Women’s Rights in Movement: Dynamics of Feminist Change in Latin America and the Caribbean (Latin American Societies) 3031391810, 9783031391811

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Latin American Societies Current Challenges in Social Sciences

Inés M. Pousadela Simone R. Bohn   Editors

Women’s Rights in Movement

Dynamics of Feminist Change in Latin America and the Caribbean

Latin American Societies Current Challenges in Social Sciences Series Editors Adrián Albala, Institute of Political Science (IPOL) University of Brasília Brasilia, Brasília, Brazil María José Álvarez Rivadulla, School of Social Sciences Universidad de los Andes Bogotá, Colombia Alejandro Natal, Seminar Inst., Civ. Soc. & Pub. Pol. El Colegio Mexiquense Zinacantepec, Estado de México, Mexico

This series aims at presenting to the international community original contributions by scholars working on Latin America. Such contributions will address the challenges that Latin American societies currently face as well as the ways they deal with these challenges. The series will be methodologically agnostic, that is: it welcomes case studies, small-N comparative studies or studies covering the whole region, as well as studies using qualitative or quantitative data (or a mix of both), as long as they are empirically rigorous and based on high-quality research. Besides exploring Latin American challenges, the series attempts to provide concepts, findings and theories that may shed light on other regions. The series will focus on five axes of challenges: 1) Social, Public and Environmental Policies The first set of challenges revolves around the agenda setting in public and social policies in Latin America. This may include several topics like: redistribution policies, social mobility, marginalization. Another key item to be included deals with sources and consequences of environmental change – especially human-related change. These consequences threaten not only Latin American’s material reproduction (e. g. by threatening water and food sources) but also deeply ingrained cultural practices and lifestyles. This section will, therefore, include proposals on environmental policies and matters. We welcome studies on a wide array of social, public and environmental policy making, implementation and effects. 2) Crime, Security and Violence The second set of challenges stem from the persistence of violence and insecurity among Latin Americans, which consistently rank crime and insecurity at the top of their biggest problems. Crime organizations – from youth gangs to drug cartels – have grown and became more professionalized, displacing State forces in considerable chunks of national territories and, in some cases, penetrating the political class through illegal campaign funding and bribes. To this we should add, in some countries of the region, the persistence of armed insurgents fighting against governmental forces and paramilitaries, therefore creating cross-fires that threaten the lives of civilians. We welcome studies on a wide array of security and violence related issues. 3) Collective Action A third theme has to do with how collective actors – social movements, civil society organizations, and quasi-organized groups – deal with issues that affect them. We welcome studies on a wide array of collective actors working on different issues, with different tactics, and diverse ideological stances. 4) Migrations Political, economic, and environmental crises, as well as promises of better opportunities in other lands, have encouraged Latin Americans to migrate within their national borders or beyond them. While during the 1970s Latin Americans often migrated to other regions, nowadays national crises encourage them to seek other destinations in more nearby countries. We welcome studies on a wide array of topics and diverse theoretical perspectives.

5) Political Inclusion and Quality of Democracy Dealing with social and ethnic minorities constitutes one of the most recurrent and unresolved challenges for the Latin American democracies. This topic includes the representation of the minorities, but includes also the study of the socio-political elites. We also welcome other studies on a wide array of issues regarding inclusion and quality of democracy in the region. Both solicited and unsolicited proposals will be considered for publication in the series.

Inés M. Pousadela  •  Simone R. Bohn Editors

Women’s Rights in Movement Dynamics of Feminist Change in Latin America and the Caribbean

Editors Inés M. Pousadela Department of International Studies Universidad ORT Uruguay CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation Montevideo, Uruguay

Simone R. Bohn Department of Politics York University Toronto, ON, Canada

ISSN 2730-5538     ISSN 2730-5546 (electronic) Latin American Societies ISBN 978-3-031-39181-1    ISBN 978-3-031-39182-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Acknowledgments

The editors thank Julio Nakamurakare for his translation and editing work and Alexander Moldovan for his meticulous dedication to the very tedious work of checking references, formatting texts, and preparing the manuscript for publication. We also thank York University’s LA&PS Minor Research Grant (Canada) for its institutional and financial support that paid for the translation of the chapters that were originally written in Spanish. A special thanks to three people at Springer, without whose support this book would not have seen the light of day: Adrián Albala, for his enthusiasm and trust that got this project going; Bruno Fiuza, for not giving up on us despite challenges and delays; and Bakiyalakshmi RM, leading the production work for Springer Nature, for her professionalism and patient support. We are in debt to the many women who are not named but contributed to our work by sharing their stories and reflections about the movements they are part of. They are the ones effectively changing the world for the better. Our immense thanks to each of the authors in this volume. As working women and feminists ourselves, we are well aware of the amount of unpaid work, conviction and dedication that went into the research, thinking, and writing processes leading up to this collective book. We are very proud of what we have accomplished together. And our gratitude to the many amazing women who paved the way for us, walked alongside us, and inspire us in both work and life.

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Contents

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Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 Inés M. Pousadela References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   12

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Feminists by Default? Women’s Rights and Social Change in Argentina����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   15 Inés M. Pousadela 1 Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   15 2 From the Origins to the 1980s ������������������������������������������������������������   17 3 A Great Leap Forward������������������������������������������������������������������������   20 4 A New Era: Fourth-Wave Feminism in the Making����������������������������   26 5 Epilogue: What Next? Backlash and Resistance ��������������������������������   36 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   38

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A Heterogeneous Women’s Movement from a Post-colonial, Unequal Society: The Case of Brazil������������������������������������������������������   43 Simone Bohn 1 Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   43 2 Definitional Issues and Theoretical Discussion����������������������������������   44 3 Women Organizing a Women’s Movement in a Post-colonial Society��������������������������������������������������������������������   47 4 Women Organized Not to Agitate for Women’s Rights����������������������   49 5 Feminist Waves: Prevailing Narratives������������������������������������������������   50 6 Potential Origins of the Women’s Movement in Brazil����������������������   52 7 Targets, Allies and Networks��������������������������������������������������������������   54 8 BWM’s Recent Collaboration with the Central Government��������������   56 9 Backlash in Brazil and Resistance������������������������������������������������������   57 10 Concluding Remarks ��������������������������������������������������������������������������   58 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   59

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Chile’s Feminist Spring: Impasse and Continuity of Women’s Demands for a Life Free of Sexism������������������������������������   67 Lucía Miranda Leibe 1 Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   67 2 Methodology and Data Collection Technique ������������������������������������   69 3 The History of Women’s Empowerment ��������������������������������������������   70 4 Women’s Movements: Political Effects on the Transition to Democracy������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   73 5 Feminist Branches: Tensions and Organisational Logics��������������������   76 6 May 2018: Generational Change and the Threat of a New Backlash������������������������������������������������������������������������������   79 7 Conclusions ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   82 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   83

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 Feminist and Women’s Activism in Colombia��������������������������������������   89 Emma Doris López Rodríguez and Martha Isabel Meriño Fontalvo 1 Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   89 2 Feminist Activism in Colombia����������������������������������������������������������   90 3 Recent Manifestations of Feminist Activism in Colombia������������������   97 4 Broadening Participatory Spaces and Inclusion����������������������������������  101 5 The Conservative Reaction������������������������������������������������������������������  103 6 Concluding Remarks ��������������������������������������������������������������������������  104 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  105

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The Right to a Complete Life: Struggles of the Dominican Feminist Movement����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  109 Esther Hernández-Medina 1 Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  109 2 A Historically Transnational Movement: Its Trajectory and Its Main issues������������������������������������������������������������������������������  112 3 The 1990s as an Inflection Point: “NGOisation”, Beijing, and Collaborating with the State ��������������������������������������������������������  119 4 The Causales: Revitalisation and Generational Change in the Dominican Feminist Movement������������������������������������������������  122 5 Anti-Rights Groups: Conservative Backlash in the Dominican Republic����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  127 6 Final Remarks: The Dominican Feminist Movement, Going Back and Moving Forwards�����������������������������������������������������  130 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  132

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Between Institutionalisation and Militancy of Affection: A Journey Through Feminisms in Ecuador������������������������������������������  137 Soledad Varea and María Rosa Cevallos 1 Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  137 2 The Origin of Feminisms and Popular Feminisms in Ecuador ����������  139 3 Institutional Feminism in the 1990s����������������������������������������������������  141

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4 Urban Feminisms��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  143 5 The Struggles for the Decriminalisation of Abortion��������������������������  147 6 Conclusions ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  151 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  152 8

Historical Periods and the Wave Metaphor in Mexican Feminism ������������������������������������������������������������������������������  155 Gabriela Cano and Saúl Espino Armendáriz 1 Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  155 2 The Waves Metaphor ��������������������������������������������������������������������������  157 3 First Period: Intellectual and Professional Emancipation (1887–1916) ����������������������������������������������������������������  159 4 Second Period: Suffrage and Equal Work (1916–1939)����������������������  160 5 Third Period: Formal Equality and Diplomacy (1939–1971) ������������  161 6 Fourth Period: Women’s Personal and Bodily Autonomy (1971–1987)����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  163 7 Fifth Period: Institutionalisation and Diversification (1987–2010s)��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  165 8 Towards a New Period? ����������������������������������������������������������������������  167 9 Conclusions ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  169 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  169

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Feminisms in Nicaragua: A Century of Revolutions, Autonomous Mobilisations and Dictatorships��������������������������������������  173 Simone da Silva Ribeiro Gomes 1 Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  173 2 Suffrage and Revolutionary Feminisms: 1920–1996��������������������������  175 3 Feminisms in the Liberal Interlude: 1996–2006 ��������������������������������  177 4 Afrofeminisms, Africa and Autonomy: 1980 Onwards����������������������  179 5 Feminisms and the Return of the FSLN to Power: 2006–2018����������  180 6 Feminisms in the Midst of the April Rebellion: 2018–2021 ��������������  182 7 Final Remarks��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  185 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  186

10 Feminisms  in Peru in a Context of Crisis����������������������������������������������  189 Violeta Barrientos-Silva 1 Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  189 2 The Antecedents of Peruvian Feminism����������������������������������������������  190 3 Feminism in the Twenty-First Century: Resurgence in the Midst of National Political Crisis����������������������������������������������  191 4 Brief Government of an “Indigenous” President, Social Explosion and Shift to “Authoritarian Neoliberalism”������������  203 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  205 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  209

Chapter 1

Introduction Inés M. Pousadela

Contents References

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Latin American women have long been at the forefront of a variety of struggles on issues ranging from peace, democracy and human rights to extractivism, displacement and environmental damage. Over the past decades, they (we) have also made significant strides in struggles around sexual and reproductive rights, gender-based violence and the skewed gender distribution of paid and unpaid work and care tasks, among other key issues aimed at the core of the patriarchal order. They have successfully challenged the supposedly “natural” character of that order, whose hierarchies invariably place women in subordinate positions. They have reinterpreted purportedly neutral relations of subordination as arbitrary, thus redefining them as relations of oppression. In different countries, women’s movements have made varying levels of progress in gaining political representation and pushing forwards gender-sensitive public policies. But they have invariably operated on every arena available, from the ground up. They have provided vital services at the community level, compensating for the absence or the shortcomings of others – notably state institutions that, as in the case of gender-based violence and femicide, did not even acknowledge that there was a problem, let alone offer any solutions to address it. They have organised, protested and advocated for policy change to ensure pressing gender issues were acknowledged and properly addressed. They have contributed to the design and implementation of policies and programmes and pushed for the mainstreaming of gender through the workings of state institutions. They have built regional and global networks and worked together in international forums to develop rising equality standards, and then brought these back to their respective domestic arenas I. M. Pousadela (*) Department of International Studies, Universidad ORT Uruguay, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, Montevideo, Uruguay © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. M. Pousadela, S. R. Bohn (eds.), Women’s Rights in Movement, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8_1

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to make change happen where it matters the most – on the daily lives of women in all their diversity. Most recently, a new generation of mobilised women – increasingly self-defined as unapologetically feminists  – has contributed to widening the women’s rights movement’s agenda and is revitalising it with innovative tactics and rendering it more massive than it ever was. The vibrancy of the Latin American women’s movement has long attracted academic attention, particularly following the latest wave of transitions to democracy that swept the region since the early 1980s. Jelin (1987), one of the first edited volumes exploring contemporary women’s movements in the region, was published before the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the peace processes in El Salvador and Guatemala and the end of Mexico’s hegemonic party system through a unique transition process focused on electoral reform. Soon after, Jaquette (1989) analysed women’s activism, and specifically feminist women’s activism, during the transition processes in five countries, namely, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay; Jaquette (1994) expanded coverage to also include Mexico and Nicaragua. Stephen (1997) analysed a series of grassroots urban and rural women’s movements in Brazil, Chile, El Salvador and Mexico. Craske (1999) focused on the obstacles that continued to conspire against women’s political participation. Women’s movements being part of the wider family of social movements, countless studies of social movements have included chapters about the women’s movement in Latin America, in the form of both regional overviews and national case studies (Escobar & Alvarez, 1992; Almeida & Cordero Ulate, 2015). As the literature kept pace with real-life developments, it came as no surprise that a growing number of studies since the 2000s moved on from women-led movements to women’s rights movements, zooming in on the growing segment of women’s rights movements that viewed themselves as feminist. Craske and Molyneux (2002) explored the ways in which Latin American women’s movements engaged the language of rights and the practice of democracy in a wide variety of post-­ authoritarian contexts. Jaquette (2009) analysed a series of tactics used by the women’s rights movement – strategic litigation, transnational networking and engagement with state institutions – in the early to mid-2000s, as well as their impact on the feminist agenda. Several more followed: Maier and Lebon (2010) discussed the women’s movement’s efforts to expand gender rights amidst neoliberal globalisation, and the growth of intersectional organising and transnational activism. Došek et al. (2017) studied the progress made in women’s political representation in much of the region, notably through the introduction of electoral gender quotas or parity regulations. Friedman (2019), in turn, analysed the impact of the so-called pink tide on gender- and sexuality-based rights in eight countries in the region, pointing out that while progress in certain areas was indeed pushed from the state, state actions tended to rely on heteropatriarchal power relations and the more challenging items of the feminist and LGBTQI+ agendas were often ignored or rejected. Finally, Bohn and Levy (2021) focused on feminist activism in the second decade of the twenty-­ first century and laid out the major outstanding grievances and claims put forwards in several Latin American countries. Many additional publications have focused on

