lower-income families in most of the countries of Latin
America.
The number of female-headed households is growing, not only among lower-
status sectors nor are they necessarily the most poor or destitute, particularly if
women garner greater control of resources and receive support from other family
members (Lara 2006a; Espinosa 2005b; Safa 2002, this volume). Sara Poggio (2003),
however, has pointed out that the democratization of relations in extended families
is more apparent when there is no spouse living in the household than when unem-
ployed men are present. A great proportion of poor female heads of family, on the
other hand, are in one-parent homes, not part of extended families with whom to
share economic burdens (Montaño 2007b). Women may in fact be left with greater
responsibilities and with less support from other family members or from the state.
Conclusion
The previous discussion underscores a number of conclusions regarding alterna-
tives to problems within the prevailing economic policies. Democracy and gender
equity are contingent on the conditions of social, economic, and cultural equity
that provide for the satisfaction of people’s needs and of the social inclusion of
women of diverse classes, races, ethnicities, and other categories. Even though edu-
cation is extremely necessary in the development of women’s capacities and
resources, it is not the only condition for gender equity. It is important that women
have the opportunity to achieve the highest occupational levels and decision-
making positions, breaking down stereotypes that define power and scientific and
mechanical capacities as masculine traits. An equitable valuation and remuneration
of the personal, social, humanistic, and educational services and job spheres in
which women have been concentrated is also necessary.
Most importantly, ensuring decent working conditions and access to social
services should become a priority to enable equity among the majority of poor
women. This should include not only increasing the productivity and commercial
capacity of what are presently precarious job spheres but also providing more ade-
quate and secure earnings and provisions to what are now irregular workers.
Extending more universal conditions of social welfare and security should also pro-
mote both gender and social equity. Policies and programs promoting gender
equity will not be complete, however, without redistributing domestic responsibil-
ities between men and women and providing them with the institutional support
for the harmonization of their productive and reproductive work. Only then will
women be able to engage more equitably in the market and public sphere, without
the poverty of time intensified under conditions of social and economic precarious-
ness (Montaño 2007a, 2007b; Benería 2006; Gideon 1999). Struggles of the most
diverse groups of women—domestic, maquiladora, home-based, community, and
enterprise workers, along with the feminist and other nongovernmental organiza-
tions supporting them—have already achieved some positive advances throughout
the region (Alvarenga Jule 2001; Arriagada 1998; Carr et al. 2000; Friedemann-
Sánchez 2006; Hays-Mitchell 2002). It is a call for our continuing mobilization!
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3 Female-Headed Households
and Poverty in Latin America
a comparison of cuba, puerto rico,
and the dominican republic
helen safa
Female household headship has long been associated with poverty. Women’s
lower salaries, coupled with other forms of gender discrimination in the labor
market, and the lack of a stable male breadwinner imply that households headed by
females have lower incomes. But Sylvia Chant (1997) and others have questioned
this automatic assumption, claiming that female heads are not always “the poorest
of the poor.” In Latin America during the 1990s the percentage of urban female
headship increased overall and, while indigent households represented the largest
proportion of female headships, the increase was not confined to this sector
(ECLAC 2004, 23).
In this chapter, I analyze the way in which globalization has accentuated the
poverty of female heads by examining data from three countries in the Hispanic
Caribbean—Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic—in all of which
female headship has increased during the 1990s. Part of this increase can be attrib-
uted to the rapid gains in female labor force participation in each of these countries,
which coincides with a decline or stagnation in male labor force participation.

In my book The Myth of the Male Breadwinner: Women and Industrialization in the
Caribbean, which compares these three countries, I show that as real wages and
male employment deteriorates, women step in to bolster the household economy
and have now become principal contributors to the household in each country.
The massive increase in married women’s labor force participation is also deci-
sive because it threatens the partner’s role as provider, a role that traditionally
formed the basis of his authority in the household. When married women have to
substitute for men as principal breadwinners, family conflict and marital break-
down often ensue, contributing to the rising percentage of female heads of house-
hold in each of the Caribbean countries studied. This pattern is clearly not confined
to the Caribbean, but may help explain the increase in female-headed households
worldwide (Chant 1997). Amy Bellone Hite and Jocelyn Viterna (2005) have shown
that in Latin America as a whole, due to economic restructuring, increased female
labor force participation rates have been accompanied by declines in male rates.
Female-Headed Households and Poverty 61
But the impact of economic restructuring and globalization on female heads

may differ in each country, depending on demographic differences among female
heads of household and the resources available to them, which range from jobs to
state benefits to remittances. Female heads are found at different socioeconomic
levels and also vary in marital status, including those never married, divorced, sepa-
rated, or widowed.1 In the Caribbean there is a high proportion of consensual
unions, which are less stable than legal marriages and therefore increase the likeli-
hood of single motherhood. Most of these single mothers have never married,
although some are separated and divorced.
These single mothers rely mostly on their own employment for survival, but in
developing countries like Cuba and the Dominican Republic they are traditionally
embedded in extended families who offer economic and emotional support. This
often leads to an undercount of female heads, who are instead embedded as sub-
heads in the extended households of their parents, as we see in the Dominican
Republic. However, in Puerto Rico, state policy encourages the breakup of
extended families, and there is a higher percentage of widows, due to the aging of
the Puerto Rican population. As a result, Puerto Rican female heads are more likely
to live alone without the presence of extended families. The state support available
to female heads also enables this independence and is much higher in Puerto Rico
than in the Dominican Republic or Cuba, where remittances from relatives living
abroad play a larger role. All three countries have experienced large-scale emigra-
tion, chiefly to the United States. Migration started in Puerto Rico as early as the
1940s, so remittances are no longer as important.
This chapter will compare the status of female-headed households in Cuba,
Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic by examining the importance of each of
the factors affecting vulnerability to poverty, namely differences in marital status
and household composition, employment, and other sources of income like state
support and remittances. I argue that female heads are more vulnerable to poverty
if (1) they live alone with young children and do not have the support of extended
family, (2) they receive little or no financial support or social services from the state,
and/or (3) they have inadequate alternative sources of income, whether from jobs
or remittances. I cannot correlate these factors with accurate income data, but
focus more on the strategies that female heads use to maximize resources from
these different sources. My focus is on female factory workers, from which my orig-
inal sample in the 1980s was drawn, and which in each country contains a consider-
able segment of female household heads. I have not done systematic field research
since then, except in the Dominican Republic, where I conducted another study on
female employment and family structure in a free trade zone in 1997 (Safa 2002).
I also consult national-level statistics to see how continued economic restructuring
in the 1990s affects the status of female-headed households in each country.
Both the amount and kind of female headship varies by country. Women in
Cuba now head over one-third of the households, while in the Dominican Republic
and Puerto Rico they constitute about 27 percent. Widows constitute one-third of
62 helen safa
female heads of household in Puerto Rico, while single mothers are the most
frequent form of female head in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Caribbean
women are resisting marriage and remarriage because the “marriage market” of
eligible men who could fulfill the role of male breadwinner has shrunk. Male emi-
gration contributes to the formation of female-headed households, while remit-
tances have become an important source of income for those left behind. There is
also an increasing percentage of female heads among professional women in the
Caribbean, resulting largely from rising divorce rates in each of these countries.
However, these professional women are less vulnerable to poverty than the low-
income factory workers focused on here.
Despite these differences, all three countries share a similar historical and cul-
tural background as Spanish colonies that came under strong U.S. economic con-
trol in the early twentieth century. Cuba broke this control with its 1959 revolution,
which established a socialist state. Puerto Rico remains a U.S. colony, but Puerto
Ricans are U.S. citizens, which makes them eligible for many federal benefits. The
Dominican Republic also remains under U.S. tutelage, but was able to establish a
democratically elected government after the overthrow of the dictator Trujillo in
1965. All three economies focused on sugar cultivation, which helps account for the
relatively large Afro-descendant population, many of whom were brought as slaves
in the colonial period. But with the decline in sugar production, Puerto Rico, the
Dominican Republic, and even Cuba are now more geared toward tourism and
export processing.
The Economic Crisis in the Caribbean in the 1990s

Neoliberal reforms in Latin America in the 1990s encouraged the informalization of
the labor market, the weakening of unions, and the growth of cheap labor. In 2003,
according to the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC), 220 million or
43 percent of Latin Americans lived in poverty, a high social cost that has made
increasing numbers question the efficacy of market reform (Hershberg 2003).

Globalization and neoliberal reform hit the small economies of the Caribbean even
harder than the rest of the region. They had long been dependent on foreign invest-
ment and exports to sustain their economies, but as globalization opened up new
markets for investment, particularly in China, they became less competitive and
more dependent on cheap labor. Meanwhile, neoliberal reform was driving up the
cost of living and reducing the value of real wages even more.
No country illustrates these effects of globalization better than the Dominican
Republic. It abandoned sugar as a primary export commodity in the mid-eighties
and sought foreign exchange through export manufacturing and tourism but
became even more dependent on the vagaries of the world market. As the value of
the Dominican peso dropped along with high inflation at the end of the 1990s, the
cost of living increased and the female share of the labor force increased to 38 per-
cent in 2000. Since 1980 the rate of female labor force participation has grown at a
higher rate than that of men, reflecting the need for additional wage earners in the
household (Báez 2000, 45, table 2.2). Women continue to be the predominant labor
force in the free trade zones, but by 2004 this percentage had declined to about
52 percent (CIPAF 2005).
Dominican free trade zones continued to prosper through the 1990s, spurred on
by generous financial incentives and cheap labor, and employed two hundred thou-
sand people by the end of 2001. But declines started in 2005–2006, both in the num-
ber of workers and volume of exports, especially in the apparel industry (CNZFE
2006). The Dominican free trade zones are under increasing pressure from interna-
tional competition, especially China. Special quotas for clothing imports to the
United States were terminated with the end of the Multifiber Agreement in 2005.
Textiles and clothing were integrated into the World Trade Organization, and
China entered as a full competitor. Clothing and textiles still constitute about
35 percent of all production in the free trade zones, despite efforts at diversification
toward high value-added products. The inclusion of the Dominican Republic in the
Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) in 2007 may somewhat
reduce this competition. But as the economy worsened in 2004, remittances grew
substantially, reaching 2.7 billion, including 1.6 billion from emigrants living in the
United States (Columbia University 2004).
Puerto Rico has totally lost its comparative advantage over neighboring
countries as a site for light manufacturing, and Operation Bootstrap, the govern-
ment’s ambitious industrialization program conceived in the 1950s as the engine of
growth, has became obsolete. The apparel industry, once the principal employer of
women in Puerto Rico, has virtually ground to a halt. As educational levels rose,
women shifted into white-collar and professional employment and the service
sector, and government employment became the most important source of job
creation. Male labor force participation rates declined from 54 percent in 1980 to
49 percent in 2000, while the female rate rose to 35 percent and then from 1990
to 2000 also began to decline (Colón Warren 2006). Despite growing unemploy-
ment and withdrawal from the labor force, especially by men, poverty rates
declined to about 49.3 percent in 1990 (Dietz 2003, 164). James Dietz attributes this
to the important role that federal transfer payments have played in the Puerto
Rican economy. Since the late 1970s federal transfers, including earned transfers
such as social security and Medicare and means-tested transfers like welfare and
food stamps, have approximated 20 percent of personal income and have become a
major source of support for the Puerto Rican economy (2003, 162–163), including
female-headed households.
Of the three countries discussed here, Cuba suffered the greatest economic
crisis in the 1990s, due to the breakup of the socialist bloc and the elimination of
trade and aid from the former Soviet Union. The 1990s in Cuba has become known
as the Special Period, the worst peacetime economic crisis in its history. Between
1989 and 1993 the GDP declined 35 percent, as exports and imports collapsed
and nutritional levels declined drastically. During the 1990s, as the Cuban state
shifted priorities, a dual economy evolved, with a dynamic or emergent sector
based largely on tourism and a traditional sector including most agriculture and
manufacturing (Monreal 2001, 10). As Cuba legalized the U.S. dollar (later changing
64 helen safa
to the euro and the convertible peso), a dual currency system emerged, benefiting
those with access to dollars through tourism, remittances, and self-employment in
the informal sector. In 1997 it was estimated that 50 percent of the population had
access to dollars through remittances or various work incentives (Espina 2001, 34).
The result has been growing inequality and the erosion of the social contract,
which guaranteed everyone a minimum standard of living (2001).
The Special Period has hit the Afro-Cuban population particularly hard,
because they have less access to dollars through remittances (since the émigré pop-
ulation is largely white) and through the new tourist economy, which favors white
employees. Shortcomings in public services and particularly the low wage rate in
the formal state sector forced the Cuban population to develop survival techniques,
in which women played a critical role. However, the state also maintained a high
level of social expenditure, particularly through a universal free education and
health care system. These expenditures rose to 32 percent of the GDP in 1998,
nearly double the average in Latin America (Uriarte 2002, 36). The at-risk urban
population rose from 6.3 percent in 1986 to 14.7 percent in 1995 (Martínez Reinosa
and Castro Flores 2004, 52), which includes many female-headed households.
In all three countries, then, the economic crisis of the 1990s resulted in an
increase in female-headed households, amid growing poverty and inequality.
However, a high level of public expenditure in both Puerto Rico and Cuba amelio-
rate this inequality, while increasing remittances play a major role in the
Dominican Republic. Remittances also increased in Cuba with the advent of the
Special Period, but aggravated this inequality, as we shall see.
The Special Period in Cuba

Any analysis of Cuban family structure must not only take account of the dramatic
changes ushered in by the Special Period in the 1990s but also examine the longer-
term changes brought about by the revolutionary Cuban government’s commit-
ment to gender equality. The Cuban state tried to promote women’s equality
through incorporating them into the labor force, raising educational levels, increas-
ing job opportunities, and providing generous maternity leaves and free day care.
Female labor force participation increased rapidly, reaching 40.6 percent in 1993
(Catasús 1999, 5), and also changed qualitatively. As a result of higher educational
levels, in 1995 women held two-thirds of technical and professional jobs, a change
that began in the 1970s (Catasús 1999, 3, table 1). But the Cuban state did not expect
women’s increased economic autonomy to contribute to marital instability. On the
contrary, the sharing of rights and responsibilities spelled out in the Cuban family
code was designed to stabilize the conjugal bond by reinforcing more egalitarian
marital relations (cf. Benglesdorf 1997). However, the percentage of households
headed by women has grown at an alarming rate, from 14 percent in 1953 to 28.1
percent in 1981, to 36 percent in 1995 (Catasús 1999). What are the factors producing
this increase?
Historically, female-headed households predominated among low income,
Afro-Cuban households and were often attributed, in Cuba and elsewhere, to the
deleterious effects of slavery on the conjugal bond. However, the revolutionary

commitment to the promotion of gender equity and other factors appears to have
contributed toward a striking convergence of marital patterns along racial lines
since 1959. Consensual unions have increased among the white population, while
more blacks are getting married (De la Fuente 1995, 147). The rate of female heads
of household continues to be somewhat higher among blacks, who have higher
rates of marital dissolution. But a comparison of white, black, and mulatto heads of
household shows a striking similarity in educational and occupational levels and
labor force participation (Catasús 1999, 9, table 2), again demonstrating remarkable
racial convergence. This also demonstrates the educational and occupational
achievements of Afro-Cuban women under the revolution, including those who
are female heads.
I would attribute this racial convergence in marital patterns and the increase in
female-headed households to the Cuban Revolution’s commitment to the reduc-
tion of class and racial barriers, which weakened the legitimacy of the old dual
marriage system whereby legal marriage was confined to the white elite (Martínez-
Alier 1974). Prerevolutionary racial differences in fertility and mortality began to
converge in the early years of the revolution and by 1981 had virtually been elimi-
nated. Educational and occupational racial differences were also leveled, and by
1981 the proportion of blacks and mulattoes employed as professionals (one-fifth of
the labor force) was virtually identical to that of whites (De la Fuente 1998, 2–3).
Interracial unions also grew, as mulattoes coupled with whites and blacks, but
there were few white-black unions (Rodríguez 2006).
Another factor influencing the increase in female heads is the rising rate of
consensual unions, from 58.70 consensual unions per 100 marriages in 1970 to 60.00
in 1981 to 81.70 in 1987 (Catasús 1996, 92–93). Much of this increase is due to the
younger generation under twenty-five, particularly among mulattas. This increase
in consensual unions among the young helps explain why age at first union and first
pregnancy also declined since 1959, despite free access to birth control, abortion,
and sex education programs. Legalized abortions have increased dramatically. The
birthrate continues to fall and is now below replacement levels. Divorce also
increased from 0.06 per thousand in 1960 to 3.50 in 1990 (Catasús 1996, 94).
Certain features unique to Cuba may also have contributed to the increase in
female headship. Socialist Cuba was among the first Latin American countries to
grant women in consensual unions and their children equal legal recognition as
women in legal marriage, further debilitating the validity of legal marriage. The
provision of free health care and education as well as increasing educational and
occupational opportunities for women made it easier for them to have children on
their own and greatly weakened dependence on a male breadwinner, despite full
employment for men prior to the Special Period. One of our Cuban respondents
from the mid-eighties, a woman textile worker who raised three small children on
her own, commented, “Ahora actualmente, cualquiera mujer, para mí, cualquiera
mujer cría un hijo sola, porque hay mucho trabajo, hay más facilidades para la
mujer” [Now any woman, for me any woman can raise a child alone, because there
66 helen safa
is a lot of work, there are more facilities for women (Safa 1995, 139). In 1995,
47 percent of all women heading their households were employed (Núñez
Sarmiento 2001, 61).
The extended family is essential to the survival of these Cuban female-headed
households, especially among the young. The proportion of extended families in
Cuba is generally high, due in part to a housing shortage, but is higher still among
female-headed households. In the study of Cuban women textile workers we con-
ducted in the 1980s, over half of the female-headed households consisted of three
generations. Adolescent mothers often live with their parents, which helps them to
engage in paid employment but also keeps them in a subordinate position in the
household (Safa 1995).
The Cuban state has made a great effort to maintain a high level of social expen-
ditures, despite the severe economic pressures brought on by the Special Period.
Social expenditures increased in the decade of the 1990s from 3.816 to 4.705 million
pesos and also increased as a proportion of the GDP (Uriarte 2002, 35). Special pro-
grams have been started targeting the most vulnerable groups, including single
mothers, departing somewhat from the socialist policy of universality. However,
increased expenditures could not make up for the reduced buying power of the
peso and the decrease in allocation to convertible currency (U.S. dollars), which
severely limit the importation of crucial items such as medicines, building materi-
als, and school supplies, especially paper (36).
Given the cutback in support services from the state, the extended family has
become even more essential. One of the extended families we interviewed in 1986
had twenty-six members, consisting of Rosa, the grandmother, and her five married
children and their children. The family had been given a house by the government
with a relatively large patio, in which each of the children has built an independent
residence for themselves out of a communal fund. They continue to live together
and now number about thirty-six, since Rosa has fifteen grandchildren and two
great-grandchildren. Rosa is over sixty and no longer works but receives a small
pension and earns some money sewing clothes at home for sale in a retail store.
The textile factory in which most of the family worked has now been reduced to a
skeleton staff of one shift. Initially, many of the factory workers were employed in
agriculture, but now many are self-employed. Families like Rosa’s continue to
grow some of their own food, as well as chickens and other livestock, although
these are now severely limited in urban areas by government regulation.
Generational differences are apparent between older women like Rosa and her
daughter Ximena, now in her forties. Rosa had a total of twelve children; Ximena
has two. Rosa undertook formal employment only after the revolution, while her
daughters have worked since they completed school. All eight siblings completed
high school, and one became a teacher. Ximena left her first compañero (a man
much her senior) when he would not allow her to work or be active in the com-
munity. She became legally married to her second partner of twenty years only
after they joined a nearby Pentecostal church during the Special Period.
Women’s economic autonomy was threatened in the Special Period. Female

labor force participation fell to 31.5 percent by 1995 (Catasús 1999, 3), indicating that
women were having a harder time holding down a full-time job as the crisis deep-
ened. Some professional college-educated women abandoned careers as teachers,
doctors, and scientists in the state sector to work in higher-paid, less-skilled jobs in
tourism (Toro-Morn et al. 2002, 51). Transportation problems mounted and women
spent more time finding and preparing food and attending to other household
chores. Men’s labor force participation also declined, more precipitously than that
of women. But in 1997 unemployment was more than twice as high for women
as for men (10.1 percent vs. 4.4 percent) (Uriarte 2002, 28). Unemployment grew as
employees were discharged from the state sector (45 percent of discharged workers
were women in 1997–1999) or withdrew because the purchasing power of the state
salary in pesos had steeply declined (Echevarría 2004, 74).
In a study of 334 Cuban households in 2000 (Blue 2004), 85 percent agreed that
having a professional job no longer guarantees Cubans a good standard of living.
Racial inequality grew during the Special Period, with only 10 percent of blacks in
the highest-income category, compared to 58 percent of whites and 31 percent of
mulattoes. These differences are due to differential access to the dollar economy,
such as earning supplements in dollars and through self-employment. Remittances
greatly accentuated these income differences, by pushing many more white than
black households into the highest income bracket. Remittances doubled the aver-
age household earnings, and 60 percent of the recipients were in Havana (Eckstein
2004, 342). White households had many more family members living abroad and
twice as many white as black households receive remittances (Blue 2004). Thus, the
racial and territorial difference associated with the receipt of remittances accentu-
ated inequality rather than reducing it.
Women Workers in the Free Trade Zones of the Dominican Republic

No state support for female-headed households exists in the Dominican Republic,

yet the percentage has increased from 21.7 percent in 1981 to 29.1 percent in 1991
(Duarte and Tejada 1995, 47), declining again to 26.8 percent in 1996 (Báez 2000, 33,
table 1.2). Female heads have a higher labor force participation rate than married or
even single women, and this rate has increased rapidly for all women since 1960,
standing at 37.6 percent in 2000 (Báez 2000, 45, table 2.1). Here again the extended
family plays a critical role, and women working in the free trade zones frequently
leave their children with their parents in the rural area (Safa 1995). Women facing
an emergency like illness, unemployment, or marital breakup seem to have no dif-
ficulty moving back with their parent(s) or other relatives, despite very crowded
living conditions.
Mothers and daughters are especially flexible at exchanging roles and reflect the
strength of the mother-daughter tie in most Dominican families. Dominica, at
forty-seven, has been in three consensual unions and “raised her children [while]
working in the factories.” At her age, it would be difficult to find a factory job, so
68 helen safa
she stays home and watches her daughter’s two preschool children, while her
daughter works in the zone and also attends school every night until ten. Her
daughter says she is lucky to have her mother’s support, but Dominica claims,
“I take care of her children and she studies at night. She is already in the second year
of high school. If she really achieves something, then I also gain. I have to sit and
take care of her children so that she can get ahead.”
The household composition of female heads of household, whether living alone
or in extended families, plays a fundamental role in determining the standard of
living of these households, regardless of the absence of a male breadwinner. An
analysis of the 1991 national-level Informe Demográfico y de Salud (Demographic
and Health Survey) by the Instituto de Estudios de Población y Desarrollo
(Population and Development Studies Institute) in the Dominican Republic found
that although female heads of household earn less than male heads and have a much
higher rate of unemployment, the average household incomes are nearly equal
(Duarte and Tejada 1995, 80–81; Safa 2002). Apparently female heads of household
are able to raise their income through the contributions of other family members,
particularly subheads, because over half (53 percent) of households headed by
women are extended, compared to only 35 percent of male-headed households.
Extended households in the Dominican Republic represented 40 percent of all house-
holds surveyed in 1991 and are even more prevalent in urban than in rural areas.
Analysis of the survey in the Dominican Republic shows that nearly three-
fourths of these subheads living in extended families are young daughters of the
head of household and over half have only one child. Many of these young, single
mothers living as subheads go undetected in the census because they are counted as
part of the extended family in which they live. Households with subheads are found
in even greater proportion among middle- and high-income groups than among the
poor (Duarte and Tejada 1995, 90). This suggests that the incorporation of subheads
or other additional wage earners is a strategy used not just by the poor but also by
the middle class to combat the economic crisis and the high cost of living.
Initially men rejected employment in the free trade zones as “women’s work,”
but since 1980 the percentage of men employed nationally in the free trade zones
has more than doubled, reaching 49 percent in 2006 (CNZFE 2006, graph 13). Part
of this increase can be explained through diversification toward higher value-added
products, a strategy used in the Dominican Republic to upgrade the apparel indus-
try in a trend that has also been noted globally (United Nations 1999, 10). Men are
employed in plants producing trousers and coats, which they have redefined as
“men’s work.” But acceptance is also due to the deterioration in male employment,
which left men few alternatives. The new labor code issued in 1992 assured work-
ing women three month’s maternity leave at half pay. Some see obviating mater-
nity leave as a factor in increased male employment in the free trade zones, which
shows how difficult it is to improve women’s working conditions.
Older men who have a particularly difficult time finding employment are very
resentful of the independence that paid employment has conferred on women
working in the free trade zones. They stereotype females who work in the free
trade zones as flirts and spendthrifts who contribute little to the household econ-
omy (Safa 2002). Women clearly reject this stereotype and claim that they are
working to support their children. One young woman worker argues that it was
more difficult for women when the sugar mill was in operation because men
“worked and earned money for the home and did what they pleased, but now the
woman works, she maintains herself, she dresses herself, it cannot be the same”
(Safa 2002, 18). As a result of improved economic autonomy, women increasingly
take the initiative in breaking relationships that are unsatisfactory, whereas previ-
ously female heads of household were often the result of male abandonment. My
ethnographic research among Dominican workers in the free trade zones shows
that female heads of household often resist marriage or remarriage and prefer to
support themselves if they cannot find a good provider (Safa 2002).
As emigration has increased, the volume of remittances has grown enor-
mously, more than doubling from 1997 to 2.4 billion in 2003. However, it is unclear
how this applies to women working in the free trade zones. We found that women
receiving remittances from their husbands were often forbidden from working in
the free trade zones, to maintain stricter control over their behavior (McClenaghan
1997; Safa 2002).
Studies done on Dominican remittance patterns reveal the matrifocal extended
nature of the Dominican family. In a large sample comparing households receiving
remittances in four Latin American countries, Dominicans show the highest pro-
portion of extended and single-parent households, while the Dominican recipient
population of three-generation households doubles that of Mexico (Sana and
Massey 2005, 518). In an earlier 1991 comparative study focusing on Santo Domingo,
women in female-headed and older households were shown to receive remittances
more than other family members and were often not working (Itzigsohn 1995,
640–645). In the latter sample, remittances constituted nearly 40 percent of house-
hold income, boosting incomes in all strata from the urban poor to professionals.
I would argue that remittances are taking the place of low and inadequate state
support for the urban poor. There is no targeted public support for female-headed
households, while general public health, education, and other public services are
poorly funded. The percentage of public social expenditures continues to be one of
the lowest in Latin America, averaging 5.4 percent of the Dominican GDP from
1994–1996 (CIPAF 2005). The government has failed to enforce the new labor code
issued in 1992, which was to sanction collective bargaining rights in the free trade
zones. As a result, few collective bargaining agreements in the free trade zones
have been signed and implemented, so workers rights are still being violated (U.S.
Department of Labor 2002). Men are preferred in technical and managerial posi-
tions and receive higher salaries (Safa 2002). Although the Dominican Republic
recently entered a new free trade pact with the United States through CAFTA-DR,
the Dominican government is still worried about competition from cheaper wages
elsewhere and is therefore reluctant to enforce workers rights. Female-headed
households are thus forced to rely heavily on the extended family and remittances
from abroad.
70 helen safa
The End of Operation Bootstrap in Puerto Rico

In Puerto Rico, the decline in export manufacturing is far more severe. Although
Puerto Rico started early and served as a model of export growth for much of the
Caribbean (and other parts of the world), decline began as other countries offered
even cheaper wages and more lucrative tax incentives. U.S. government policies
such as the Caribbean Basin Initiative in the 1980s and NAFTA in the 1990s favored
export manufacturing in other countries in the region, which accelerated this trend
(Safa 1995).
A 2002 study of displaced garment workers in Puerto Rico found that since 1997,
the number of garment workers island-wide declined from 21,818 to 9,739 (Colón
et al. 2008). In addition, one-fourth of all garment workers were over fifty, a demo-
graphic trend that was already apparent in 1980 when we collected data on our orig-
inal sample of women workers in Puerto Rico. Few new younger workers were
hired, and many of the older women workers had been working in the same plant
for twenty to thirty years. The older female heads revealed that when they were
younger and raising children on their own, most lived with or relied on the help of
extended family members, usually female kin. Like Dominican women, two-thirds
of the female heads of household in our Puerto Rican sample say they would prefer
not to remarry (Safa 1995, 83).
Today in Puerto Rico, the percentage of three-generation families has dropped
sharply, and the ethos of the residential income-pooling extended household
has been sharply reduced. Even the displaced older garment workers report receiv-
ing only minimal aid from children and other kin (Colón et al. 2008). Nationally,
29 percent of female heads live alone, much higher than in Cuba or the Dominican
Republic. This partly reflects the high percentage of widows (30 percent), who in
Cuba and the Dominican Republic normally would live with extended families.
Nuclearization is also the result of public policy, which through public housing,
social security, and other social programs stressed the U.S. middle-class nuclear
family as the ideal (Safa 2001, 99).

