Feminist Policymaking In Chile

The election of Michelle Bachelet as president of Chile in 2006 gave new impetus to the struggle in that country for legislation to improve women’s rights and highlighted a process that had already been under way for some time. In Feminist Policymaking in Chile, Liesl Haas investigates the efforts of Chilean feminists to win policy reforms on a broad range of gender equity issues—from labor and marriage laws, to educational opportunities, to health and reproductive rights. Between 1990 and 2008, sixty-three bills were put forward in the Chilean legislature as a result of pressure brought by the feminist movement and its allies. Haas examines all these bills, identifying the conditions under which feminist policymaking was most likely to succeed. In doing so, she develops a predictive theory of policy success that is broadly applicable to other Latin American countries.

Why have women remained marginalized in Chilean politics, even within a context of democratization? Addressing this question, Susan Franceschet traces women's political activism in the country - from the early twentieth century struggles for suffrage to current efforts to expand and deepen the practice of democracy. Franceschet highlights the gendered nature of political participation in Chile, as well as changing perceptions of what is and is not political. Even as women enter electoral and bureaucratic politics in greater numbers, she argues, they are divided by ideology, competing interests, and unequal access to power. Clarifying the themes and challenges of the Chilean women's movement today, she finds an inextricable link between women's struggles for citizenship rights and the nation's broader struggles for democracy and social justice.

The election of Michelle Bachelet as president of Chile in 2006 gave new impetus to the struggle in that country for legislation to improve women’s rights and highlighted a process that had already been under way for some time. In Feminist Policymaking in Chile, Liesl Haas investigates the efforts of Chilean feminists to win policy reforms on a broad range of gender equity issues—from labor and marriage laws, to educational opportunities, to health and reproductive rights. Between 1990 and 2008, sixty-three bills were put forward in the Chilean legislature as a result of pressure brought by the feminist movement and its allies. Haas examines all these bills, identifying the conditions under which feminist policymaking was most likely to succeed. In doing so, she develops a predictive theory of policy success that is broadly applicable to other Latin American countries.

Since the early 1980s Ecuador has experienced a series of events unparalleled in its history. Its &“free market&” strategies exacerbated the debt crisis, and in response new forms of social movement organizing arose among the country&’s poor, including women&’s groups. Gendered Paradoxes focuses on women&’s participation in the political and economic restructuring process of the past twenty-five years, showing how in their daily struggle for survival Ecuadorian women have both reinforced and embraced the neoliberal model yet also challenged its exclusionary nature. Drawing on her extensive ethnographic fieldwork and employing an approach combining political economy and cultural politics, Amy Lind charts the growth of several strands of women&’s activism and identifies how they have helped redefine, often in contradictory ways, the real and imagined boundaries of neoliberal development discourse and practice. In her analysis of this ambivalent and &“unfinished&” cultural project of modernity in the Andes, she examines state policies and their effects on women of various social sectors; women&’s community development initiatives and responses to the debt crisis; and the roles played by feminist &“issue networks&” in reshaping national and international policy agendas in Ecuador and in developing a transnationally influenced, locally based feminist movement.

Michele Bachelet, Chile's first female president, was elected with an explicit gender agenda in 2006 and then reelected in 2013. This volume focuses on Bachelet's efforts to introduce progressive measures and the constraints that she has faced in a context where both formal and informal political institutions can act as barriers to change.

What explains civil society participation in policy making in Latin American democracies? Risley comparatively analyzes actors who have advocated for children's rights, the environment, and freedom of information in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Successful issue framing and effective alliance building are identified as 'pathways' to participation.

Political institutions profoundly shape political life and are also gendered. This groundbreaking collection synthesises new institutionalism and gendered analysis using a new approach - feminist institutionalism - in order to answer crucial questions about power inequalities, mechanisms of continuity, and the gendered limits of change.