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the intersectionalities of gender, class and ethnicity, and several anthologies have included Latin America or Latin American cases within a broader, global comparative perspective. The present volume seeks to provide an updated comparative overview of women’s movements in Latin America, filling some of the gaps left by the existing literature. It includes case studies on four of the countries covered in  Bohn and Levy (2021) – Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia – which it analyses from different angles, plus five additional ones: the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru. Each of this volume’s chapters seeks to understand where the struggle for women’s rights is headed to; to do so, they start by looking at where it is coming from and how it stands today. They all use qualitative methodologies, and most resort to first-hand accounts of the processes described and reflections by the actors on their own experiences, collected through surveys, in-depth interviews and/or ethnographic observations. Throughout this book, we conceptualise feminist movements as a subset of women’s movements. These are broadly defined as “collective action by women organized explicitly as women presenting claims in public life based on gendered identities as women” (McBride & Mazur, 2008: 226). These claims may or may not be specifically about women’s rights – when they are, we characterise these movements more precisely as “women’s rights movements”. Although by demanding equal rights for women they indeed challenge the subordinate status of women in patriarchal societies and the system of hierarchical classifications at its base, not all these movements are explicitly feminist. In one way or another, all chapters in this volume work on the basis of these distinctions, either implicitly or explicitly. They all study women’s rights movements to then zoom in on explicitly feminist movements, and, while making clear that not all groups that are part of the wider women’s movement self-identify as feminist, they view the growing adoption of feminist discourse by women’s activism and the growing social acceptance of feminist discourse as distinctive traits of the contemporary Latin American landscape. Overall, Latin America appears to be home to the largest, strongest and most densely regionally and globally interconnected women’s rights movements in the global south. Perhaps not coincidentally, it is also the global south region with the largest share of electoral democracies – many of them deeply flawed, but democracies still. According to the latest Democracy Index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU, 2023), Chile is the only one of the countries covered in this volume that qualifies as a “full democracy”, with Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican Republic fitting, in decreasing order of democratic quality, into the “flawed democracy” category, and Peru, Ecuador and Mexico, in that order, rated as having recently declined further into the “hybrid regime” category. Nicaragua is a major exception in that since 2018 it has been rated as an unquestionably authoritarian regime, with declining ratings reflecting its increasingly repressive character on a yearly basis. With the notable exception of Colombia, most of the countries included in this volume were part of the so-called third wave of democratisation that kicked off in

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the late 1970s in the Dominican Republic and ended in Mexico in the 1990s. In all cases, the resulting democracies were marked by both the nature of preceding regime type – typically military dictatorships, with the exceptions of the Dominican Republic and Mexico – and a skewed balance of forces that resulted in transitions controlled from above or, in the exceptional case of Argentina, initiated by the collapse of the authoritarian regime (Huntington, 1991). Democratic transitions are a common point of reference through several of our case studies. Authoritarian interruptions partly account for the maladjustment of the imported periodisation of feminism as a succession of “waves” focused on distinct issues and struggles. However, from more or less critical positions, sometimes leading to the proposition of new chronologies anchored in more context-appropriate landmark events, all contributors to this volume enter a dialogue with this global-­ north characterisation of feminism’s stages – if anything, because the protagonists of the processes being discussed often did. In some cases, as Argentina’s, the influence of global-north third-wave feminism came to be embodied in leftist political activists who came back as feminists having become so in exile and went on to bridge the gap left by the dictatorship between the second and third waves of feminism. Democratic transitions were also a time of accelerated learning for women’s rights movements that might have initially expected the establishment or restoration of the rights associated with democracy to include women on an equal footing. As it turned out, “gender-neutral” transitions leading to a democratisation of the polity would by no means result in the democratisation of gender relations – but political democracy could indeed provide the proper tools for women’s movements to advance their claims. Major subsequent political processes such as Colombia’s peace agreements or the drafting of new constitutions in Ecuador and, most recently, in Chile, provided crucial opportunities that were duly taken advantage of. The degree to which women sought and achieved a fair share of political representation under these democracies exhibits great variation among our case studies. According to data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Brazil is currently, among the countries studied here, the one with the lowest share of female legislators in its lower chamber or unicameral congress, 17.7 per cent, while Nicaragua, at 51.7 per cent, is the one with the highest share. Leaving Nicaragua aside, as legislative representation arguably matters little in an authoritarian context, Mexico is the country with the highest share of women representatives, 50 per cent, followed by Argentina (44.8 per cent), Peru (38.8 per cent), Ecuador (38.7 per cent), Chile (35.5 per cent), Colombia (28.9 per cent) and the Dominican Republic (27.9 per cent) (IPU/UN Women, 2023). Quota systems are a key factor accounting for these differences. Argentina, where political representation was a major issue for the post-transition women’s movement, pioneered a gender quota system in 1991, and since 1995, quotas were increasingly adopted in country after country. In some form of another, these are currently in use in more than 130 countries around the world. In Latin America, they have been adopted everywhere except in Guatemala. And unlike other regions that have leaned towards reserved seats, Latin America has embraced legislated

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candidate quotas, which require all parties to nominate a certain percentage of women on their party lists (Krook, 2017). But there is great variation among the countries under study regarding both timing of adoption and quota design. After Argentina, Mexico adopted a quota system in 1996, followed by Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Peru in 1997. By the time Colombia and Nicaragua adopted their own quota systems in 2012, Ecuador had already moved towards parity, and when Chile adopted – as a temporary measure – a 40 per cent quota in 2015, Mexico had already gone for parity. With female representation above its 30 per cent quota but having long stagnated, Argentina also embraced parity in 2017 (Johnson, 2022). For Banaszak et al. (2003), the reason for the (earlier) adoption of quota systems owed a lot to the influence of women’s movements, and secondarily to the key roles played by some female legislators and office-holders. But most importantly, not all quota systems are created equal. Their disparate ability to produce the intended effect depends on their design, their fit within the wider institutional context – and specifically with the electoral and party systems in place – and the presence or absence of political will to provide the required oversight (Krook, 2017). As it happens, some of our countries designed better systems and implemented them better  – but why? According to Gatto (2017), women’s mobilisation is the strongest determinant of the strength of a gender quota design, followed by the presence of women in congress, which appears to be correlated with the introduction of strong placement mandates and the elimination of design loopholes. Another indicator worth looking at is the proportion of female cabinet ministers. More volatile and easily reversible than legislative representation, it can offer a measure of the commitment of incumbent governments to gender equality, revealing the temporary opening of windows of opportunity for the women’s rights movement. The picture here is quite different: as of 1 January 2023, the three countries with new progressive governments, Brazil, Chile and Colombia, have a much higher share of women in cabinet minister positions than their share of female legislators: 36.7, 58.3 and 50 per cent, respectively (IPU/UN Women, 2023). On the other hand, the proportion of female ministers is much lower than the women’s share of congressional seats in Argentina, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador  – with Argentina’s case standing out because the incumbent is still the same one that recently sought to take credit for the feminist movement’s greatest political victory of the last decades. The assessment of such distinct political opportunity structures is a constant throughout the chapters in this volume, which analyse the ebbs and flows of their countries’ women’s rights movements’ relations with the state and its political institutions across regime and government changes, with particular attention to the complexities of their relationships with the political left and, most recently, with pink-tide governments across the region. The chapters in this volume that deal with countries in which women have achieved relatively high levels of legislative representation are inevitably confronted with the complexities of the connections between descriptive and substantive representation. Their accounts appear to support the idea that while it does not

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automatically translate into a similar measure of substantive representation, in the long term, descriptive representation is a key means to ensure that women’s issues of concern are present and taken into account in the political process. While political representation is presented as a key issue for women’s movements in several but by no means all countries under study, gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive rights are a constant throughout. Gender-based violence has climbed to the top of the women’s movement’s agenda everywhere and became one of the axes around which feminisms of the twenty-first century have been reconfigured. In country after country, various degrees of progress have been made in recognising the nature and dimensions of the problem and designing public policies to tackle it. But an immense gap remains between awareness of the problem and its effective solution. Many of the policies designed are not adequately funded and implemented, and the persistence of violence is undoubtedly a major outstanding debt throughout the region. Sexual and reproductive rights, and notably abortion rights, while on the feminist agenda since the 1970s and 1980s, also came to the forefront in recent years, when a rejuvenated and reinvigorated feminist movement took to the streets carrying them as a banner. This led to progress in several countries across the region, including some covered in this volume. Before the feminist movement went massive in the mid-2010s, abortion was legal, or at least not criminalised, in only two Latin American countries – Cuba and Uruguay –, with a gestational limit of 12 weeks in both (Pousadela, 2021). Following a decades-long struggle, Argentina joined them in 2020, setting a gestational limit of 14 weeks. Next was Colombia, in 2022, its victory coming through a different path: while Argentina’s change came out of Congress, in Colombia it was the Constitutional Court that ruled on the matter – and enabled access on demand up to 24 weeks into pregnancy. Sizable progress was also experienced in Mexico, albeit through a more convoluted process. It started with abortion on demand being legalised in Mexico City in 2007; much later, between 2019 and 2022, similar reforms were passed in other states, eventually encompassing about one third of Mexico’s states. In 2021, the Supreme Court of Mexico issued a unanimous decision that recognised a constitutional right to safe, legal and free abortion within an undetermined period in the early stages of pregnancy, as well as on specific grounds thereafter. Mexican states are now in the process of reforming their laws accordingly. In the rest of the region, abortion is either altogether banned – as in Nicaragua, a rare case of outright regression – or allowed under a limited set of exceptional circumstances, or causales. Some countries, such as Argentina, have long had causales on the books, allowing for the collection of sufficient evidence to pronounce them at the very least inadequate to effectively protect women’s right to choose autonomously. However, in countries where abortion has been banned altogether or allowed only in the extreme case in which the pregnant person’s life is in imminent danger, women’s movements have tended to see the incorporation of more permissive causales – in cases of rape, to preserve the pregnant person’s health broadly defined,

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and on broad social and economic grounds  – as opportunities to make progress towards the end goal of full legalisation. Such have been, with varying outcomes, the cases of Chile, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador. As of today, abortion remains prohibited altogether in the Dominican Republic, is allowed on very limited grounds in Brazil and Chile and is permitted on a wider range of grounds, including the preservation of the pregnant person’s health, in Ecuador (Center for Reproductive Rights, 2023). This makes abortion rights a major outstanding debt of democracy with Latin American women, and one that would in principle be much easier to settle than that of eradicating gender-based violence – if it weren’t for the growing public presence and influence of an emboldened, abundantly funded, well-coordinated and highly networked transnational anti-gender movement that has reacted to the advances made by the women’s and LGBTQI+ rights movements by adopting much of the tactics of the human rights movement and instrumentalising the human rights language to its advantage. The anti-gender movement is not going anywhere: for the foreseeable future, it is a challenge that the feminist movement will need to be ready to face. It will set as many obstacles as possible to impede progress on gender rights and will react violently to undermine them and try to revert them as soon as they are achieved. In their own way, they will continue to highlight the fragile nature of rights, the fact that they must never be taken for granted once and for all and must instead be continuously nurtured and protected. As they stand, Latin American women’s movements are in good shape to get the job done. As transpired by every single one of this volume’s chapters, since the turn of the century, and particularly over the past few years, they have seen the inflow of new cohorts of young, sometimes very young, feminists that have widened their agendas, brought novel ways of organising and made them massive. To become massive in what remains an extremely unequal region even by global-south standards, where multiple inequalities overlap and reinforce one another, feminism had to become receptive to the demands of a wide multiplicity of women and connect better with other rights struggles. As reflected in the case studies contained in this volume, in this regard it fared better in some countries than others, and still has a long way to go. Overall, however, through processes that have varied widely from one country to the next, feminist movements have tended to become more intersectional, producing multiple strands of feminism – popular feminism, Black or Afrofeminism, ecofeminism and queer feminism, to name a few – as well as plural ways of experiencing feminism in daily life. Renewal has operated through the convergence of generations rather than simple replacement, yielding densely networked movements that are present on every arena, from streets and grassroots communities, the media and academia to the state and global institutions. Mazur et  al. (2016: 7) define strength as “the ability of women’s movement actors to accumulate political and social assets to support their claims”, and measure it along two dimensions: mobilisation, or the proliferation of formal and informal structures of activism that translate into advocacy, campaigning, and protest,

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and institutionalisation, or the presence of movement actors in political, state and other institutions, including parties, unions, legislatures, the bureaucracy and, last but not least, academia. On both counts, women’s rights movements in the region are becoming stronger. Following the introduction, this volume contains nine national cases, in alphabetical order by country. To enable cross-national comparisons, all of them seek to respond to the same set of questions regarding the key issues, grievances and claims around which organised women coalesce; the composition of the women’s rights/ feminist movement, its heterogeneity and internal disagreements and the degree and ways in which it is intersectional; its alliances, transnational ties and interactions with global institutions and norm-setting processes; its tactical repertoires; its relationships with state institutions across government changes and any concomitant changes in levels of contention; recent generational changes and their implications; the penetration of feminist discourse and the degree to which feminist activism has succeeded in deconstructing power relations, rendering the invisible visible and effecting change; and the challenges posed by the conservative backlash that has mounted in response. The second chapter, by Inés M. Pousadela, examines the processes that, in a matter of decades, gave birth to a new generation of young “feminists by default” in Argentina and moved feminism from the margins to the centre stage, making its demands impossible for powerholders to avoid and leading to its biggest policy victory so far: the legalisation of abortion in December 2020. The chapter reviews the origins, evolution, composition and agenda of the contemporary feminist movement, setting the spotlight on three key issues  – political representation, gender-­ based violence and sexual and reproductive rights, and specifically abortion rights – and their underlying demand of recognition of women’s full personhood and autonomy as subjects of rights. It analyses the transformations the movement has undergone along the way as well as its internal conflicts and the challenges ahead, including the increasingly bold, visible and well-resourced anti-gender movement – the so-called the ones in light blue – that felt the need to organise and take to the streets in reaction to the rise of a feminist “green tide” that would soon overflow the confines of Argentina and into other countries in the region. Other chapters, particularly those that place the spotlight on gender-based violence, such as Peru’s, refer to the regional reverberations of the Argentine #NiUnaMenos movement, identified as a major milestone in the development of a renewed women’s movement. Chapter 3, by Simone R. Bohn, focuses on the Brazilian women’s movement, which it characterises as large, vibrant, heterogenous and intersectional – a reflection of the uneven and combined development of Brazil’s post-colonial and post-­ slavery society. The author warns that the usual chronologies that identify successive “waves” of feminism tend to ignore certain struggles, such as those of Brazilian women of African descent or women workers, not fitting the description of each of the feminist waves as it presented itself in the global north. But she acknowledges that the Brazilian movement has undergone successive generational changes that have enriched its agenda and tactical repertoire  – an observation that is present