Federal transfer payments made it easier for widows and other female heads to
live separately. In 2000, 35 percent of female heads were receiving public welfare,
and 48 percent of these were living below the poverty line (Colón Warren 2006, 16).
In all, 61 percent of female heads of households in 2000 were living below the
poverty rate, which can be explained by their dependence on government assis-
tance, low female labor force participation rates, and the absence of support from
extended families. Nationally, only 16 percent of Puerto Rican female-headed
households have more than one person employed, compared to 39 percent among
married couples (Colón Warren 2006). Colón and others (2008) note that 65 percent
of garment workers earned under ten thousand dollars annually, and 40 percent are
female heads.
Dependence on public welfare may have dampened formal employment
among female heads, but encouraging them to live alone also makes it harder for
mothers of young children to work outside the home (cf. Burgos and Colberg 1990).
The labor force participation rate of Puerto Rican female heads of household is
much lower than in Cuba or the Dominican Republic. Only 35 percent of Puerto
Rican female heads of household were employed in 2000 and 42 percent had no one
employed in the household (Colón Warren 2006, 85). Again, this may be explained
partially by the large percentage of elderly widows living on social security or other
pension payments. Unemployment is also high, but it is higher for men than for
women in Puerto Rico.
Clearly, Puerto Rican female heads of household differ in certain important
respects from the profile of Cuban and Dominican female heads outlined earlier.
The percentage of Puerto Rican female heads of household reached 31 percent in
2006 (American Community Survey 2006, table B11001) but many more of these are
widows than in the other islands. The percentage of single mothers may be lower
due to the decline in consensual unions, which have largely disappeared, now num-
bering only 5 percent. The decline in consensual unions is a deliberate result of state
policy, which as early as 1898, when Puerto Rico was occupied by the United States,
promoted a new civil code to make civil marriage more accessible in an effort to cut
down on the 50 percent of the population living in consensual unions (Findlay
1999). The promotion of legal marriage was defined as part of the U.S. “civilizing
mission” and was later reinforced by privileging couples in legal unions in terms of
access to federal transfer payments such as social security, veteran benefits, and
payments to family dependents of Puerto Ricans enrolled in the U.S. military.
However, eliminating consensual unions has not brought about marital stability,
because the divorce rate is so high. Nationally, 57 percent of female heads of house-
hold are divorced, much higher than in Cuba or the Dominican Republic (Colón
Warren 2006, table 1) and even higher than the United States. The marriage rate has
also declined.
Structural factors such as rapid urbanization and migration also help explain the
nuclearization of the Puerto Rican family. Migration to the United States started in
the 1940s, reached its peak in the 1950s, and now over half of the Puerto Rican pop-
ulation lives in the United States. Remittances seem to have declined in importance
because of the free flow of people and money to the United States and the fre-
quency of travel.
In place of remittances, federal transfer payments have assumed more impor-
tance as a long-term survival strategy and on the island go primarily to families
(such as female heads) where the head of household is unemployed. Half of the
displaced garment workers in 2002 received government aid (Colón et al. 2008),
to which they are entitled because of plant closings. In 2006 the percentage of
Puerto Rican families where the householder did not work in the past year stood at
52 percent, rising to 56 percent among female heads (American Community Survey
2006, table S1702), many of whom are dependent on federal transfer payments.
In 1995, 71 percent of all Puerto Rican transfer payments were earned benefits such
as Medicare and social security (Dietz 2003, 161), which again reflects the aging of
the Puerto Rican population.
72 helen safa
Conclusion
Globalization and economic restructuring has contributed to the increase in
female-headed households in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic by
further weakening the role of the male as breadwinner. Male employment has dete-
riorated or stagnated in each of these countries, while female employment and
participation rates have increased. Women have become increasingly resistant
to marriage, because it offers them neither economic nor, apparently, emotional
support.
A small class of professional women in the Caribbean have benefited from the
changes economic restructuring has helped produce. They have taken advantage of
increased educational opportunities in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican
Republic and are surpassing men in university education and professional employ-
ment. The high rate of divorce among professional women in all three countries
would suggest that female educational and occupational advancement alone will
not stem the increase in female-headed households, although it may make them
less poor.
This analysis reinforces the importance of household composition in alleviating
the poverty of female heads. This is particularly true in Cuba and the Dominican
Republic, where young, single mothers rely primarily on extended families for both
emotional and financial support. Extended families become less important as a
household form in Puerto Rico as the percentage of widows grows and female-
headed households receive more government aid.
But the three countries studied here differ not only demographically but also in
terms of state policy. The Dominican state never provided adequate public services
to its citizens (Safa and Antrobus 1992), and structural adjustment only aggravated
this tendency. The state relies on remittances and the extended family to provide
the primary source of aid for the urban poor, including female heads.
The Cuban state has had to reduce the number of public employees (including
women) and its wages no longer provide an adequate standard of living, forcing
many employees to leave or supplement their state jobs in the nonstate sector. But
the state strives to maintain universal access to public health and education, while
the increasing importance of remittances threatens to undermine the high level of
racial and class equality that Cuba had achieved. Women’s autonomy is also jeop-
ardized, but I doubt that Cuban women will revert to dependence on a male bread-
winner. Female heads are likely to continue to depend on the extended family and
on access to dollars through self-employment, the tourism sector, and remittances
when they are available. The role of remittances in the formation and support of
female-headed households certainly bears further investigation.
Puerto Rico provides the strongest level of state financial support specifically
directed to female-headed households, thanks to massive federal aid. The high per-
centage of widows in Puerto Rico who are entitled to social security and other
transfer payments partially explains this high level of support. But the way in which
this support is administered also contributes to a low labor force participation rate
and to the breakup of extended families, making them more dependent on the state
for survival. Remittances also appear to have declined in importance.
However, the public support that Puerto Rican female heads of household
enjoy does not appear to have contributed significantly to an increase in their num-
ber. The increase has been much higher in the Dominican Republic and especially
Cuba, where specific public support for female-headed households is minimal or
nonexistent. This suggests that the common assumption in the United States, that
public welfare has increased the percentage of female-headed households, is greatly
exaggerated. Rather than eliminating public support for female-headed house-
holds, as some critics demand, I would suggest modifying this policy to facilitate
rather than deter household extension. My Caribbean data shows that female-
headed households are better off economically (and psychologically) if women
share household expenses with relatives who provide additional sources of income
or child care, rather than being on their own. This implies moving away from the
nuclear family model upon which much public policy in the United States (and else-
where) is now based.
note
1. Widows are not included in my category of single mothers, since most are older and no
longer raising children.
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4 A “Top-Down”–
“Bottom-Up” Model
four decades of women’s
employment and gender ideology
in cuba
marta núñez sarmiento
Since 1959 the Cuban cultural identity nationwide has been enriched by the new
needs and values generated in women’s and men’s gender ideology. This essay
argues that the feminization of the Cuban workforce, especially among profession-
als, has contributed to a change in what it means to be a woman and a man in my
country.1 The processes linked to the increasing participation of Cuban women in
the labor force are similar in many respects to those taking place in other countries
of the region, including the United States and Canada. Nevertheless, there are
notable differences that singularize the Cuban phenomenon, which I describe in
this chapter.
Two hypotheses guide my reflections. First, the Cuban programs to promote
women’s participation in society have operated at two interrelated levels, that of
the general policies promoted “from the top” and that of the reactions to these
policies due to specific needs “from the bottom” (which have modified the policies
constantly). The dynamics of women’s employment have resulted from a highly

intertwined process nurtured by different experiences and ideas for four decades
and conditioned by Cuban economic, political, and ideological structures in its
recent history. According to the second hypothesis, the feminization of labor has
contradictorily impacted the gender identities of all members of society, not only
the identity of women, with evident trends toward nondiscrimination. Women
have been the engines of these transformations.
Gender Transformations in Cuban Society:

A “Top-Down”–“Bottom-Up” Model
Women’s participation in Cuban society has been part of the comprehensive social
justice programs started in the early sixties to eliminate all sorts of discrimination.
Since the beginning, criticisms of these programs have aimed to reinterpret the
realities that the programs wished to transform, claiming the programs were either
obsolete or unable to grasp people’s lived reality. This critical consciousness
has been present since 1959, stemming from the highest echelons of the political
A “Top-Down”–“Bottom-Up” Model 77
hierarchies—scholars, intellectuals, and artists—and from the everyday experiences

of men and women. Critical thought and its concerns have been constrained by
patriarchal trends persistent in Cuba, as well as by dogmatic positions.
I have labeled the program to promote women’s incorporation to the labor force
as a “top-down”–“bottom-up” model. Conceived and in operation at the higher
political levels, the program includes social policies, legal frameworks, economic
measures, and new cultural patterns that have been systematically modified as they
have been implemented in day-to-day women’s and men’s lives. This critical flexi-
bility, developed through multiple participation, is one of the program’s successes.
It is difficult to separate the “above” actions from those that operate at the
“bottom,” for the way in which the model functions makes it difficult to distinguish
any well-defined structure within it that could be labeled as belonging to a certain
level. Nevertheless, in considering how these two levels operate, I have selected
certain topics concerning women’s employment and the gender ideology linked to
it and have analyzed the interactions between measures dictated from above and
the reactions that they provoked from the bottom.
There were many economic, political, and ideological conditions that charac-
terized the Special Period in Cuba during the nineties and impacted women’s
employment and gender ideology. This crisis affected Cuban society as a whole
and was the result of severe economic shortages due to the disappearance of the
Eastern European socialist bloc centered around the Soviet Union. These countries
accounted for 85 percent of all Cuban foreign economic relations. The reinforce-
ment of the blockade by the U.S. government against Cuba, with the Torricelli law
(1992) and the Helms-Burton amendment (1996), were also influential.
Throughout these years the Cuban economy plummeted, and the quality of life
of the population experienced a sudden and enormous decrease. The extent of the
damages can be shown through the following example. For thirty years Cuba pur-
chased 12 million tons of oil annually from the Soviet Union on preferential terms,
based on a trade treaty that benefited both countries. The breakup of the Soviet
Union in 1991 ended this treaty and Cuba started buying oil on the world market.
That year, and the following, Cuba was able to purchase only around 4 million tons
of oil and the economy nearly collapsed.
Readjustments were introduced simultaneously in various spheres of society.
Overcoming the crisis has been a very slow process, lasting from 1995 to the pres-
ent. One date proves the political importance in Cuba of women’s participation in
society. On March 8, 1990, International Women’s Day—a day of mobilization for
women throughout the world—Fidel Castro announced the beginning of the
Special Period. Fifteen years later, on March 8, 2005, the Cuban president declared
that Cuba was starting to come out of the Special Period. Why did Fidel select this
date to communicate such politically relevant events? In 1990 he knew that he could
count on Cuban women to discover the survival strategies that helped the country
withstand the years of crisis and readjustment that awaited all Cubans, years
that were aggravated by the fall of the socialist bloc, the strengthening of the U.S.
blockade, and the impossibility of concluding the Cuban process of rectification of
78 marta núñez sarmiento
mistakes and negative trends initiated in 1984. In 2005 he wanted to proclaim what
the Cuban population had been already sensing, the recuperation from the crisis
was on its way.
Various legal actions and public policies have been generated from above dur-
ing the last forty-eight years, which have clearly impacted women’s employment
and gender identities. The maternity law of 1974, part of the labor code, regulates
maternity leave for women workers. The family code of 1975 requires divorced or
separated parents to pay a food allowance to their children. Day care centers were
established in 1961 for children ages forty-five days to five years old, and school
lunchrooms at primary schools were added to benefit working mothers’ children.
Universally free education from preprimary to graduate studies has been available
since 1961, along with the right for students to apply for stipends to pay for room
and board. University and technical education graduates are required to be
employed by the state for two years to fulfill social service. All workers have the
right to a month of paid vacation every year. There are also a number of public
health services offered to the population that have promoted healthy habits, includ-
ing family planning, Pap exams and breast cancer tests, vaccinations, and free
access to all levels of public health care, from the family doctor to hospitals and
specialized institutions.
These measures have been modified to adjust to shifting circumstances and the
influence of cultural patterns. The maternity law was changed to face the difficul-
ties brought on by the Special Period. Originally each pregnant woman had the
right to three months of paid leave to look after her newborn, and her job was
secured for her. In 1993 the maternity-leave period was extended to six months and,
in subsequent years, to one year. Since 2000 both parents have the right to paid
maternity or paternity leave. However, from 2000 to 2009 only two dozen fathers
in all of Cuba have used this right.
Two articles in the family code were added that encourage both partners to
share household chores. They are read in all marriage ceremonies, but no one has
used them in arguing for divorce. The family code articles are perceived differently
by women and men according to their ages. In a recent study I asked professional
men and women how they had benefited from them. Those who were over thirty-
five years of age at the time of the interview and who had experienced the upward
mobility that favored the lowest income groups in Cuba from the early 1960s to the
end of the eighties were very aware of what these changes meant to them.
Interviewees younger than thirty-five years scarcely commented on these measures
because they took them for granted.
Positive and Negative Facts on Women’s Employment

The proportion of women in the nation’s labor force rose steadily from 13 percent
in 1959 (Núñez Sarmiento 1988, 13) to 38 percent in 1989 (ONE 1997, 116), the thresh-
old of the Special Period. From 1989 to 2002 this upward trend decreased, reaching
a plateau in which women’s employment indexes swayed and even slightly
decreased in relation to 1989. Since 2003 the proportion of women in the total labor
force has started to increase again.
Beginning in 1977, women represented more than half of the professionals and
technical workers in the Cuban labor force. This trend continued during the Special
Period. In 2007 women accounted for 66 percent in this category of workers, while
men represented only 34 percent (ONE 2006, table 6.9). From 1978 on, women in the
labor force had higher educational levels than working men; in 2006, 18.5 percent of
all working women had graduated from the university, while only 11.1 percent of all
working men were university graduates, and 55.7 percent of all working women
were high school graduates in comparison with 44.4 percent of men in the work-
force (ONE 2006, table 6.7).
Women are employed in all sectors of the economy, including traditional and
nontraditional ones. In 2006, 60 percent of all faculty members at Cuban universi-
ties were women, as well as 50 percent of all scientists, 52 percent of physicians, and
51 percent of lawyers. These facts show advances in women’s employment, but
inequalities still persist in terms of enormous physical and psychological burdens.
During the nineties, women adapted to new forms of employment. In the first
part of the Special Period, almost all Cuban workers belonged to the public sector.
As a result of the economic restructuring initiated around 1995 that expanded
the private sector in Cuba, women’s participation in this sector increased from
15 percent in 1989 to 22.9 percent in 1997. In this same year, women represented
34.3 percent of workers in joint ventures and mercantile agencies. The distribution
of working women by occupation in 1989 and 1997 confirms the trend of job relo-
cation. According to the Ministry of Labor, 89 percent of all female workers were
employed in the public sector in 1989, while by 1997 only 81.3 percent belonged to
this sector.
The adaptation of women to the restructuring of the economy in the midst of
the crisis years has a positive outcome in the sense that women gained flexibility in
the Cuban job market. But further studies have to be done to determine if these
women accepted less qualified jobs and to see if new and future discriminatory
signs exist in the private sectors, especially among the self-employed workers, in
joint ventures where workers benefit indirectly from hard currency, and in the agri-
cultural cooperative sector.
Surveys regularly conducted by the National Office of Statistics show that
Cuban women workers carry the burden of the second shift. They spend thirty-six
hours a week doing house chores, while male workers declare that they spend
twelve hours a week performing these activities. Cuban women are judges, profes-
sors, scientists, physicians, and blue-collar workers, but they are also the ones who
iron, cook, and clean the homes. Men dedicate their time to shopping, paying the
bills, and putting the garbage out (ONE 1999, 148). Of the multiple reasons that
explain why this gender discriminatory division of house chores persists, two have
to do with material scarcities in Cuba while the third relates to patriarchal cultural
patterns.
Cuba has an enormous housing deficit that causes up to three or four genera-
tions to live under one roof, with several female figures in each household who
distribute household chores among themselves. Under the influence of patriar-
chal ideology, the mothers, grandmothers, and aunts do not assign household
duties to the younger male members of the family because they consider that it
erodes their virility. For the last fifty years, food, soap and detergent have been
extremely scarce and therefore have been rationed. Women have learned to econ-
omize these few resources better than men. A woman interviewed said, “At home
men waste the scarce things we have and mess up everything when they perform
household chores. That is why I prefer to do them myself, even if I take up the
whole burden.”
The “victims” (women) should not be blamed for their own victimization; as
explained in Marxist and feminist theory, both at the societal and at the individual
level it is very difficult to change ideologies that support social discrimination, far
more difficult than changing those sustained by political ideologies. The oppressed
tend to incorporate into their behaviors the ruling classes’ ideological representa-
tions. For centuries patriarchal ideology has sustained power patterns in all socio-
economic formations, a sociological process that can be compared with racist forms
of domination. Even in societies where the economic structures and the political
institutions based on old cultural patterns have been radically transformed do
patriarchal ideologies survive and prevail in the minds of the population. These
phenomena have been widely treated by social scientists in developed and devel-
oping countries. Among the Marxist classics, I point out Antonio Gramsci’s thesis
of hegemony and culture, Inessa Armand’s works on women’s subordination, and
Alexandra Kollontai’s materials on women’s political participation. Feminist U.S.
authors Helen Safa, Sherryl Lutjens, and Carmen Diana Deere, Brazilian writers
Mary Garcia Castro, and Cuban authors Mayda Alvarez, Nara Araújo, and Luisa
Campuzano have recently referred to this.
The fact that only 30 percent of all leadership positions in the Cuban workforce
are held by women is another discriminatory characteristic of women’s employ-
ment (ONE 2006, table 6.9). This proportion has been approximately the same
since 1992, although women account for 60 percent of all professional and technical
workers and should be the appropriate source for managers.
Why Women Stayed in the Workforce during the Special Period

At the beginning of the crisis in 1990, women workers benefited from public poli-
cies that promoted their participation in society. They had lived through decades of
sustained economic growth and higher levels of human development. At the initial
stages of the crisis, human development and, in particular, quality of life in Cuba
was higher than in any other developing country.
Several arguments explain why Cuban women stayed in the labor force during
the years of crisis and readjustments in the nineties and are continuing to stay now.
One-third of all women workers head their households and are the main breadwin-
ners of their families. When we add to them the number of women who remarry,
who bring their children from a previous marriage to this new union, and who
consider themselves responsible for their children’s maintenance, then the propor-
tion of women breadwinners increases.
Cuban development strategy promotes high technology and efficiency, and a
skilled workforce is needed. Women represent almost two-thirds of all professional
and technical workers and are therefore essential to accomplishing this goal.
Because Cuban women workers have been increasingly active in the labor force for
the last thirty-five to forty years, at present many younger ones represent a second
generation of working women in their families. Real and present maternal refer-
ences of what it means to be a paid worker could explain the second generation’s
willingness to stay in the labor force.
During the years of crisis and readjustment, the legal and public policy frame-
works that favored the incorporation and permanence of women in the labor force
accommodated the new conditions. For example, in 1997 the Council of State
passed the National Plan of Action, following the agreements of the Fourth United
Nations World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995. The Cuban Plan of
Action summarized in ninety articles the political will of the state to continue
promoting women’s equality. These articles are mandatory for all public institu-
tions and progress is controlled through workshops organized by the Federation of
Cuban Women.
Community-based activities center on the everyday lives of Cubans. In several
case studies, women acknowledged that during the crisis years they switched to
jobs near their homes because of the lack of transportation; they also asked for their
neighbors’ help and worked out survival strategies in their neighborhoods. They
started seeing their family doctors and nearby polyclinics instead of going to distant
hospitals.
In the sixties, seventies, and eighties, Cubans in the whole country, not only the
capital, benefited from an upward social mobility that improved education, health,
nutrition, and social security levels. The gains were much more equitable than
those prevailing in other developing countries. The mobility had a positive out-
come, in the sense that it helped to create certain reserves in working women for
confronting the crisis. But it also had a downside, because these same women
deeply understood how much they had lost with the sudden decrease in the living
standards of the population.
Official actions and ideas against women’s discrimination did not stop in the
nineties. Women played a visible and essential role in assuring the survival of their
families and of the country’s economy, and this elevated their self-esteem. The cri-
sis also unveiled not only persistent inequalities among women and men but also
women’s potential, strengths, and capacities to overcome the crisis at the individ-
ual, family, community, and national levels. Women stepped out of this crisis with
renewed strength, as was forecast by U.S. scholar Collette Harris (1995) and by
Cuban professor and essay writer Luisa Campuzano (1996).
These women had to build their strategies while living in a patriarchal society,
where they carried the burden of the second shift while men dominated managerial
positions. The high rate of divorce and separation increased the number of female-
headed households, making working women the main breadwinners.
Decision Making and Leadership Positions

During the last half-century, women’s growing capacity for decision making has
been one of the most important changes in terms of gender ideology, due largely to
women’s increased employment. Of course, this does not mean that Cuban women
lacked the ability to solve their problems before the revolution or before women’s
massive incorporation into the labor force.
Working women have trained themselves to simultaneously perform several
tasks at their jobs and at home. This ability is based on their high educational levels,
their lives in a society that has been fundamentally transformed, and the fact that
they have been subject to these changes in greater terms than men. In-depth stud-
ies are needed to help us understand how working women, whether professionals
or not, have constructed a decision-making know-how for all spheres of their lives,
including in the working world, from their traditional roles in the household. There
are generational differences, as the younger women tend to expect and persuade
men in their families to perform domestic activities.
In exercising decision-making abilities, women not only develop a sense of
empowerment as human beings but also confirm their right to behave independ-
ently, a basic civil right that Cuban women did not exercise fully after 1959.
Nevertheless, the social category of women as managers needs to be redefined, both
through assigning women to such positions and strengthening this category in the
social imaginary to promote women’s willingness to occupy managerial positions.
Decision making is the ability to evaluate scenarios, point out their main prob-
lems, explain what causes them, and propose solutions. It also includes the ability
to judge gains and losses in each situation and, according to the information at
hand, to determine which actions are needed to reach the goals. I exclude from this
definition the concept of formal leadership that includes decision making and other
institutional aspects. Nevertheless, both concepts of formal leadership and decision
making are related to empowerment, which is relevant to gender ideology.
In my research on women and employment in Cuba over the last twenty-five
years, I have shown that changes in gender ideology have generated decision-
making abilities in working women in all spheres of their everyday lives. Since 2001,
in more recent studies where I included professional men and women, I noted dif-
ferent answers according to gender.
At the time of the interviews, the majority of the men in these case studies were
occupying a managerial post or had occupied one in the past. All of them were
willing to perform leading responsibilities at their jobs. On the other hand, only
one-fifth of the women interviewed had been managers before or were willing to
do so. As stated earlier, in 2006 only 29 percent of all Cuban managers were
women. Out of the total of women workers, only 6 percent were managers. This
percentage, consistent for the last fifteen years, is proportionately low, considering
that women are the majority among professional and technical workers and should
be considered the natural source for managers. In 2006 men filled 70 percent of all
managerial positions, while their participation among professional and technical
workers hardly rose (ONE 2006, table 6.9).
The men in my sample who have held managerial positions or who desired to
become managers considered that they were qualified for these responsibilities or
were capable of being trained for such. They were seeking these positions. Women
in the sample explained why they did not want to become managers. Almost all of
them admitted that they were not sufficiently trained; others answered that it
would take too much of their time, paying very little. Others considered that
it would be an extra burden for the second shift. Some said that they preferred to
continue upgrading their professional knowledge instead of being trained as man-
agers. All of them believed that they are already decision makers at their jobs. It is
a mistake to interpret these answers as a lack of self-confidence. Rather, what fre-
quently happens is that they know what they want to achieve in their fields of
employment and becoming managers is considered an obstacle to their projects or
goals. Although the decision to avoid managerial and leadership positions to com-
ply with professional and life purposes is realistic according to these women’s pres-
ent conditions, at the national level it means that women cannot contribute a
gendered perspective to the Cuban managerial field and employment leadership.
The few women in the sample who were managers at the time of my study or
who had occupied managerial positions in the past declared that they had not
looked for these responsibilities but had been assigned to them. Some of the
women had been union leaders at the grassroots level. They acknowledged that
their coworkers respected their authority and felt that they were capable of solving
problems. Although they were not completely satisfied performing managerial
posts, they had exercised them responsibly. The majority of the Cuban women
who are capable of becoming managers or employment leaders do not want to
seem to reflect the limitations of their own process of gender ideology. However,
all conditions also have to be present at the social level to accomplish this goal.
Professional women, who are the natural source for managers or leaders in the
job sphere, were first perceived in the Cuban job market as a stable category at the
threshold of the Special Period. During the crisis years all women workers, not only
professionals, had to stay employed to keep their salaries, regardless of whether or
not they had a stable partner. As the value of the Cuban peso decreased, they were
compelled to find a second job to contribute to their household incomes. At that
point, and even at the present, if they assumed a managerial position it would have
been difficult to work for the needed additional income. When managerial posts
can fulfill the material needs of those that perform them, then more women will be
interested in them.
Cuban managerial culture has been designed by men and for men, and this has
to be changed to convince women to become managers. The presence of six
women ministers in fundamental ministries today proves that such change is
possible. Professional women comply with the requisites to perform managerial
positions. They are present in all sectors of the economy and have represented the
majority of professional and technical workers for the last thirty years. Their edu-
cational levels are high, they perform complex tasks simultaneously, and they are
already decision makers at their jobs and in their homes. Their lists of past employ-
ment are relatively long, beginning from the grassroots level, so they are familiar
with their job environment. When all the necessary conditions to promote women
to managerial posts flourish in Cuba, the process will be irreversible. Women man-
agers have started at the basic levels of employment and have risen with constant
feedback and learning through job experience, so they are familiar with all the com-
plexities of the jobs they will direct.
Women’s access to managerial positions cannot be postponed until the patriar-
chal cultural patterns in Cuba are completely transformed. Women’s promotion to
managerial posts has to contribute to these changes. This is what happened with
the incorporation and permanence of women in the labor force in the sixties and
seventies, widely explained by the Communist Party and the Federation of Cuban
Women; they did not wait for perfect conditions in the jobs or in society.
Gender Ideology at the Workplace