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across national case studies. Bohn also highlights the development, by some segments of the Brazilian movement, of patterns of close collaboration with the state under the federal administrations of the Workers’ Party – something that the chapter on Argentina also notes in relation with the “pink-tide” governments led by the kirchnerista version of Peronism. These left-leaning administrations, albeit without conflicts, opened windows of opportunity for women’s rights activism, and major policy victories were achieved. Bohn also emphasises the formidable challenge of the conservative backlash. Unlike Argentina, where it took the form of localised resistance aimed at undermining the effective implementation of major policy wins, such as the laws on Comprehensive Sex Education and Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy, Brazilian anti-gender conservatism, long present in Congress, rose to the presidency with Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022), inaugurating a period of violent regression not just for women’s rights movements but also for indigenous people’s rights defenders, climate activism and civil society at large. In chapter 4, Lucía Miranda Leibe focuses on the element that most if not all contributors identify as having breathed new vitality into contemporary Latin American feminisms: the influx of a new generation of increasingly younger mobilised feminists that has turned feminism, for the first time in history, into a mass phenomenon. Her analysis zooms in on the “Feminist Spring” that kicked off in Chile in 2018, when female students mobilised en masse in the wake of several high-profile cases of gender-based violence and femicide, demanding justice for victims and calling for systemic changes to address the deeply rooted gender inequalities underlying gender-based violence. On the basis of semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations, Leibe reconstructs the paths leading the students to join the feminist movement and the claims they brought through a range of tactics, including demonstrations, marches and strikes, as well as acts of civil disobedience such as the takeover of public spaces and universities. Their movement had significant impact on the national conversation surrounding gender equality and women’s rights, shedding new light on a variety of issues ranging from gender-based violence in its multiple forms to the gender wage gap and reproductive rights, including abortion. When the protest outbreak found an institutional outlet in a constitution-making process, it was only natural for this to be put in the hands of a constitutional assembly with gender parity. Chapter 5, co-authored by Emma Doris López Rodríguez and Martha Isabel Meriño Fontalvo, turns our attention towards Colombia’s women’s rights activism around two major historical turning points: the process leading to a new constitution being adopted in 1991 and the armed conflict and the most recent peace negotiation process between the Colombian government and the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). As Bohn does for the case of Brazil, López and Meriño shine the spotlight on the diversity of women’s rights and feminist activisms in Colombia, highlighting a variety of local and community-level experiences and the specific forms of activism developed by Afro-Colombian and trans women. Also as in Brazil, this analysis inevitably touches on the strong conservative backlash, visibly active in critical junctures, notably the 2016 peace agreement referendum, and in reaction to milestones such as the emergence of now-vice president Francia

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Márquez’s leadership in the run-up to the 2022 election. A Black single mother of modest origins with strong connections with the environmental movement, Márquez ran on a platform focused on equal human rights and the inclusion of historically marginalised communities as a pathway to lasting peace. Her election alongside former rebel Gustavo Petro led to the inauguration of the first-ever left-wing government in Colombia, hopefully opening previously closed windows of opportunity for the whole diversity of Colombian women to make their rights count. With chapter 6, Esther Hernández-Medina takes us to the Dominican Republic and through its women’s movement’s journey to materialise the aspiration of early twentieth century feminist leader Abigail Mejía of women having the right to live “a complete life”. Following a condensed historical account of the origins, development and diversification of the Dominican feminist movement throughout the twentieth century, Hernández-Medina zooms in on the 1990s as an inflection point characterised by the professionalisation and “NGOisation” of the movement resulting from the flow of international funding and increased access to advocacy and networking opportunities at the UN conferences on human rights, population and women celebrated during that decade. The author highlights the creative tactics the movement has used to compensate for its relatively small size and focuses on its activism around the same three key policy areas that are covered in the chapter on Argentina and are present in one form or another throughout most of this volume: political participation, gender-based violence and abortion rights. Starting from a low baseline, the Dominican movement continues to fight for decriminalisation under three causales. Chapter 7 takes us to Ecuador. The analysis of the Ecuadorian feminist movements developed by Soledad Varea and María Rosa Cevallos is based on two concepts: that of opportunity structures, which account for the movements’ progressive expansion and consolidation, and that of the politics of affect, used to characterise a movement that not only demanded gender-related rights but also sought to transform relationships among people and with nature as part of the construction of a new society. The authors explore the historical processes leading to the constitution of the various strands of feminism that coexist today: the left-wing popular feminisms of the early twentieth century; the institutional feminism of the 1990s, consolidated under the influence of the same international processes described for the Dominican Republic; and those formed as the movement experienced generational change and turned into a mass phenomenon following the 2007–2008 constitution-­ making process, including variations of ecofeminism, community feminism and urban feminism. The latter’s struggle for sexual and reproductive rights, and specifically for abortion rights, which first resurfaced during the constitutional process, exposed the uneven nature of the opportunity structure created by the leftward political shift: while allowing for some progress on gender-based violence, the consolidation of a culturally conservative leftist government whose leader became the self-appointed standard-bearer of the anti-gender reaction resulted in nothing but setbacks for abortion rights. Only now is some ground being gained as a result of a recent decision by the Constitutional Court to decriminalise abortion in the case of rape – that is, to include rape as a causal for legal abortion.

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11

In chapter 8, Gabriela Cano and Saúl Espino Armendáriz question the usefulness of the metaphor of the “waves”, directly transposed from the completely different US context, to tell the story of feminisms in Mexico. They propose instead a novel periodisation encompassing five periods separated by turning points in the sociopolitical history of Mexico. For the first four stages, they identify a definite focus of feminist struggles: intellectual and professional emancipation (1887–1916), equal suffrage and labour rights (1916–1939), the institutionalisation of formal equality and citizenship rights (1939–1971) and personal and bodily autonomy (1971–1987). The fifth stage, lasting until the 2010s, is characterised by the institutionalisation and diversification of the feminist movement resulting from advances of the discourse of equality in various settings, from academia to the state, and the emergence of new activist groups with specific intersectional agendas contemplating class, sexuality, race, culture and even religion. The authors note that certain feminist causes, and notably abortion rights, have been a constant since the 1970s and experienced a turning point in 2007 when abortion was legalised in Mexico City. Access to this right slowly expanded, but as elsewhere, the dimensions of the anti-gender reaction have been proportional to the gains, creating an increasingly challenging environment for feminist activism. As in other chapters whose authors glimpse the origins of a feminist “fourth wave”, Cano and Espino also contemplate the possibility that these developments are giving rise to a sixth ongoing period in the history of Mexican feminisms. Chapter 9, by Simone da Silva Ribeiro Gomes, takes us to our only Central American case, coincidentally the only country covered in this volume that is currently a dictatorship: Nicaragua. Much like Cano and Espino, the chapter’s author also provides a chronology anchored in the country’s own landmark events that shaped successive generations of Nicaraguan feminisms  – notably the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, the Sandinista’s electoral defeat leading to a decade-long liberal interlude and Daniel Ortega’s return to power in 2006, now allied with the Catholic right, and the regime’s progressive autocratisation, which intensified with the 2018 April Rebellion and its bloody repression. The author explores the changing relations between feminist movements and the state and the ensuing processes of re-politicisation of young women activists, particularly from 2006 onwards, when they were pushed to reorganise autonomously and face a state that not only denied them rights but also increasingly persecuted them. The last case study, by Violeta Barrientos Silva, circles down on Peru. Following a historical account of the movement’s origins and its development through two decades of feminist-friendly democratic neoliberalism, the author focuses on the processes unleashed by the strong repercussions of Argentina’s #NiUnaMenos movement in Peru. Over the next few years, new expressions of the women’s movement flourished that focused on the various forms of gender-based violence and surpassed the traditional confines of the middle-class concerns of the capital city. Against the backdrop of, and deeply affected by, protracted political and institutional crises, the consolidation of far-right anti-gender political sectors and a global pandemic, younger Peruvian women plunged headfirst into their version of the twenty-first century “street feminism”, characterised by an emphasis on personal

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affirmation, horizontal organising and decision-making, autonomy and decentralisation – but also by internal conflict and a tendency towards cancellation culture. The ten chapters that make up this volume are a modest testimony to the most formidable and least bloody revolution that history has ever produced. The road is long and far from linear: in the long term, it is undoubtedly a story of progress, but in the short term, it includes detours and setbacks. Progress is uneven both among countries and across issues, and many unsolved problems remain region-wide, from pervasive gender-based violence and the denial of sexual and reproductive autonomy to wage gaps, the unequal distribution of unpaid work and the disproportionate burden of care tasks, all of which betray the subordinate position and diminished value that continues to be assigned to women. But today’s Latin American women’s movements are uniquely equipped to keep up the struggle.

References Almeida, P., & Cordero Ulate, A. (2015). Handbook of social movements across Latin America. Springer. Banaszak, L. A., Beckwith, K., & Rucht, D. (2003). Women’s movements facing the reconfigured state. Cambridge University Press. Bohn, S., & Levy, C. (Eds.). (2021). Twenty-first-century Feminismos. Women’s movements in Latin America and the Caribbean. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Center for Reproductive Rights. (2023). The World’s Abortion Laws, available in https://reproductiverights.org/maps/worlds-­abortion-­laws/. Craske, N. (1999). Women and politics in Latin America. Rutgers University Press. Craske, N., & Molyneux, M. (2002). Gender and the politics of rights and democracy in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan. Došek, T., Freidenberg, F., et al. (Eds.). (2017). Women, politics, and democracy in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan. EIU. (2023) Democracy Index 2022. Frontline democracy and the battle for Ukraine, available in https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-­index-­2022/. Escobar, A., & Álvarez, S. E. (Eds.). (1992). The making of social movements in Latin America: Identity, strategy, and democracy. Taylor & Francis. Friedman, E. J. (Ed.). (2019). Seeking rights from the left. Duke University Press. Gatto, M. (2017). The variation of quota designs and their origins in Latin America (1991–2015). In T. Došek, F. Freidenberg, et al. (Eds.), Women, politics, and democracy in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan. Huntington, S. (1991). The third wave. Democratization in the late twentieth century. University of Oklahoma Press. IPU and UN Women. (2023). Women in politics: 2023, available in https://www.unwomen.org/ sites/default/files/2023-­03/Women-­in-­politics-­2023-­en.pdf. Jaquette, J. (Ed.). (1989). The Women’s movement in Latin America: Feminism and the transition to democracy. Unwin Hyman. Jaquette, J. (Ed.). (1994). The women’s movement in Latin America: Participation and democracy. Routledge. Jaquette, J. (Ed.). (2009). Feminist agendas and democracy in Latin America. Duke University Press. Jelin, E. (Ed.). (1987). Ciudadanía e identidad. Las mujeres en los movimientos sociales latinoamericanos. Instituto de Investigaciones de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo Social.

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Johnson, N. (2022). De la cuota a la paridad: lecciones de América Latina. Diálogo Político, 2, 36–42. Krook, M. L. (2017). Electoral quotas and beyond: Strategies to promote women in politics. In T.  Došek, F.  Freidenberg, et  al. (Eds.), Women, politics, and democracy in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan. Maier, E., & Lebon, N. (Eds.). (2010). Women’s activism in Latin America and the Caribbean: Engendering social justice, democratizing citizenship. Rutgers University Press. Mazur, A., McBride, D., & Hoard, S. (2016). Comparative strength of women’s movements over time: Conceptual, empirical, and theoretical innovations. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 4(4), 652–676. McBride, D., & Mazur, A. (2008). Women’s movements, feminism and feminist movements. In G.  Goertz & A.  Mazur (Eds.), Politics, gender and concepts: Theory and methodology. Cambridge University Press. Pousadela, I. (2021). In Uruguay, revolution reimagined: Liberty, equality, sorority. In S. Bohn & C. Levy (Eds.), Twenty-first-century Feminismos. Women’s movements in Latin America and the Caribbean. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Stephen, L. (1997). Women and social movements in Latin America: Power from below. University of Texas Press.

Chapter 2

Feminists by Default? Women’s Rights and Social Change in Argentina Inés M. Pousadela

Contents 1  Introduction 2  From the Origins to the 1980s 3  A Great Leap Forward 4  A New Era: Fourth-Wave Feminism in the Making 5  Epilogue: What Next? Backlash and Resistance References

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1 Introduction In January 2021, at an event marking the entry into force of the then-recently passed law recognising abortion rights, President Alberto Fernández announced he was “very happy to be putting an end to patriarchy”. He added that it was “a day of joy because I kept my word, I campaigned for this, and today it has become law” (Infobae, 2021). He was accused of appropriating a cause that was not his own in order to offset the negative consequences of his government’s inability to deal with a series of simultaneous crises, the COVID-19 pandemic included. As he lacked any feminist credentials, many doubted his sincerity and thought him an opportunist. But the real question is: when, and how, did abortion become an opportunity to boost a politician’s popularity and election chances? If anything, it used to be a losing cause: no politician would express support for an issue that could easily drag them down. They wouldn’t even have the words to name patriarchy  – and now, albeit with little knowledge of its meaning and implications, they were speaking about it. The president had indeed disciplined his party, gathered the congressional votes needed and put his signature on the bill, but the merit of this immense progress for I. M. Pousadela (*) Department of International Studies, Universidad ORT Uruguay, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, Montevideo, Uruguay © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. M. Pousadela, S. R. Bohn (eds.), Women’s Rights in Movement, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8_2

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Argentinian women’s sexual and reproductive rights was not his to claim – rather, it belonged to the social movement that turned abortion into an issue that politicians would want to embrace for political gain. Thanks to the women’s  movement’s decades-long efforts, abortion rights were no longer an esoteric demand of a bunch of extravagant feminists who were easily ignored, or a taboo issue in bad taste for the dinner table. It had become the talk of the town and the common-sense demand of a movement that could – and did – mobilise millions in the streets. This chapter looks at how this change happened by focusing on the decades-long cultural war and battles over meanings that allowed for the emergence of a new generation of young women (and not only women) who are “feminists by default”, so to speak. Not so long ago, the few students in a class daring to declare themselves feminists would have been required to explain why; now, those refusing to call themselves feminists can be rightfully asked “why not”. For a sizeable and influential segment of the younger generations, the meaning of feminism has changed. It is no longer viewed as the mirror image of machismo, as if these were two symmetrical and equally wrong positions claiming the subordination of the other half. It is increasingly embraced as a common-sense position based on the undisputable claim that women are human beings and therefore have human rights. To analyse when and how this change occurred and what it means for the future, this chapter reviews the origins, evolution, composition and agenda of the contemporary feminist movement in Argentina, the transformations it has undergone and the conflicts and challenges ahead – including the rise of increasingly bold, visible and well-resourced anti-gender movements. We approach our case study within the conceptual framework of social movements, defined as “collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities” (Tarrow, 1994, p. 9). As a social movement, the women’s movement under study takes the form of a dense “network of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations” (Diani, 1992, p. 8) and engages in a wide repertoire of “contentious performances” (Tilly, 2004) that shape as much as they reflect a shared collective identity. Throughout this chapter, we analyse the tactical repertoire of the contemporary Argentinian women’s movement’s, the resources it has mobilised and the political opportunities it has exploited, all the while focusing on the cultural struggles it has engaged in and the framing and reframing processes involved (Snow & Benford, 1988; Ryan & Gamson, 2006). Attention is given to the movement’s successful efforts to develop a compelling “injustice frame”, which Gamson (2013) conceptualises as the core element that holds a collective action frame together. The injustice frame functions alongside two other components – the agency component, related to the possibility of changing the unjust situation through collective action, and the identity or adversarial component, related to the process of defining a “we” in opposition to a “they” with different interests or values. But the injustice frame also facilitates the adoption of the other two and “increases awareness of social movements among bystanders and encourages sympathy toward their efforts at collective action even when people are not ready to join. It promotes personal identification with whatever collectivity is being wronged and spurs the search for agents who are

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responsible for the undeserved hardship that members of the recipient group suffer” (Gamson, 2013, p. 319). This chapter focuses on women’s rights movements, that is, women’s movements – a subset of social movements defined on the basis of the gender of the activists involved – advocating for women’s rights, many of which (but by no means all, particularly when looking back in time) are explicitly feminist. While broadly defining feminist organisations as those in which “women, organised explicitly as such, are the major actors and leaders and make gendered identity claims the basis for their action” (Beckwith, 2005, p. 585), throughout this chapter we view the feminist subgroup of organised women as made up of those who explicitly identify as such and articulate their claims through feminist discourse. The first section provides a compressed chronology of the Argentinian women’s movement from its beginnings until the 1980s, including the “it’s complicated” status of its relationship with the political left. The second one highlights the significant transformations it experienced and the victories it scored after the country transitioned to democracy, as it became clear that a “gender-neutral” transition would not lead to the empowerment of women. The movement sought to address the democratic deficit of what could only be described as a “half democracy” – one in which women were not included in decision-making on an equal footing – through the “politics of presence” (Philips, 1998), prioritising the achievement of a “fair share” of political representation, a standard that rose from quotas to parity over time (Archenti & Tula, 2014). The third section looks into the movement’s plunge into fourth-wave feminism by analysing two processes that resulted in the massification, diversification and rejuvenation of feminism, propelling profound cultural change and spreading its influence across the region and beyond: the #NiUnaMenos movement against gender-­based violence (GBV), and the eventually successful National Campaign for the Right to Free, Safe and Legal Abortion. The conclusions provide a quick sketch of the movement as it stands today, raising two major challenges, one internal and one external, which appear to lie ahead. Our analysis is based on both primary and secondary sources. It uses information gleaned from academic publications and reports produced by government agencies and civil society organisations (CSOs) and obtained from news articles, as well as from the websites and Facebook profiles of organisations and campaigns, brochures, statements, photos and videos. In addition, the protagonists’ discourse was compiled from press sources as well as a handful of in-depth interviews carried out by the author and already published, and informal conversations with young women participating in street demonstrations for abortion rights in 2018.

2 From the Origins to the 1980s In the second half of the nineteenth century, the budding women’s rights movement was animated by female writers, journalists and teachers. Their writings, targeted at literate women, included initially timid demands for equal opportunities, especially

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concerning education, viewed as a crucial step towards the acquisition of the capacity needed to participate fully in public life. The legitimacy of these demands was often grounded on maternalism – women’s role as mothers in charge of bringing up and educating the future citizens of Argentina. A major target of early women’s rights advocates was the 1869 Civil Code, which enshrined women’s legal inferiority; attempts at reforming it, however, did not fructify until the mid-1920s. Under that legislation, married women had no right to engage in commercial activities, receive education or initiate legal proceedings without their husbands’ consent. By the end of the century, organised groups started to emerge that defined themselves as focused on the defence of women, and sometimes as explicitly feminist. Cecilia Grierson, Argentina’s first woman medical doctor, founded the National Council of Women in 1900, aimed at raising women’s “moral and intellectual level”. Another Argentinian doctor, Petrona Eyle, who graduated in Switzerland, founded the Centre of Argentine University Women in 1904 and led the fight against women’s sexual exploitation. Her initiative led to the First International Feminist Congress being held in Buenos Aires in 1910 (Giordano, 2004). Early feminists were typically urban, middle class, often from immigrant backgrounds, and ideologically liberal, socialist or anarchist. As a result, pioneer organisations such as the Women’s Socialist Centre and the Women’s Trade Union were founded in 1902 and 1903, both under the inspired leadership of Alicia Moreau de Justo. Moreau went on to establish the Feminist Centre in 1906, which convened the First International Congress of Free Thought held in Buenos Aires later that year (Giordano, 2004). The Women’s Anarchist Centre, founded in 1907, began publishing the feminist newspaper Nuestra Tribuna in 1922. These groups animated the International Week for Proletarian Women’s Agitation held in Buenos Aires in 1923 (Giordano, 2004). Already fully involved in the struggle for the rights of working women, the women’s movement was rewarded in 1926 with Law 11.357 on Equal Civil Rights for Women, which amended the Civil Code to extend women’s rights to parental authority, administration of property and rights within marriage.

2.1 A Bumpy Expansion of Political Rights While most demands of early feminists focused on civil equality, education and support for poor mothers, some demanded the right to vote from the get-go. Instituted in 1912, the so-called “universal” suffrage excluded women. Moreau founded the National Feminist Union in 1918, and another prominent feminist, Julieta Lanteri, founded the National Feminist Party in 1919, symbolically standing as a candidate for Congress. In 1920, organisations advocating for women’s suffrage joined forces and organised mock women’s votes in the run-up to municipal elections. This led to women being recognised the right to vote in local elections in Santa Fe province in 1921;  six  years later, women in San Juan province were

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allowed to vote in both municipal and provincial elections. The national Female Suffrage Law had to wait until 1947. The first women’s suffrage bill was submitted to Congress in 1919, but did not move forward, and nor did the more than 10 subsequent ones submitted between 1919 and 1942. It didn’t help that Argentina experienced its first military coup in 1930, inaugurating a period of “conservative restoration” during which women’s organisations focused on fending off regression in civil rights. The process accelerated with the rise of Peronism: the first-ever state agency dedicated to “women’s issues” was established following the 1943 coup. Receiving the name of Division of Women’s Work and Assistance, it was soon promoted to Directorate level, and it established strong links with existing women’s organisations, leading to the formation of the Commission for Women’s Suffrage. In 1945, women’s organisations campaigning for suffrage submitted a petition to the government; however, a segment of the movement opposed to the de facto government rejected the idea of the right to vote being a graceful concession granted by decree. But a new, broader group started to form that included not just the elite of female academics and intellectuals but also female workers and trade unionists. As Barry (2019, p. 17) points out, “it was the first time that women from so many different backgrounds came together for this purpose, and the first time that a government supported a women’s suffrage law. The issue went from a demand of opposition groups putting pressure on the state to a project taken on by the state itself to mobilise women and incorporate them into politics”. When Juan Domingo Perón became president in 1946, the women’s suffrage bill was on his agenda. In 1947, the campaign was reborn, led by then-First Lady Eva Duarte de Perón, a rising star. Although she was no feminist, Evita was instrumental in mobilising women, especially through trade unions, to put pressure in the run-up to the congressional debate (Barrancos, 2014). In this way, when it was finally discussed, there were no longer any serious objections. Law 13.010 gave Argentine women the right to both elect and be elected, which they first exercised in 1951. It also produced an atypical result: in the absence of internal democratic processes, Eva Perón, as president of the Peronist Women’s Party, reached an agreement with the party’s highest governing body to give women eligible places on party lists, resulting in 25 female representatives and eight female senators elected (Barry, 2019). This was reversed with the 1955 military coup, and no substantial progress in women’s representation was attained until a pioneering quota law was implemented in the 1990s.

2.2 Feminists and the Left: Unrequited Love For decades, it was uncommon for women’s groups to publicly self-define as feminists. Feminism re-emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s which were, as elsewhere, the times of the “sexual revolution” and the emergence of youth culture. Several feminist groups were founded, starting with the Argentine Feminist Union (UFA) in 1970 and the Movement for Women’s Liberation in 1972 (Vassallo, 2005).

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These were relatively small groups of mostly adult, middle-class women, typically focused on questioning hegemonic marriage, maternity and housekeeping and care roles. They did not channel massive young women’s activism, mostly propelled towards the political left. But within the left, there were only fringe attempts to integrate feminism by stripping it off the stigma that linked it to cultural imperialism and bourgeois concerns, producing an early ideological articulation of capitalism and patriarchy as systems of oppression. The articulation lasted only until “tactical decisions” mandated the subordination of “female emancipation” to class struggle (Trebisacce, 2013a, b). Twenty years later, UFA activist Leonor Calvera (1990) remembered how hard it was to be a feminist: We were accused by the right of being extremist and rebellious, and by the left of being elitist and bourgeois. On the other hand, there was a tendency to discourage feminists by attacking them personally, mocking them, sabotaging their opinions, constantly polemicising with them without letting them explain themselves, and stirring internal rivalries, or enshrouding them in indifference.

Many feminists of the 1970s were “dual activists”, active in both political parties and feminist groups, and oftentimes in conflict with both (Grammático, 2005). In a context of high political polarisation, many eventually leaned towards their party affiliations, leading to crises and splits within feminist groups. Only retrospectively could many older feminists articulate the uneasiness they felt, being leftist or Peronist activists, when they were assigned minor roles in their organisation or their concerns as women were treated as secondary  at best. A later process of self-­ reflection undertaken during the dictatorship, often in exile, transformed them into the feminists who renewed the struggle in the post-transition period (Interview with Susana Chiarotti in Andrades, 2019). Not surprisingly, the biggest contestation effort against the cruellest dictatorship the country ever experienced was embodied in a group of women, and specifically mothers – the mythical Mothers of Plaza de Mayo – who demanded the reappearance of their missing children, kidnapped by the military (Barrancos, 2010). A second organisation, Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, made up of women searching for their appropriated grandchildren, emerged later. But while these organisations projected women to unprecedented activist roles, they didn’t make gendered claims or recognise themselves as feminist.

3 A Great Leap Forward The idea of subsequent waves of feminism focused on successive generations of rights does not quite fit with Argentina’s experience, marked by a series of authoritarian interruptions, the last of which was preceded by political activation bringing women into a variety of spaces –student movements, grassroots organisations, leftist political parties and armed groups – that were not necessarily structured around

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feminism, and were often in conflict with it. While feminist CSOs boomed in the global north, they remained small in Argentina, as in the rest of Latin America. But as the country transitioned to democracy in 1983, the women’s movement soon caught up with what is commonly known as “third-wave feminism”, as long-­ repressed demands came to the surface. Returned exiles played an important role in identifying hierarchies between the sexes as part of the authoritarian legacy that needed dismantling. They revitalised the movement and pushed its boundaries regarding both the issues at stake and the approaches to tackle them, as recounted by feminist activist and researcher Mabel Bellucci: An emblematic case was that of Dora Coledesky, who went into exile as a member of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party. […] In Paris, she joined the effervescent French feminist movement […] and returned with the commitment to fight for abortion rights […] She was attracted to heterogeneous alliances like the ones she saw in her Parisian exile. For example, she opened dialogue with [the budding LGBTQI+ movement]. 1980s feminism […] ignored three significant debates: prostitution, lesbianism, and abortion […] So Dora set up her own group: the Commission for the Right to Abortion, and triggered a debate. (Interview with Mabel Bellucci in Pacheco, 2020)

Even before the start of the democratic transition, a Multisectoral and Multiparty Women’s Coalition began to emerge in 1981, bringing together women’s groups and representatives of the women’s branches of the political parties. Demands put forward at its first public appearance on 8 March 1984 included shared parental custody and divorce, access to information on contraceptives – curtailed under the presidency of Isabel Perón in 1974 – public nurseries, equal pay for equal work, wages and pensions for housewives and the ratification of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).1 New women’s rights CSOs were then founded, including Association of Work and Study on Women and Líbera in 1982; Prisma and Violence Against Women Tribunal in 1983; and the Institute for Women’s Legal and Social Studies and Feminist Alternative in 1984. More organisations joined them over the following years, adding to the contributions made by feminists working in private research centres such as the Centre for Women’s Studies and the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (Burton, 2017). Regional ties strengthened in the 1980s before the movement went global in the 1990s. The first Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting was held in Colombia in 1981 and resulted in the establishment of International Day of Non-­ Violence Against Women, adopted by the UN in 1993. A second meeting followed in Peru in 1983 and a third one in Brazil in 1985. In 1986, following the UN World Conference on Women held in 1985, Argentinian women started a unique journey that continues to this day: that of the National Women’s Encounters, held in a different city and province every year,  Adopted by the UN in 1979, CEDAW was ratified by Argentina in 1985, and has enjoyed constitutional status along with other human rights treaties since 1994. In 2006, the Argentine Congress ratified the Optional Protocol to CEDAW, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1999. 1

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bringing together during three days thousands of women from all walks of life, not necessarily feminists, to discuss horizontally a variety of issues, from the economy and the environment to sexual and reproductive rights. The Encounters are self-­ convened, collectively financed and autonomous from state and parties. At the first edition, organisations that predated the dictatorship converged with others founded during the dictatorship and during or right after the transition, including some focused on GBV plus at least three groups of women trade unionists (Balbuena & Gavrila, 2012). Many years later, 90-year-old Nora Cortiñas, co-founder of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, said she became a feminist after attending the first Encounter: Until [the first Encounter], I was not interested in learning that women have rights as well as duties. I lived in a very sexist and patriarchal home [...] Then I realised I had equal rights as men. That’s when I decided to become a feminist. I started to study, debate and attend meetings. Thanks to these, many women came out of their shells to see the world through different eyes and with a different spirit. (Interview with Nora Cortiñas in de Frutos, 2020)

Gatherings grew from some 1,000 participants in 1986 to more than 20,000 in 2009 and 50,000 in 2018. Through the years, themes changed, as did the Encounters’ composition in line with ongoing social transformations and political upheavals. Gender issues and intersections with the LGBTQI+ movement grew stronger over time, and since 2001, when the country was overrun by the deepest social crisis in a generation, popular feminism became ever more prominent (Masson, 2007; Alma & Lorenzo, 2009; Di Marco, 2010). Key legislation passed over the years was pushed out of the Encounters, from the two main achievements of the 1980s – shared parental authority and equal rights for children born out of wedlock (Law 23.264 of 1985) and divorce (Law 23.515 of 1987) – to representation quotas in the 1990s and advances on sexual and reproductive rights in the early 2000s, up to the legalisation of abortion in 2020. Members of Argentina’s burgeoning women’s movement took part in UN conferences in the 1980s and 1990s, including the key World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993, when women “became human” as their rights were declared to be human rights (Facio, 2011). Possibly conditioned by their recent anti-­ authoritarian experience, Argentinian activists were quick to reframe their struggles as human rights struggles. This was the time when the archetypical human rights CSO, Amnesty International, started working on sexual and reproductive rights (Ganzfried, 2021). In Argentina, classic human rights CSOs such as the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, founded at the height of the military dictatorship, started reporting on reproductive rights in the mid-1990s and later joined the campaign for legal abortion (Interview with Edurne Cárdenas in Pousadela, 2019).