Gender ideology has changed more among Cuban women than men, including the
new attitudes women have assumed in society. Paradoxically, though, they repro-
duce the macho patterns in Cuban gender ideology in bringing up their children.
What follows summarizes what professional Cuban women and men reported to
me during the in-depth interviews included in the case studies I conducted from
2001 to 2006.
In terms of gender ideology linked to employment, both women and men iden-
tify complexities at their job, but women are less afraid than men to acknowledge
that they do not know certain aspects of their work environments. Women con-
fessed insecurities at their jobs and men never did. Such statements could be inter-
preted as supporting the notion that women are incapable of decision making and
lack self confidence if they weren’t clarified by women’s assertions in the inter-
views, as well as by the data concerning women and employment in Cuba. Women
declared their willingness to upgrade their job expertise. In fact, their professional
training is higher than men’s. For example, they had more PhD’s and Master’s
degrees than men in the sample, completed more graduate and foreign-language
programs than men, and participated in more scientific events than men did.
Women and men in my case studies considered that women in the workforce
had altered men’s attitudes at their jobs. Still, women detailed more precisely than
men what they meant by those changes. Men simply pointed out these new atti-
tudes without any further explanation and used socially accepted slogans. On the
other hand, professional women believe that they incorporated new ways of
approaching their tasks in the long and medium range. They are capable of linking
general objectives with actions necessary to accomplish them. They said that they
dedicate more time than men to figuring out their job planning and that they reject
improvisations and simple solutions more than fellow male workers do. One of the
women said in her interview, “That is why women are capable of making utopias
come true.”
Working women use traditional feminine traits to convince their colleagues at
work. They are “delicate,” “affectionate,” and “charming.” They like to hear others’
opinions and tend to approach fellow workers, men and women, to exchange per-
sonal experiences. Women develop several tasks at the same time and consider
themselves “indispensable.” Women interviewees believed that the reaccommoda-
tion of men and women at their jobs should be obtained through negotiation rather
than confrontation. They consider themselves key factors in these negotiations.
Women in my studies believed that they had indirectly influenced the new atti-
tudes of many of their working men. Men who are married to or live with working
women sometimes do household chores and this transforms certain attitudes at
their jobs. For example, fathers who take their kids to day care or to school have to
wake up very early to arrive on time at work. Some men buy food and other house-
hold goods in shops near their work.
Women have richer perspectives on how employment has influenced their atti-
tudes toward labor. The difference can possibly be explained by the fact that they
entered the Cuban job market more recently than men did, in the midst of a process
that was broadly transforming attitudes beyond job behavior. For example, com-
pared to their mothers, these working women have fewer children and are involved
in more marital or consensual relationships. Their educational levels are also higher
than their mothers’. Many of these professional women head their households and
govern their own everyday lives. The rich, new, and unfinished experiences that
these women have lived through in relatively short periods may have enriched their
ability to reflect on themselves and guide themselves in unfamiliar spaces.
Men did not openly blame women for the problems they confronted at work,
at home, and in their intimate relations, but they are concerned with the many
changes influencing women. Only two of all the men I interviewed considered that
those who accuse women of being “extremely liberated” are “backward” and “cam-
ouflaged machistas.” Another two said that such awkward sentiments have to do
more with professional competitiveness than with gender differences. Men tend
to disguise their apprehensions about women workers, mainly professional ones
that compete with them, because they would be criticized by the prevailing antidis-
crimination norms in public spaces.
Women said that, at least in Cuba, men react paradoxically toward working
women because they feel both attracted to and threatened by them. They are afraid
of competing with them when “designing work projects and carrying on their
duties in bed.” They believe that men are attracted to these challenges because they
promote in them the desire to hunt this “difficult prey.” If they “trap” them, their
macho ego would grow. Women in the study pointed out that this “hunting”
process also takes place at work. Men there are compelled to demonstrate that they
are better trained than their female colleagues and they have to impose their lead-
ership to assure their official power.
Two-thirds of the interviewed women admitted that men feel threatened by

women at their jobs for the following reasons: (1) professional women have higher
educational levels than men; (2) professional women who are not managers spend
more time upgrading their skills and acquiring knowledge, which could lead to con-
flicts between them and the managing men who dedicate more time to bureau-
cratic tasks; (3) accustomed to fitting in tasks at their jobs and at home, professional
women are better trained than men to organize their work schedules; (4) women
could snatch managerial jobs away from men; (5) annual evaluations at the work-
place show that women perform more activities than men; (6) Working women
depend less on men; and (7) men depend on women’s contribution to the family
income.
These ideas reflect how paradoxical the gender patterns of the labor market are.
Their contradictory origins transcend the labor sphere and must be found in the
broader cultural patterns conditioning gender identities in Cuba. To understand
changing gender ideology, I selected some of the cultural gender patterns valid in
Cuba today, which were also present in society during the upbringing of the men
and women in my studies. I asked the interviewees to comment on the cultural
gender patterns that influenced them during their childhood, adolescence, and time
at their university. They commented on the prevalent sexist patterns they experi-
enced during their childhood.
Regarding the tradition of dressing girls in pink and boys in blue, all men con-
sidered this correct because pink is “delicate,” “feminine,” and “sweet,” and boys
who wear pink are considered “sissies.” Women’s evaluations were more flexible.
All of the women said that this is a tradition, and parents decide whether or not to
use it with their children. Girls have the advantage of being able to dress in either
pink or in blue, mainly with the use of jeans. But boys are not permitted to dress
in pink.
Considering how differently boys and girls play, even the youngest of the inter-
viewees answered that their parents made them play with children of their same
sex. The gender division of games is evident at home. Boys play ball outdoors or
practice whatever sport is popular at the moment. Girls play with dolls or “play
school” inside their homes or on the porches. On the sidewalks they play hop-
scotch, jacks, or jump rope.
Day cares, the state institutions for preschool children of working mothers, per-
suade Cuban boys and girls to exchange gender roles in their games. But gender
divisions persist when they play without the guidance of their teachers. In primary
schools, which all Cuban children from five to eleven years old attend, students of
both sexes participate together in sports, camping, and cultural activities. But when
they play during recess, they tend to play with children of the same sex, as they did
in day care.
Cuban psychologist Patricia Arés, in her studies of how masculine identities are
constructed in Cuba, argues that men are not trained during childhood and adoles-
cence to adjust to the changes in gender ideologies that they will have to confront
later as a result of women’s development. Boys are not allowed to cry and display
pain, so grown-up men are unable to express their feelings. Boys have to fight back,
creating violent behaviors. Boys do not perform household chores and are not
trained to participate in the “second shift” (2002).
Girls are granted more opportunities to act less dogmatically than boys. When
they make boys play with them as “school pupils,” girls lead the game as “school
teachers.” Girls can cry their heads off, and they fight back if they wish. At school
they compete with boys, getting higher marks. They are the leaders par excellence
in the children’s pioneer organizations.
From these reflections I infer that men in my case studies are less prepared than
women to act flexibly in terms of what it means to be a man or a woman in Cuba
today. Men’s ideology is less flexible than women’s because they have been sub-
mitted to more indoctrination both as boys and adolescents. In general, they may
be as repressed as women, or even more so, in all spheres of life.
Gender Ideology in Marital Relations

Women’s participation in the labor force has contributed to a change in attitude of
women and men, at home and at the level of intimate relations. Yet, as a woman
sociologist declared in her in-depth interview, “In the intimate sphere men are
openly patriarchal, because they do not have to submit to the social rules prevailing
at work and in other public spaces that are critical of such attitudes. In private men
act like the superior beings they believe they are.” Her opinion led me to think that
Cuba perhaps repeats at the more personal level what is happening in other
countries.
Cuba has gone through almost fifty years of revolutionary transformation and
continuous programs to struggle against discrimination of all sorts. Measures to
eliminate gender discrimination have been among the most successful, even more
than those aimed at eradicating racism. Therefore, changes from the top, dedicated
to women, have operated in a global framework of revolutionary transformation.
There has not been a “stalled revolution,” as defined by North American author Arlie
Hochschild to describe what happened in the United States, where a woman’s revo-
lution occurred without a general transformation of the social structures (1989, 12).
In Cuba there are macrostructures to promote women’s participation in society.
Cuban women and men, mainly the former, have experienced inner changes
from societal projects that intend to foster their growth as full human beings.
Anguish and joy have been especially strong at the most intimate levels of many
marital relations. The everyday fight between general structures pursuing equality
and the patriarchal norms and values rooted in the individual is evident in this
sphere of life.
Several examples illustrate how these contradictions express themselves.
Women in my studies explained that their husbands were jealous of them because
they dressed up to go to work. Jealousy was manifested in veiled ways or it erupted
aggressively, but women always perceived it. They felt constantly observed and
judged by their partners. One of them said, “People say that women are jealous, but
men are more so, although some express their jealousy in subtle ways.”
Women in my sample said that because they work, all men in their homes—not
only their husbands—should be compelled to share domestic chores. These work-
ing women turn into examples for their daughters, because the latter want to
become workers too when they grow up. The sons grow up knowing that they will
have women colleagues at work and that they will probably marry a working
woman. Women interviewees admit that they educated their sons with macho pat-
terns and trained their daughters to use their liberties carefully, for they live in a
highly machista society.
Women noted that working made them more independent, not only in eco-
nomic terms but also in decision making. Among their decisions is a very important
one: to get rid of “unwanted” husbands. Professional women said that it is difficult
for them to find stable partners. They argued that they compete with their partners
on professional matters. The competition increases if both have the same profes-
sion, especially when the women earn more than their husbands or, even worse,
when they hold leadership positions and their husbands do not. In Cuba it is very dif-
ficult for professional women under forty to find professional men to become their
partners because, for the last thirty years, professional women have outnumbered
professional men. The divorce rate is high: in 2003 the divorce rate was 3.0 per 1000
inhabitants (CEPDE-ONE 2003, 161, table 5.1), while the marriage rate was 4.9 per
1000 inhabitants (130). Cuban social scientists have demonstrated that this trend
has been ongoing for several years (Consulta Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas 1999;
Alvarez Suárez 2008; Núñez Sarmiento 2005). Among the reasons are women’s
employment, housing shortages, and the fact that divorce is a relatively simple pro-
cedure. There seems to be another factor, although not one included in the divorce
rates: the Cuban tradition has condoned consensual unions since colonial times.
Cuban historian María del Carmen Barcia Zequeira writes that, according to
the Cuban census from 1841 to 1870, “consensual unions were the most frequent
options among the members of the poorest groups in Cuban society, whether
urban or rural, and this alternative had little to do with race, for it was as common
among whites as among blacks” (2003, 78–79).
Both women and men in my sample thought that working women have fewer
children than nonworking women. The Cuban global fertility rate has decreased in
the last three decades; in 2004 it was 1.5 children per woman (Peláez 2006, 5). Cuban
social scientists stress women’s employment and the wide access to family planning
programs since 1964 among the main causes for low fertility. Sociologist Juan Carlos
Alfonso insists on the need to use a gender perspective to study Cuban fertility
processes to be able to understand men’s as well as women’s behavior (Alfonso and
Alvarez 1996; see also Núñez Sarmiento 2003). This relational approach enables
scholars to understand fertility as something involving men and women, rather than
concentrating only on women, as demographers often do.
Women and men in the sample considered that women’s employment had
affected the sexual behavior of all Cubans. Family planning policies introduced in
1964 as part of the public health system enable men and women to avoid unwanted
pregnancies. Since the seventies, sex education programs in schools and for adults
have given women the possibility of a more confident and free sexuality. Almost all
interviewees considered that legal abortions, practiced at public health institutions
at no cost, have been wrongly used by women as a contraceptive.
Men in my studies spoke little about the influence of working women on mari-
tal relations. One of the women thought that men were afraid to acknowledge their
macho behavior in the private sphere, and this explained why they answer with
socially accepted formulas. She said that “men should be proud of their women, for
they are able to work at work and at home” and that men should “share household
chores with their wives.” Nevertheless, surveys conducted in Cuba since the
nineties show that women spend triple the number of hours on household chores
than men do. Very few men in the sample shared the “second shift” to help their
wives advance professionally. Some of the men in my studies confessed that they
are very attracted by professional women and at the same time fear them in inti-
mate settings. Cuban studies on sexuality show that men feel sexually threatened
by “strong” women, who they believe will challenge them to show their virility.
On the other hand, women declared that, thanks to their jobs, they have met
interesting men and others who were not so interesting but that it is difficult for
them to find professional men for their partners, which is frustrating. In many
cases, this fact has led them to stay single or without a stable partner. When women
become workers, they often mature in their sexual behaviors. They demand equal
satisfaction in their sexual relations and ask men to use condoms to prevent AIDS
and other sexually transmitted diseases. Some of the women declared that they feel
comfortable asking men out, although they would prefer men to take the initiative.
Conclusion
Since 1959 women have lived in a society that criticizes their dependence on men.
Consequently, women have reacted to these demands in their day-to-day behavior
and have constructed very personal attitudes to get rid of all types of dependence.
Men have not attempted to live independently of women, which is grounds for
further research.
The Cuban experiences of incorporating women into jobs, keeping them in the
labor force, and progressively elevating their professional qualification show that
such a goal can be fulfilled in a country with scant material resources, as long as
there is political will and a clear gender approach. Social scientists from Cuba and
other countries could learn from these processes. Further research in this field
includes identifying the spaces where machista ideology, its practices, and its means
endure, as well as how and why this ideology persists culturally and politically. The
implications of this phenomenon for the country at present and in the future needs
to be understood to create new public policies that support women, enforce exist-
ing legal regulations, and maintain the economic and social conditions needed to
promote women’s equality. New mechanisms should be designed to mediate and
negotiate gender conflicts that might arise in the future.
The low representation of women employed in leading managerial positions is
a fundamental shortcoming concerning women’s equal participation in society.
The effort to assign women to leadership positions in this area and in politics must
continue, and not by imposition. In 1986 Cuba experimented with appointing
women, blacks, and youth to prominent positions, without positive results. It is
preferable to continue selecting candidates according to their professional compe-
tency. Studies should investigate the differences in the ways in which men and
women exercise leadership and its implications for gender relations in employ-
ment, the family, and marital relations.
It is vital to continue revising Cuban programs to promote women’s and men’s
participation in the transformation of gender relations and ideologies. Not only will
women’s participation be enriched but relations between men and women will be
redefined, with the hope of easing many of women’s difficulties.
note
1. These reflections summarize case studies that I have developed from 1985 to 2007, schol-
arly exchanges with Cuban and foreign students and colleagues dealing with these topics, and
my personal experiences as a social scientist living in Cuba who has gone through the social
transformations I am studying. In particular, I used three recent studies, published in Cuban
and U.S. journals, which refer to Cuban professional women and men (Núñez Sarmineto
2001a, 2003, 2005).
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Kollontai, Alexandra. 1921. The labour of women in the evolution of the economy. In Selected
writings of Alexandra Kollontai, ed. Allison and Busby. Reprint, 1977.
Núñez Sarmiento, Marta. 1988. La mujer cubana y el empleo en la Revolución Cubana. Havana:
Editorial de la Mujer.
———. 2000. Estrategias cubanas de empleo femenino en los 90: Un estudio de caso con
mujeres profesionales. Revista Caminos, no. 17–18:46–63.
———. 2001a. Cuban strategies for women’s employment in the nineties: A case study with
professional women. Socialism and Democracy 15 (1): 41–64.
———. 2001b. Estrategias cubanas de empleo femenino en los 90: Un estudio de caso con
mujeres profesionales. Papers, no. 63–64:141–170.
———. 2003. Gender studies in Cuba: Methodological approaches (1974–2002). Gender and
Society 17 (1): 7–31.
———. 2004. Ideología de género entre profesionales cubanos. Temas, no. 37–38:24–36.
———. 2005. Changes in gender ideology among professional women and men in Cuba today.
Cleveland State Law Review 52 (1–2): 173–187.
ONE. 1997. Anuario estadístico de Cuba 1996. Havana: National Office of Statistics.
———. 1999. Perfil estadístico de la mujer cubana en el umbral del siglo XXI. Havana: National Office
of Statistics.
———. 2003. Cuba en cifras 2002. Havana: National Office of Statistics.
———. 2006. Anuario estadístico de Cuba 2006. Havana: National Office of Statistics.
Peláez, Orfilio. 2006. Reto inaplazable para los cubanos. Granma, October 30, 4–5.
Safa, Helen I. 1998. De mantenidas a proveedoras. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto
Rico.
PART III
WOMEN’S AGENCY FOR
PLURAL DEMOCRACY AND
FULL CITIZENSHIP
5 The Mothers and Grandmothers
of Plaza de Mayo Speak
interviews by graciela di marco
The Mothers’ committees for the disappeared were one of the first expressions of
female activism in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. They irrupted onto
the political stage of their respective countries as a collective response to a regional
policy of counterinsurgency that grotesquely violated the most basic human rights
to life, to not be tortured, and to have a fair trial. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo
(May Square) of Argentina was the first and best-known group of mothers to organ-
ize in search of their disappeared children. As many other authoritarian regimes of
this era, the Argentinean military dictatorship used brutal methods to eliminate a
growing civil and armed opposition, tragically ending the lives of tens of thousands
of people through a technique, initially employed by the Nazis in World War II,
that became known as disappearance. People were illegally detained, imprisoned,
tortured, and killed, without having any official paper trail that indicated to family
members when they are were arrested, where they were taken, and what happened
to them. The Mothers’ committees were the organized expression of hundreds of
mothers and other female relatives who initially searched individually for their
loved ones in police stations, hospitals, and morgues. They became the first human
rights organizations in Latin America and stood front and center in the national
struggles for democracy.

Some years later in Argentina, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo emerged
from the Mothers’ committees. They are dedicated to finding their grandchildren
who were born in jail and given in adoption to military personal of the junta when
their own parents were killed. With the help of sympathetic scientists, the
Grandmothers’ committee applied a sophisticated DNA procedure to identify their
now-grown grandchildren, who in most cases had no idea who their real parents
were. Over the years the Grandmothers have rescued the identity of almost a hun-
dred people raised in military-dictatorship families. On February 13, 2009, the
Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo announced that they had identified their ninety-
seventh grandchild. The following testimonies are firsthand stories, told by the
Mothers and the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
Testimony of Nora Cortiñas: Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Founding Line

Actually, the Mothers started meeting on April 30, 1977. My son, Gustavo, was
abducted on the fifteenth. I ran all over the city, from the police station, to the
96 interviews by graciela di marco
bishopric, to the Ministry of the Interior. Later I visited all the existing organiza-
tions, first the Liga Argentina por los Derechos del Hombre [Argentinean League
for Human Rights], where relatives of the disappeared were helped. Some of them
had belonged to the league and now their children were disappeared. Catalina
Guagnini once said, “They took away the bad sons and daughters of the good com-
munists.” I also visited the Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos
[Permanent Assembly for Human Rights], founded in December 1975, and other
organizations such as the Movimiento Ecuménico por los Derechos Humanos
[Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights] and the Servicio de Paz y Justicia
[Peace and Justice Service], whose leader, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, was also abducted
and disappeared at the time, but who was liberated due to the international outcry
demanding his freedom. He had been working for many years in defense of the
unprotected in Latin America: the indigenous peoples, the peasants.1
After that the Mothers began to meet at Plaza de Mayo. A couple of weeks later
my brother-in-law told me that a group of women gathered there wanted to know
where their children had been taken to. They weren’t known as the Mothers
[of Plaza de Mayo] yet.
Anyway, I crazily started filling in forms and dealing with legal procedures.
I talked about this at home and was told where to go. The first days I feared my
husband would talk about our problems at the ministry where he worked, which
was under military intervention, and I would tell myself: these people aren’t going
to help me find Gustavo. I tell you, they were a disaster, but I was terrified and
thought that my acting might make things worse and that my son would be tor-
tured still more. It was that kind of confusion, ambivalence, coming and going.
Then I began going to Plaza de Mayo, and there I met Azucena, María Vela, María
Rosario, and Juanita. Well, that’s when we started. Gustavo’s wife lived at home
with her boy. She and Gustavo were politically active, “Peronist Montoneros.”2 At
that time, 1977, Gustavo was very much engaged in politics. Although he disagreed
with the leadership, he was politically active.

By then I wasn’t doing any housework; my priority was to look for my son.
I slipped into a spiral of growing madness. Yes. Because it’s madness, but I never
gave in, never. And then all that fear . . . they would phone and threaten me, they
would say that they were going to arrest me, they mistreated me. As I’m an extro-
vert, when I went to the police station I was seen as some kind of leader, so the
threats were harsher. Later, they would phone my home and repeat the threats.
They wrote my name, Nora Cortiñas, on my neighborhood walls followed by the
words: “terrorist mother.” We went out on the streets. Azucena’s idea was that
we should go to Plaza de Mayo to join in our grief, anguish, and uncertainty,
because grief also brings uncertainty.
The Fathers
At the end of 1977, when we began meeting, Azucena, Esther, Mary, and the French
nuns were abducted. The aim was to dissolve our movement. It was like a bolt of
lightning and it shook our families tremendously. Our husbands, the fathers, were
Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo 97
afraid because, before taking our friends, they had arrested us. Entering Plaza de
Mayo was symbolic, and they said, “How long will this go on? Watch out, they will
disappear you.” Once the fathers saw how the police stopped a bus, got all the pas-
sengers off, pushed us in, and took us away. We gestured for them not to get near,
because they had to contact our lawyers. One thing was for the Mothers to be
arrested, but another would be for the fathers to be arrested with us.
We could say anything to the members of military and security forces, call them
names, and things like that. When we entered the army headquarters we would say,
“You took our children, but your wives cheat on you.” When they said, “Your son
must be a stooge,” we answered, “My son may be a stooge, but your wife cheats on
you.” The fathers couldn’t. We shouted, kicked, stamped our feet, cried, and
screamed. Judeo-Christian culture conditions men’s behavior: they aren’t supposed
to cry. A man must show fortitude and endurance; he represents strength. But it
wasn’t like that. Men were weak. Many of the Mothers were divorced or separated,
had a different attitude toward life, but many were housewives.
When we met the first time, Azucena said, “Let’s go to Plaza de Mayo from
Stella Maris Church.” There was a small office outside, at the back of the church,
for the bishop, who wore boots under his cassock.3 So Azucena gathered the
Mothers and fathers who had attended and said, “We are not coming back here;
we must go to Plaza de Mayo and let everyone see us entering the government
house.”
She fixed a date: Saturday, April 30. Thirteen Mothers and a girl who belonged
to the Communist Party and was looking for her own disappeared attended.
The government house was closed. One of the Mothers said, “We’ll come next
Friday.” Three Fridays later, one of them said, “We’re coming on Fridays [in
Spanish, viernes]; a day with an r is unlucky!” You see, even we Catholics are super-
stitious. Another Mother said, “Why don’t we choose a different day?” And another
one said shyly, “We still have Mondays [lunes] and Thursdays [jueves]. No, not
Monday. That’s laundry day; let it be Thursday.” As time passes, I remember that
scene very well. And the fact that we had a double role: we went out to look for our
sons and daughters, but we also did the housework, even if husbands helped. In my
case, not only my husband but my daughter-in-law who lived with us and my son
Marcelo helped. Nevertheless, we had two roles and I thought, I’ve been at this
meeting for hours and forgot to buy bread. Or take cooking: I would get up and
cook at six in the morning because I had to be off by eight, and I wanted to leave
some food at home, and my husband complained of the smell of food. And I said,
“If you don’t like it, you cook. I’m leaving your meal ready; you can eat it when
you’re hungry.” Things of that sort, due to the double role we had. I would think,
I’m going off, but they have this or that at home.
We never gave the fathers direct participation. At times they would express
their feelings timidly—but, you know, they were fearful. Besides, we were like
madwomen; we went out on the streets because we were mad. If we got phone
calls, we would pick up the phone and yell, “Son of a . . .” How can you shout that
on the phone? Well, let them take me. . . . You know . . . things like that could only
be done by mothers. Now I understand that if the fathers had acted like that they
would have been murdered or imprisoned.
After some years of gathering at Plaza de Mayo, we were about four hundred
Mothers, and a few fathers accompanied us. Some have died since—some haven’t.
Sometimes they just sat on the benches of the square, or walked around, but they
never marched with us. . . .
When we were carrying out legal procedures and any of the fathers came along,
they always ended up saying something atrocious, like “I told my son or daughter
not to get involved.” And we said, Go away, goodbye. If you think that, you
shouldn’t be here.” That’s how it was. The fathers wanted to save their children by
saying they had been naive, knew nothing about politics, and had been used. We,
the Mothers, had a clear mind.
The path was marked by Azucena; she definitely had a clear mind. She had been
in a union; she had courage; we learned from her. Another Mother was the daugh-
ter of an anarchist. Another belonged to a family who had escaped Nazi Europe. All
this created a circle. We learned from each other, how to defend our children,
vindicate their behavior without fear. At first some of us said, “I don’t know what
my son or daughter was up to.” But that was at the beginning. You couldn’t say,
“My son was an activist.” No! That would have buried him. Every day we learned
something.
The Organization
When we began gathering at Plaza de Mayo, at first we just stood there. Azucena,
an incredibly protective Mother, would bring drafts of letters to the pope, to the
Episcopal conference. A draft that we read and that later would become a letter, it
didn’t matter what kind of paper it was written on, wrapping paper or whatever;
we would sign it. Nothing was changed; we signed it as it was. Then she would pro-
duce letters to the military: the navy, the air force, and the army. She gave us copies
and said, “Three Mothers will go to the Ministry of War [now the Ministry of
Defense], three to the navy headquarters.” In those days we were very few; three
should go there, three somewhere else, and we chose who would go. It was a group
experience, as in Enrique Pichon Riviere’s social psychology theory. Later on,
I myself started studying social psychology, because when the students of this
school wrote papers, many wrote about our work. They said that we were experi-
encing Pichon Riviere’s theory. But we didn’t understand it that way. We would
meet, line up to present habeas corpus, and decide who would go where; each one
had a role. Later in the day we would meet again to see how things had come out.
It was a very spontaneous organization in which each would choose what she was
going to do: I’ll go there and do that. When we met, one of us asked, “Who’s going
to talk?” And someone would say, “I’ll speak about the babies we’re looking for.”
For example, a Mother who wanted to know where her pregnant daughter or
daughter-in-law had been taken would say, “I’ll talk about pregnant women.” We
always went to the different institutions in threes and did our work openly: we had
to arrange interviews, give our ID numbers, our home phone numbers. It was all
done in the open; it wasn’t clandestine work. It was like saying, “Here we are. We
want to know where our sons and daughters are.” And we would argue, and
quarrel. . . . For many years we did not have formal roles; we worked just like
that. How did things work? In 1977 Azucena was our natural leader; when she
arrived at Plaza de Mayo, she inspired fortitude. She was generous; she would let
everybody speak and give their opinions and considered them all. She wasn’t bossy
or authoritarian. She had an open mind, was spontaneous, and thought that deci-
sions should be made by the group. She did not think of herself as the president or
anything of the sort. Hers was a natural leadership. We formed smaller groups, and
met at our homes or at tea rooms. At first we met for lunch at a convent in the
neighborhood of Balvanera, where there was a soup kitchen and you could get a
cheap meal. There we planned our work and organized different activities.
The Awakening of Consciousness

The change we went through—well, not change but transformation or learning—
the awakening of our consciousness, I always say, had to do in the first place with
“Why?” “What for?” and “Why did they take them?” They took them because they
were politically active. That’s why. As the years went by we understood this on the
streets, walking together with unionists, with teachers, with doctors and medics,
with those who were following in the path of the political struggle started by our
sons and daughters. The reasons they took them were related to the oppressive
neoliberal economic policies of hunger, unemployment, the impoverishment of a
rich country. This is what we learned, but on the streets, where at first we didn’t
dare talk politics. That was serious; it was getting involved and we could be pointed
at; they could say, “The Mothers belong to political parties.” We were very careful;
we still are and we don’t take part in any activities that have to do with political par-
ties. After every change of government we had to do our catharsis, because after
the military dictatorship we were made all kinds of beautiful promises and we
believed them, until we realized they were only promises.
The Present Situation

This government is very different from the earlier ones—up to now, and in certain
respects. What is the situation? You can’t be blind to all that has been achieved.
After twenty years of constitutional governments, plus what we did during the dic-
tatorship with our marches, protests, denouncing, and demands, we now have a
government that listens. Surely, in the past, the president must have thought, if
I become president, the first thing I will do is open the ESMA [Escuela de Mecánica
de la Armada, or Navy Technical School], where there were concentration camps.
That must have been one of his ideas. Still, we can also see that the dreams of our
sons and daughters, like the reign of social justice, haven’t been fulfilled. We under-
stand that this country was systematically destroyed during thirty years by the mil-
itary, their partners, and politicians; they destroyed it; they threw it into a ditch.
You need more than one day to put it back on its feet. And you must understand
that politicians who were part of former governments are responsible: they were
rulers or belonged to the ruling class; they aren’t innocent. When they take office
they have airs at first, but later they compromise with those that hold economic
power. Their commitment is with the web of politicians and businesspeople that
helped them get there. So, I will not trade my son’s wishes and struggle for the pro-
posed transformation of the ESMA and the clandestine detention center Club
Atlético into areas for the preservation of memory, nor for the banning of the
amnesty laws. Because I’m sure that from wherever he is buried, he will follow his
mother’s steps and tell me to be strong. So if I had any doubts or said, “How long?”
“What’s the use?” I heard a voice inside me saying, “You must go on till the end;
you must achieve what we did not.”
Feminism and Women’s Rights

We are all women. We have doubts on only one issue; we don’t agree on it or
haven’t discussed it widely: abortion. It’s a complex topic, you know; some of the
Mothers are Catholic, but they are beginning to understand that the issue is that
poor women die while those who are well-off can have an abortion; they can decide
and their health is protected. And those poor women cannot afford contraceptive
methods. Furthermore, there isn’t any kind of sex education. But that took some
time. At first, the topic of abortion produced uneasiness. Many said they didn’t
want to get mixed up in that question because woman is a life-giver. . . . But you
know, we’ve made progress in that field. For many years I have fought for the
decriminalization and legalization of abortion, although I don’t support it. But
I think every woman has a right to decide. I also consider that the decision to have
an abortion also involves me, and unfortunately many women have to make that
decision by themselves, because even if the couple gets on, well, they can’t make
this decision together. I wish every woman had the right to choose how many chil-
dren she wants to have, how and when. This is part of the struggle for freedom we
are in. The other question was accepting homosexuality, a controversial issue.
Sometimes the way the media present this topic is shocking.

In a conversation with two reporters, Marta Merkin and Ana María Muchnik,
one of them said, “I’m a feminist, you know,” and I answered, “That’s being against
men.” I’m married. I have two sons. I come from a patriarchal home, where mas-
culinity was exalted. My father was very jealous, even of his daughters; we couldn’t
go to some places, and when we began dating, wow, well. . . . So one of them said,
“Let us tell you.” And they talked about the recognition of our gender’s rights and
gave me a lesson on feminism. Since then I’ve understood that what the Mothers
have done was to place gender in the struggle, simply by carrying out our endeavor
as women, confronting the military dictatorship, and challenging a society that
had mistreated us because we were women—especially the military, the church,
and the politicians. Even women who were members of political parties mistreated
us, particularly those of the Unión Cívica Radical [Radical Civic Union]. A group
of women belonging to this party invited us to a meeting in an apartment in Plaza
San Martín [a park in the Retiro district of Buenos Aires]. They wanted us to tell
them how we got organized, how we went out on the streets, but all this in great
secrecy. It looked as if they were afraid to have that interview with us in case
we introduced them into a world they didn’t wish to know too much about. With
peronist women it was different; Evita had led that movement. Although I associ-
ated Evita with machismo because she always repeated “with my general, my
man,” she had started walking that path. I believe this involvement scared me
because my husband was such a male chauvinist, and then I had to face things I’d
never done before: go out on the streets to confront the dictatorship; that made me
a feminist. I had never read about feminism. I think women should be given a
detailed explanation of what it means to be a feminist. This should be done on
television, on the radio, when women meet. You know, I used to think it was
against men, because machistas fill their wives’ and daughters’ heads with the idea
that feminists fight for freedom, like in Europe, where women marched waving
their bras, and that feminism is always a synonym of lesbianism. It’s necessary to
clarify this and then you understand you’ve got rights, equal to those of men. We
belong to different genders; we walk side by side. You have the same rights, and if
not, you protest. I tell you, my mother-in-law, whom I never heard use the word
feminism, was a woman who did what she thought was right, and it didn’t matter
if her husband liked it or not. She confronted him. She would give me advice—
many recommendations—she was an extraordinary woman, a beautiful, chubby
lady. One day she told me that you should always have the last word, no matter if
you are right or not—that’s being a real mother-in-law—and that I should not allow
my husband to dominate me, because otherwise I would never get him off me.
Rather than a mother-in-law, she was a good mother who knew what her sons
were like, and what her husband had been like. So it was good advice. That’s when
I understood!
I’m really an extrovert. I like to know, peek into, and read about everything, to
be up to date with what’s happening in the world. It was good for me to study
social psychology in 1985. Social psychology is illuminating; it teaches you how to
listen and analyze what you hear, to detect who says what and how it’s told. My
experience teaching women at my sewing workshop, although it was kind of
domestic, was also important because I learned about the lives of other women
and, of course, the fact that I met extraordinary women.
The Feminist Conferences

Except for a couple, I attended all the local and international feminist conferences
of the past years: the Continental Conference of Women in Cuba, the New York
conference, and the one held in Russia when it was still part of the Soviet Union.
They have been useful in my relationship with women, taught me about the rights
we are entitled to and how to use them. But sometimes women disappoint me
because when they are in office they change. I also feel that we’re not represented
by those women in power who, after receiving our support, take no interest in gen-
der or equality. Those who act like men are compromising, selfishly and foolishly.
Nevertheless, learning is enriching for me. However, my family, my son, my
daughters-in-law, and grandchildren don’t belong to the feminist circle.
I would like to be remembered as a woman who wants to exalt gender, in the

sense that I value myself and the struggle of women, even the most humble, in any
corner of the world. The women at the pickets are an example.4 Before these
women appeared at the pickets, many other women went out on the streets of their
neighborhoods to fight for drinking water or for electric power; they told me that
our struggle at Plaza de Mayo was an example to them. They said “If the Mothers
can go out on the streets to fight for their sons and daughters, then we can fight in
our own neighborhoods for our children, for what we are entitled to, public
services.” Yes, I would like simply to be remembered, and maybe someone will say,
“Do you remember Nora? Wow, she would go everywhere. For example, that
roundtable I attended yesterday about precarious jobs. I was there saying to myself,
they all talk about laws, regulations. I just have a few notes; should I talk? And I did,
and they all ended up crying, even men. That was because I spoke about the essen-
tials, what our sons and daughters wanted, and what happened.
Testimony of Estela Carlotto: President

of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo
The Context
The movement of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo isn’t a typical movement;
it’s not a group of women who gathered with a particular aim, to carry out a task,
or with lives, ideals, or ambitions in common. No. We founded a group summoned
by grief, a struggle, and our search. The call came from a military dictatorship, not
from us. We didn’t know each other; we came from different cultures, religions,
and economic and political backgrounds. All that was put aside; it didn’t matter and
our aim was the search for our sons, daughters, and grandchildren.
At the time of the coup d’état of March 24, 1976, I was the principal of a primary
school. I had four children and my husband, a chemist, owned a small plant that
manufactured paint. My two elder daughters, Laura and Claudia, were married and
independent; both were politically active at university and in high schools; they
opposed what we knew was coming. They had a clear view of the dark future that
was in the making.
Our home was middle class. And I always say we raised our children with a lot
of freedom, independence, and self-determination. However, we were not pre-
pared for their political discourse and actions. We had been rebellious and had
wanted change, but we had followed in the steps of our parents, and those of my
generation wished their children to do the same. But this didn’t happen. My hus-
band and I did not take part in politics; we voted only when we had to, supporting
the UCR; we opposed peronism. We were influenced by those who, for different
reasons, had problems with Peron’s politics. This issue mattered to us. When our
daughters became peronists, it was a big surprise, almost unpleasant. But as I’ve
said, with the liberty in which we raised them, we listened to them. We lived in
La Plata, a university town with a strong labor movement, which was dynamic
and in the opposition and, at the beginning of the troubles, suffered the actions of
the Triple A, the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina [Argentinean Anticommunist
Alliance].5 In La Plata people were abducted and murdered, and their bodies
appeared anyplace or were thrown in the streets; they were not disappeared. And
we could see day by day how the political milieu rarefied. It got dangerous, and we
were afraid most of all for our daughters. To protect them, I tried to dissuade them
from their involvement and sometimes made foolish proposals. However, if they
asked for things to make their placards and posters, I helped and always listened to
them in fear. I would say to Laura, the eldest of my four children, to do as I did in
my daily life: if there was someone in need, give him something; if there were aban-
doned children, take care of them for a few hours. She laughed and said lovingly
that that wasn’t the way, that they wanted to do away with orphanages, that that
was charity, that it lasted only for an instant, that it was only a way to cleanse our
conscience, that it didn’t work, and that they wanted radical changes.
And I listened, and started to understand. Both of them were married. Claudia got
married when she was eighteen. They were no longer under our tutelage, but as we
were a close-knit family, we were there for them and looked into their activities. Laura,
the eldest, always minimized the danger she was in, as if her work weren’t important.
She was at the university, and belonged to the Juventud Universitaria Peronista
[Peronist University Youth, the peronist youth movement in the universities], which
later associated with Montoneros. She worked for this movement as a liaison with
the media; she visited neighborhoods trying to awaken class consciousness; wrote
political graffiti; took part in marches. My husband knew more about some of her
activities. I was a little foolish, believed what I was told, and was, of course, more
fearful. My husband—this I discovered later—gave refuge in his factory to many kids
who were being persecuted. He took care of them and since he manufactured paint,
he gave it for free for their political campaigns. Sometimes, when he saw a wall with
a political slogan written by Montoneros, he would exclaim, “That’s my paint.”
He also gave other political organizations the paint they needed—that was his
contribution—and other things he did, which I won’t know about because he passed
away four years ago.

The problem at the time with teachers was that they were passive. We didn’t
confront; the union was practically inexistent. But when there were strikes, I was
there. Although I was the school head, when the causes were just I even went on
strike myself. I was aware of things but didn’t belong formally to an organiza-
tion. And I was very scared of my daughters’ political engagement. When the
constitutional government, a very bad one but constitutional nonetheless, was
overthrown on March 24, we understood that the future was going to be hard and
dangerous.
The Repression
On August 1, 1977, my husband was abducted because he was Laura’s father. I was
warned that if I wanted him back alive I would have to pay ransom and was given
one day (Wednesday) to collect forty million pesos and save his life. They told me
that on Thursday they were changing the guard and weren’t turning in any prison-
ers; this meant they would kill him.
Obviously, I began collecting money, went to the pawnbroker, borrowed, and

did everything I could and finally raised this sum and handed it to an emissary.
Then I just waited, as I had no news from my husband. I read the newspapers to see
if a body appeared someplace. I saw many people: lawyers who only wanted
money, corrupt individuals who bargained with life. I met others who wanted to
help but did not know how. Well, I did everything I could. Meanwhile I learned for
the first time how to act and move in search of a disappeared person. I visited hos-
pitals, police stations, presented a habeas corpus, spoke to politicians, and made
many contacts of all kinds. Twenty-five days later he was liberated; he had lost
twenty-eight pounds and, because of his diabetes, was in bad condition.
The last time I saw Laura was July 31, 1977. After my husband was freed, he
went back to work, and he would meet her in Buenos Aires, where she lived. He
traveled there regularly, where he had customers and suppliers for his factory. This
was his cover, part of his routine. In my case it was different as I worked at a school.
Laura wrote and phoned once a week. And then the letters and calls ceased. The
last letter was dated November 16, 1977. So I thought, she’s been abducted. We
established November 26, 1977, as the day of her disappearance. She was living with
her husband, so when we learned about her fate, once again I contacted politicians,
the bishop, those under the bishop. The military officer Bignone, who had received
me before in his office at the army headquarters, was practically out of his mind. He
stated that they killed them all. I said that I did not want her killed, that if she had
committed a crime, she should be tried and sentenced. That I would wait for her.
He replied that I should understand what had happened in Uruguay, where the
Tupamaros had been imprisoned and this had strengthened their convictions, and
that this wasn’t going to happen here.6
It was then when I thought she had been murdered, because when my husband
was kidnapped he had overheard someone say that they were murdering prisoners.
When he told us this, we thought he had gone mad. So I said to this man, “If you’ve
killed her I want her body. Because I don’t want to go mad like so many mothers
looking for NN [No Name] initials on unidentified graves.” In the past I had accom-
panied many mothers whose sons and daughters had disappeared or had been mur-
dered. There were many new graves in La Plata, especially those marked NN.
In April 1978, a woman who had been in prison with Laura was released. She visited
my husband at the factory and told him that our daughter was alive, that her six
months’ pregnancy was going well—that was when I learned she was pregnant—
that the baby was going to be born in June, and that I could claim it at the Casa
Cuna.7 During all these years I’ve gathered information from comrades who were
with her and were liberated, whom I met in different countries where they were
refugees, or here in Argentina. I learned that Laura had given birth to a boy on
June 26, 1978, that she had been taken to the Central Military Hospital. Since then,
all of us have been gathering information about what happened to her and her son.
On August 25, 1978, a high-ranking police officer told us that she had resisted arrest
at a road blockade and had been shot by the military. These confrontations and
shootings were fabrications. The prisoners were taken from detention centers and
massacred. Laura realized they were going to murder her. She said good-bye to all
her comrades that day, August 25. She was twenty-three years old. Her death was
the most terrible blow I’ve ever received in my life. It’s the cross I carry, because
I struggle a great deal and will continue struggling, but grief doesn’t die out; it’s
there. And I’m also searching for her son, who is now twenty-seven years old, but
I don’t know where he is. The issue here is with whom he is and how. There are
boys and girls who have been appropriated but don’t know it. And when by various
means we find them, not because they come to us but because of someone’s report,
then it is as if they awake to a very harsh reality. I have been introduced to boys that
could have been my grandson but who weren’t. Some people have told me, “There
is someone who looks like you; his eyes are like your daughter’s.” But then, when
you present the report and the blood tests are done and he isn’t your grandson, it’s
over. Still, sometimes someone comes with reliable information and a miracle hap-
pens. That’s why I have so much hope that someday I’ll be lucky.
The Grandmothers
Before this happened to Laura and after some good advice I was given, I had made
up my mind and thought that I should get closer to the Mothers and Grandmothers
who were organized and working in La Plata, so my search wouldn’t be a lonely
one. I went to the Grandmothers and began attending the meetings at Plaza de
Mayo and signed up for the different tasks. Since then, I have been with my
compañeras, my sisters in grief, doing what is possible, and even the impossible. Of
course, at the beginning we had no experience; we did not know what to do. We
wanted to see the babies at Casa Cuna; we also watched the children going in and
coming out of kindergartens in their white pinafores. If we suspected anything then
we would go to their homes, pretending to be salespeople, or whatever, and tried
to check our information. On certain occasions, when someone informed us that in
such and such a place there lived a policeman who had taken a child of ours, we
would go and see if the child was really ours. All of this was registered. But then
we became well-known and couldn’t go on acting this way. If you think about it,
our work started as something very domestic and improved with time. Then
society and bureaucracy forced us to create a nonprofit organization with a legal
status, formal statutes, and a committee, inscribed in the category of human
rights. Thirteen Grandmothers belong to the standing committee, and other
Grandmothers who do not belong to the committee work jointly with us; we are
about twenty Grandmothers in all. In the past we would meet in a tea room or in a
train station and plan our strategies. Later, we had our own offices and met there.
Since we have improved our organization, our meetings are more frequent, and
since 1984, with a constitutional government in place and legal actions imminent,
we began to work with attorneys and psychologists. We developed genetic proce-
dures to identify our grandchildren accurately and created the National Bank of
Genetic Data, a unique case in the world, at the Durán Hospital in Buenos Aires.
The Search and the National Bank of Genetic Data

We said to ourselves, “The years go by and we still can’t find them.” Some
Grandmothers had doubts as to whether their grandchildren had been born, if they
were boys or girls, if they had inherited their looks. How could we prove at a court
of law that a child was one of our grandchildren? From an article in a newspaper we
learned that a father had denied his paternity but it had been proven through a
blood test. So we thought, if the fathers and mothers aren’t here, our own blood can
be used for the tests. So then we started visiting different countries: Italy, France,
Sweden, and the United States. In Europe we got no answers to our questions, but
in the United States we did. The person who had an important role in this, and still
has, is Dr. Mary-Claire King, who, with other scientists, established in a seminar in
1983 that with the blood sample of a relative of the children, the whole genetic
pattern of their parents could be rebuilt. Comparing blood samples can ascertain
identity. During 1984—[we were] already in the constitutional period—Mary-Claire
King came to Argentina and stated that the genetic bank was ready to operate, its
experts were well prepared, and the equipment and the whole system were very
modern. Clay Snow, the other doctor who came with her, created the team of
forensic anthropologists. They are the pillars of this project. That way we are cer-
tain that when children are found, they are the grandchildren we were looking for.
This was our contribution, and that is why many people after all these years say we
were the promoters of genetic science. We promoted many initiatives, because our
work, as time went by, suffered great changes. Searching for babies is very different
than searching for adult men and women. The philosophy is different; the strategies
have been modified. We needed teams of experts, attorneys, [and] psychologists,
because children and adults were in need of care and attention. We constituted the
genetic team that collaborates with the genetic bank. Later, it was the time of mod-
ern computer science, and a research team. At this point we couldn’t do the work
ourselves any more: receive reports, take the numerous telephone calls, visit differ-
ent homes, do the follow-ups, take pictures, see the birth certificates, read the files,
all that. We had different teams taking turns to do this work under our leadership.
As time passed, we thought that as our grandchildren grew older, two things would
happen: they might come looking for their Grandmothers, and we would continue
looking for them. That is when we began carrying out different tasks that had to do
with the community, because that is where our Grandchildren are.
For the past six or seven years we have been producing videos, television spots,
and other programs: theater, music, tango, and dance, for identity. These programs
link us to the grandchildren, to those who have doubts about their identity, and
encourage them to contact us. As a matter of fact, we have a team to handle spon-
taneous presentations, because boys and girls come here, tell us their stories, their
doubts about their identity, that they may be sons or daughters of disappeared
persons, and we must help them. Most important of all are the tests; on this we
work closely with the government and the Comisión Nacional por el Derecho a la
Identidad (CONADI; National Committee for the Right to Identity).
The Struggle for Identity, Truth, and Justice

Eight historic organizations devoted to human rights have been doing all this work,
which represents an opportunity to obtain justice, keep memory alive, unearth the
history of the disappeared, and find the grandchildren. The Grandmothers work
particularly with the grandchildren. We are a very specific organization but have
included other topics, such as education. We have agreements with the Ministry of
Education, municipalities, and universities of Buenos Aires and the provinces.
These programs and tasks are like a fan that continues opening. We also intervene
in matters concerning women, the elderly, and children in society.
The Grandmothers are considered a referential institution on all these issues,
and these programs and the work they involve need a liaison team with the press
and a team to promote our activities. These must be dynamic and have a constant
presence in all the activities related with these topics, as a means of collaborating
with the democratic system. Why? Because we are in need of justice and truth and,
most importantly, the reconstruction of society. Our social fabric is destroyed,
wounded, by hunger, unemployment, housing problems, a deficient health insurance
system, and a deteriorated educational system. This concerns the Grandmothers:
although we are few, we distribute the diverse tasks among ourselves and get help
from our grandchildren. Many that have been found, or the brothers and sisters of
those we are still looking for, work at our offices. They are our reinforcement
because the Grandmothers aren’t getting any younger and can’t do their work as
before, and, sadly, others have passed away. We are the leaders and are in good
company.
The Right to Identity

During the dictatorship, between four and five hundred children were stolen. The
great majority were born in concentration camps. Here, at the Grandmothers’
headquarters, we have 240 reports, plus another 100 filed by CONADI, which aren’t
at our offices. It is a lot! Of all the missing children, eighty have been found, sadly,
not all of them alive. Some were never born because their pregnant mothers were
murdered, killing them as well. Others died with their families when their homes
were bombed. In some cases the grandparents have found their remains.
With CONADI we have established a national network for the right to identity.
We not only work in Buenos Aires and in the other five offices in our country but
have developed in every province and city the means to bring our case to public
notice and receive spontaneous reports from those working for nongovernmental
organizations, local governments, ombudsmen, offices for Human Rights, and
volunteers. These groups all belong to the network. Nowadays, with great effort,
we’re opening a branch office in Madrid, because we know many children were
taken away, or left the country, many years ago. We have reports of boys and girls
that have doubts about their identity, and some believe they might be our grand-
children. They watch television, see us, listen to our concerts, and watch our films
and documentaries. Our programs are worldwide.
That is why we recommended that a series of articles concerning identity be

introduced in the International Convention for the Rights of the Child. Three of
them are referred to as Argentinean: 7, 8, and 11. In addition, the convention has
had constitutional rank in Argentina since 1994 and clearly states the proceedings
that must be followed when children are stolen and the responsibilities of the state
in these issues.
The Struggle against Impunity

When Alfonsín took office, the whole of society celebrated it.8 A line was drawn
after the dictatorship; the military and the security forces were in retreat, morally
defeated. We supported the democratic government, although we didn’t share the
views of the ruling party, but the people had great hopes. We were there and
expected to be contacted, but nobody called us. We asked for interviews but
weren’t received. And then many good things happened: the prosecution and
judgment of the commanders-in-chief of the armed forces [and] CONADEP
[Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas, or National Committee for
Disappeared Persons], which published Nunca Más [Never Again], a national report
that officially lists the disappeared. And then, the surrender and the amnesty laws,
which cost us blood, sweat, and tears. Our watch at Congress was permanent, beg-
ging the representatives not to pass these laws. But well, they followed the party
line and the laws were passed.9 Our only relief was that the crimes against our
grandchildren would not go unpunished. We answered, “Don’t try to comfort us.
Our grandchildren weren’t born from a cabbage; they had mothers and fathers, and
we also want truth and justice for them.” Nevertheless, we continued our work
and clamor for justice, and the fact is 940 military are in jail for being accomplices
in the theft of babies, together with those who appropriated a child. The amnesty
laws were horrendous. We felt wronged and offended because we had to live with
murderers, walk on the streets not knowing if the man walking beside us had mur-
dered our son or daughter. And something that worried us was the continuity of
barbaric acts, because crimes committed by the police, gangs of extortionists, and
paramilitary groups weren’t investigated. That is why we have always demanded
the repeal of these laws. But now this new government is doing things that give us
hope once again.10 I think that these are good times that we must take advantage of.
We have a government that has made a political decision in this sense, and has done
what we have asked for before without success. We now are received, they ask for
our advice, we are in permanent contact with them, and, furthermore, our requests
are answered.
Gender Consciousness
Two things have changed: women and the knowledge of their rights. In the past
they accepted given roles in life: kept home and raised children, and the husbands
had their jobs, held office, etc. This has changed. But men have changed too, recog-
nizing women as their peers, their right to be at the same level, neither higher nor
lower, neither behind nor in front, but side by side. I believe that the compulsory
percentage of 30 percent women as political candidates on electoral slates should
be raised to at least 50 percent. Also, in many companies you can see women’s
leadership.
We are for everything that represents women’s rights: the right to hold public
office, have economic and social responsibilities, intervene in society beside men,
and not be subjugated, mistreated, discriminated against. That is part of our work.
Nowadays we’re struggling for the ratification of the protocol of the CEDAW
[Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women],
which hasn’t been approved by our Congress. Last year I visited the United
Nations, commissioned by our Ministry of Foreign Relations, so you can imagine
how important our institutional work is.
I believe that the society that condemned us was saying, consciously or not,
“Well, that did not happen to me; they must have been up to something or their
family didn’t look after them.” There was no distinction between sons and daugh-
ters. At first we felt discriminated against by a society that ostracized us, but espe-
cially by the military, who called us “madwomen” and said, “Don’t worry. They
will get tired of all this and just cry; they’re women.” They were wrong and, well,
here we are. They could have disappeared many more people if they had been
clever enough to acknowledge that women are strong. I can’t say if it was courage,
or mere love, but it was defying a situation in which it was impossible to keep still.
I think no mother in our place could keep still. Those that kept quiet were afraid, or
sick, or were restricted by their families: “Don’t go,” “I don’t want you to go.” But
a great majority went out on the streets. It was a challenge to verbalize that they
had taken away part of our souls and that this leaves an empty space. But you just
can’t stay at home crying. Every one of us did what she could and what we knew
best. The miracle is that we’re still together, because it’s not easy. And time passed,
fatigue and ailments came, but we did not reduce our efforts. Of course we have
our problems like any family or organization. But we will continue working,
I hope, while we have the strength and energy.
I would like to be remembered as a woman who did what had to be done; who
was not a heroine, nor different, nor special, but a woman with a lot of love and
grief, with memory; who did her part; who needed to do her part, and still does; a
woman committed to that struggle.
acknowledgments
Edited by Alejandra Brener and translated by Esteban Moore.
notes
1. Adolfo Pérez Esquivel founded the Servicio de Paz y Justicia, which in those years pro-
moted an international campaign denouncing the atrocities committed by the military regime.
In 1977 he was arrested by the federal police in Buenos Aires, held a prisoner for fourteen
months in the police headquarters without due process, and was tortured. While he was impris-
oned he received the Pope John XXIII Peace Memorial and in 1980 he was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize.
2. The Movimiento Peronista Montonero (Montonero Peronist Movement) was a political

military organization that emerged as an armed movement in defense of the third administra-
tion of General Domingo Perón, who was elected in 1973 but died in 1974. He was replaced by
his widow, Isabel Perón, who had previously been elected vice president. Montoneros went
underground in 1976 to fight against the military coup that had overthrown Isabel Perón’s
government. The group was finally crushed through state and paramilitary repression.
3. The boots imply that he was linked to the military.
4. Editor’s note: see Graciela Di Marco (this volume, ch. 9) on women’s participation in the
picket movement in the 1990s.
5. The Triple A was a paramilitary organization that was instrumental in carrying out the
repression of the “dirty war.” Created in 1974 by José López Reja, secretary of social security
during the administration of Isabel Perón, it controlled political forces that were considered to
be threats to this government and continued to be part of the repressive apparatus during the
military coup.
6. The Tupamaros, or the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation
Movement), was a left-wing political organization in Uruguay that emerged in the sixties and
evolved into a guerrilla movement at the end of that decade. It was severely repressed during
the military regime of the seventies and early eighties, with most of its members assassinated,
in exile, or in jail. It became a political movement again with the return to democracy, actually
forming part of the ruling Frente Amplio (Broad Coalition).
7. Casa Cuna, formerly Casa de Niños Expósitos (Home for Abandoned Children), was
founded in Buenos Aires in 1779. Since 1961 it has become a children’s hospital, Hospital
General de Niños Dr. Pedro de Elizalde.
8. Raúl Alfonsín was president of Argentina from 1983 to 1989.
9. The Law of Final Point and the Law of Due Obedience were sanctioned in 1986 and 1987,
which liberated hundreds of oppressors from charges and guilt. In 2003 those laws were
repealed. In June 2005 the nation’s Supreme Court of Justice resolved the nullity of these laws.
As a consequence, new rulings could be started against military officers accused of human
rights violations during the last military dictatorship.
10. She is referring to President Nestor Kirchner’s administration.
6 Gender Politics in Nicaragua
feminism, antifeminism, and
the return of daniel ortega
karen kampwirth
The Sandinista Front made an opening to establish a

new basis for relations. . . . They treated [women] as
important. —María Lourdes Bolaños
There was a [Sandinista] discourse about women but

I think there was a strong fear of the word “feminist.”
I think that more than anything it is a fear of losing
power, of having to share power with a woman.
—Hazel Fonseca
The autonomy of the family was heavily attacked in my

country under the Marxist government of the 1980s. . . .
In that decade the Constitution established the recogni-
tion of common law marriage as equal to legal marriage
and also unilateral divorce. . . . Today the class struggle

has converted itself into a struggle for the elimination of
sexual classes and the triumph of the “neutral sex.”
—Max Padilla
Nicaragua has the most significant feminist movement in Central America today,
thanks in part to the Sandinista Revolution (1979–1990). But, according to María
Lourdes Bolaños, Hazel Fonseca, and many other activists in the women’s move-
ment, many leaders of the revolution were also responsible for impeding the emer-
gence of feminism. So it is somewhat ironic that the opponents of today’s feminist
activists, people I call antifeminists, often frame their opposition to feminism in
terms of the Sandinista Revolution.1 Antifeminist activists such as Max Padilla see
the revolution and feminism as part of the same process, a process they oppose.
112 karen kampwirth
But ironically, in 2006, the antifeminists accomplished one of their long-term

goals—the abolition of the right to abortion to save the life of the woman—with
the help of the same revolutionary party that they had blamed for the emergence of
feminism in Nicaragua.
The Emergence, or Reemergence, of Feminism in the 1980s