3.1 Women Belong in the House… and the Senate When democracy was restored in 1983, women had the legal “right to be elected” (Barry, 2019), but multiple obstacles – biased internal party processes, gender stereotypes, lack of support networks, limited funding and caregiving

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responsibilities – resulted in a Chamber of Deputies that was only 4 per cent female. On its own, the needle barely moved: six years later, it remained stuck at 5 per cent. The presence of a limited number of critical actors (Childs & Krook, 2008, 2009) was key in the absence of a critical mass (Dahlerup, 1988) of women legislators required to ensure substantive gender representation, which the specialised literature sets at approximately 30 per cent. They not only initiated policy proposals but emboldened male colleagues to support policies that benefited women. Early on, those “critical actions” were aimed at establishing the conditions for a critical mass to form. The Network of Feminist Politicians, a cross-party organisation, was founded in 1990 to push for gender quotas (Archenti, 2000; Archenti & Johnson, 2006; Caminotti, 2014). Passed in 1991 by a Congress that was obviously still overwhelmingly male, Law 24.012 established a pioneer quota system that required a minimum of 30 per cent of women in eligible positions on party lists. Its implementation increased women’s legislative representation to levels previously unknown in the region and contributed to lift the standard from quotas to parity. After the quotas system was used for the first time in 1993, the proportion of women deputies climbed to 14 per cent, reaching 27 per cent in 1995 – still below the quota. The system was reformed in 2001 because of a decision issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which came in response to a 1994 claim submitted by a female politician affected by manoeuvres to circumvent the quota. A steady increase followed, with the proportion surpassing the quota in 2003 and reaching 40 per cent in 2008. Changes were even more pronounced in the Senate: when the first direct Upper House election was held in 2001, the proportion of women rose from 6 to 37 per cent. Although self-identified feminists were never a majority among women elected to Congress, the rising number of women led to a substantial increase in access to authority positions in legislative committees along with an increase in the number of bills with a gender content, even if these comprised a small proportion of the bills submitted by female representatives (Archenti & Johnson, 2006). By 2017 female representation levels had stagnated and the bar had risen. The golden standard was now parity, already enshrined in other countries in the region (Archenti & Tula, 2014). The strategies we used to help put and keep [parity] on the public agenda included the organisation of and participation in discussion groups, the preparation and dissemination of studies on the impact of women on politics, the publication of press releases and op-eds, the creation of permanent spaces of interaction for women from various political parties, social media campaigns [such as #MujeresALaPolítica (#WomenToPolitics)] and street advertising. (Interview with Natalia Gherardi in Pousadela, 2018)

Law 27.412 on Gender Parity was passed in November 2017, and starting in 2019 national legislative party lists were required to include 50 per cent of women in alternating positions to ensure equal eligibility chances. Women’s rights groups remained vigilant to ensure the new law was adequately regulated and implemented, and by 2023, women accounted for 44.8 per cent of deputies and 43.1 per cent of senators, with both chambers presided by female speakers (IPU/UN Women, 2023).

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Legislative representation exceeded by far women’ presence in the Executive and Judicial branches of government: barely 20 per cent of ministries were headed by women and only exceptionally did women reach the positions of president, provincial governor and Supreme Court justice. But women’s rights activists believed that the effects of the Gender Parity Law would exceed its area of application, helping to challenge gender stereotypes concerning the exercise of power and yielding measures to help women overcome “invisible barriers” in a world where men play gatekeepers’ roles, where connections are heavily priced and where those with care responsibilities find it extremely difficult to get ahead (Interview with Natalia Gherardi in Pousadela, 2018). While playing a key role in normalising women’s presence in positions of power and mainstreaming gender in state institutions, quotas and parity requirements seem to have had mixed effects in terms of substantive representation (Archenti & Johnson, 2006). True, feminists in Congress, distributed unevenly across parties, supported two key pieces of legislation for LGBTQI+ rights: the equal marriage (2010) and gender identity (2011) laws. But the legislative debate about abortion made it abundantly clear that women in Congress were by no means all feminists: they were on both sides of the divide, and some prominent anti-gender movement representatives were also women (Grinstein, 2022).

3.2 Gender-Based Violence to the Fore As the legend goes, #NiUnaMenos, the movement against GBV that would change everything, was triggered by a single tweet posted on 11 May 2015 by feminist journalist Marcela Ojeda. But Ojeda herself acknowledges there was a lot more to the 18 words she wrote out of outrage: the very conditions for that tweet to be written, and to have the impact it had, were grounded in decades of women’s activism (Interview with Marcela Ojeda in Medios Rioja, 2021; Illbele, 2020). Ojeda’s call elicited an instant response from her Twitter network of feminists and soon overflowed the confines of social media into traditional media, notably television, which amplified its effect. But its resonance owed everything to the decades-long underground work of women’s rights organisations that named and quantified a phenomenon  – femicide  – that previously simply did not exist (Pousadela, 2016). Femicides, defined as the misogynistic killing of women by men, are of course as old as patriarchy itself – they are the most extreme form of violence of a continuum routinely used to maintain the order of male dominance over women. But they were only conceptualised as such in the feminist academic discourse of the 1970s, aimed at replacing the gender-neutral term (“homicide”) that obscured the underlying gender hierarchies (Radford & Russell, 1992).

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A turning point in Argentina was the 1988 murder of Alicia Muñiz by her former partner, world boxing champion Carlos Monzón.2 While the case did create divisions, with many people – mostly men – rooting for their idol, the media coverage of the issue of “battered women” greatly increased and started dismantling deeply rooted assumptions about the behaviour of victims and perpetrators. Campaigns were launched to encourage denunciation of domestic abuse and requests for help multiplied, as did reporting to the police; protocols for care and training of police and judicial officials were designed, and the first Women’s Police Station opened in La Plata, Buenos Aires province, in 1988. But in 1980s Argentina, femicides still didn’t officially exist. The murder of Alicia Muñiz was not treated as such, and neither was the 1990 murder of 17-year-­ old María Soledad Morales at the hands of the “sons of power” in the authoritarian fiefdom that was the province of Catamarca. It was under the light of #NiUnaMenos that the so-called María Soledad case was, much later, reinterpreted as a femicide (La Tinta, 2020). Referring to these murders in one way or another was not just a matter of semantics – it made the whole difference as to whether this was a problem that should be part of the public agenda and become the object of public policy (Pousadela, 2016). That kind of reframing process was enabled by the Belém do Pará Convention (Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women). Drafted by the Inter-American Commission of Women – the establishment of which, several decades earlier, was also an achievement of the regional feminist movement – Belém do Pará was the first treaty in the world to recognise women’s right to a life free of violence. Feminists throughout the region pushed for their states to adopt, ratify and domesticate it into national legislation, then monitored its implementation, including by collaborating with its follow-up mechanism, MESECVI, since its establishment in 2004. As recounted by long-time feminist Mabel Bianco, the Convention, ratified by Argentina in 1996, changed the understanding of GBV: For many years we talked about “domestic violence” [...] But for some years now we have been focusing on violence against women and girls, which goes beyond the purely family and domestic sphere [...] The Belém do Pará Convention draws attention to the violence women suffer because they are women [...] in all areas of their lives. So we no longer look only at what happens in the home, but also at what happens in the street, in the media, in health services, within institutions. (Interview with Mabel Bianco in Abad, 2016)

For the state, however, femicides still did not exist, so no records were kept. The first national register of femicides was created in 2008 by a CSO, Casa del Encuentro, established in 2003 to provide training, assistance and counselling to victims of GBV and human trafficking. It was co-founded by Ada Beatriz Rico, whose activism was triggered by the femicide of Alicia Muñiz. In spite of a 2012 amendment to the Criminal Code that introduced gender motivation as an

 The moment was aptly described as “The day when the domestic was no longer an alibi for violence”. See Vallejos (2008). 2

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aggravating factor in the penalty for murder  (Página/12, 2012), until after #NiUnaMenos, Casa del Encuentro was the only one keeping tabs: In 2008, when we started reporting, these were all treated as crimes of passion: there was no talk of femicide, and victims were equated with perpetrators – for the media, they were both victims [...] But there is still a long way to go. In the case of a young girl who was recently murdered, some media outlets questioned her parents for allowing her to be in a certain place at a certain time. This is symbolic violence. (Interview with Ada Beatriz Rico in RadioCut, 2020)

4 A New Era: Fourth-Wave Feminism in the Making In the mid-2010s, Argentina’s women’s movement plunged headfirst into a fourth-­ wave feminism marked by the appropriation of the Internet and social media, particularly but not only by younger feminists, and a focus on everyday sexism and misogyny, and specifically on sexual harassment (Cochrane, 2013; Munro, 2013; Freire et al., 2018). The inflow of a new generation of feminists gave the movement an unprecedentedly massive character  – a key contributing factor to its greatest victories so far, and a major difference from the experience of older feminists, like Mabel Bianco, who evoke a time when “we were 30, 50 women blocking traffic [...] marching with our little signs, trying to draw attention” (Interview with Mabel Bianco in OGP, 2022). The movement also became more intersectional and combative – eliciting an increasingly emboldened anti-gender reaction. As discussed by Munro (2013), the fourth wave’s micropolitics and “call-out” culture of everyday sexism and misogyny places it in continuity with third-wave feminism. Intersectionality – the concept that various axes of oppression intersect, reinforcing inequalities but also producing complex and sometimes contradictory effects – is not the patrimony of fourth-wave feminists either, since it was increasingly embraced since the 1980s. Intersectionality has long meant caution not to think of gender as the sole basis for identification, and younger feminists are only deepening this understanding and translating it into everyday practices. There is no doubt that social media has contributed to organising and promoting events, as was the case of #NiUnaMenos, allowed for coordination on a global scale, as in the global women’s strike first held on 8 March (International Women’s Day) 2017, and supported effective advocacy, as seen during Argentina’s 2018 congressional abortion debate (Laudano, 2019). Fourth-wave feminism, though, should not be simply equated with “cyberfeminism”, because it is not just about the intensive use of (no longer “new”) communications technologies but about the feminist networks and communities that have emerged as a result of their use. For women all over the world, Twitter and Facebook have become sites for debating issues, sharing experiences, expanding consciousness, building sorority and organising in ways that often overflowed out of the digital realm, challenging the idea of so-called slacktivism.

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4.1 #NiUnaMenos: From Social Media to the Streets A Twitter exchange among feminist friends and colleagues resulted in a 300,000-strong street march three weeks later, on 3 June 2015 (Natalucci & Rey, 2018). Mass protests born this way are often mislabelled as “spontaneous”, disregarding the long-term organisational and reframing work that made them possible. Feminist journalists played a key role not just because it was one of them who tweeted out the first mobilisation call, but because, most importantly, they set the scene for that call to have its eventual repercussions. For many years, pioneer feminist journalists had covered GBV and reproductive rights, often becoming the targets of scorn or bullying by male colleagues. In doing so, they changed the narrative, at least as far as mainstream national media was concerned: GBV was now viewed as a human rights violation, femicides were no longer “crimes of passion”, victim blaming was no longer acceptable, and femicide victims had become individuals with a name, a face and a life that had been worth living. In this context, the femicide of 14-year-old Chiara Páez was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back: it came in the wake of a long string of increasingly violent crimes against women, some of them happening in public places and in broad daylight but eliciting no reaction from the state. Explains Ana Correa, of the #NiUnaMenos organising group: People were already fed up, so Marcela Ojeda’s tweet fell on fertile ground. [...] An organising group was formed with the aim of holding a great mobilisation to force political, social and media actors to react. We wanted to send a strong message and we imagined this as a “turning-point moment”. (Interview with Ana Correa in Pousadela, 2017)

As part of the organising group, Correa recognises that “there was some degree of spontaneity, but there was also a lot of organisational work”: This could not be just another march. That’s why we took initiatives that were disruptive at the time: for instance, we sought the support of “celebrities”, both women and men, to help us disseminate the call for mobilisation as far and wide as possible. We didn’t have a budget and did not want help from the very same sectors we were addressing our demands to. We needed allies in the mass media. (Interview with Ana Correa in Pousadela, 2017)

#NiUnaMenos showed how digital platforms could be used to develop and influence the public agenda, strategise, organise and mobilise. After #NiUnaMenos, online outrage (Acosta & Lassi, 2019) continued to have an impact, as reflected in the dissemination of hashtags such  as #NiñasNoMadres (#GirlsNotMothers) and #YoALos11 (#MeAt11) in reaction to the shocking case of an 11-year-old rape victim who had her abortion request purposefully delayed and was forced to give birth. Focused on a phenomenon, femicide, that no one could defend, the call for mobilisation received a massive and far-reaching response. The movement was soon replicated in other countries, and, as its first anniversary approached, “women throughout the country started to summon one another to march again”. This time around, not much organising was needed: “#NiUnaMenos now belonged to all” (Interview with Ana Correa in Pousadela, 2017).

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#NiUnaMenos focused on the tip of the iceberg but became an invitation to look underneath: into the wide array of gender-based violences (plural) curtailing the freedom of women, including transgender women as well as other LGBTQI+ people. Feminist CSOs such as MuMaLá (Women of the Latin American Motherland)3 founded their own observatories of violence and proceeded to use their data to denounce the lack of public policies and dedicated budgets to tackle it. An early result of this advocacy was the approval of a law, in late 2016, making street harassment a misdemeanour in Buenos Aires City (Interview with Raquel Vivanco in Verdile, 2017). In the heat of #NiUnaMenos, new popular feminist collectives were formed, often under the umbrella of political movements. Their founders would soon occupy newly created spaces within state structures, pushing forward gender mainstreaming. Such were the cases of Economía Feminista, founded in 2015 by economist Mercedes D’Alessandro, later appointed National Director for Economy, Equality and Gender at the Ministry of Economy, and Mala Junta, founded the same year by sociologist Victoria Freire. Affiliated with the Patria Grande political group, this collective yielded the first national Minister of Women, Gender and Diversity, Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta, and the youngest-ever national legislator, Ofelia Fernández, a former student activist elected to the Buenos Aires Legislature at age 19 in 2019. In the wake of #NiUnaMenos, the issues that generations of feminists had fought for were finally placed on the agenda. The public understanding of GBV and the demand of bodily autonomy expanded in ways that made abortion rights the logical next step. Femicide was, after all, the extreme manifestation of the accumulation of daily doses of violence, discrimination and humiliation  – all of which stemmed from the denial of women’s full autonomy to make decisions over their own lives and bodies. The denial of the right to choose came to be understood as a form of GBV, yet another way in which women’s full personhood was denied. As an abortion rights activist and feminist academic put it, “illegal abortion is violence on bodies”  (Gutiérrez, 2022). The affirmation of women’s status as full subjects of rights, a requirement to fight GBV, was also the grounds on which the right to abortion was demanded. Five years after #NiUnaMenos, abortion was finally legal in Argentina.

 Led by popular educator Raquel Vivanco, MuMaLá was founded in 2012 as an offshoot of the Libres del Sur left-wing party. It self-defines as a popular, federal and dissident feminist organisation embracing cultural, sexual and gender diversity and was part of the National Campaign for abortion rights. Vivanco later became the director of the Observatory established in the recently created National Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity. 3

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4.2 The Long-Standing Battle for Abortion Rights #NiUnaMenos gave a decisive push to a campaign that had started much earlier: the National Campaign for the Right to Free, Safe and Legal Abortion. Since the 1920s, Argentina’s Criminal Code treated abortion as a crime against life and punished both the women undergoing the procedure and those who performed it. However, it admitted two situations allowing for “non-punishable abortions”: risk to the health or life of the pregnant woman and pregnancies resulting from rape or “indecent assault against an idiot or insane woman”. As early as 1988, the demand for legalisation was put forward by the Commission for the Right to Abortion, formed that year in Buenos Aires (Bellucci, 2014). Along with female doctors from a local public hospital, the Commission drafted a bill on contraception and abortion rights and coined the first version of a slogan that travelled far: “Contraceptives so as not to abort, legal abortion so as not to die”. Under the two presidencies of Carlos Saúl Menem (1989–1999), an economically neoliberal and socially conservative Peronist, the influence of the Catholic Church and Christian fundamentalist groups increased. At the vanguard of the anti-­ rights movement that blossomed decades later, in 1998 President Menem instituted the commemoration of the “Day of the Unborn Child” (La Nación, 1998). At the same time, reproductive rights fully entered the public agenda under the influence of a series of UN conferences which some prominent Argentine feminists participated in – notably the one on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994, and the conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. In 1994 abortion entered the public discussion in the context of a constitutional reform process. President Menem’s initiative to enshrine the “right to life from conception” was stopped by the Self-convened Women’s Movement to Decide Freely, a coalition of feminists in political parties, trade unions and civil society. This created a space for women to share their abortion experiences publicly for the first time (Bellucci, 2014). The issue gradually gained space within the Women’s Encounters. Its first iterations’ official programming did not include discussions of the issue, but the persistence of self-organised workshops eventually led to its inclusion in 1995, with the space devoted to it and the intensity of the debate growing over time along with backlash from religious women’s groups that also took part in the Encounters. A call for legalisation emerged from the 2003 Encounter. A national campaign was proposed in 2004, and materialised in 2005. The National Campaign was federal, plural, horizontal and intersectional from the get-go. It encompassed a wide variety of women’s and feminist groups, including popular women’s organisations boosted by the 2001 crisis and budding trade union feminism. It used a human rights framing (Sutton & Borland, 2017) and pivoted “between the principle of social justice (since access to safe abortion is discriminatory, and morbidity and mortality occur among vulnerable women) and the idea that women’s lack of freedom and autonomy to decide about their own bodies is a debt of democracy (since it results in the curtailment of their freedoms as

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citizens)” (Gutiérrez, 2018). Medical professionals and their organisations also framed the denial of abortion rights as a public health issue. The Campaign grew significantly from 2012 onwards. That year, the Supreme Court F.A.L. ruling decriminalised abortion in all pregnancies that resulted from rape. This led to the Ministry of Health issuing a “protocol for the comprehensive care of people with the right to legally terminate a pregnancy”, based on a wide understanding of health risks as grounds for legal abortion. Many women who theoretically fit the requirements were not able to access the so-called ILEs (legal interruptions of pregnancy, or non-punishable abortions),4 and the National Campaign became increasingly vocal in the face of these denials. While the Campaign worked for the long haul, others took care of the “in the meantime” (Burton, 2017). Among them was Socorristas en Red, a national feminist network formed in 2012. It comprised dozens of groups that counselled and accompanied women who wanted an abortion. Several local collectives had long been working along these lines, helping women have access to and use abortion medication. Over the years, Socorristas en Red built a database that shed light on existing practices, debunking myths and building the case for legalisation. Its activists viewed this as a new form of feminism, less academic and more emotional, focused on building relationships and enacting sorority (Burton, 2017; Zurbriggen et al., 2018). By 2017 the Campaign had submitted legislative bills to Congress six times, and six times it had failed. Initially, the bills were ignored, and later they were endorsed by several legislators but then shelved. Partisan logics prevailed, and politicians remained convinced that abortion was a one-way ticket to electoral defeat. Determined to prove them wrong, the Campaign embraced a variety of strategies in addition to parliamentary lobbying, aimed at creating awareness and building acceptance. The fact that the struggle for abortion was about so much more helped it converge with and feed off #NiUnaMenos. A feminist “reading marathon” held at the National Library in support of the Campaign’s 2014 submission of yet another legalisation project to Congress became a close antecedent of #NiUnaMenos. The Campaign adhered to #NiUnaMenos since its first march in 2015, although abortion was not featured in the document issued in the aftermath, in fear it would detract from the massiveness of the initiative – and it was indeed rejected by some elements of the movement, notably the mothers of femicide victims. But this changed in 2016, when the #NiUnaMenos collective joined the Campaign’s call for the release of Belén, a young woman from Tucumán province who was detained after experiencing a miscarriage, remanded in custody for more than two years and sentenced to eight years in prison for premeditated homicide. Belén’s release was claimed as an advocacy victory by the women’s rights movement (Interview with Raquel Vivanco in Verdile, 2017). As its second march approached, #NiUnaMenos had

 To be distinguished from “IVEs” (voluntary terminations of pregnancy), accessible on demand once Congress passed the new law. 4

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already embraced the Campaign’s slogan: “Sexual education to decide, contraceptives not to abort, legal abortion not to die”.

4.3 The Green Tide The progression of time accelerated in 2018. Signalling that the strategy of “social decriminalisation” as a route towards legalisation was bearing fruit, the go-ahead for legislative debate came from an unexpected source. On 1 March, in his opening speech of the legislative session, President Mauricio Macri, a self-declared “pro-­ life” centre-right politician, announced that a debate on the decriminalisation of abortion was due, thereby creating political space for a discussion that had been on hold for decades. He also took up various feminist demands, such as wage parity, sex education and paternity leave. An intense debate followed, not just within political parties but also in society and in a wide diversity of settings, from family, school and work to the media and the streets. On 6 March a bill – the seventh one – was submitted to Congress, endorsed by legislators from both government and opposition. For two months, the Chamber of Deputies held informative meetings and public hearings on the issue. While social media were a key organising tool and helped the movement surpass national borders, television took centre stage as an amplifier. As Gutiérrez (2018) explains, “The ratings points machine went into action and the National Campaign was called on multiple TV programmes. Thus, the clandestine nature of abortion, [...], which for so many years pre-empted debate, was placed on the public agenda”. Suddenly, the green scarf was everywhere. Long the emblem of the Campaign,5 in the early years, as an activist recalls, it was often rejected when handed out, and “We had to run after people for two blocks to get them to sign the petition” (Gutiérrez, 2022). This changed overnight. A symbol of rebellion and resistance (Bertolaccini, 2020), the green scarf was initially worn around the neck, but soon found its way to wrists and backpacks, used as a headband, tied around the waist or as a top garment. It became an emoji and a frame on Facebook profiles; it multiplied on stickers, notebooks and T-shirts. It became a sign of identity. “A public and proud expression of support for legal abortion, it expresses love and sorority when given as a gift, [...] it signals confidence and security when seen on another backpack during a solitary night walk” (Felitti & Ramírez Morales, 2020, p. 136). It wrapped

 The scarf evokes the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo’s struggle for human rights. Why green was chosen is unclear, but it seems that when it was adopted by Catholics for the Right in the 18th Encounter in 2003, purple cloth had run out, so they sought another colour – one not identified with any political party or ideology – and chose one associated with life and hope. But, as writer Tununa Mercado put it, this is meant not as “naturalistic” but a “denaturalising” green: denaturalising binary classifications, sexual mandates and gender stereotypes. It coexisted in harmony with the orange scarf calling for the secularity of the state and in conflict with the reactive sky-blue scarf of the “pro-life” movement. See Muzi (2018). 5

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public monuments and was displayed in the air above heads in massive pañuelazos not only in Argentina but in other countries in Latin America and beyond, held both as a sign of solidarity with Argentinian women and as a tactic by local feminists to further their own struggles. On 14 June  2018, after almost a 23-h debate and a heart-stopping vote, the Chamber of Deputies narrowly passed the bill. But on 9 August, an anti-abortion majority blocked it in the Senate. The movement doubled down with the motto “Handkerchiefs won’t be put away” (Los pañuelos no se guardan). The Campaign had provided the interpretative framework that activated public discussion. The deployment of feminist activism in the public space, both physical and virtual, forced people to talk openly about a formerly taboo subject, making it a top policy issue. “Social decriminalisation” had already been achieved (Gutiérrez, 2018), making legal decriminalisation no longer a matter or “if” but “when”. Following the Senate’s negative vote, President Macri assured he would include the issue in a reform initiative of the Criminal Code. In late October, the National Administration of Medicines, Food and Medical Devices authorised the production of misoprostol for sale on prescription; so far distributed only in hospitals, the abortion-­inducing drug would now be available for doctors to prescribe to those deemed to fit the requirements of an ILE. Unlike basically every election campaign of the past, in which gender issues were marginal if present at all, now politicians and parties felt compelled to include on their platforms proposals to deal with GBV, care policies to promote equitable labour participation, parity in decision-making spaces and the elimination of barriers to the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights. In the run-up to the 2019 general elections, the women’s rights movement made sure candidates were unable to avoid stating their position on abortion. When, by the end of the first year of the COVID pandemic, President Alberto Fernández resubmitted the bill to Congress and aligned his party to ensure its approval, he was only belatedly fulfilling a promise that feminists in the streets – including some like Ofelia Fernández from within his own party – made sure to remind him he would be held accountable for (Interview with Ofelia Fernández in Guillaume, 2020). Abortion was no longer a lead lifejacket but a trump card. Many politicians who had been vocal against it in the past, including former president and now-vice-­ president Cristina Kirchner, now realised this and jumped on the feminist bandwagon.

4.4 Expanding Gender Infrastructure Along with Law 27.610 on Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy, a second law was passed in December 2020: Law 27.611 on Comprehensive Health Care and Attention during Pregnancy and Early Childhood, known as the “Law of the 1,000 days”.

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A major previous milestone was Law 26.150 on Comprehensive Sex Education (ESI) of 2006, which established students’ right to receive comprehensive sex education in all public, state-run and private educational establishments across the country. In the face of strong conservative resistance to its implementation, this law was defended by the feminist movement as a feminist cause (Faur, 2019). As the motto went in 2016, “To say ‘Ni una menos’ you must defend ESI”. Other milestones were Law 26.485 on Integral Protection to Prevent, Punish and Eradicate Violence against Women, of 2009; Law 26.618 on Equal Marriage in 2010 and Law 26.743 on Gender Identity, of 2012, which recognised each person’s self-perceived gender identity and their right to dignified treatment (Pousadela, 2013). Following #NiUnaMenos, the judiciary launched the first official Femicides Registry, and national action plans to tackle GBV began to be formulated as a way of implementing Law 26.485 of 2009, a key #NiUnaMenos demand. Laws 27.452 (“Ley Brisa”) and 27.499 (“Ley Micaela”) were both passed in 2018. The former recognised the right to a monthly allowance and health coverage for child and adolescent collateral victims of femicides; and the latter established mandatory training on gender and GBV for all public employees at all levels of the three branches of the federal government. In late 2019, the new administration established the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity, and in 2021 the Equality and Gender area of the Ministry of Economy produced the first-ever national budget with a gender and diversity perspective. Feminists in civil society celebrated these advances as their own but maintained the need to further push for their translation into effective policies throughout the national territory. To contribute to it, they monitored the allocation and execution of budget aimed at reducing gender inequality gaps and demanded action against conservative resistance to proper implementation of the legislation (Gherardi, 2021).

4.5 Feminists Everywhere Progress on women’s rights was pushed by “feminists everywhere”, in the words of Masson (2007): on the streets and in the media; in CSOs, hospitals, schools and universities; in political parties, unions, academia, journalism and the publishing industry;6 in state bureaucracies, Congress, the courts and even beyond borders; in regional forums such as the Feminist Encounters of Latin America and the Caribbean (Revilla Blanco, 2019) starting in the early 1980s; and in regional and international institutions, including the game-changing UN conferences of the 1990s (Friedman, 2003). A productive back-and-forth between arenas followed, and the newly acquired visibility and legitimacy of feminism allowed feminists in inhospitable contexts to also make strides, as noted by Clarisa Gambera, a trade union feminist:  A major change followed: girls and women started appearing in books, fiction and nonfiction, both for children and adults (Queirolo, 2020) as protagonists who spoke for themselves rather than someone else’s object of hate, love or dispute. 6

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I. M. Pousadela Only recently have we been able to talk about feminism in mixed organisations such as trade unions. It involves a lot of tensions – the union is not feminist – but we can now have some debates [...] The feminist movement gives political support to those of us who work within more structured and vertical organisations. It is not the same for me to bring to the union an issue being raised by a march of 70,000 women, or just do it by myself or as part of a small group. (Interview with Clarisa Gambera in Canal Abierto, 2017)

Along with the less visible, sustained work of academic units focused on gender issues, some of them dating back several decades, the work of feminist journalists has been particularly noteworthy. Their efforts yielded new legislation, Law 27.635 of 2021 on Gender Equality in Communication Services, and they are forming a new generation of journalists more intentional in their denaturalisation of hierarchies and debunking of prejudiced thought. Mariana Carbajal explains: Journalists for Non-Sexist Communication has been working behind the scenes for more than ten years. And there are others [...] Many years ago we managed to eradicate the designation of “crime of passion” to refer to femicides [...] but the media needs more women with a feminist perspective. [...] This should not be a speciality but a quality standard. [...] It should not be specific to a segment of journalists or a specific topic such as femicide, but a cross-cutting view. (Interview with Mariana Carbajal in Igarzábal, 2021)

As street pressure conquered new spaces, more feminists travelled from civil society and academia to the state to occupy them, swelling the ranks of “state feminists” (Mazur & McBride, 2008), as acknowledged by D’Alessandro7: I oversee an area that is an achievement of feminism, on an issue on which I worked a great deal before joining the state, as an academic and an activist. Having a feminist area in the Ministry of Economy is a dream come true. [...] The “bureaucratic machinery” is difficult, but there are many of us women in government who are working to make profound changes and there is a political opportunity. [...] There are no feminist policies without women in positions of power. (Interview with Mercedes D’Alessandro in Drazer, 2021)

4.6 A Convergence of Generations The feminist movement became massive as it became younger: youth became its defining trait to the point that Peker (2019) called this moment “the daughters’ revolution”. In the days of the struggle for abortion, we realised that what made mobilisations massive were the columns of young women, young people, and their student centres, for whom, in many cases, it was the first time they attended a march or committed to a cause. (Interview with Ofelia Fernández in Guillaume, 2020)

Rejuvenation, however, happened through convergence rather than replacement (Friedman & Rodríguez Gustá, 2023). When she spoke at the Senate during the

 As head of an agency with the mission to mainstream gender in economic policies and ensure they contribute to close inequality gaps, D’Alessandro leads Mujeres Gobernando, a horizontal support and coordination group made up of hundreds of women in high government positions. 7