One of the few things that feminists and antifeminists agree about is that
Nicaraguan feminism was a product of the Sandinista Revolution. However, as
Victoria González-Rivera (2001) has shown, Nicaraguan feminism was not born
with the revolution. Instead, it can be traced back to the nineteenth century.
Moreover, many of the most independent and politically active women of the
twentieth century were supporters of the Somoza dictatorship, and so the
Sandinista Revolution was not the first time that women were mobilized behind a
partisan or feminist project. Nonetheless, historical memory is typically con-
structed by history’s winners and so the history that González-Rivera uncovered is
truly a lost history. In the dominant story, told by feminists and by their opponents,
feminists first began organizing in the 1980s.
This feminist organizing was possible in large part because of the mass mobi-
lization of men and women, especially young women, in the early 1980s. They
were mobilized by the Sandinista government for a variety of purposes: to teach
others to read, to immunize children, to harvest coffee, to guard their neighbor-
hoods at night. Those campaigns played a critical role in the challenge to traditional
authority that was the revolution (Kampwirth 2004, 26–28).
In the early years of the revolution, the Sandinista-affiliated national women’s
organization, Asociación de Mujeres Nicaragüenses Luisa Amanda Espinoza
(AMNLAE; Luisa Amanda Espinoza Association of Nicaraguan Women) played an
important role in challenging traditional authority. Founded in 1977 as the
Asociación de Mujeres ante la Problemática Nacional (AMPRONAC; Association of
Women Confronting National Problems) it was one member of the Sandinista

coalition that helped bring down Somoza. With the revolution it changed its name
but its mission did not change significantly. Still a support group of the Frente
Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista Front for National Liberation), the
most significant changes were due to the development in the FSLN itself, from a
guerrilla movement to a political party.
AMNLAE’s work included advocating for legal changes to help women and
providing services through Casas de la Mujer (Women’s Houses), which numbered
more than fifty nationwide by the end of the revolutionary decade. These Casas
provided services in the areas of health and psychological and legal counseling, at
the same time as they offered workshops in areas such as sexuality, contraception,
and job training. Yet despite all the important work it did, AMNLAE’s role as
support for the male-dominated FSLN impeded its ability to challenge sexual
inequality. With time, even women who stayed with AMNLAE began to question
the relationship between the association and the party (on AMNLAE and the FSLN,
see Criquillón 1995; Kampwirth 2004, 28–36, 54–57; Murguialday 1990, 101–148).
Gender Politics in Nicaragua 113
AMNLAE’s work promoting reforms in gender-related laws, and internal pres-

sures within the women’s organization in the 1980s, provides reasons to believe
that AMNLAE would have evolved into a more independent and more feminist
organization had the revolution continued on its original course. But there is no
way to know for sure. The relatively easy years of the revolution came to an end
with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as president of the United States in 1981 and his
funding of the contras shortly thereafter.
With the onset of the war, gender politics in Nicaragua entered a new phase.
Within the evolving women’s movement, there were at least two different
responses to the war, that of what Nicaraguans call “the sectors” (labor unions or
other economically organized groups) and that of AMNLAE. And their responses
to the very same war could not have been more different.
The Secretarías de la Mujer (Women’s Secretariats) were founded in all the
major labor unions in the early to mid-1980s. The first Secretaría was created within
the rural wageworkers union, the Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (ATC;
Association of Rural Workers) in 1983. The women of the ATC Secretaría success-
fully made the case that the key to increasing rural women’s productivity—and
therefore raising funds necessary for the war effort—was to address gender inequal-
ity. Perhaps because of the power that came out of their important role in the
national economy, the women of the ATC succeeded in pressuring the FSLN to
open hundreds of day care centers, collective corn mills, and wash basins and
to address issues like sexual harassment and access to contraception. At the same
time as the women of the Secretarías insisted that the war could never be won
without more gender equality, the women of AMNLAE accepted an ever more
subservient relationship with the FSLN, on the grounds that the war could never
be won without softening demands for gender equality, at least temporarily (on
the emergence of feminism within the sectors, see Criquillón 1995, 215–225;
Murguialday 1990, 155–188).
The final years of the 1980s were a time when elements of the revolution were
institutionalized; they were also the years when another sort of women’s organiz-
ing began to emerge. Joining the Sandinista-affiliated women’s movement,
AMNLAE, whose roots could be traced to the guerrilla period, and the Secretarías,
which grew in response to the contra war, was a third branch: independent or
autonomous feminism. This third way—that explicitly rejected links to parties
and unions—responded to two occurrences: the debates that led up to the 1987
Constitution and the 1987 Encuentro Feminista de América Latina y el Caribe
(Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentro) that was held near enough—
in Taxco, Mexico—to allow forty to fifty Nicaraguan women to attend.
By 1987 one of the earliest autonomous feminist groups, the Colectivo de
Mujeres de Matagalpa (Matagalpa Women’s Collective), was formed. Initially it
broadcast over the radio and performed feminist theater on topics such as abortion,
and soon added classes in literacy, midwifery, and the law. The Centro de Mujeres
de Masaya (Masaya Women’s Center), founded in 1988, and the Centro de Mujeres
IXCHEN (IXCHEN Women’s Center), founded in 1989, were women’s centers that
114 karen kampwirth
provided a range of legal, health, and psychological services, at the same time as
they advocated for gender equality.
Groups like the Centro de Mujeres de Masaya and IXCHEN (which soon had
centers in many Nicaraguan cities) were in many ways like AMNLAE’s Casas,
except that they operated independently from the FSLN. But a very different model
of women’s organizing—an autonomous feminist organization that sought to
change state policy rather than provide services—was founded by many of the
women who participated in the Encuentro. Upon their return from Mexico in 1987,
they founded the Partido de la Izquierda Erótica (PIE; Party of the Erotic Left).
The PIE was a lobbying group that succeeded in promoting gender equality as
a constitutional value. In the 1987 Constitution, at least ten articles make specific
mention of women’s rights (compared with none in the 1974 Constitution).
Couples in common law marriages (which are more common than legal marriages
among Nicaragua’s poor majority) were protected from discrimination, and no-
fault divorce was permitted. The PIE did not last into the 1990s, but it left its mark
on the Constitution and on the women’s movement. After the FSLN lost the 1990
election, all twenty-some members of the PIE became founding members of the
autonomous feminist organizations that emerged in the early 1990s (on gender
issues and Sandinista law making, see Kampwirth 1998; Stephens 1988, 1990).
After the Revolution: Autonomous Feminists

Respond to State Antifeminism
The war was the central topic of the 1990 presidential campaign and the language
with which both leading candidates spoke of war and peace was highly gendered.
Daniel Ortega, “the fighting cock,” was portrayed simultaneously as a loving
father, hugging his baby daughter Camila, and as a horse-riding cowboy leading a
charge of other men on horses. These masculine images were tied together with
the slogan “everything will be better,” a very poor choice for a party that had
already governed for ten years.

Ortega’s major challenger, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, or doña Violeta, as
she was consistently called, always dressed in white, invoking the image of the
Virgin Mary. Through her words and image, she made the claim that she, a woman
with almost no formal political experience, would be able to end the war and rec-
oncile the Nicaraguan family, just as she had reunited her own politically divided
children. Instead of formal political experiences, doña Violeta promised to draw on
her experiences as wife, widow, and mother. Appealing to an imagined past in
which men protected women in exchange for their loyalty and subservience, a past
in which families were not divided by politics, she promised to end the war, reunite
families, and end the suffering of mothers (Kampwirth 2004, 48–54). Running on
that platform, she won with almost 55 percent of the vote.
When doña Violeta took office in April 1990, she fulfilled many of those prom-
ises. Ending the war, the central promise of the campaign, largely did occur that
same year as the contras demobilized, mainly because their main source of funds—
the U.S. government—withdrew its support. Sporadic political violence continued
for several years after doña Violeta took office, but the draft was abolished and, for
the most part, the war ended. To a significant extent doña Violeta also came
through on her promise of reconciliation, even making an alliance with some FSLN
legislators against more radical right-wing members of her own political coalition.
And doña Violeta also carried through the implicit antifeminist promise of her
political campaign by seeking to overturn many Sandinista-era gender reforms,
especially in the areas of health, education, and social welfare (on those policies, see
Kampwirth 2004, 48–54).
The early 1990s brought major changes for Nicaraguan feminists. The electoral
loss of the party of the revolution, the FSLN, meant that they lost an ideological
ally in government, and many of the laws and social programs that had promoted
gender equality were overturned or underfunded. But they were also freed from
the constraints that the vanguardist FSLN had tried to place on feminist activists.
The most unanticipated result of the 1990 election was not the peaceful end of the
Sandinista Revolution or the demobilization of the contra forces but the explosive
emergence of autonomous feminism, including lesbian feminism.
The official coming-out party of the new branch of women’s organizing was
held, appropriately enough, on International Women’s Day. The Festival of the
52 Percent, held at the Piñata fairgrounds in Managua during the weekend March 8,
1991, was a critical turning point.2 It represented a definitive and public break
between AMNLAE and other currents within the women’s movement. While the
break did not mean the end of AMNLAE, it did signal a mass exodus of AMNLAE
dissidents to the new independent feminist movement. Among those dissidents
were members of a new lesbian-feminist rights movement that made its first public
appearance at the Festival of the 52 Percent. While a few gay and lesbian rights
organizations existed as early as the mid-1980s, they occupied a precarious space
during the revolution, ordered by FSLN leaders to lie low and refrain from making
waves.
Many lesbians were loyal revolutionaries who accepted those limits. For
example, Mary Bolt, who helped found the sexual rights organization Fundación
Xochiquetzál in 1991, had a long history as a Sandinista, having become an urban
guerrilla in 1974. I asked if she was an open lesbian when she joined the FSLN:
They never asked me, what sort of thing are you? Never [laughing]. You simply
joined and, period, it isn’t as though they asked me what I thought, what
I believed. I simply joined. . . . So before the triumph [of the revolution] I didn’t
have problems. . . . And after the triumph, I still wasn’t very interested in
lesbian organizations. For me the fundamental objective was the defense of the
revolution. (interview, July 1994, Jamaica Plain, MA)
But after the Sandinistas lost the 1990 election, she reconsidered her political
goals. “After, with the new election, an emptiness opened up and I think this hap-
pened to a lot of Nicaraguan men and women. It was a political emptiness. . . . for
us it was very strong; it was a cause for grieving. . . . So for me this emptiness was
filled by the feminist movement” (interview, July 1994, Jamaica Plain, MA).
116 karen kampwirth
A single thread tied together Mary Bolt’s life as guerrilla, party activist, and
autonomous feminist. She never rejected the earlier activism; instead, she moved
on from one form to another when circumstances changed: from guerrilla to party
activist after Somoza was overthrown, and from party activist to autonomous
feminist after the Sandinistas lost the 1990 election. Many gays and lesbians did the
same in the early 1990s. Freed from the constraints of the FSLN, which tried to limit
their activism, and faced with a hostile new government, many gays and lesbians
organized themselves. The year 1990 saw the founding of the gay rights organiza-
tion SHOMOS, the anti-AIDS organization Fundación Nimehuatzín, and the les-
bian feminist collective Nosotras (We Women).3 In 1991 the sexual minority rights
organization Fundación Xochiquetzál opened its doors. It was soon followed by the
lesbian organizations Entre Amigas (Among Friends) and Grupo por la Visibilidad
Lésbica (Group for Lesbian Visibility). And, in 1992, more than twenty-five groups
united in the Campaña por una Sexualidad Libre de Prejuicios (Campaign for
Sexuality Free of Prejudice) (on the gay and lesbian rights movement, see Arauz
1994; Babb 2003; Thayer 1997).
If the March 1991 Festival of the 52 Percent was a declaration of independence
for the autonomous feminist movement and the lesbian rights movement, that
independence was ratified less than a year later. In January 1992 more than eight
hundred women attended the first national feminist conference, which was titled
Diversas pero Unidas (Diverse but United). By early 1992 the autonomous feminist
movement was large, diverse, capable, and increasingly daring.
The major disagreement that divided the newly autonomous activists was
autonomy itself. Some activists—the majority—were so afraid of being controlled
once again by an organization like the FSLN or AMNLAE that they rejected pro-
posals to form any sort of coordinating organization. Yet efficiency required them
to be able to unite their individual groups in some way, and so they agreed to form
a series of networks. Eight were formed at the conference, to work on issues such
as sexuality, economics, and environmentalism. By the early twenty-first century,

two of the networks formed in early 1992—the Red de Mujeres contra la Violencia
(Women’s Network against Violence) and the Red de Mujeres por la Salud María
Cavallieri (María Cavallieri Women’s Health Network)—still were active and large.
There were 120–150 member organizations in the network against violence and
96 alternative clinics, collectives, and Casas in the network for women’s health
(Kampwirth 2004, 64).
Those who preferred the network model were the majority at the 1992 confer-
ence. But there was a large minority that feared that failing to create something
more centralized than the networks was risky. Without a coordinating body and
without an explicit commitment to feminist goals, the new autonomous move-
ment might stagnate. So they formed the Comité Nacional Feminista (National
Feminist Committee) in May 1992. To join the committee, groups had to agree to
support a set of feminist demands: that they were against violence, domestic and
otherwise; that they were in favor of gay rights; and that they were prochoice.
Although the committee disbanded in 1994, it recreated itself with twenty-five
organizations and five individual members in November 1998. By the mid-1990s,

the autonomous feminist movement in Nicaragua was influential, not just in
Nicaragua but in the whole region (see Kampwirth 2004, 96–108; Blandón 1997). So
when the five-country Corriente Feminista Centroamericana (Central American
Feminist Current) was created in 1995, it was no surprise that its office and staff
were based in Managua, Nicaragua.
But the internationalization of Nicaraguan feminism was not the only innova-
tion of the 1990s. Another major change in women’s organizing was the beginning
of coalition building across partisan and class lines, forging alliances that would
have been unimaginable in earlier decades. Two of the most visible examples of the
new cross-partisan, cross-class alliances for gender justice were the Comisarías de la
Mujer y la Niñez (Women’s and Children’s Police Stations) and the Coalición
Nacional de Mujeres (National Women’s Coalition).
In 1993 a number of groups whose relations were often hostile came together
behind a project that helped to make legal protections against domestic violence a
reality. The plan was to create a series of Comisarías that would be staffed by
women and would offer a holistic range of services including legal, psychological,
and medical support, very much like the Casas that had been originated by
AMNLAE in the 1980s and like similar women’s police stations in Brazil. Nineteen
organizations sponsored the pilot project. That these nongovernmental organiza-
tions and government agencies united behind the Comisarías was surprising, given
their often opposing roles in the revolution, contra war, and gender battles of the
1980s and early 1990s (see Kampwirth 2004, 68–69).
Yet despite the apparent instability of the coalition, the Comisarías continued to
grow: four years after the beginning of the pilot project, there were twelve centers
in operation nationwide, three of them in the capital. By 2000 thousands of women
had been served at one of the fourteen centers nationwide (Kampwirth 2004,
66–69). Nicaragua stood out among Central American nations with regard to
women and law enforcement: “Nicaragua currently boasts a higher percentage of

women police officers, more women officers in the highest ranks, the most institu-
tionalized system of women’s police stations, and the most extensive police train-
ing on gendered crimes in Central America” (Fitzsimmons 2000, 225).
Another cross-class and cross-partisan women’s coalition was formed in 1995.
The Coalición Nacional de Mujeres sought to extract promises from all the parties
in the months leading up to the 1996 national election, which was the first election
for any national office since 1990. The coalition included women who belonged to
the two biggest parties—Arnoldo Alemán’s Alianza Liberal (Liberal Alliance) and
Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista Front—along with women from many of the smaller
parties, including the Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista (MRS; Sandinista
Renewal Movement), the Partido Conservador (Conservative Party), the Partido
Resistencia Nicaragüense (the contras; Nicaraguan Resistance Party), and Proyecto
Nacional (PRONAL; National Project), an alliance of centrist parties. All three
currents within the women’s movement—AMNLAE, the Secretarías, and the
autonomous feminist organizations—were also well represented.
118 karen kampwirth
Three parties and coalitions—the FSLN, the MRS, and PRONAL—eventually

signed the Minimum Agenda of the Coalición Nacional de Mujeres, committing
themselves to a series of gender reforms. Of course, the most controversial
demands—abortion, contraception, gay rights—did not appear on the agenda. But
even so, had the demands on the agenda been met, politics would have been trans-
formed in some important ways at the level of the nation and the family. As it hap-
pened, the big winner of the 1996 election, Arnoldo Alemán of the Alianza Liberal,
refused to sign the agenda or to even meet with members of the coalition, even
though it included many women from his own party (Blandón 2001).
The Antifeminist Response from the State

Why did Alemán refuse to even consider signing the Minimum Agenda? Although
he never really explained, his response to the Coalición Nacional de Mujeres was
consistent with the general patterns of his political career. Both as a young man in
the Juventud Somocista (Somoza Youth) and as the mayor of Managua from
1990 to 1996, his political style was one of right-wing populism: appealing to
excluded groups, especially the very poor, and seeking to mobilize those groups
from above.4 Arguably, Alemán refused to sign the Minimum Agenda of the
Coalición Nacional de Mujeres because the Coalición could not be squeezed into
his political framework. It was nonpartisan while he was fiercely partisan; it was an
autonomous organization while his organizations were all controlled from above;
it demanded rights with no strings attached while he preferred to dole out privi-
leges in exchange for loyalty. Finally, the coalition’s demands for gender equality
might have been problematic; Alemán was very closely allied with the most con-
servative sectors of the Catholic Church.
During the first year of the new administration, that church-state alliance was
strengthened. In one of his first acts as president, Alemán named a new cabinet,
replacing all the ministers from the Chamorro administration with the exception of
the minister of education, Humberto Belli. Belli, a member of the right-wing

Catholic organization Opus Dei—and one of the most nationally and internation-
ally prominent opponents of the feminist movement—had been at the forefront of
efforts to combat various revolutionary legacies. Although the Constitution of
1987, ratified under the Sandinistas’ watch, had guaranteed free public education,
Belli led the drive to privatize public education. While the women’s movement
promoted sex education, AIDs awareness, and egalitarian gender roles, Belli pro-
moted legal matrimony, abstinence, and traditional gender roles.
Of course, the retention of Belli did not signal a break with Violeta Chamorro’s
administration, quite the opposite. Yet despite her efforts to turn back the clock on
gender politics, doña Violeta also was committed to reconciliation. Thus the
Instituto Nicaragüense de la Mujer (INIM; National Women’s Institute), an agency
that was formed under the Sandinistas, continued to exist. In fact by the end of the
Chamorro administration, the INIM was one of the central actors in the coalition
that created the Comisarías. However, under Alemán, there was far less ambiva-
lence toward the feminist movement and feminist NGOs.
During his 1996 campaign for president, Arnoldo Alemán accused the NGO sec-
tor of being a primary cause of Nicaragua’s underdevelopment and poverty. But a
public campaign against prominent NGO leaders did not begin until after the worst
natural disaster to hit Nicaragua during the Alemán administration: massive flood-
ing as a result of Hurricane Mitch in late 1998 and early 1999.
Following Hurricane Mitch, President Alemán greatly accelerated his attacks
on the NGOs. Accelerating the campaign against the NGOs was logical in the
context of the administration’s goals: capitalizing on opportunities, while minimiz-
ing the political risks associated with Hurricane Mitch. There was even more of a
need, from Aleman’s perspective, to increase his attacks against the NGO sector
once it transformed in response to Mitch, forming a Coordinadora Civil (Civil
Coordinating Committee) in November 1998, composed of more than three
hundred organizations. Once the NGO sector had united, it had the ability to carry
out studies of the unmet needs of people in regions hit by Hurricane Mitch, studies
that clearly were irritating to Arnoldo Alemán.
In addition to the irritation of the Coordinadora studies, Alemán could not have
been pleased to realize that many foreign funders seemed to deem the groups that
belonged to the Coordinadora more trustworthy than his administration. Alemán
might have relied on the tried-and-true populist strategy of blaming powerful
foreigners, especially the members of the European Union, for his problems in
responding to the devastation of Hurricane Mitch. In fact, he was critical of some
powerful foreigners, but the main focus of his attacks was on local foreigners, that
is, prominent members of the NGO sector, and especially on women (on the indi-
vidual women he targeted, see Kampwirth 2003, 141–146).
In fact, Arnoldo Alemán’s campaign against prominent NGO activists mainly
targeted women who were identified in one way or another with the feminist
movement. In addition to attacking feminist NGO leaders, “the more than 200 pri-
vate medical clinics that offer services to low income women” were harassed and
investigated “under the pretext that abortions were carried out there,” according to
Ana Quirós (quoted in Cuadra 2000, 5). Although the administration never found
evidence that any of those centers performed abortions, many Nicaraguan femi-
nists did support the right to safe, legal abortion. Ultimately, the campaign against
women’s health providers was not primarily a campaign against their actions (since
claims that they performed abortions were unfounded) but rather a campaign
against their ideas (that is, their belief in reproductive rights).
In the campaign against the NGOs, Arnoldo Alemán united the church and
state on one side, while he and his allies conflated foreigners and feminists on the
other side. Marching in a September 2000 demonstration with Cardinal Obando y
Bravo of Managua, Alemán asserted his support for a proposal to abolish article 165
of the Constitution, a nineteenth-century provision of the civil code that permitted
abortion to save a woman’s life. Supporters of banning abortion under all circum-
stances asserted that the church and Alemán administration, not those NGO
activists who defended women’s right to life, were the real Nicaraguans. According
to “Dr. Rafael Cabrera of the Catholic University [Universidad Americana], the
120 karen kampwirth
NGOs ‘are foreigners who do not represent Nicaraguans, feminist movements that
promote lesbianism and organizations that promote sexual licentiousness and
homosexuality’” (Infopress Central America 2000, 2).
Journalist Sofía Montenegro has suggested that, of all the sectors of civil soci-
ety, the feminist movement is the most threatening to the interests of the Catholic
Church. According to Montenegro, “the Church has demanded the head of the
feminist movement” as part of its pursuit of the “reevangelization of the continent
[which is necessitated] by secularization and, on the other hand, [by] competition
with the Protestants.” She suggested that the very close ties between the Alemán
administration and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church could be seen as an unof-
ficial pact, with the ultimate goal of forming a hegemonic alliance between the
Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC; Liberal Constitutionalist Party), the FSLN,
and the church. Given that the 1999 pact between the PLC and the FSLN undercut
all other parties’ ability to compete and given the weakness of private enterprise
and unions in neoliberal Nicaragua, the main impediments to the PLC/FSLN/
church alliance were the feminist movement and the press. Arnoldo Alemán largely
succeeded in co-opting and controlling the FSLN through the 1999 pact, but
the feminists were not so easily persuaded (interview, August 7, 2001, Managua,
Nicaragua).
Antifeminist Organizations
The antifeminist organizations do not constitute a movement in the same sense as
the feminist movement. While hundreds of organizations identify with the feminist
movement, there are a relatively small number of antifeminist groups. The most
extensive list of organizations I have seen in writing was composed of nine organi-
zations that identified themselves as prolife and profamily. They signed an open
letter to George W. Bush, calling on him to put a stop to many of the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID)’s programs, which, they said,
“gravely attack our cultural identity and mock our moral and spiritual principles, at
the same time as they promote, especially in children and adolescents, the addiction
to sex, homosexuality, prostitution, promiscuity, [and] the deceptive and irrespon-
sible use of immoral methods, like the condom and contraception” (Vida Humana
Internacional 2002).
I do not claim that the signers of the letter comprise a complete list of antifem-
inist groups in Nicaragua, just as my previous discussion of feminist groups is
incomplete. But I think it is accurate to claim that there are hundreds of feminist
groups and a much smaller number of antifeminist groups, because I used the same
research methods when I interviewed antifeminists as when I had interviewed
feminists.
Of these organizations only one of them, the Asociación Nicaragüense de la
Mujer (ANIMU; Nicaraguan Women’s Association), founded in 1996, is composed
exclusively of women and, unlike most Nicaraguan women’s organizations, never
makes even momentary alliances with other women’s groups. When I asked
ANIMU Vice President Evangelina de Guirola if ANIMU ever collaborated with
other women’s groups, she quickly answered no, suggesting with her tone that the
very question was objectionable. According to the then president Elida de
Solórzano, ANIMU “seeks ways to benefit women . . . so that they have access to
an education, to protect them in all that pertains to women . . . not just our organs
but our psychology, which is based on motherhood” (interview, December 18,
2002, Managua, Nicaragua; quote from phone interview, December 19, 2002). In
the course of talking about her work, ANIMU vice president Evangelina de Guirola
brought up the topic of feminism without my asking her about it (in fact, all the
antifeminists I interviewed brought up the topic of feminism on their own). She
told me that feminists sought unnatural solutions to imaginary social problems:
“I have heard some who say that they want equality but they want the sort of equal-
ity that goes against nature, like Marxism. . . . The first thing the radical feminists
do is to make you feel like a victim. It is Paolo Freire’s system. . . . Never in my life
have I felt discriminated against for being a woman (interview, December 13, 2002,
Managua, Nicaragua).
But even though it is easy to identify hundreds of feminist groups and only a
few antifeminist groups, it does not follow that feminists are hundreds of times
more powerful. Counting the number of organizations is not the only way to meas-
ure the strength of a movement. When measured by another criterion—the extent
to which activists have access to powerful institutions—Nicaraguan antifeminism is
quite significant. In the years following the 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinistas,
until Sandinista Daniel Ortega was reelected president in 2006, opponents of
feminism enjoyed direct access to the state. In fact, many prominent antifemi-
nists directed or held powerful positions within state agencies under presidents
Chamorro, Alemán, and Bolaños, especially those agencies that were directly
involved with the issues that most concern opponents of the feminist movement:
sexuality, inculcation of values, and access to contraception and abortion.
In fact, one could argue that opponents of feminism in the 1990s did not need to
organize as feminists have because they enjoyed often direct access to two very
powerful institutions: the state and the Catholic Church. In fact, this access was so
good that individual activists tended to move back and forth between the state and
civil society. A good example is Elida de Solórzano: A participant in the charismatic
Catholic movement since 1974 and a member of the charismatic organization
Ciudad de Dios (City of God) since its founding in 1978, she lived in Nicaragua
throughout the revolution, even though she and her family were harassed for being
charismatic Catholics rather than liberation theology Catholics.
After the Sandinistas were voted out of office, Solórzano worked closely with
Humberto Belli as his adviser (1990–1996) when he served as vice-minister and then
as minister of education. She sought to directly confront the legacy of the revolu-
tion: “Education [under the Sandinistas] was devoid of a lot of traditional family
values that Nicaragua had known under the Somozas. . . . Christian values were
lost” (interview, January 31, 1991, Managua, Nicaragua). Solórzano participated in
the governmental delegations to the United Nations International Conference on
Population and Development (both the preparatory conference in Mexico City in
122 karen kampwirth
1994 and the later conference in Cairo), and she served as head of the Nicaraguan
delegation to the Beijing ⫹5 conference. From 1999 to 2002 she worked within the
Ministry of the Family as an adviser to ministers Humberto Belli and Max Padilla.
Finally, at the time of the 2002 interview, she was president of the women’s organ-
ization ANIMU.
During the years 1990–2006, when the right largely controlled the state, one
major goal of the antifeminists was to abolish article 165 of the penal code, the
article that gave doctors the right to perform therapeutic abortion. Dr. Rafael
Cabrera, president of Asociación Nicaragüense Pro Vida (ANPROVIDA; Nicaraguan
Prolife Association) told me that the abolition of article 165 in 2006 was a good
thing, because it was a nineteenth-century anachronism. In that time, before the
invention of antibiotics, before tuberculosis had been brought under control,
before cardiac problems could be treated, Nicaragua was characterized by what
he called “a hostile environment” (interview, November 28, 2006, Managua,
Nicaragua). In the nineteenth century, pregnancy could threaten a woman’s life,
and so therapeutic abortion was permitted to allow doctors to try to save patients
faced with life-threatening pregnancies. But over the course of the twentieth
century, that medical environment became less hostile, until the point when,
according to Cabrera, all pregnancies could be safely carried to term.
I told Cabrera of a case of a Nicaraguan woman I knew personally who died at
the age of twenty-seven after her first pregnancy caused irreparable heart damage.
He dismissed that example, telling me that since she died months after the baby
was delivered by cesarean, her death could not be attributed to the pregnancy.
Cabrera’s position—that therapeutic abortion was never medically necessary and
article 165 was just a loophole to permit abortion for social reasons—was the most
common position among the antitherapeutic abortion activists that I interviewed,
although it was not the only position.
Abortion and the Return of Daniel Ortega