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abortion debate in June 2018, Mabel Bianco was 77. A medical doctor by training, she had moved back and forth between state, civil society and the international arena throughout the post-transition period. In 1989 she established a CSO, Foundation for Women’s Studies and Research, and in 2003 she co-founded the National Consortium for Sexual and Reproductive Rights. For more than two decades, she occupied multiple regional and international positions in forums and structures working on women’s health and rights. Still active in public life, now she was a prominent example of what younger feminists call “the pioneers”. The feminist journalists and writers that initiated #NiUnaMenos, the founders of the feminist organisations born in the aftermath, those bringing feminism into new spaces such as trade unions and those moving to public office to spearhead gender mainstreaming were typically in their 30s and 40s – they were part of the “sandwich generation” (Interview with Victoria Freire in El Grito del Sur, 2019). They had started their journey during the neoliberal 1990s or in the early 2000s, in a context of social crisis and effervescence. Their road towards feminism was very different from their mothers’, who “discovered feminism at 40”, and their daughters’, who became feminists in their early teens (Interview with Mariana Carbajal in Peker, 2019). I didn’t have access to feminist texts until I was much older. I studied Economics without reading female authors, with a few exceptions. I didn’t have feminist debates with my classmates. (Interview with Mercedes D’Alessandro in Lovisolo & Wolf, 2021)

Cartoonist Maitena Burundarena, in her early 50s during #NiUnaMenos, only retrospectively realised that she had long been a feminist: she had lacked the words that would come so naturally to the younger generation: My [old] comics are full of things that have names now and didn’t have names before. Sorority [...] Care tasks [...] Patriarchy. [...] The word “feminism” doesn’t appear, because even I didn’t know I was doing feminism. [...] Feminism used to be a pejorative word. I was told as a criticism that my humour was “a bit feminist” [...] It wasn’t something you wore with pride, you had to explain yourself too much. (Interview with Maitena Burundarena in Kämpfer, 2022)

In contrast, members of the daughters’ – or rather, the granddaughters’ – generation are becoming feminists at a much younger age, and their transformation appears to be a much less lonely experience as it occurs just as a new feminist “common sense” is taking hold. They bring new issues to the agenda, such as sexual harassment and micromachismos, “things that adult women like myself, now 45, endured in our high school years but had not thought to question” (Interview with Luciana Peker in Tapia Jáuregui, 2019). I had been a [high school] student activist for two or three years, without thinking in feminist terms. [This changed] abruptly in 2015, with the first #NiUnaMenos march [...] My agenda changed completely. [...] And because feminism is a perspective, I had to revise even how I understood my priorities and the logic of activism. We must recognise the centrality of youth in today’s feminist struggle, while understanding that history does not begin with us. It is the persistence of those [who preceded us], who were marginalised, their agendas treated as second-class agendas, but ploughed ahead and

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I. M. Pousadela built the tools that allowed us to become a part of it. While [the concept of the “daughters’ revolution”] puts the emphasis on the new generations, it also shows feminism’s intergenerational character. (Interview with Ofelia Fernández in Guillaume, 2020)

5 Epilogue: What Next? Backlash and Resistance Argentina’s contemporary feminist movement is not only young and intergenerational but also diverse and intersectional. It comprises new organising forms – more informal and less professionalised – and less theoretical and more practical strands of “daily life feminism” concerned with matters such as who is allowed to speak and whose word counts, who is named and counted and how spaces are used and appropriated. As Mabel Bellucci puts it: There is not just one feminism, there are feminisms, in the plural. It is a movement of movements, with a multiplicity of currents within, which do not always converge and can even clash with one another. And the use of the singular is a mistake that even feminists themselves sometimes make. (Interview with Mabel Bellucci in Pacheco, 2020)

Social crises fuelled the growth of popular and anti-capitalist feminisms; starting in 2017, these were at the forefront of the women’s strike held on International Women’s Day. While it brought about sudden and significant regressions in women’s participation in the labour market and the feminisation of poverty, the pandemic also resulted in a great leap forward in terms of agenda setting, bringing to the fore the problem of women’s unpaid work, accounted for by the disproportionate dedication of women to care tasks (INDEC 2022;  Interview with Gala Díaz Langou in Pousadela, 2020). Acceptance of the diversity of sexes and genders and more flexible understandings of identity have seen the emergence of queer feminism and trans-feminism – and, to a lesser extent, of trans-exclusionary feminists rejecting the assertion that trans women are women and therefore refusing to include them in women’s spaces. Discussions over the nature of the movement resulted in a split that materialised in 2019, when the Women’s Encounter held in La Plata was accompanied by an alternative “counter-hegemonic” one, and it deepened in 2022, when two subsequent meetings were held in San Luis. One was renamed “Plurinational Meeting of Women, Lesbians, Transvestites, Trans, Bisexual, Intersex, Intersex and Non-Binary People” and took place in October, while another one with the original name was held in November (Carrasco, 2022; Demarchi, 2022). Other disagreements, notably around the status of sex work, also persisted. Another kind of split became apparent on 8 March 2023, when two separate marches were held for International Women’s Day. Left-wing organisations, including the National Campaign, marched to Plaza de Mayo demanding the effective implementation of legislation and access to abortion rights across the country. Those

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aligned with the government, including the Ni Una Menos collective, marched to the National Congress, giving the Executive disproportionate credit for the movement’s victories and refusing to make it the target of any discontent. Prominent among their slogans were condemnations of the “judicial persecution” of Vice-­ President Cristina Kirchner, under prosecution over multiple corruption allegations, and endorsements of her candidacy for president in the upcoming elections (Marin, 2023a, b). Such divisions do not bode well for the future. Acritical alignment with a political project that, regardless of one’s judgement of its rights and wrongs, can only be temporary could result in substantive losses to a movement that still has a long way to go. While post-victory deflation is all too common, it could throw off-course a movement that continues to have great challenges ahead. If changes in legislation were hard to achieve, securing changes in the hard facts of GBV, access to rights and gender gaps will only be harder. And they will be made much more so by the backlash elicited by recent victories. Anti-gender reactions have produced a conservative transnational social movement that fits the definition advanced by Tarrow (1994). As seen across the region, anti-gender actors that never before felt compelled to organise and mobilise, possibly because their values had long been embedded in shared meanings, institutions, practices, policies and legislation, began to do so in reaction to the women’s and LGBTQI+ movements’ advances. In Argentina, a “celeste” (light blue) movement grew in direct opposition to the green tide, aimed at combatting the straw man of “gender ideology” (Correa, 2018), defending “the two lives” (of both “mother” and “child”) and nesting its activism, just as the feminist movement’s, in the streets, in the media, in hospitals and in the courts (Loza & López, 2020). Earlier conservative resistance rose as soon as the ESI programme started training teachers and producing teaching materials in 2008 (Faur, 2019). Hypocritically, after opposing the implementation of ESI for more than a decade, defying the state with the warning, “Don’t mess with my children” (Con mis hijos no te metas), and resisting the distribution of contraceptives, the celestes entered the discussion on abortion arguing that sex education and contraception should be good enough barriers to make abortion unnecessary (Gutiérrez, 2018). As soon as abortion was legalised, opponents filed lawsuits arguing the new law was unconstitutional. They simultaneously sought to obstruct its implementation, notably by promoting en masse conscientious objection, particularly in remote locations (Interview with Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta in Defensoría del Pueblo, 2022), operating “abortion crisis centres” and hotlines (Cota, 2020) and conducting disinformation campaigns. The journey of the feminist movement – aimed at making the invisible visible, denaturalising subordination and restoring women to their full humanity – has clearly only just begun. It will take a united movement to confront the threats of regression while continuing on the path forward.

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Childs, S., & Krook, M.  L. (2009). Analysing women’s substantive representation: From critical mass to critical actors. Government and Opposition, 44(2), 125–145. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1477-­7053.2009.01279.x Cochrane, K. (2013). All the rebel women: The rise of the fourth wave of feminism. Guardian Books. Correa, S. (2018). Ideología de Género: Rastreando sus orígenes y significados en la política de género actual. Sexuality Policy Watch. https://sxpolitics.org/es/ideologia-­de-­genero-­rastreando-­ sus-­origenes-­y-­significados-­en-­la-­politica-­de-­genero-­actual/3858 Cota, I. (2020, February 11). Exclusivo: Centros antiaborto vinculados a EEUU ‘mienten’ y ‘asustan a las mujeres’ en América Latina. OpenDemocracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/es/5050/ exclusivo-­centros-­antiaborto-­vinculados-­eeuu-­mienten-­asustan-­mujeres-­america-­latina/ Dahlerup, D. (1988). From a small to a large minority: Women in Scandinavian politics. Scandinavian Political Studies, 11(2), 275–298. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-­9477.1988. tb00372.x de Frutos, R. (2020, July 1). Entrevista: Nora Cortiñas, Madre de Plaza de Mayo [Interview with Nora Cortiñas]. Pikara Magazine, Indymedia. https://argentina.indymedia.org/2020/07/01/ argentina_entrevista-­nora-­cortinas-­madre-­de-­plaza-­de-­mayo/ Demarchi, L. (2022, August 9). San Luis alojará dos Encuentros en 2022: Uno plurinacional y diverso, otro nacional y de mujeres. Diario El Ciudadano. https://www.elciudadanoweb. com/san-­luis-­alojara-­dos-­encuentros-­en-­2022-­uno-­plurinacional-­y-­diverso-­otro-­nacional-­y-­ de-­mujeres/ Di Marco, G. (2010). Los movimientos de mujeres en la Argentina y la emergencia del pueblo feminista. La Aljaba, XIV, 51–67. Diani, M. (1992). The concept of social movement. The Sociological Review, 40(1), 1–25. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-­954X.1992.tb02943.x Drazer, M. (2021, October 14). “No hay políticas feministas sin mujeres en el poder” [Interview with Mercedes D'Alessandro]. Deutsche Welle. https://www.dw.com/es/ no-­hay-­pol%C3%ADticas-­feministas-­sin-­mujeres-­en-­espacios-­de-­poder/a-­59402555 El Grito del Sur. (2019, April 6). Cristina es un imán para la unidad [Interview with Victoria Freire]. El Grito del Sur. https://elgritodelsur.com.ar/2019/04/vicky-­freire-­cristina-­iman-­la-­ unidad.html Facio, A. (2011). Viena 1993, cuando las mujeres nos hicimos humanas. Pensamiento iberoamericano, 9, 3–20. Faur, E. (2019). La Catedral, el Palacio, las aulas y la calle. Disputas en torno a la Educación Sexual Integral. Mora, 25(1), 25. https://doi.org/10.34096/mora.n25.8534 Felitti, K., & Ramírez Morales, R. (2020). Pañuelos verdes por el aborto legal: Historia, significados y circulaciones en Argentina y México. Encartes, 3(5), 5. https://doi.org/10.29340/ en.v3n5.132 Guillaume, M. (2020, December 9). “Ser feminista es estar del lado de la historia” [Interview with Ofelia Fernández]. France 24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjO52q6ywxo Freire, V., et al. (2018). La cuarta ola feminista. Emilio Ulises Bosia. chrome-­extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://malajunta.org/wp-­content/uploads/2019/06/libro-­mala-­ junta-­web-­final-­2.pdf Friedman, E.  J. (2003). Gendering the agenda: The impact of the transnational women’s rights movement at the UN conferences of the 1990s. Women’s Studies International Forum, 26(4), 313–331. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-­5395(03)00077-­3 Friedman, E. J., & Rodríguez Gustá, A. L. (2023). “Welcome to the revolution”: Promoting generational renewal in Argentina’s Ni Una Menos. Qualitative Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11133-­023-­09530-­0 Igarzábal, B. (2021, September 15). Una mirada feminista del periodismo [Interview with Mariana Carbajal]. Fundación Medifé. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFeCR1AsgbE Gamson, W. (2013). Injustice frames. In D. della Porta, B.  Klandermans, D.  McAdam, & D. A. Snow (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of social and political movements.

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Ganzfried, M. (2021). Amnesty international and women’s rights: Feminist strategies, leadership commitment and internal resistances. transcript Verlag. https://apps.crossref.org/coaccess/ coaccess.html?doi=10.14361%2F9783839460085 Gherardi, N. (2021, June 3). Ni Una Menos: 6 años después, en qué se avanzó y qué falta. Chequeado. https://chequeado.com/el-­explicador/ ni-­una-­menos-­6-­anos-­despues-­en-­que-­se-­avanzo-­y-­que-­falta/ Giordano, V. (2004). Evolución de los derechos civiles de la mujer. Argentina siglo XX. VI Jornadas de Sociología. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. chrome-­extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://cdsa.aacademica.org/000-­045/220.pdf Grammático, K. (2005). Las ‘mujeres políticas’ y las feministas en los tempranos setenta: ¿Un diálogo (im)posible? In A. Andújar et al. (Eds.), Historia, género y política en los ‘70. Feminaria. Grinstein, C. (2022). Democracia paritaria y representación sustantiva de género. El caso del Proyecto de Legalización de la Interrupción Voluntaria del Embarazo en Argentina. Revista Argentina de Ciencia Política, 1(29). Gutiérrez, M. A. (2018). Ahora que estamos juntas, ahora que sí nos ven: El debate por la Ley de Interrupción Voluntaria del Embarazo en Argentina. CIVICUS. https://www.civicus.org/index. php/re-­imagining-­democracy/stories-­from-­the-­frontlines/3483 Gutiérrez, M.  A. (2022, March 24). LASA Dialogues: Aborto en América Latina: movilización y políticas. Latin American Studies Association. https://www.facebook.com/watch/ live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1272301976506892&wtsid=rdr_0rLaOQEWE0bmriews Illbele, F. (2020, June 3). “¿No vamos a levantar la voz? Nos están matando”: el tuit que no fue viral pero que marcó un antes y un después. Infobae. https://www.infobae.com/sociedad/2020/06/03/no-­vamos-­a-­levantar-­la-­voz-­nos-­estan-­matando-­el-­tuit-­que-­no-­fue-­viral-­pero-­ que-­marco-­un-­antes-­y-­un-­despues/ INDEC. (2022). Encuesta Nacional de Uso del Tiempo 2021. Resultados definitivos. Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos. chrome-­extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/ https://www.indec.gob.ar/ftp/cuadros/sociedad/enut_2021_resultados_definitivos.pdf Infobae. (2021, January 14). Alberto Fernández promulgó la ley del aborto: “Estoy muy feliz de estar poniéndole fin al patriarcado.” Infobae. https://www.infobae.com/politica/2021/01/14/ alberto-­fernandez-­promulgo-­la-­ley-­del-­aborto-­estoy-­muy-­feliz-­de-­estar-­poniendole-­fin-­al-­ patriarcado/ Kämpfer, A. (2022, December 8). Feminismo era una palabra peyorativa [Interview with Maitena Burundarena]. IP Noticias. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FabEwAMLI7A La Nación. (1998, December 9). Menem instituyó el día del niño nonato. La Nación. https://www. lanacion.com.ar/sociedad/menem-­instituyo-­el-­dia-­del-­nino-­nonato-­nid120850/ La Tinta (2020, September 9). María Soledad Morales: Fue feminicidio. La Tinta. https://latinta. com.ar/2020/09/maria-­soledad-­morales-­fue-­feminicidio/ Laudano, C. (2019). Acerca del uso estratégico de TIC en movilizaciones feministas. In A. L. Rivoir & M. J. Morales (Eds.), Tecnologías digitales: Miradas críticas de la apropiación en América Latina. CLASCO/RIAT. Lovisolo, I. & Wolf, F. (2021, July 18). El presente y futuro de Argentina: Entrevista a Mercedes D’Alessandro [Interview with Mercedes D'Alessandro]. Abro Hilo. https://abrohilo.org/ el-­presente-­y-­futuro-­de-­argentina-­entrevista-­a-­mercedes-­dalessandro/ Loza, J., & López, M. (2020). Representaciones y repertorios de expresiones conservadoras organizadas contra el aborto en Argentina (2018–2020). In A.  Torres Santana (Ed.), Derechos en riesgo en América Latina: 11 estudios sobre grupos neoconservadores. Ediciones Desde Abajo/Fundación Rosa Luxemburg. Marin, L. (2023a). Día de la Mujer: Con escenarios divididos y alto contenido partidario, habrá dos marchas por el 8M en la ciudad. La Nación. https://www.lanacion.com.ar/sociedad/dia-­de-­ la-­mujer-­con-­escenarios-­divididos-­y-­alto-­contenido-­partidario-­habra-­dos-­marchas-­por-­el-­8m-­ en-­nid07032023/