The most public battle between feminist and antifeminist forces in Nicaragua, prior
to the overturning of therapeutic abortion in 2006, revolved around a nine-year-old
rape victim, who was known as Rosa. Feminists ultimately won that struggle, in
a couple of ways: first, because after months of public conflict, Rosa had a thera-
peutic abortion in the dead of the night and, second, because most Nicaraguans
(64 percent according to one poll) thought that a nine-year-old should not be forced
to carry a pregnancy to term (Villegas 2003; also Kampwirth 2006, 73–74). But the
next time the issue of therapeutic abortion became a matter of public debate, femi-
nists lost. And in 2006 the battle was not about the life of one little girl but about the
lives of the hundreds of girls and women who faced life-threatening pregnancies
every year.
Arguably, the abolition of therapeutic abortion is the logical outcome of
three separate occurrences in Nicaraguan politics in the years since the end of the
revolution in 1990, two of which I have analyzed in this chapter. First, the
autonomous feminist movement—which as I have shown emerged both because
of the revolution and despite the efforts of revolutionary leaders to control the
movement—was divided over tactics in 2006, and those disagreements undermined
their effectiveness to some extent (Kampwirth 2008). But therapeutic abortion, as
much as it is a life-and-death issue, should not cloud our vision of the real accom-
plishments and real strength of the autonomous feminist movement. At the begin-
ning of the twenty-first century, feminism in Nicaragua is a powerful social
movement, including hundreds of organizations and thousands of activists. It is a
movement that may touch the lives of millions through its networks of Casas de la
Mujer, through its legal lobbying efforts, through advocacy work for people like
Rosa, and through its role in the mass media.5
The second major factor that explains how Nicaragua came to be one of a tiny
handful of countries that does not permit abortion to save the woman’s life is the
antifeminist movement, which emerged in the 1990s as a backlash against the
legacy of the revolution and against the autonomous feminists. The considerably
smaller antifeminist movement turned out to be a formidable foe in 2006, as it had
never been so united and sophisticated. Over the course of the years following the
Sandinista Revolution, it had taken full advantage of its strong ties to the state,
especially to the state ministries that dealt most directly with personal politics: the
ministries of health, education, and family. These activists had opposed therapeutic
abortion for many years prior to 2006. That they succeeded in abolishing that nine-
teenth-century medical reform in 2006 cannot be understood outside the electoral
context, which abortion opponents had not taken advantage of previously. But, just
as importantly, Catholic and Evangelical abortion opponents had rarely worked
together.6 That started changing in the late 1990s.
Elizabeth de Rojas, a minister with Alianza Evangélica (Evangelical Alliance),
explained that her work first came to the attention of traditional Catholic leaders in
December 1998, when she helped organize a “crusade” called Festinavidad. That
festival involved distributing to Nicaraguan children more than three hundred
thousand gifts that had been provided by supporters of U.S.-based evangelical min-
ister Franklin Graham and culminated in a two-day cultural event in the Dennis
Martínez National Stadium, in which an estimated 160,000 children participated.
Rojas told me that through Festinavidad they hoped “to introduce them to the
word of God [and] to strengthen family values” (interview, December 4, 2006,
Managua, Nicaragua; Tórrez 1998).
That massive event attracted press coverage and “Max Padilla, the minister of
the Family at that time, saw the great gathering of children on TV” (Rojas, inter-
view, December 4, 2006, Managua, Nicaragua). Believing that the evangelical
organizers of this event shared values with traditional Catholic opponents of femi-
nism, Padilla invited Elizabeth de Rojas to a meeting at his office in the Ministry of
the Family. It was there that she met Elida de Solórzano, adviser to Padilla and
founder of ANIMU), Evangelina de Guirola of ANIMU and founder of Sí a la Vida
(Yes to Life), and Dr. Rafael Cabrera of ANPROVIDA. That was the beginning of
the alliance between Catholic and evangelical abortion opponents that culminated
in a mass march against therapeutic abortion on October 6, 2006, and the vote in
124 karen kampwirth
the National Assembly a few days later, to abolish the life-of-the-mother exception
to the civil code.
The third and final factor that explains the abolition of therapeutic abortion in
2006 is the transformation of the FSLN. In 2006 the FSLN seemed to reimagine the
legacy of the revolution. That new vision of what it meant to be a revolutionary
was traditional Catholic rather than liberation theology Catholic, antifeminist
rather than feminist. One could question in what sense this legacy of the revolution
was revolutionary. On the billboards that sprung up everywhere in Nicaraguan
cities in the months leading to the November election, there was little of the
FSLN’s traditional red and black, replaced instead with an array of brilliant colors,
especially hot pink. Daniel Ortega, the Marxist-Leninist in military uniform, was
replaced with Daniel the practicing Catholic in white shirt and jeans. The rhetoric
of anti-imperialism and class struggle was replaced with the rhetoric of peace and
reconciliation. In fact, many historical enemies of the FSLN were incorporated into
the Sandinistas’ electoral coalition, most prominently, vice presidential candidate—
and former contra commander—Jaime Morales Carazo.
But despite the unlikely breadth of the Sandinista electoral coalition, many
traditional revolutionaries—most notably the feminists—were left out as Ortega
chose to ally himself and his very disciplined party with the right in voting to abol-
ish therapeutic abortion. Despite long-standing tensions between the leadership of
the FSLN and autonomous feminists, I think it is highly unlikely that the FSLN
would have voted to abolish the life-of-the-mother exception if not for the fact that
the election was days away. In other words, the FSLN’s new-found opposition to
therapeutic abortion does not necessarily indicate a shift to the right. What it does
show is that, after a decade and a half out of power and close to a decade of politi-
cal pacts with the right—with Arnoldo Alemán’s Partido Liberal Constitucionalista
(Liberal Constitutionalist Party) and with Obando y Bravo’s faction within the
Catholic Church (Hoyt 2004; Torres-Rivas 2007, 6–7)—the FSLN was quite willing
to oppose its former base in the women’s movement, to say nothing of the vast
majority of Nicaragua’s medical establishment, if that is what it took to return to
power. Rather than a shift to the right, it was a shift to cynicism. It was part and par-
cel of the FSLN’s long-term evolution from a revolutionary party to one that was
often a personal vehicle for Daniel Ortega and his family. But whether right-wing
or cynical, the return of Nicaragua’s revolutionary party does not look very left-
wing, at least not from a feminist perspective.
notes
1. The activists I identify as “antifeminist” rarely use that term to describe their own work,
instead calling it profamily or prolife. But I contend that the term “antifeminist” is appropriate
for at least three reasons. First, feminist activists are also in favor of families (albeit egalitarian
families) and their work against maternal mortality and domestic violence is also prolife work.
Second, activists in this movement are not simply social conservatives any more than feminist
activists are simply social liberals. In both cases, the movements are centrally concerned with
the politics of intimacy and daily life. Finally, the term “antifeminist” identifies it as a backlash
movement.
2. The “52 Percent” in the name of the festival refers to the fact that women are a majority
of Nicaraguans.
3. SHOMOS is a play on words: somos means “we are”; by adding the “h”—which is silent
in Spanish—the pronunciation remains the same but the meaning changes to “we are
homosexuals.”
4. The Juventud Somocista was an organization of young people that supported the Somoza
dictatorship (1936–1979).
5. The feminist magazine La Boletina (available at http://boletina.puntos.org.ni/), which has
been published approximately every other month since 1991 by the Fundación Puntos de
Encuentro (Common Ground Foundation), has a circulation of twenty-six thousand. That is
larger than the circulation of any other magazine in Nicaragua. The feminist soap opera Sexto
Sentido (Sixth Sense)—which addresses issues such as domestic violence, rape, abortion, and
homophobia—is produced by the staff of Fundación Puntos de Encuentro. It drew 70 percent
of the audience in its time slot in 2001, which was its first year on the air.
6. Evangelicals are a significant and growing minority. “At the end of the 1970s, only five
percent of Nicaraguans were evangelicals. Now they account for more than twenty percent—
some say more than thirty percent—of the population” (Miller Llana 2006). But evangelicals,
which in Nicaragua is a synonym for “Protestants,” were divided. Many evangelicals, especially
those belonging to the Consejo de Iglesias Pro-Alianza Denominacional (CEPAD; Council of
the Ecumenical Alliance of Churches), an alliance of thirty-three denominations, favored pro-
tecting the right to therapeutic abortion (Ramona López, CEPAD, interview, November 30,
2006, Managua, Nicaragua; Sirias 2006).
references
Arauz, Rita. 1994. Coming out as a lesbian is what brought me to social consciousness. In
Sandino’s daughters revisited: Feminism in Nicaragua, ed. Margaret Randall, 265–285. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Babb, Florence. 2003. Out in Nicaragua: Local and transnational desires after the revolution.
Cultural Anthropology 18 (3): 304–328.
Blandón, María Teresa. 1997. Movimiento de mujeres en Centroamérica. Managua: Programa
Regional la Corriente.
———, ed. 2001. The Coalición Nacional de Mujeres: An alliance of left-wing women, right-
wing women and radical feminists in Nicaragua. In Radical women in Latin America: Left and
right, ed. Victoria González and Karen Kampwirth, 111–131. University Park: Penn State
University Press.
Criquillón, Ana. 1995. The Nicaraguan women’s movement: Feminist reflections from within.
In The new politics of survival: Grassroots movements in Central America, ed. Minor Sinclair,
209–237. New York: Monthly Review.
Cuadra, Scarlet. 2000. Tintes políticos en la polémica sobre el aborto en Nicaragua: Unidos,
la iglesia y el presidente Alemán. Proceso, no. 1246:1–6.
Fitzsimmons, Tracey. 2000. A monstrous regiment of women? State, regime, and women’s
political organizing in Latin America. Latin American Research Review 35 (3): 216–229.
González-Rivera, Victoria. 2001. Somocista women, right-wing politics and feminism in
Nicaragua, 1936–1979. In Radical women in Latin America: Left and right, ed. Victoria González
and Karen Kampwirth 41–78. University Park: Penn State University Press.
Hoyt, Katherine. 2004. Parties and pacts in contemporary Nicaragua. In Undoing democracy: The
politics of electoral caudillismo, ed. David Close and Kalowatie Deonandan, 17–42. Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books.
Infopress Central America. 2000. NGOs under attack. Central American Report (CAR), March 10.
www.infopressca.com/CAR/magizi/2710-2.htm (accessed March 10, 2000).
126 karen kampwirth
Kampwirth, Karen. 1998. Legislating personal politics in Sandinista Nicaragua, 1979–1992.

Women’s Studies International Forum 21 (1): 53–64.
———. 2003. Arnoldo Alemán takes on the NGOs: Antifeminism and the new populism in
Nicaragua. Latin American Politics and Society 45 (2): 133–158.
———. 2004. Feminism and the legacy of revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas. Athens: Ohio
University Press.
———. 2006. Resisting the feminist threat: Antifeminist politics in post-Sandinista Nicaragua.
NWSA Journal 18 (2): 73–100.
———. 2008. Neither left nor right: Sandinismo in the anti-feminist era. NACLA Report on the
Americas, January–February.
Miller Llana, Sara. 2006. Evangelicals flex growing clout in Nicaragua’s election. Christian
Science Monitor, November 2. www.csmonitor.com (accessed November 4, 2006).
Murguialday, Clara. 1990. Nicaragua, revolución y feminismo (1977–1989). Madrid: Revolución.
Sirias, Tania. 2006. Presidente de Universidad Evangélica y el aborto terapéutico: Fuera elec-
torerismo y escuchar a mujeres. El Nuevo Diario, October 13. www.elnuevodiario.com.ni
(accessed October 13, 2006).
Stephens, Beth. 1988. Changes in the laws governing the parent-child relationship in post-
revolutionary Nicaragua. Hastings International and Comparative Law Review 12:137–171.
———. 1990. A developing legal system grapples with an ancient problem: Rape in Nicaragua.
Women’s Rights Law Reporter: A Rutgers Law School Publication, no. 12:69–88.
Thayer, Millie. 1997. Identity, revolution, and democracy: Lesbian movements in Central
America. Social Problems 44 (3): 386–407.
Torres-Rivas, Edelberto. 2007. Nicaragua: El retorno del sandinismo transfigurado. Nueva
Sociedad, no. 207:4–10.
Tórrez, Joaquín. 1998. Un puente infantil de amistad EU-Nicaragua. El Nuevo Diario, December
9. www.elnuevodiario.com.ni (accessed December 20, 2006).
Vida Humana Internacional. 2002. Grupos provida de Centroamérica felicitan a Bush. Boletín
Electrónico de Vida Humana Internacional (VHI) 5, no. 15. www.vidahumana.org/news/
26MARZ002.html (accessed March 26, 2002).
Villegas S., Jairo. 2003. Reaparece Rosa. La Prensa, March 16. www.laprensa.com.ni (accessed
March 16, 2003).
7 Haiti
women in conquest of full
and total citizenship in an
endless transition
myriam merlet
For some years now, almost all analytic texts on Haiti take as a point of departure
the difficult junction of transition that the country has been experiencing. In fact,
since the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in February 1986, Haiti has been seeking
and continues to seek paths leading to democracy. In late May 2005, nineteen years
later, Haiti is still bogged down and in an endless crisis. So any attempt to present
and to analyze is perforce marked by the parameters of this transition, punctuated
by a series of crises. The most recent, precipitated among other things by the
contested elections of 2000, is not without economic and social consequences. For
several years the Haitian economy has posted disturbing macroeconomic indica-
tors and negative growth in real terms. The longevity of such a crisis increases the
difficulties of Haitians living together in a national community where they histori-
cally have not enjoyed full citizenship. Poverty, inequality, the permanence of anti-
democratic structures, totalitarian temptations, and state violence are among the
many motifs that push feminist thought to question the exercise of citizenship in
this country, which, for the moment, receives a great deal of media coverage but
remains nevertheless poorly understood. A presentation of Haiti, however brief, is
indispensable as an introduction. To understand the geopolitical stakes and the
terms of the current issue, it is important to also understand the context of the
situation.
Haiti is a former French colony, which gained independence in 1804 after a long
slave revolt and a bloody war of independence. Many believe that it is from this bel-
licose past that the practices of violence stem, practices that taint social relations
both between individuals and between individuals and state institutions. I strongly
doubt this. Aside from the fact that similar situations do not necessarily produce
this effect, I believe that violence is a cultural phenomenon that results from certain
conditions prevalent in a given society, and that is what accounts for its hegemony.
In the case of Haiti violence is more likely observed in interpersonal relationships
and in relationships that power structures hold with men and women citizens.
Since its independence Haiti has had a very stormy political history. From
1957 to 1986, the country lived under the hold of the dictatorship of the Duvaliers.
128 myriam merlet
This most bloody dictatorship brought about the massive exodus of thousands of
Haitian men and women to Africa and to the large metropolitan areas of North
America and Europe.
The Postdictatorial Resurgence

The year 1986 was the year of all hopes. After about thirty years of dictatorship, the
confluent effect of popular pressures and international negotiations forced Duvalier
the younger to step down from power. This departure opened a whole era of
struggle for the reconquest of fundamental rights. The Haitian women’s move-
ment would itself see a renewal. The ability to mobilize, demonstrated by women
during this period, was a signal element on the Haitian sociopolitical landscape. On
the occasion of the historical April 3, 1986, demonstration—where thousands of
women took to the streets of the capital and of the provincial towns—women reaf-
firmed under various forms their refusal to be excluded and their wish not to accept
that the construction of democracy come about without them, or worse, at their
expense. Since then, the women’s movement has not stopped moving, with an
expansion of groups and associations of various tendencies.
A new constitution was worked out in 1987, which sheds light on the trends of
the time. It finally seemed that Haitian men and women were going to afford them-
selves the means to live together in, what the preamble describes as, a “socially just
Haitian nation,” where discrimination is prohibited and the respect for fundamen-
tal liberties is postulated as guaranteed from the “right to progress, to education, to
health, to work,” and so on. Gender relations are also taken into consideration,
inequalities between the sexes are banned, and the principle of the equality of the
different forms of union is proclaimed.
The ability of women’s groups to organize so promptly comes, as in the case
of other social movements, from being rooted in certain ideals. The people as a
whole, since the construction of the Haitian state in 1804, have aspired to better
their conditions. These aspirations explain an entire set of social movements that
from 1987 to 1990 (date of the first democratic elections in the country, allowing
Jean-Bertrand Aristide to be elected president), attempted to choke off the various
successive crises by refusing certain forms of arbitrariness.
The holding of democratic elections nonetheless does not betoken a break with
these successive crises. The post-1990 period was specifically marked by a bloody
military coup d’état (1991–1994), during which women in particular were in the
crosshairs, for the insurgents often used collective rape as a fearsome political
weapon.
A Transition without End

Under the banner of the military contingents of so-called multinational forces (but
in fact principally made up of U.S. GIs), the constitutional government of Aristide
came back to power. Although establishing a Truth and Justice Commission, this
era, known as the return to constitutional order, did not at any rate bring the
Haiti: Women in Conquest 129
awaited redress. Notably, no reparation came about concerning specific violations

of which women were victims, despite the fact that women’s organizations had
spared no effort to assemble dossiers and to submit them to the authorities. On the
other hand, the Haitian army was dissolved. Moreover, women disappeared from
spheres of power. The lone cabinet position occupied by a woman was that in the
new Department of the Condition and Rights of Women. During this period of
international military occupation, women’s organizations denounced the sexual
abuse of women, and especially of girls, by military personnel. The government
pursued none of the complaints filed. This government would nevertheless adhere
to the Beijing Platform of Action.
The two administrations that followed this return to constitutional order once
again did not keep their promises. In 1995 René Préval won against Aristide in a
close race, consolidating the power of the Lavalas party. The second Aristide
administration—whose election was contested by all political groups for its lack of
popular participation—accentuated the crisis that was brought on by the closing of
Parliament in 1999. The contesting of the elections of 2000 that brought Aristide to
the presidency plunged the country into another crisis. Political repression became
widespread and a climate of state terrorism was established, especially after
chimères (criminal gangs close to the Lavalas regime) led attacks on several cam-
puses of the state university in December 2003. Women’s organizations, in this con-
text of war waged by the Lavalas government on the civilian population, drew up
an index of the rapes, often collective, of women by Aristide’s paramilitary. The use
of sexual violence as a weapon of terrorism became consolidated and generalized.
The government was declared outlawed by the Coordination Nationale de
Plaidoyer pour les Droits des Femmes (National Coordinating Committee of
Advocacy for Women’s Rights)—a position that would produce unanimity and
accompany the mobilization against the Aristide government. During this period,
the women’s movement succeeded in getting Parliament to vote and ratify the
Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of

Violence against Women, or the Convention of Belém do Pará, and proclaimed
April 3 the National Day of the Movement of Haitian Women.
Beginning in March 2004, Haiti entered once again into another phase of its
recent, tumultuous history. The apprentice dictator Aristide was constrained under
the pressure of various forces to resign and went into exile. Another United Nations
mission, composed of men and women civilians and military personnel, was
enacted. Thus began a new so-called transition phase, with the installation of a
government charged with establishing a climate conducive to running elections at
every level of the state apparatus. The elections were to be held before the end of
the year 2005.
Following a scenario well-known to the Haitian populations since the fall of the
dictatorships of both Duvaliers (father and son), Haiti continues on its seemingly
endless cycle, consisting of alternating periods of political crisis followed by periods
of so-called transition.
130 myriam merlet
The War against Citizenship

Since the question of democracy became the center of the aspirations of the Haitian
people, they have been implicated in a struggle without respite for access to full
citizenship. From the very start of the nineteenth century, the Haitian state and the
Haitian nation have been built and rebuilt, but not without considerable difficulty.
After each gain made by the citizens, there followed long periods of repression,
when the body of social, political, and economic rights was again called into ques-
tion. There has long been a permanent war against citizenship. Even though it has
not taken the usual form where factions square off, arms in hand, this war against
the Haitian people has been very real. More often than not, it has donned the cloth-
ing of state terrorism, as illustrated by the last moments of the Lavalas regime.
In the grips of galloping inflation and a drastic devaluation of the local currency,
Haitians watched their living conditions deteriorate more each day, thereby threat-
ening all social and economic rights. One characteristic of this impoverishment has
been the phenomenon of the feminization of poverty, in a country where, accord-
ing to the 2003 Institut Haïtien de Statistique et d’Informatique census, women
head 42 percent of households. The poverty of women in an economy in regression
for more than a decade is tantamount to social injustice. Women are the poorest
among the poor and the existence of a dual labor market is manifested by intra- and
interprofessional segregation. Women find themselves in jobs in the sectors on the
periphery and/or at the bottom of the salary hierarchy (Bureau du TAG 2000b).
Despite the weaknesses of the data on revenues, those available reveal significant
gaps between men and women (UNICEF 2000). Women find themselves over-
whelmingly at the lower echelons of the wage hierarchy.
The situation seems to go from bad to worse. Between the two Enquêtes
Budget-Consommation des Ménages (Household Budget-Consumption Studies)
(EBCM 1986–1987, 1999–2000), a noticeable rise in food expenditures has been
observed (from 49.4 percent to 72.6 percent) (Ministère de L’Economie et des
Finances 2000, 113). The worsening of household poverty has added considerably to
the weight of the efforts made by people to obtain access to basic services. An
analysis of the dynamics of basic social services revealed that, given the minimal
contributions of the state and its partners in the public sector (NGOs and foreign
assistance), “the relation between household budget items is deteriorating: prefer-
ence is being given more and more to food to the detriment of other household
budget items” (Rouzier 2001).
The situation is even more serious for women. They are the first victims of
these shortfalls. Not only does the discrimination practiced against them put them
in a difficult position, but very often they are obliged to compensate by engaging in
additional nonremunerated activities (Merlet 2003a).
Citizenship defines who we are, our way of living together. This concept refers
to “a sociological object, like a process of collective life characterized by two states,
that of the political citizen man [and woman] and that of the social citizen man [and
woman]” (Thériault 1999). Worldwide, women’s first demands attacked matters of
political rights, a struggle that gained the ability to vote in many countries during
the first half of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, this membership among the
enfranchised will not, for all that, guarantee the full freedom of women citizens
and, even less, equality with their male counterparts. Indeed, citizenship possesses
a gendered dimension (Del Re and Heinen 1996, 12). Considering the citizenship of
women, one is forced to take into account two essential dimensions: citizenship as
a mode of belonging to national space and citizenship as a set of rights and duties.
A few facts suffice to illustrate the urgent need for social rights:
• Illiteracy is certainly a signal phenomenon of the Haitian landscape, yet recent

data show that the gap between men and women has widened, growing from
the order of three to ten points between 1982 and 2000. There are still 9 percent
more girls (than boys) not attending school and the male/female ratio stands at
seven to three at the collegiate level.
• The morbidity rate remains disturbing for the population on the whole, from
21 percent to 36 percent, according to socioeconomic level: the lower the level,
the higher the rate. However, with respect to the specific material needs of
women, the decrease of services offered by the state, both in quality and in
quantity, dangerously increases their vulnerability. Thus, Haiti continues to
post the highest maternal mortality rate in the Americas (523 deaths per 100,000
births). The deficiencies of the health care system have social as well as
individual costs. Principally women, as the ones responsible for the health of
the family unit, must compensate for the structural deficiencies with
supplementary domestic work, which aggravates the situation of poverty,
defined in terms of one’s access to choice and possibilities of action in one’s
own life and environment.
• Access to certain basic services, such as electricity and water, remains the
appanage of some privileged city dwellers. And, as a function of the sexual
division of labor, the seeking of water is a task principally reserved to the
female sex, notably to girls. This fact has grave consequences: many reported
cases of violence against women count attacks perpetrated during these times.
Normatively speaking, legislation has long neglected women in Haiti: “Since

the formation of the Haitian state, women have been treated like second-class
citizens. . . . Even though different adopted constitutions declare that the law is the
same for all, one must admit that prior to 1950 [when women’s suffrage was won],
women were not regarded as actual persons and, as such, did not enjoy the same
rights as men” (Magloire 2004, 101).
It was at the beginning of the 1930s that the exclusion of women was brought
into public view. The struggles of the Ligue Féminine d’Action Sociale (LFAS;
Feminine League of Social Action) to gain political rights attacked the very founda-
tions of the status of women in Haiti. These arduous struggles resulted in political
rights as much for voting as for eligibility in 1950, and Haitian women were able to
exercise their citizenship for the first time in 1957.1 Nevertheless, full citizenship
for Haitian women still remains to be introduced into legal texts. Women did
not obtain the equality of rights in marriage until 1982, discrimination regarding
132 myriam merlet
women in terms of adultery has only very recently been lifted, and, even today,
paternal authority and marital supremacy remain.
Women’s access to the same civic and civil rights as men is possible only with
the recognition by the law of their right to control their own reproduction. Legal
recognition of reproductive rights makes women fully autonomous individuals
not subject to forced pregnancy and able to decide for themselves (Tahon 1998).2 In
such a way, citizenship can be in harmony with freedom and can finally be a fact of
equality. In Haiti no text of law, no policy or other document, treats the right of
women to control their reproduction. The only reference to women’s reproduc-
tion has to do with abortion, and this text of the penal code is far from guarantee-
ing women control of the act of reproduction. So, on the strictly normative level, it
is possible to state that for as long as Haitian women do not have reproductive
rights, full and whole citizenship will remain a pious wish (Merlet 2003b).
The question of abortion is worth a pause for consideration on more than one
account. On the one hand, it holds weight in the very construction of women’s
citizenship, and, on the other, the problem of public health is engendered by the
consequences of recourse to clandestine services. According to Haitian legislation
in effect, abortion is considered a crime. Stipulated penalties are heavy (imprison-
ment); they pertain as much to the woman in question as to the person performing
the abortion and his or her auxiliaries. Hence, abortions are all carried out in secret,
as much in commercial hospitals as in the offices of qualified practitioners. It goes
without saying that, given the weak socioeconomic conditions of the great major-
ity of Haitian women, most abortions are carried out under risky conditions with
grave consequences, the responsibility of which is not assumed by the hospital
system.3
In this war waged against the citizenship of the Haitian people, the question of
rights takes its full measure and, as in any patriarchal society, the state of subordi-
nation of Haitian women is marked by discrimination and violence. The laws in
force in Haiti derive from the Napoleonic code and hence do not consider women
as full citizens. Even though the 1987 Constitution recognizes the equality of both
men and women, its provisions are not reflected in the law, and that is what counts
in court.
The war against citizenship aims at women in particular. In a situation of gen-
eralized repression, such as the coup d’état and the last days of the Lavalas reign
(a situation comparable to a war), sexual violence against women is used as a puni-
tive and dissuasive weapon. This weapon is certainly aimed at women, but men
also abuse the women of other men to make the latter feel worthless and power-
less, since they generally consider women to be “property.” A positive correlation
has been observed between the use of force as a political weapon and in domestic
violence. During periods of high political repression, domestic violence increased
quantitatively, as well as on the level of forms and degree of cruelty recorded
(Merlet 2001a).
Violence against women is an everyday phenomenon. The women of Haiti,
like those of all patriarchal societies, must daily confront situations of violence in
the privacy of their dwellings as well as in public places. Yet the absence of viable
official statistics on violence against women greatly limits any attempt at evaluating
the situation in Haiti. Moreover, the silence in which society cloisters women
aggravates the situation, to the extent that still too few women dare to denounce
the violence victimizing them. Haitian society is one that considers violence against
women as a normal, unexceptional act, a behavior that does not shock in and of
itself. Haitians react according to a certain threshold of tolerance that seems to
accept this violence as a manifestation of Haitian culture.
Nevertheless, the efforts of sensitizing and consciousness raising carried on by
women’s groups have fostered a wider circulation of information. Thus, more and
more women are breaking the silence and daring to report the violent acts they
suffer. Encouraged by the effort of individual women, women’s organizations are
systematizing the recording and the analysis of data.
Actions of the Women’s Movement

Since the fall of the Duvaliers’ dictatorship, like many men and women social
activists, Haitian women have understood that they must make their voices heard
to avoid changes being made at their expense. During the period of the coup d’état
of September 1991, the question of violence committed specifically against women
by the forces of repression was one of the principal spearheads in the denunciation
of the military dictatorship.
On this occasion, women’s organizations were able to call attention to the
specificity of violence against women. In the very midst of the coup d’état period, a
coalition formed of more than one hundred women’s organizations, called the
Première Rencontre Nationale contre la Violence (First National Meeting against
Violence), where more than three hundred women denounced and analyzed the
violence of which they were victims and sought to organize networks to fight
against this reality.
With this action and those that followed, women’s organizations brought the
struggle against violence directed at women to the forefront of the nation’s politi-
cal agenda. Witness, for example, the interest generated by the Tribunal International
contre la Violence Faite aux Femmes Haïtiennes (International Tribunal against
Violence Done to Haitian Women), held in November 1998. The principal media of
the capital and of provincial towns broadcasted conclusions and excerpts from
these sessions during the three days it lasted and continued to speak about the
event for more than two months afterward.
Women’s appeals for justice are numerous and urgent. Since 1998 a platform
of women’s organizations has established a Comité de Négociation (Negotiation
Committee), charged to work with members of Parliament, with an eye toward
changing the laws most unfavorable to women. Work was carried out within
the frame of an agreement duly signed between the parties (a first in Haiti
from which other groups of civil organized society would subsequently draw
inspiration). Negotiations culminated in the rendering of drafts of laws on adul-
tery, sexual aggression, domestic work, and the partial liberalization of abortion.
134 myriam merlet
Box 7.1
Report of the Negotiation Committee of Women’s Organizations
(Excerpt)
September 1998
The negotiations with members of Parliament—specifically with the Health,
Population, Family Social Affairs, and Women’s Condition Commission—
arrived at the formulation of three (3) new proposed laws to submit to the
Parliament:
1. Modification of certain articles of the civil code relating to divorce
(Articles 215 and 216 of Law no. 7)
2. Modification of certain provisions of the penal code (articles relating to
rape and other sexual aggressions, to abortion, and to adultery)
3. Modification of Article 257 of the work code, relating to men and women
domestic workers (referred to as “servants” by the current Article 257)
proposals submitted to parliament

1. On abortion
The proposal submitted to the parliamentary assembly permits the practice
of Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy (IVG) during the first twelve
weeks of pregnancy, in the event
• of danger to the life and health of the mother and the infant to be born;
• of rape or incest.
The new law also provides that only authorized persons (physicians,
nurses, aides) with a certification of competent authority may perform the
abortion in a hospital, a health center, or a clinic.
2. On rape and other sexual aggressions

The new proposed legislation constitutes an innovation to the chapter
dealing with murders and other assaults on persons. More precisely,
• The notions of sexual aggressions, rapes, and sexual harassments are defined.
• Rape is no longer defined from the point of view of the male aggressor.
As a result, rape is no longer limited to a matter of penetration.
• Penalties are established for different types of sexual aggressions.
• The position of authority of the aggressor (male or female) is equally
taken into account.
• The notion of community service is introduced as a new penalty in cases
of sexual harassment.
3. On domestic work
The new legislation proposes a somewhat broader social coverage:
• Days off every week.
• Annual paid vacations.
• An annual bonus. This last point respects the constitutional stipulations

on the matter.
4. On adultery
The proceedings of the commission’s goals are strictly limited to seeking to
lift “discrimination against women.” According to this principle, the
commission refrains from removing penalties for adultery. It limits itself to
subjecting the male spouse to the same sanctions as those currently
reserved for the female spouse and allows that divorce may be requested
by either party.
Two (2) significant changes must be noted:
• Proof of adultery is uniform, regardless of the sex of the person
concerned.
• Homicide of the adulterous spouse is not excusable, except in the case of
self-defense.
the position of the committee

1. On abortion
Considering that women should remain the sole mistresses of their bodies,
the committee salutes the lifting, even partially, of the penalty for
abortion. The committee remains convinced that this new legislation
heads in the direction of protecting the health of women. Nonetheless, the
requirements for the practice of IVG (authorized places and persons) are
not in keeping with the situation of the country. There still exists today a
high number of zones and regions of the country that do not have
authorized personnel and/or sites. In light of this fact, a high number of
women will be unable to benefit from these new provisions. It would be
fitting, therefore, to provide for transitional arrangements to permit
greater application of the new rule (inclusion of midwives, after training,

and extension of sites at all levels of the health system).
2. On rape and other sexual aggressions
The new proposal of law constitutes a praiseworthy attempt to face the
different cases head-on and to lift the ambiguity of crime against honor,
placing sexual aggressions in the chapter of crimes against a person. This
proposal offers the merit of forearming women against forms of aggression
of which they are first and almost exclusively the victims. It also offers the
benefit of covering individuals of both sexes, outside of any consideration
of age or situation.
3. On household work
Working conditions to which domestic personnel are generally subjected
disparage them to the rank of nonperson. This category of personnel is not
paid or considered as full-time workers, and as such does not benefit from
(continued)
136 myriam merlet
Box 7.1 (continued)

the set of rights legally afforded the other categories. In taking up the cause
to raise this thorny social question, the committee seeks to highlight the
importance and the social value of household work. Such work is
ordinarily done for free by women for the benefit of the whole society.
The fundamental problems that household work raises, and more
particularly the situation of domestic personnel in Haiti, cannot be posed
in the framework of these negotiations. The latter essentially deals with a
limited expansion of social coverage. Despite the evident limits of the
proposed law, the concern that has been injected into the work of the
legislature constitutes a first step toward the state taking into consideration
the situation of one of the categories of the most disadvantaged men and
women workers.
4. On adultery
The simple fact of providing, in the case of adultery, the same penalties for
both sexes can in no way be satisfactory. Binding men to the same legal
provision as women cannot at all be considered a step forward. Male
adultery is not stigmatized by our society. On the contrary, it is given
value as an expression of virility. Adultery is cast as a problem only when it
is the act of women. Consequently, even if legal recourse is offered to
women, it will be difficult for them to avail themselves of it. One can safely
bet that the cases that the courts will have to hear will remain principally
cases of adulterous women. This being so, to penalize male adultery does
not change the feminine condition.
Unfortunately, the vicissitudes of Haitian political life did not permit the enactment
of these laws by the Chamber of Deputies and the National Assembly because of
the dissolution of Parliament at the beginning of 1999 and the monopolizing of the
legislature by the Lavalas power structure.4 Moreover, the situation of impunity
that currently prevails in the judicial system exposes women even more to the risks
of conjugal and sexual violence.
In various forms, such as the initiative committees, the ad hoc committees,
or even brainstorming groups and action groups, women’s collectives are consoli-
dating and functioning in a somewhat systematic manner; the last example to date
is that of the Coordination Nationale de Plaidoyer pour les Droits des Femmes
(CONAP; National Coordinating Committee for the Advocacy of Women’s Rights.
The Executive Committee of CONAP—which brings together five principal
feminist organizations: Information Femmes (Women News), Présence des
Femmes / FanmYo La (Women’s Presence), Les Femmes Décidées de Jacmel
Fanm Deside de Jacmel (Determined Jacmel Women), La Maison des Femmes Kay
Fanm (Women’s House), and Solidarité Femmes Haïtiennes (Haitian Women
Solidarity)—was able to impact the last mobilization of women citizens by inscribing
women’s strategic demands in the global political context. CONAP’s constitutive

organization, the Comité de Négociation des Organisations de Femmes (Negotiation
Committee of Women’s Organizations), developed a five-year Plan for the Defense
of Women’s Rights to pursue the process of negotiation with the Haitian parlia-
ment and the executive powers. CONAP intends to bring about modifications at
the level of certain texts of law particularly unfavorable to women and to appeal to
the state for the enactment of programs and regulations answering to the specific
needs of women.
This sort of action is the fruit of a long process of maturation, during the course
of which women’s organizations learned to act strategically. The process con-
tributed to demystifying certain spaces of struggle. Thus, contrary to the years
1986–1990 when women’s organizations did not invest in official political spaces,
they no longer reject direct involvement. Their strategy now involves all spaces
and is based on preoccupations statutory in nature. The status of women returns—
as in the first Haitian feminist organization, LFAS, during the fifties—to the center
of discourse and action in women’s organizations.
The Mobilization for Citizens’ Rights

The last transition phase initiated in March 2004 was rich with anticipation. The
people, who had just experimented with their mobilizing capacity, were hoping that
this new transition would be seized on for the installation of a new order, specifically
in terms of governance. They wanted to see the coordination of the diverse forces
constituting this nation eventually segue to the construction of the foundation of a
viable citizenship for all men and women. Alas, constraints of all kinds, notably
linked to practices of bad governance, came to sap these hopes once again. The
movement of Haitian women, which had acquired a certain enfranchisement at the
height of women citizens’ mobilizations in 2003 and 2004, is presently confronting
strategies of marginalization on the part of traditional sociopolitical figures. Another
swing of the pendulum seems to be in the offing.

The present situation, characterized by an aggravation of the climate of inse-
curity, the generalization of rape as a weapon of terrorism, widespread impunity,
and a drastic deterioration in living conditions, brings back into question the very
principles of citizenship. Economic and social rights are not respected and politi-
cal rights are denied. The situation calls into question “the exercise of citizenship
as the possibility of existing and living in a positive relationship with a commu-
nity” (Trouillot 2002, 10). Wishes to curtail citizenship are given pride of place,
and the people’s aspirations for a better life are being postponed for the foresee-
able future.
The government’s evident scorn for citizens’ rights remains a constant. It is
vital for men and women citizens to mold society to guarantee fundamental rights.
Thus, feminist action, conscious of the danger, owes it to itself to link up with a vast
citizen movement for the defense of fundamental rights. Women’s organizations in
synergy with those of students, unions, and activists fighting for human and eco-
nomic rights must mobilize for the right to education, health care, food, and life in
138 myriam merlet
a healthy environment. Once more, the people, in organized fashion, owe it to

themselves to formulate petitions for good governance to provide better living con-
ditions and guarantee the rights of citizens. These petitions must be channeled
through demands against the high cost of living and in favor of social policies, the
creation of jobs, and respect for political rights, including free speech and freedom
of expression. Thus, the petitions must demand a redefinition of the legal and reg-
ulatory framework guaranteeing economic and social rights.
acknowledgments
Translated by Lawrence Gregorio, Gettysburg College.
notes
1. For an analysis of the participation of women, see Merlet (2002b).
2. For a consideration of women’s rights to control their sexuality, see Merlet (2002a).
3. Despite the existence of family planning programs—programs that address themselves
primarily to women—the so-called modern availability of contraceptives still shows meager
success. Only 13.2 percent of women use modern methods of contraception (EMMUS III, 76).
The great majority of them therefore do not, for diverse reasons (notably, the accessibility of
contraceptives and gender relations), use means to control their reproduction. As a result,
unwanted pregnancies are legion. Given the unfavorable socioeconomic situation faced by
most women many decide to abort (see Bureau du TAG 2000b).
4. Women in both chambers of the Haitian Parliament number fewer than 4 percent. The
fall 1998 elections, which were supposed to renew the Parliament, never took place. In January
1999 President Lavalas dissolved the parliament under false pretenses, and it did not return
until 2000.
references
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Port-au-Prince: Fonds Kore Fanm de l’ACDI (Agence Canadienne de Développement
International).
———. 2000b. La problématique de genre en Haïti. Mimeograph document.
———. 2004. Abortion in Haiti and its consequences. Chemins Critiques 5, no. 2.
Del Re, Alisa, and Jacqueline Heinen, eds. 1996. Quelle citoyenneté pour les femmes? La crise des
Etats-providence et de la représentation politique des femmes en Europe. Paris: L’Harmattan.
EBCM 1986–1987, 1999–2000. Institut Haïtien de Statistique et d’Informatique. Port-au-Prince.
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Publique et de la Population (MSPP).
Magloire, Danièle. 2004. La violence faite aux femmes: Une violation constante des droits de la
personne. Chemins Critiques 5 (2): 101–130.
Merlet, Myriam. 1998. La subcontratación internacional en Haití: Un estrangulamiento para las
mujeres. In Posibilidades de incidencia en la elaboración y ejecución de política sobre “Maquila y
Equidad Genérica”. Paper presented at the Maquila y Equidad Genérica conference, Seminar
of Christian Aid, UNICEF, Antigua, Guatemala, January 20–23.
———. 2001a. Between love, anger and madness: Building peace in Haiti. In The aftermath:
Women in post-conflict transformation, ed. Sheila Meintjes, Anu Pillay, and Meredeth Turshen,
159–171. London: Zed Book.
———. 2001b. Le portrait des femmes dans l’audiovisuel Haïtien. Le Nouvelliste. November
9–11.
———. 2002a. Lorsque le tabou social se cache derrière la foi! Paper presented at the workshop
on sexual and reproductive rights of the Ninth Latin American and Caribbean Feminist
Encuentro, Punteras, Costa Rica, December 1–5. www.campanha28set.org.
———. 2002b. La participation politique des femmes en Haïti: Quelques éléments d’analyse. Port-
au-Prince: Fanm Yo La.
———. 2002c. Pauvreté, inégalité et exclusion. In Bilan économique et social de l’année 2001. Port-
au-Prince: UNDP.
———. 2003a. Le fardeau de la croissance négative, L’accès des femmes à l’économie à l’heure
de l’intégration des Amèriques: Quelle économie? Conference, Montreal. April 23–26.
———. 2003b. Société, es-tu capable d’être juste? (envers les femmes, les enfants, les pauvres,
les handicapés-es. . . ). In Les actes du colloque La Participation Citoyenne, la Démocratie
Participative et la Gouvernance Décentralisée, ed. Imprinerie Déchamps, 14–17. Port-au-Prince:
ActionAid.
———. 2004. Impact de l’impunité et de la violence sur les femmes. Presentation at the
International Droits Humains, Justice, Réconciliation et Paix, l’ActionAid. NCHR.
November 24–26.
———. 2005. Vyolans politik pote vyolans sou fanm. Ayiti Fanm 15 (61): 6.
Merlet, Myriam, and Danièle Magloire. 1997. Agir sur la condition féminine pour améliorer les
situations des femmes. In Homme et femme, Dieu les créa: Du féminisme au partenariat no. 2;
Conférence Haïtienne des Religieux-ses, 33–40. Port-au-Prince.
———. 1999. L’avortement en Haïti et ses conséquences: Analyse de la situation. Technique
d’Administration, d’Animation et de Gestion. Mimeograph document.
———. 2000. Cahier national des revendications des femmes. Port-au-Prince: National Haitian
Coordination of the 2000 World March of Women.
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(EBCM 1999–2000). Preliminary results. Port-au-Prince: IHSI. www.mefhaiti.gouv.ht.
Rouzier, Philippe. 2001. La dynamique des SSB. Mimeograph document. Port-au-Prince: UNDP.
Tahon, Marie Blanche. 1998. Citoyenneté et parité politique. Paper presented to the Congrès des
Sociétés Savantes, Ottawa, Canada, May.
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UNICEF-Haïti.
8 From Urban Elite to
Peasant Organizing
agendas, accomplishments, and
challenges of thirty-plus years of
guatemalan feminism, 1975–2007
ana lorena carrillo

norma stoltz chinchilla
First Phase, 1975–1985

The First United Nations World Conference on Women, held in Mexico City in
1975, served as a catalyst for and accelerated the second wave of feminism in a num-
ber of Latin American countries. In Guatemala, however, it took more than a
decade before women’s groups—particularly those with an explicitly feminist
perspective—began to play an important and visible role in civic and political life.
The fact that feminism and a gender perspective are relatively new in
Guatemala does not mean that women only recently became actors in Guatemalan
history. Throughout the decade following the United Nations conference, for
example, women of all ages and social classes, ethnic groups and religious perspec-
tives, mobilized in unprecedented numbers around issues of democracy, human
rights, social justice, greater economic equality, and peace. The majority did not
join union, peasant, or student movements; Christian-based communities; or
Communities of Population in Resistance and exile organizations as a result of an
explicit gender consciousness or elaborated critique of women’s subordination in
general. However, the very act of violating traditional rules proscribing public
sphere participation for “good women” stimulated many women activists to reflect
on their identities and abilities as women. The sense of personal power that many
women felt on becoming active protagonists, capable of influencing history instead
of being merely recipients of it, caused profound personal transformations.
Cristina Calel, an indigenous Quiche woman and activist with the Comité de
Unidad Campesina (CUC; Committee of Peasant Unity) tells how CUC organized
the whole family, including the women:
At first there were problems because, [people would say] how is it possible for
a woman to talk about politics with men? Little by little they saw that women
also had the ability and the men wanted their wives to do the same type of
From Urban Elite to Peasant Organizing 141
[activist] work that we did. Many women felt happy when they saw us. The
ladies brought their petites [woven mats] to the classes and they sat and asked us
about this and that. Catholic Action helped them a lot to come out of their
homes and to start getting organized. (Stoltz Chinchilla 1998, 322)
Elena Tecún, a young indigenous woman from the altiplano (highlands) who joined
the guerrilla movement, showed her pride at being able to do what the male com-
batants did in the mountains:
My life in the guerrilla movement was totally different from when I was at
home. At home I couldn’t run, or walk long distances, but in the guerilla you
get used to it as a result of the training. When we had to carry things on our
backs, the women were able to carry as much as the men. We all carried our
part of the load. Some of our leaders were women. . . . When people [planta-
tion workers] saw that some of us were women, they were very happy and they
approached us. The women workers especially were happy to see other women
in the guerrilla forces, because this proved that women are capable, and that it
wasn’t true that women were good for nothing. (Stoltz Chinchilla 1998, 395–396)
The participation of hundreds of women—rural as well as urban—in revolu-

tionary and in mixed-gender civil organizations from 1975 to 1985 lead to a tran-
scendent break in Guatemalan women’s history. Women partaking in public life,
exercising their citizenship, is widely recognized as having fertilized the ground for
the present period. But the fierce response from the government’s counterinsur-
gency army and its economically and politically powerful allies was a heavy price to
pay. An estimated two hundred thousand Guatemalans were killed or disappeared
as a result of the conflict and approximately one hundred thousand Guatemalan
peasants (84 percent of them indigenous) were forced to flee to Mexico between the
early and mid-1980s.
Taking into consideration the context of governmental repression and revolu-
tionary insurgency that characterized Guatemala during this period, it is not diffi-
cult to unravel the reasons for the delay in the development of explicitly feminist
and gender-conscious organizations. The first, and probably most important, rea-
son was the repressive atmosphere that restricted the free circulation of ideas,
silenced debate, and kept cultural revolutions within certain limits. In the mid- and
late 1960s, for example, when there were cultural and political revolutions in differ-
ent parts of the world, the framework of political repression was already in place in
Guatemala, as a result of the reaction of the elites to the Jornadas of March and
April 1962.1 These early protests proved to be a defining moment in Guatemalan
history, one in which many women participated. Violeta Alfaro has observed,
For the urban youth—and ladinas—March and April of 1962 were like 1968 in
France or Mexico.2 The difference was that in Guatemala the young people
took up arms. Among them were the first women who took up arms, going up
to the Sierra de las Minas in the eastern part of the country; many of them were
barely twenty years old at the time. (Stoltz Chinchilla 1998, 11)
142 a. l. carrillo and n. s. chinchilla
There had been other moments in Guatemalan history—moments of national

political crises in 1920 and 1944—when women played an important public sphere
role and defined new forms of female political activism. But the Jornadas were
important because they opened up a limited space for debate in an otherwise
repressive culture. At the same time, it is important to recognize that the restricted
cultural and social patterns in Guatemala from the midsixties until the mideighties
were the result of not solely political repression but also the notoriously conserva-
tive dominant culture of Guatemalan elites and the hierarchy of the Catholic
Church, as well as the hegemony of orthodox leftists who resisted theoretical and
practical challenges to the primacy of social class (Monzón 2003, 16; Carrillo 2004,
131–136).
Despite the restrictions on public sphere debate and organizing, feminist ideas
circulated in Guatemala as early as the 1960s. During this time, small groups of
activists and intellectuals, mainly women, read, debated, and spoke about the ideas
of Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan in study groups, trying to contextualize
the readings within the Guatemalan and Latin American environment. The meet-
ings, however, appear to have been isolated experiences that were neither followed
nor encouraged by the majority. According to one of the participants,
What was happening was that there was no clarity on the issue of women [in
the left], and the men made you feel guilty for taking on a problem that was
only a “secondary conflict.” They said that the women’s situation would be
resolved when the revolution was achieved, and moreover, in a society like the
Guatemalan society, with so much conflict and such fundamental problems,
dedicating time to this was detracting from the real conflict. There were warn-
ings [about those ideas], not so much from our partners, but from other
compañeros and even from women. They also told us that we were assimilating
everything that came from abroad and they asked us when we were going to
go to the park to burn our bras. (Mariel Aguilar, interview in Stoltz Chinchilla
1998, 7–8)
An example of these first efforts was the publication in Guatemala of the book
Mujer y Lucha Social (Women and Social Struggle) (Aguilera 1979), a compilation of
different texts on feminist theory and history, as well as statements from members
of Latin American and global feminist movements. The editors conceived of it as a
manual for the use of “study groups” and “feminist movements.” Their visions and
plans for change were never realized, having been eclipsed by other political events
and the generalized repression.
Later in the seventies, some of these same women, together with academics,
journalists, and activists, used the opening that preparations for the United Nations
conference in Mexico provided them to obtain national and international support
for the struggle of women workers and to write articles on domestic work, double
shifts, women in politics, prostitution, health, education, and women’s wage work
for daily newspapers such as Prensa Libre. Violeta Carpio and Amalia Rivera, for
example, wrote about the struggles of women workers in the U.S.-owned Outer
Limit jeans factory; their articles were published in Guatemalan newspapers and a
U.S. journal, Latin American Perspectives. They spoke about their findings at the
tribunal of the 1975 United Nations conference and participated actively in the
conference, together with other Guatemalan activists and writers such as Raquel
Blandón, Luz Méndez de la Vega, and Eunice Lima.
Another attempt at spreading the feminist perspective during this period was
the column Femina Sapiens, published in the independent weekly magazine ¿Qué
Pasa Calabaza?, which began to circulate in Guatemala in 1977, two years after the
United Nations conference. The column, often signed by “Amaranta,” the pseudo-
nym of the young feminist writer Viviana Fanjul, openly and frankly discussed
topics such as sexuality, abortion, reproductive health, and love that even today are
still often considered taboo in the Guatemalan media. The column Femina Sapiens,
whose name emphasizes the importance of the written word and knowledge in
service of the emancipation of women, appealed to popular common sense and
spoke about such subjects in a tone that was not only frank or natural but openly
defiant. In 1978 alone, despite its limited allocation of space, the column covered
subjects such as maternity, the commercial use of the female body in advertising,
the questioning of the canons of female beauty and its commercial use, women’s
health, maternity, sexuality, orgasm, domestic work, pain-free birth, and the differ-
ent types of abortion, underground and legal, accompanied by graphics and photo-
graphs. Despite its courageous and pioneering character, escalating levels of
violence from conflicts between the army and armed revolutionary groups in the
late 1970s limited the magazine’s ability to generate a wider discussion of women’s
issues and it ceased publication.
During the sixties and seventies, women played increasingly more visible and
important roles in mixed-gender organizations, including in the revolutionary
organizations that pushed for fundamental social change in rural and urban areas in
a context of growing repression. In these organizations, women of all ages earned
political experience and organizing skills that proved useful in pushing for a
women’s and gender-conscious agenda once the war ended. Some women revolu-
tionaries recall having been exposed to feminist ideas through reading books such
as The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, articles written by Italian and Latin
American feminists, and works by socialist authors like Alexandra Kollantai (1977),
Clara Zetkin (1984) and Margaret Randall (1974) during this time. More often than
not, however, women revolutionaries who pushed for a deeper analysis of the
causes and consequences of women’s subordination or who demanded a more
important role in the decision making within their organizations during the 1970s
and 1980s were discouraged from pursuing their concerns and labeled egocentric or
divisive.
Beyond the ideological resistance that revolutionary organizations had to
second-wave feminist ideas, the climate of violence itself at the end of the 1970s
and beginning of the 1980s made it difficult to discuss and mount challenges to
the dominant patriarchal culture. The growing challenge of armed revolutionary
groups to ruling elites and the military’s brutal but sophisticated counterinsurgency
campaigns, particularly in the rural areas of the altiplano (where indigenous popu-
lations are concentrated), were not favorable to public debates about new para-
digms or deep questioning about traditional gender relations (Monzón 2004b, 16).
When the Primer Encuentro Feminista de América Latina y el Caribe (First Latin
American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentro) took place in 1981 in Bogotá, many
Guatemalan women were literally struggling for their lives and those of their fam-
ilies and communities. It was not until six years later, at the fourth Encuentro in
Taxco, Mexico, that a Guatemalan delegation was able to participate in a hemi-
spheric feminist gathering in a significant way.
Second Phase, 1985–1994

The first second-wave feminist organizations in Guatemala began to appear as
the war began to draw to a close and Vinicio Cerezo, the first civilian president in
more than thirty years, was elected. Many of the founders of the first postwar
women’s organizations, explicitly feminist or not, had been in exile, where they had
developed relationships with feminists from throughout Latin America—including
Sandinista Nicaragua—Europe, and North America. Furthermore, they brought
with them a wealth of organizing experience and lessons gained from working in
unions, political parties, and revolutionary groups. One of the first explicitly feminist
women’s groups, Tierra Viva, founded in 1988, insisted from the beginning on the
principle of autonomy and independence and the importance of developing feminist
theory in a Guatemalan context. The idea for the formation of the group emerged
among the Guatemalan women attending the fourth Encuentro in Taxco in 1987,
a decisive moment for the consciousness of many of Central American women
who attended. In the same year, the Grupo Guatemalteco de Mujeres (GGM;
Guatemalan Women’s Group) was organized to raise consciousness about women’s
lives and needs and to serve women in need, especially those affected by domestic
violence. Two years earlier, in 1986, the Grupo Femenino por Mejoramiento de la
Familia (Women’s Group for Family Improvement), aligned with the Unidad de
Acción Sindical y Popular (Unity Group for Popular and Labor Union Action), had
emerged to promote women’s organizing, to develop the leadership skills of work-
ing women, and to support the needs of workers and their families.
Together, these three pioneering groups established the Coordinación de
Agrupaciones de Mujeres de Guatemala (Coordinating Body of Women’s Groups
of Guatemala), which collaborated, in turn, in the creation of the Asamblea
Permanente de Mujeres Centroamericanas por la Paz (Permanent Assembly of
Central American Women for Peace), an organization that existed for four years.
After the assassination of Dinorah Pérez, political activist and director of the
Instituto de la Mujer María Chinchilla (María Chinchilla Women’s Institute), these
and other groups formed the Red de la No Violencia contra la Mujer (Network for
Nonviolence against Women), which helped to direct public attention to the need
for laws, public policies, and social services to help reduce violence. It also served
to link Guatemalan activists to other regional and international networks that
worked to develop public consciousness about and organize resistance to violence

against women. The leading role that the founders of these three groups played in
the creation of coordinating bodies and networks can be directly linked to their
experiences in exile or in the refugee camps during the war, particularly in Mexico.
During the same period, other women participated in women’s groups that
focused on human rights, the resolution of armed conflict through negotiation, and
the demilitarization of society in favor of respect for civil law. In some groups,
indigenous and ladina women organized around specific problems stemming from
the conflict. These included the Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala
(CONAVIGUA; National Coordinating Committee of Guatemalan Widows) and
the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (Mutual Support Group), a mixed-gender group
made up of relatives of the disappeared, with significant female leadership and
membership.
For some women, experiences in mixed ladino-indigenous organizations
engaged in discussions about gender laid the basis later in the 1980s and early 1990s
for the formation of indigenous women’s organizations with a women’s agenda
and gender consciousness (Carrillo 1991, 118). For other indigenous women, it was
their experience in indigenous refugee organizations in Mexico, such as Mamá
Maquín, Madre Tierra, and Ixmucané, that informed their demands for women’s
empowerment and greater equality, including for the first time in the history of
Guatemala, the demand that peasant women’s right to land ownership be recog-
nized (Hernández 2005, 76). This process was accelerated by indigenous women’s
participation in the first regional and continental indigenous conferences in the
early 1990s, including the Conferencia del Quinto Centenario (Fifth Centenary
Conference) in 1992 and the Enlace Continental de Mujeres Indígenas (Continental
Network of Indigenous Women) in 1993.
During this same period, another new initiative, Otra Guatemala, a magazine
published between 1988 and 1990 by exiles in Mexico, helped to spread feminist
ideas by articulating them with leftist projects and concepts as a means of resolving
the old debate about the relevance of the women’s demands. The magazine sought
to bring together different positions on the left but also served as a forum for the
dissemination of Guatemalan feminist ideas and the activities of women’s organi-
zations in Guatemala, as well as for the recovery of women’s history. Women who
published articles in the magazine and/or were on its editorial board, such as
Carmen and Victoria Álvarez, Lucia Pellecer, Lorena Carrillo, Ana Cofiño, and
Yolanda Urizar, later went on to found or were linked to feminist groups, indige-
nous organizations, and women’s groups in Guatemala.
Despite the tensions and contradictions inherent in the relationship between
more autonomous women’s organizations and those that were related to leftist
organizations at the time, and between the leftist-affiliated women’s organizations
and their parent organizations, the most important achievement of this period was
“to take feminism out from the ‘underground’ in which it had been entombed dur-
ing all the preceding years” (Aguilar 2001, 73).
Third Phase, 1994–1999

The third phase of women’s organizing in Guatemala was characterized by several
milestones. One of the most important occurred during the first debates of the
Asamblea de la Sociedad Civil (ASC; Assembly of Civil Society), an organization
created so that civil society could support the Peace Accords, which were finally
signed by the government and the insurgent forces in 1996.3 The assembly, com-
posed of more than thirty organizations and some individuals, was originally based
on the assumption that women’s needs and demands would automatically be
included as part of the other social groups of which they formed a part: workers,
peasants, professionals, students, businesspeople, the indigenous, the religious,
political parties, and so on. A coalition of women’s organizations, mainly the
Convergencia Cívica Política de Mujeres (Women’s Civic Political Convergence),
GGM, Coordinadora por el Desarrollo Integral de la Mujer (Coordinating Body for
Women’s Comprehensive Development), Familiares de Detenidos y Desaparecidos
de Guatemala (Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared of Guatemala), Tierra
Viva, and Coincidencia de Mujeres came to an agreement, not without struggle,
that women should be included as one of the founding sectors of the assembly
( Jimeno 1996; Berger 2006).
The creation of a Women’s Sector in the ASC produced a forum in which
twenty-two women’s organizations (some working exclusively with women and
others interested in promoting women’s issues within mixed-gender organizations)
and five independent women could debate different versions of gender-specific
demands to be included in the negotiations and, if successful, in the agreements
that resulted from them. The task was not an easy one. Arriving at agreement
among the members of the Women’s Sector meant having to negotiate among a
diverse group of women who did not have a common agenda or experience with
women’s issues and who lacked the trust that comes from having worked together
previously. In the end, however, the members of the Women’s Sector were able to
get the rest of the assembly to take their demands seriously and to add a number
of them into the final agreement. Among the demands were the incorporation of
a gender focus in development programs and programs for the resettlement
of uprooted populations; the creation of legislation recognizing sexual harassment
and domestic violence as punishable crimes; measures favoring the expansion of
women’s citizenship and political participation; special protections of indigenous
rights; and increasing women’s access to land, credit, housing, and education.
Political activist and active participant in the Women’s Sector, Georgina
Navarro, describes the negotiation process that characterized this challenging but
important effort:
In the Women’s Sector, the contributions of the feminists gave theoretical sup-
port and valid arguments to the proposals that later sustained them at the nego-
tiating table, with the political parties and the other sectors. [In the beginning]
indigenous women did not identify with them; they were surprised that we
would come up with things that had not been spoken of publicly here, at least
they had not heard about them . . . but little by little the indigenous women
began to identify. Rosalina Tuyuc, for example, who handled the issue of
human rights very well, began identifying with some proposals in which she
saw herself reflected. CONAVIGUA began to join the Sector when they heard
the proposals and identified with some of the issues. They didn’t endorse every-
thing, just what they believed in. And since we had to present consensus pro-
posals, things they didn’t endorse, didn’t pass, like abortion [an issue that didn’t
have agreement from some other women either because they continue to con-
sider it a taboo topic (ASM)]. The issues [with which] they identified were, for
example, the problems faced by widows due to the armed conflict, the situation
of the women victims of the armed conflict [an experience already shared in
Mexico with other ladina refugees]; it was not feminism as such, but certain
issues that united us. (Monzón 2004a, 62)
The agreement to include women as a sector with specific interests and direct
representation was a milestone in the history of women and democracy in
Guatemala and of peace accords in the world. It deserves to be recognized as such
despite subsequent disappointments resulting from the government’s inability or
lack of will to implement fundamental provisions of the accords. Similarly, the
establishment of the Foro Nacional de la Mujer (National Women’s Forum), an
attempt to ensure that women’s issues were not overlooked in the implementation
of the accords, deserves recognition for being a pioneering effort in spite of the fact
that rural women’s groups were insufficiently represented in it (Berger 2006).
According to one observer, “It can be said, then, that it was during this period that
feminism and feminists decisively influenced the discussions of the main leaders of
the broader women’s movement and the content of the demands expressed in the
Peace Accords through the constant and dynamic participation of organized
women in the spaces and mechanisms defined for this process” (Aguilar 2001, 73).
Other milestones during this period included the coordination of an increas-

ingly more varied collection of women’s groups and the organization of public
debates related to preparations for regional, hemispheric, and international confer-
ences, such as the Primer Encuentro Centroamericano de Mujeres (First Central
American Women’s Encuentro), held in Montelimar, Nicaragua (1992); the Sexto
Encuentro Feminista de América Latina y el Caribe (Sixth Latin American and
Caribbean Feminist Encuentro), in Costa del Sol, El Salvador (1993); and, sponsored
by the United Nations, the World Conference on Human Rights, in Vienna (1993);
the International Conference on Population and Development, in Cairo (1994); and
the World Conference on Women, in Beijing (1995).
The public debates conducted by women’s groups and their desire to have
political influence and negotiate with the government, as well as with different sec-
tors of civil society, generated a strong reaction at times. Such was the case of the
proposed Law on Population and Development (Decree 3-93), which focused on
the reproductive health of men and women, including family planning, gynecolog-
ical and obstetric treatment, and the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.
Opposition to the law—passed by Congress but eventually vetoed by the

president—came not only from the Catholic Church hierarchy and conservative
groups who saw family planning as a cover for abortion but also from some
Catholic women activists and indigenous women.
Another significant event during this period was the establishment of the first
monthly feminist newspaper in Guatemala, La Cuerda, in 1998. It started out some
years before as a monthly page in a nationally circulating daily paper. The most
important contribution of the newspaper to praxis and theory of progressive social
movements in Guatemala is its emphasis on articulating the ethics of the body and
feelings to politics. Picking up the trail of Femina Sapiens but taking it further and
updating it in Guatemalan time and space, La Cuerda pays homage to its predeces-
sor with a column of the same name. La Cuerda, however, reinterprets the intention
of the original column by emphasizing an integration of the theoretical and politi-
cal. The newspaper defines itself as “a feminist look at reality” and seeks to balance
analysis with reporting information, as well as to stimulate opinion and debate on
national matters from a feminist perspective. The newspaper’s vision derives from
an integrated concept of feminist thought and social reality and originates in the
debate with the left, summarized in the principle of “the personal is political.”
Together with the radio program Voces de Mujeres (Women’s Voices), established in
1993, La Cuerda is the result of the postwar democratic opening that has brought
about more favorable conditions for the creation of alternative means of commu-
nication and knowledge creation and transmission. In 2007 La Cuerda expanded its
vision to form Agenda Feminista (Feminist Agenda), a space where women can
share the history of their experiences in the women’s movement, hammer out a
common language, and support feminist political action throughout the country.
Although the project is still in its early stages, the goal is to convene a Congreso de
Feministas (Feminist Congress) in 2009.
A contradictory trend that accelerated during this period was the progressive
NGOization of Guatemalan women’s organizations and the women’s movement

overall. On one hand, beginning in the nineties, there was growing international
pressure from the United Nations conferences and public and private donors to
include women’s issues in the programmatic initiatives of governmental agencies
and nongovernmental organizations, both of which depended heavily on external
financing. This created a certain demand for people trained in gender issues and for
workshops on subjects related to women. Many women activists believe, however,
that it also increased fragmentation, duplication, and competition for scarce
resources, resulting in a lack of long-term, coherent goals. Many of the critics also
believe that increasing NGOization weakened the most political aspects of the
feminist movement in favor of the “institutionalization of the movement, the
establishment of administrative and accounting systems . . . the creation of impact
indicators and the drawing up of logical frameworks for the execution of projects,”
while “negotiating and influencing became the same . . . as not confronting and
abandoning political mobilization and denunciation” (Aguilar 2001, 82–83).
Other women activists, although they recognize the contradictory effects of

NGOization, have pointed out a positive development during this period, not
entirely unrelated to NGOization. That is, for the first time, by the end of the
period the Guatemalan women’s movement, particularly its feminist current, no
longer had a majority of members from the ladina-mestiza or urban population or
the upper and middle classes. It was no longer only rural and indigenous women
who were creating spaces for themselves and their concerns but also women with
other ethnic identities (Garifuna and Xinca, for example), young women, religious
women, and women with different sexual orientations.
Fourth Phase, 2000 to the Present

By the year 2000 there was once again an increase in violence (due mostly to crime),
government corruption, a climate of impunity, insecurity in the public sphere, and
the fragility of the legal system, which, together with economic deterioration,
helped to undermine the implementation of the Peace Accords and state policies
related to the accords. The creation of the Secretaría Presidencial de la Mujer
(Presidential Secretariat for Women) opened up some avenues for the institution-
alization of policies favoring women and paved the way for the Guatemalan
Congress to ratify the Protocolo Facultativo (Optional Protocol) of the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). But
the relevant state agencies have still not publicized the content of CEDAW and
have not acted on other reforms stipulated in the Peace Accords, including the law
of electoral and political parties reform, the law against sexual harassment, and the
integration of women into the Consejos de Desarrollo Urbano y Rural (Urban and
Rural Development Councils). The incorporation of a gender perspective into the
packet of educational reforms and into the expansion of rural women’s rights to
land and credit has also not progressed.
On the positive side, a diverse group of women have been able to come to
agreements on certain political agendas and specific projects. During the election
campaigns of 2003, women’s groups joined the protests against the constitutional
court’s approval of the candidacy of the ex-president General Efraín Ríos Montt
(who was responsible for the “scorched earth” counterinsurgent campaign). They
joined the Nosotras las Mujeres (We, the Women) campaign to convince other
women to exercise a well-informed vote, reminding them of the impact that the
war of the 1980s had on women and their communities (Monzón 2004b, 26).
For the first time there was discussion between indigenous and ladina-mestiza
women of approximately twenty proposals for inclusion in the election platforms of
the political parties. The symposia organized around these proposals focused atten-
tion on the problems women faced and demands for action by the state that would
benefit the common good, including “the creation and strengthening of institutional
mechanisms for the advancement of women, the allocation of state funds to specific
women’s programs, as well as the approval of laws and/or legal reforms that con-
tribute to eliminating the barriers that limit the effective participation of women in
political and management spaces and the execution of public policies” (Monzón
2004c, 27).
Although the proposed reform in the law governing elections and political
parties that would have provided for quotas for women in party electoral slates
seems to have stagnated and women still seem to be required to have higher edu-
cational levels and more experience to be selected as political party candidates than
men do (Garcia 2007), the pressure to get more women involved in electoral poli-
tics appears to have born fruit in the 2007 elections. More indigenous women
participated than before, including as candidates, and a number of them have been
elected to Congress and several more as mayors. Indigenous women also presented
local agendas to the political parties and, for the first time, organizations of women
affiliated with the left emerged to push women’s issues and candidacies in their
parties’ elections. Formed in 2006, the Colectiva Feminista de Mujeres de Izquierda
(Feminist Collective of Leftist Women), allied with the Unidad Revolucionaria
Nacional Guatemalteca–Movimiento Amplio de Izquierda (URNG-MAIZ;
Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity–Broad Leftist Movement) party, and
the Núcleo de Lucha contra el Patriarcado (Nucleus of Struggle against Patriarchy)
gave leftist women visibility, a defined identity, and a mechanism through which
to sustain a debate about feminism and women in the context of electoral politics.
The selection of feminist Walda Barrios as vice president on the URNG-MAIZ
ticket in 2007 represented a landmark in the history of women and left parties in
Guatemala and was the result of left women having organized as women.
This new effort to think concretely and strategically about legislative and policy
reform agendas, increase women’s participation in electoral politics, and form the
necessary alliances is not without its critics. There are feminists who believe that
pressuring the government to implement and supervise reforms, given the prob-
lematic political atmosphere and the weakness of the Guatemalan state, distracts
from a more militant feminist effort to transform the social order.
The most important new development during this period has been the unex-
pected and historically unprecedented diffusion of women’s organizations and
feminist perspectives outside of Guatemala City. The coordinated public marches
that began in the capital with the signing of the Peace Accords on March 8, 1996, are
celebrated more and more frequently in the departmental administrative centers,
under the leadership of coordinating bodies that bring together diverse groups.
Mayan, Garifuna, and Xinca women, the main ethnic groups in Guatemala, are
increasingly active in several regional and hemispheric networks as well as in many
local and national organizations. Garifuna women began to develop their hemi-
spheric ties as a result of the Primer Encuentro de Mujeres Negras Latinoamericanas
y del Caribe (First Latin American and Caribbean Black Women’s Encuentro) in
1992 and indigenous women did the same after the Enlace Continental de Mujeres
Indígenas in 1993.
Indigenous women who had been in exile or refugee camps during the war
have faced a number of organizational challenges upon their return. During the
1980s and early 1990s, indigenous women who were in refugee camps had strong
support from the Mexican NGOs (Blue 2005) and were successful in organizing
their nine thousand or so women members into three main groups: Mamá Maquín
in 1990, Madre Tierra in 1993, and Mujeres en Resistencia Ixmucane in 1993. When
they returned to Guatemala in 1993, and in the years that followed, the women
encountered a more conservative and hostile environment. Branded as members or
sympathizers of revolutionary organizations (brought together in URNG) and
often rejected by local male leaders with a much less progressive mind-set
compared to that to which they were accustomed, the women found it difficult to
continue with the same agenda of empowerment that they followed when they
were refugees. Nevertheless, in 2000 the three groups mentioned earlier formed
the Alianza de Mujeres Rurales por la Vida, la Tierra, y la Dignidad (Rural
Women’s Alliance for Life, Land, and Dignity), which operated out of Quiché,
Huehuetenango, Alta Verapaz, Suchitepéquez, and Petén. After a period of focus-
ing primarily on “productive projects,” their current agenda tries to combine
preparing for employment or income generation with a political agenda that has
“a transformative character” and foments “broader relationships” (Hernández
2005, 82).
Some indigenous women work actively for land rights in mixed-gender groups
such as the Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas (National
Coordinating Body of Peasant Organizations) and the Coordinadora Nacional
Indígena y Campesina (National Indigenous and Peasant Coordinating Body),
which since 1996 has had a Secretariat for Women that pressures for greater repre-
sentation of women in positions of power. Other indigenous women organize
around a particular focus: cultural (Consejo de Mayas, or Mayan Council, formed
in 1993); political (Comité de Mujeres Coordinadora de Organizaciones del Pueblo
Maya de Guatemala, or Women’s Coordinating Committee of the Mayan
Organizations of Guatemala, formed in 1996; and the Asociación de Mujeres
Tejedoras del Desarrollo, or Association of Women Weavers of Development,
formed in 1997); self-knowledge (Grupo de Mujeres Mayas Kaqla, or Kaqla Mayan

Women’s Group, formed in 1998); and women’s leadership and citizenship devel-
opment (Asociación Política de Mujeres Mayas Moloj, or Moloj Political
Association of Mayan Women, formed in 2001). Others struggle for a more visible
role and against discrimination (Asociación de Mujeres Garífunas de Guatemala, or
Association of Garífuna Women of Guatemala, formed in 1995) or to bring together
women of diverse ideological positions to push for a broad political movement
of Mayan women and their increased representation in the state apparatus
(Asociación Moloj, or Moloj Association, formed in 1999). These organizations,
whether consisting of mixed groups or organizing women around a particular
focus, are playing an increasingly important role in the education and mobilization
of rural indigenous women (Monzón 2004a, 34–35). This mobilization, in turn, has
motivated other governmental and nongovernmental organizations, such as the
Foro Nacional de la Mujer (National Women’s Forum), created in 1989, to restruc-
ture themselves along regional, linguistic, and sociocultural lines, so as to facilitate
more diverse participation.
Perhaps the most innovative of the new groups is Grupo de Mujeres Mayas
Kaqla, made up of Mayan women with experience in the revolutionary move-
ments of the 1980s, along with some younger women. What is interesting about
Kaqla’s project is the creative appropriation and updating of a wide range of cul-
tural, intellectual, and political traditions, in a dialogic approach that keeps the
channels open for a wide range of debates, with the goal of combining both the
private and the public. These include Western European and U.S. traditions such
as psychoanalysis and socioanalysis, feminism, deconstructionism, and theoretical
paradigms of development, integrated with cultural points of reference from
indigenous peoples and languages and Guatemalan popular culture. Although the
Mujeres Maya de Kaqla want, in this initial phase of their process, “to talk to them-
selves” (Grupo de Mujeres Mayas Kaqla 2004, 28), particularly around issues of
internalized oppression, their ultimate goal is dialogue in the search for new ways
of configuring—at least on the discursive level—a multiple and heterogeneous
subject.
Another important initiative is the effort that some historic organizations,
such as CONAVIGUA, are making to guarantee a new generation of leaders.
CONAVIGUA has created the Movimiento de Jóvenes Maya (MOJOMAYA; Maya
Youth Movement), an autonomous organization of young activists who are linked
with a growing youth movement in Guatemala.
While some activists look with consternation at what they view as the depoliti-
zation of Guatemalan women’s movements over these past eight years and a
decrease in influence at the national policy level, others focus on the historically
unprecedented spread of women’s organizations and feminist perspectives in rural
areas. It is indisputable that in Guatemala today there is a growing diversity of
projects that give voice and space to women who historically have not had it. In a
country that is just beginning to accept its identity as a multiethnic nation and
explore all the ramifications of that identity, and in which, until very recently, effec-
tive citizenship was denied to the majority of its population, this diffusion of
women’s organizations, activities, and consciousness can be seen as a preexisting
condition for a new moment of protagonism.
Weakness and Challenges

The most remarkable part of the past thirty years of activism by Guatemalan
women has been its continuity in spite of threats, deaths, a genocidal war, and a
postwar period characterized by high levels of impunity and official corruption, as
well as by increasing hunger and poverty, elites that resist democratic reforms, and
a valiant but fragile civil society. Women’s activism during and after the wars of the
1970s and 1980s has helped to bring about a concept of citizenship that is more
active and inclusive and a concept of the nation that is more pluralistic and multi-
ethnic. It has created a more holistic concept of progressive social change that com-
bines reproduction with production, and feelings and desires with economic and
political transformation. It has encouraged more democratic and less sectarian
practices in progressive coalitions and, most importantly, it has brought into public
life a core group of women—some who have been activists since their teens and
others who have been organizing for decades—with extensive knowledge of the art
of mobilizing and organizing, even under the most adverse conditions. These expe-
rienced women work alongside new generations of activists who did not directly
experience the war and the more orthodox traditions of leftist organizations;
together they combine the transmission of experience with the creation of new
spaces and experiments in new organizing styles.
At the same time, the fragility of the changes that have been achieved, the
emergence of new forms of terror and intimidation such as the wave of femicides—
1,049 women killed between 2002 and 2004—and problems generated by civilian
governments that conciliate the right-wing Catholics of Opus Dei or attempt to
co-opt feminist discourse without genuinely believing in it make it difficult to carve
out time to collectively reflect on the achievements of Guatemalan women’s
organizations and the lessons they have learned.4
The goal of fully integrating women and feminist ideas into democratic politi-
cal culture in Guatemala has been constantly challenged by conditions of violence,
limited access to education and public debate, and intolerance and discrimination
on the basis of gender, class, and ethnicity. But responding to these challenges has
also been the strength of the Guatemalan women’s movement. The failure of the
left to develop women’s organizations and a framework for feminist analysis dur-
ing the war gave a certain freedom to postwar feminist groups to experiment with
ideas and organizational forms. On the other hand, the continuing presence of large
numbers of women in mixed organizations, or the women’s organizations linked to
them, has made it possible for these women to develop critiques, based on their
experiences, of gender approaches that lack feminist theory or politics and of femi-
nist approaches that minimize the importance of class.
Women refugees and peasants have challenged their organizations to develop
strategies that promote improvement not only in women’s economic conditions
but also in political empowerment. Recent research in communities of returnees

confirms that “access to land for isolated groups, through credits and timely
support, is insufficient to turn back poverty and does not generate development”
(Hernández 2005, 82). This concurs with the evaluations of peasant women’s organ-
izations who now propose goals with a more political character. The airing of
debates about theory and practice with regard to women, within and among leftist
organizations and between leftist organizations and feminists, has resulted in
feminist agendas that are closely tied to political issues and the social problems
of Guatemala, far removed from those elsewhere that might be viewed by
Guatemalan feminists as self-absorbed and elitist. While the ability of women
with a feminist perspective to influence national politics and the programs of left-
ist political parties is still relatively weak, recent developments have occurred,
such as the selection of Walda Barrios as the vice presidential candidate of the
URNG-MAIZ in the 2007 elections and the unprecedented collaboration of women
congressional representatives with rural and urban women’s groups in the passage
of the new Law against Femicide in April 2008.
Guatemalan women’s movements currently face a number of challenges, some

of which are more related to their particular context and others similar to those of
other Latin American women’s groups. Like movements elsewhere, Guatemalan
women’s organizations face an ongoing challenge to determine how much effort to
invest in organizing public actions versus the internal development of the move-
ment, what types of relationships women’s organizations should maintain with the
state, and how to maintain autonomy and independence while depending on inter-
national financial support.
On the other hand, of particular importance in a multiethnic country like
Guatemala is the articulation of differences, particularly within and among ethnic
groups. The recent geographic dispersion and political decentering of Guatemalan
women’s organizing activities makes this articulation more important than ever
before. In parts of Latin America where academic feminism is well institutional-
ized, the challenge is to bridge the gap between academic and rank-and-file
feminists. In Guatemala, however, the challenge is to generate more theory that
sustains and encourages women’s activism and to create and permanently sustain
academic institutions, research centers, and civil organizations that can help teach
gender issues, shape feminist thought, and generate ongoing financial support for
these projects.
And finally, in Guatemala, as elsewhere in Latin America, there is the need to
effectively confront the resurgence of a religious right adamantly opposed to
women’s right to reproductive choice. How to respond to the right-wing offensive
while still constructing a women’s movement that respects and allows for differ-
ences among women—especially between some indigenous and nonindigenous
women when it comes to state reproductive policies—has created tension among
women around public policy issues. This potential division highlights once again the
overarching challenge of how to construct a movement that teaches women how to
negotiate among their differences, as well as with the state and their nonstate allies.
Throughout these challenges, the fundamental task of finding ever more creative
ways of “subverting, transgressing and subverting again” still remains (Aguilar 2001).
notes
1. The Jornadas, a series of political campaigns and public protests against the military
government of Ydigoras Fuentes, developed into an insurrectionary moment in Guatemalan
political history.
2. The term ladinos, as used in Guatemala, refers to mestizos or, in many cases, any
non-Indians.
3. The peace negotiations between the government, the army, and the Unidad
Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG; Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity),
an umbrella group that brought together an array of armed and civilian revolutionary organi-
zations, began in Mexico on April 26, 1991, with the signing of the agreement that included the
participation of civil society.
4. The figure of 1,049 exceeds the total cases attributed to femicide in Ciudad Juárez as of
2004 (see Grais-Targow 2004). The brutal killings of women with only minimal efforts to
investigate the perpetrators and virtually no prosecutions in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, is a phe-
nomenon that has received extensive media attention and international campaigns on behalf of
the murdered women, while the situation in Guatemala has received much less attention. In a
number of the Guatemalan women’s cases there are indications of involvement by government
security forces.
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PART IV
BROADENING THE CIRCLE
OF WOMEN’S ACTIVISM
New Meanings from
Intersecting Oppressions
9 Women’s Movements
in Argentina
tensions and articulations
graciela di marco
There are, therefore, by necessity, many feminisms and

any attempt to find the “true” form of feminist politics
should be abandoned. —Chantal Mouffe
This chapter focuses on the relations between Argentinean women’s movements

and the state between the nineties and the early twenty-first century. In this period,
processes of structural adjustment and globalization dramatically changed the
social structure of Argentina. A significant corpus of law was passed to support
women’s rights; however, a gap remains between the laws on the books and an
effective defense and protection of such rights.
My approach to trace the developments that took place from the mid-nineties to
the present takes the vast literature about women’s movements in Latin America
into account, starting from considerations of both public and private organizations
as spaces where gender discourses are constructed and negotiated in their linguistic
and practical implications.1 Gender is constructed; that is to say, legitimized and

nonlegitimized gender relations are sanctioned and gender is performed. The state
is an organization where different discourses and practices coexist, because it is the
result of social processes rather than a unified apparatus pursuing well-defined,
homogeneous strategies. Rather than a monolithic, uniform whole, it is a battlefield
where different interests fight one another. Pervaded by asymmetric gender rela-
tions, the state nevertheless plays a role in the construction of these same unequal
power relations between genders. In Argentina, social movements interrelate with
the state in countless ways, and these relations also give rise to negotiations of new
meanings (Di Marco 1997a). The messages generated by collective action are related
to the actors’ demands for subjectivity and visibility at the intersection with other
social forces and interlocutors (political parties, religious organizations, and the
state). Any attempt at examining the connections among various social movements,
women’s movements, and the Argentinean state will necessarily be only partly
successful, because it requires fragmenting a relation in progress within a field of
democratic conflicts and potentialities.

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PART I

SETTING THE STAGE

include some measure of both redistribution (of resources across segments of

Women’s Agency and Collective Action in Latin America

worldwide. Their theoretical production is equally remarkable, although generally

Four Decades of Latin American and

Origins in Inhospitable Times

regimes, feminist theorists brought to our attention the contradictions between

subregional differences, most obviously in terms of timing: movements began

Weathering the Transition to Formal Democracy and the “Lost Decade”

the contradictions experienced by women in socialist regimes, most came to

izing of Afro-Latin, rural, lesbian, and popular feminisms—and later indigenous

The 1990s: NGOs, Institutionalization, and Internationalization

New Millennium, New Trends

toral victories by center-left to left parties and/or coalitions in Venezuela (Chavez

women of mostly European or mixed descent, both in society and in movement-

The Chapters in This Book

Status of Women: How Far Have We Come?

The Many Faces of Women’s Struggles for Citizenship

process remains incomplete, although it contributed to the beginnings of popular

undermine the possibilities for building a strong movement, as noted by Carrillo

structure and political context

institutionalization: how much and at what cost?

Organizing at the Local, National, Regional, and International Levels

the institutional sphere and the politics of scale

Latin American and Caribbean feminisms. Signs 28 (2): 537–580.

sions of sociopolitical participation, Latin American and Caribbean women have

The Joy of Beginning

mobilization, and theorization surfaced initially in the advanced industrial nations,

comprehension of gender discrimination also sensitized feminists to the social

Autonomy and the Constitution of Collective Subjects

military—or civilian—authoritarian regimes, unexpectedly, inadvertently, and pro-

implications of this public and political participation in the name of traditional

to gender-based struggles, the amount of time and commitment employed in their

“Popular” Feminism: The Gender-Class Perspective

satisfying needs for basic infrastructure and services. Lack of infrastructure—

from women’s traditional gender roles without consciousness—initially, at least—

experiences as the source of collective knowledge about the meaning of gender,

of working-class neighborhoods, or in the Programa del Vaso de Leche, served as a means of

pretaciones. Pasos, no. 45:11–20.

contributions and intensiﬁed work (Arriagada 1998; González de la Rocha 2001).

Industrial Restructuring and Precarious Labor

women working in professional and technical occupations and in clerical and

in labor-intensive manufacturing may explain the decline in economic participation

racial differences in overall economic activity may be less pronounced, so Afro-

Migration and Transnational Aspects of Precarious Labor

Implications for Social and Gender Equity

Resources are also drained as prevailing socioeconomic conditions tend to frag-

panorama de base a partir de la ronda de censos de 2000. Santiago: CEPAL .

Di Marco, Graciela. 2006. Movimientos sociales y democratización en Argentina. In De lo

America. Feminist Economics 5 (1): 1–28.

which coincides with a decline or stagnation in male labor force participation.

But the impact of economic restructuring and globalization on female heads

The Economic Crisis in the Caribbean in the 1990s

increasing numbers question the efficacy of market reform (Hershberg 2003).

The Special Period in Cuba

deleterious effects of slavery on the conjugal bond. However, the revolutionary

Women’s economic autonomy was threatened in the Special Period. Female

Women Workers in the Free Trade Zones of the Dominican Republic