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Marin, L. (2023b). “Cristina, presidenta”: El inusual grito en el cierre de uno de los actos por el 8M, que volvieron a congregar a miles de mujeres. La Nación. https://www.lanacion.com.ar/ sociedad/cristina-­presidenta-­el-­inusual-­grito-­en-­el-­cierre-­de-­uno-­de-­los-­actos-­por-­el-­8m-­que-­ volvieron-­a-­nid08032023/ Masson, L. (2007). Feministas en todas partes. Una etnografía de espacios y narrativas feministas en Argentina. Sudamericana. Mazur, A., & McBride, D. (2008). State Feminism. In G. Goertz & A. G. Mazur (Eds.), Politics, gender, and concepts: Theory and methodology. Cambridge University Press. Medios Rioja. (2021, November 25). Marcela Ojeda, periodista, cronista, creadora del "Ni Una Menos" [Interview with Marcela Ojeda]. Medios Rioja. https://www.facebook.com/watch/ live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1181206632405903 Munro, E. (2013). Feminism: A fourth wave? Political Insight, 4(2), 22–25. https://doi. org/10.1111/2041-­9066.12021 Muzi, C. (2018, August 5). La historia del pañuelo verde: Cómo surgió el emblema del nuevo feminismo en Argentina. Infobae. https://www.infobae.com/cultura/2018/08/05/ la-­historia-­del-­panuelo-­verde-­como-­surgio-­el-­emblema-­del-­nuevo-­feminismo-­en-­argentina/ Natalucci, A., & Rey, J. (2018). ¿Una nueva oleada feminista? Agendas de género, repertorios de acción y colectivos de mujeres (Argentina, 2015–2018). Revista de Estudios Políticos y Estratégicos, 6(2), 14–34. OGP. (2022, March 8). Argentina: Mabel’s Fight for Women’s Rights [Interview with Mabel Bianco]. Open Government Partnership. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhfRq4Bi4QE Pacheco, M. (2020, May 22). Entrevista a Mabel Bellucci, ensayista y activista feminista queer [Interview with Mabel Bellucci]. Resumen Latinoamericano. https://www.resumenlatinoamericano. org/2020/05/22/argentina-­entrevista-­a-­mabel-­bellucci-­ensayista-­y-­activista-­feminista-­queer/ Página/12. (2012, November 15). El femicidio ahora ya es ley. Página/12. https://www.pagina12. com.ar/diario/sociedad/3-­207885-­2012-­11-­15.html Peker, L. (2019). La revolución de las hijas. Paidós. Peker, L. (2019, March 24). La palabra multiplicada [Interview with Mariana Carbajal]. Página/12. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/182442-­la-­palabra-­multiplicada Phillips, A. (1998). The politics of presence. Oxford University Press. Pousadela, I. M. (2013). From embarrassing objects to subjects of rights: The Argentine LGBT movement and the equal marriage and gender identity laws. Development in Practice, 23(5–6), 701–720. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2013.802291 Pousadela, I. M. (2016, May). Politics beyond parties: #NiUnaMenos, an exploration of the political productivity of social mobilization towards the promotion of rights. 34th LASA International Congress, New York. Pousadela, I. M. (2017, February 24). Claiming the space for women in Argentina, one step at a time [Interview with Ana Correa]. CIVICUS. https://www.civicus.org/index.php/media-­resources/ news/2755-­claiming-­the-­space-­for-­women-­in-­argentina-­on-­step-­at-­a-­time Pousadela, I. M. (2018, January 26). ‘The presence of women in spaces of political representation is good not only for women but also for democracy’ [Interview with Natalia Gherardi]. CIVICUS. https://www.civicus.org/images/Argentina-­Natalia_Gherardi.pdf Pousadela, I. M. (2019, January 11). ARGENTINA: ‘Change is inevitable. It is just a matter of time’ [Interview with Edurne Cárdenas]. CIVICUS: https://www.civicus.org/index.php/media-­ resources/news/interviews/3689-­argentina-­change-­is-­inevitable-­it-­is-­just-­a-­matter-­of-­time Pousadela, I. M. (2020, August 12). COVID-19: ‘We need public policies that reduce and redistribute unpaid care work’ [Interview with Gala Díaz Langou]. CIVICUS. https://www.civicus. org/index.php/media-­resources/news/interviews/4559-­covid-­19-­we-­need-­public-­policies-­that-­ reduce-­and-­redistribute-­unpaid-­care-­work Queirolo, G. A. (2020). Mujeres, historias y feminismos: Reflexiones desde Argentina y Chile. Estudios de Filosofía Práctica e Historia de las Ideas, 22, 1–10. Radford, J., & Russell, D. E. H. (Eds.). (1992). Femicide: The politics of woman killing (1st ed.). Twayne Pub.

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Chapter 3

A Heterogeneous Women’s Movement from a Post-colonial, Unequal Society: The Case of Brazil Simone Bohn

Contents 1  Introduction 2  Definitional Issues and Theoretical Discussion 3  Women Organizing a Women’s Movement in a Post-colonial Society 4  Women Organized Not to Agitate for Women’s Rights 5  Feminist Waves: Prevailing Narratives 6  Potential Origins of the Women’s Movement in Brazil 7  Targets, Allies and Networks 8  BWM’s Recent Collaboration with the Central Government 9  Backlash in Brazil and Resistance 10  Concluding Remarks References

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1 Introduction Known as large, energetic and diverse, the Brazilian women’s movement (BWM) has received substantial scholarly attention. This chapter is a historical overview and a critical literature review of the existing works devoted to the case. One of its primary objectives is to examine the movement’s contours, differentiating it from instances where women organized to strive for causes unrelated to promoting women’s rights. Second, by unearthing the long-term ramifications of the movement’s colonial ancestry, the chapter resignifies the struggles of Indigenous women and women of African descent, highlighting salaried factory women’s contributions to the movement’s genesis. Third, this revisionism enables the chapter to problematize some prevalent readings regarding the boundaries of feminist organizing in Brazil.

S. Bohn (*) York University, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. M. Pousadela, S. R. Bohn (eds.), Women’s Rights in Movement, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8_3

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Finally, the historical overview highlights the movement’s principal targets and allies, different networks, recent partnerships with the federal government and reaction to the conservative backlash that has challenged the advancement of women’s struggles contemporarily.

2 Definitional Issues and Theoretical Discussion This chapter understands social movements as the organized collective action of groups unified around, and whose identity stems from, the quest for a similar cause, which is usually a demand that the institutionalized political power structures have overlooked (Diani, 1992; Snow et al., 2004). Multifarious groups may share that similar goal, meaning that social movements encompass a plethora of distinct organizations, each of which might have additional, organization-specific claims (Tarrow, 1998). This motley feature of social movements has at least two important implications for their contours and dynamics. First, identity formation is a complex phenomenon (Diani & Bison, 2004; Hunt & Benford, 2004; Snow & McAdam, 2000), as individual organizations unite around the pursuit of both the pan-­movement demands and their own. Second, the realization of some of their vital claims means that moments of abeyance (Taylor, 1989) follow cycles of contention (Tarrow, 1998) and that those shifts may cause changes in the movement’s membership, as well as in its allies and targets (Diani, 2004; Rucht, 2004). Women’s movements share some of those features, as do other social movements. That is to say that they are a collection of women organized to strive for the attainment or expansion of women’s rights (Beckwith, 2000, 2005; Ferree & McClurg Mueller, 2004).1 As McBride and Mazur (2008) note, ‘[a]t the basic level, “women’s movement” is a dichotomous concept. The negative pole – not a women’s movement – means collective action by men (not women), or by women not organized explicitly as women presenting claims other than those based on gendered identities as women’ (226). Hence, not all organized women coalesce to agitate for ‘women’s rights’. From this perspective, this chapter’s first question pertains to the actual contour of the women’s movement in Brazil. Who is and is not part of the women’s movement in this country? In other words, have there been organizations overwhelmingly composed of women and led by them, but which pursued goals that did not involve ‘women’s rights’? While women’s activism in women’s organizations does not automatically mean they are part of the women’s movement, other distinctions are in order. Women’s movements encompass, but are not synonymous with, the feminist movement (Beckwith, 2005; Ferree & McClurg Mueller, 2004; McBride & Mazur, 2008), which raises the question regarding the boundaries between the two. Some argue that feminism operates at the level of the search for ‘strategic gender interests’ as

 This chapter takes that sex is a biological category and that gender is socially constructed.

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opposed to ‘pragmatic gender interests’ (Molyneux, 1985) or is defined by the search for gender-specific demands, instead of gender-related, or feminine, claims (Alvarez, 1990). Rather than a category with fixed content, this chapter understands feminism, first, as a historical construct. That is to say that, although it signifies organized women fighting against women’s gendered oppression, the specific claims that empirically embody that fight change over time and space (Ferree & McClurg Mueller, 2004). Second, at any given time, a necessary condition for distinguishing feminist actors from other groups of organized women is self-­ identification with feminism as a matrix of thought. In addition to engaging in praxis to challenge women’s subordination to men, feminist movement actors publicly resort to a ‘feminist discourse’ (McBride & Mazur, 2008) to define themselves, articulate their action platform and present it to society at large. These nuances form the basis of this chapter’s second question. What boundaries separate self-identified feminist and non-feminist actors within the Brazilian women’s movement (BWM)? As shown later in this chapter, this country has (and has had) groups of women organized as such for the pursuit of gender equity but who do not necessarily portray themselves as feminists. While the two questions presented so far seek to delineate the boundaries of the BWM, a discussion of substantive issues is vital. What does agitating for the realization of women’s rights actually entail? What is or has been the content of the struggle for women’s rights? At least two important considerations must be made in this regard. First, as mentioned, case studies of a single country’s women’s movement with a longitudinal design reveal that the struggle for women’s rights has acquired different contents over time. In fact, those changes are powerful drivers (albeit not the only ones) of the cycles of contention and abeyance of organized women’s activism. For example, in parts of Latin America, organized women’s struggle for women to access public education, which fostered much of the early organizing in the later decades of the nineteenth century, was upstaged by the fight for the right of the vote, particularly in the first three decades of the twentieth century (Gargallo, 2006). In the context of the United States, after securing the right to vote in 1920, organized women – even if different groups or generations – turned their attention to other aspects of the search for gender equality, such as women’s rights in the workplace (Taylor, 1989). Similarly, once the last of the Canadian provinces extended suffrage to women (in the 1940s), obtaining women’s equality within marriage and other arenas loomed large in the broad agenda of the Canadian women’s movement (Marsden, 2012). In this regard, some authors who focus on advanced capitalist countries have identified, and work with, the idea of waves of feminism, such as Evans and Chamberlein (2015); Kinser (2004); Krolokke and Sorensen (2005); Mack-Canty (2004); and Purvis (2004)  – to name but a few. Though some authors (such as Harnois, 2008) criticize this categorization, feminist waves are portrayed as having materialized in several nations of the globe. They are meant to help one gauge feminist causes (or clusters of demands) over time. Interestingly, when some countries had some sets of grievances but not others, the underlying assumption is that they skipped a particular wave they should have had (Dekel, 2011). From this

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perspective, the first wave is commonly thought as have been propelled primarily (but not exclusively) by the struggle for the full political inclusion of women into the polis (Gouges, 1993 [1791]; Pateman, 1988; Wollstonecraft, 1988 [1792]), by awarding them the right to vote and to stand for elections (Mill, 2017 [1869]). In the same way, the second wave is presented as relating to the struggle against several empirical manifestations of women’s oppression (Beauvoir, 1989 [1949]; Friedan, 2001 [1963]), such as the fight for reproductive rights, against domestic violence and gender-based inequalities at home, in the job market and the workplace, for instance. Still following the same viewpoint, a third wave is usually associated with the growing recognition, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, of gender-based claims that go beyond the duality between men and women and articulate the lived experiences of distinct cohorts of women (Butler, 1990; Crenshaw, 1991; Haraway, 1988; Yuval-­Davis, 1997). Finally, a fourth wave is believed to have emerged with the appropriation of the Internet by women’s movement actors to focus on the antisexist and anti-misogyny struggle, particularly the fight against sexual harassment (Baumgardner, 2011; Chamberlain, 2017; Cochrane, 2013; Munro, 2013). This discussion leads to a third question for the chapter. Has the imagery of waves been deployed to capture the critical grievances around which movement actors marshalled their time and resources in pursuing women’s rights in Brazil? Second, while it is vital to identify clusters of demands that have shaped the collective action of a women’s movement, understanding its dissonances (and, possibly, hierarchies) is paramount. In other words, there could be an intra-movement variance regarding the content of the term in question – namely, women’s rights. At any given time, distinct sets of organized women from the same country’s women’s movement may have different understandings of what pursuing the so-called woman question means and calls for. Individual women’s organizations develop their specific platform of demands and action while concurrently participating in the overarching movement’s engagements. For instance, in Australia, it became progressively clear to ‘mainstream’ Australian women who were part of the state agencies devoted to the promotion of women’s rights that they had to understand and incorporate into their platform of action the perspectives and claims held by both immigrant women and aboriginal women from their country (Sawer, 1990). By the same token, African-American organized women, despite sharing the goals of seeking the expansion of reproductive rights with the larger women’s movement, had additional and equally important claims, especially those related to Black liberation (Valk, 2008). Similarly, in Argentina, in addition to partaking in the fight to curb violence against women and for reproductive rights (i.e. pan-movement demands), the so-­ called popular feminism (di Marco, 2010), which salaried women workers spearheaded, sought the implementation of measures against the rising costs of living, especially the improvement of labour conditions in occupations overwhelmingly held by women. These illustrations help form an essential multi-pronged fourth question: how to account for the intra-movement variance? How intersectional has the Brazilian women’s movement been from the outset and over time? The following sections of this chapter address those four questions in the following order. Section 2 briefly addresses the impact of Brazil’s colonization on the

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basic features of this country’s women’s movement. Subsequently, Section 3 examines instances where women organized as women did not agitate for women’s rights. In the sequence, Section 4 investigates the prevailing wave-based narratives regarding the boundaries between feminist and non-feminist actors. Section 5 argues that salaried women toiling in factories agitated for women’s rights in the marketplace and made a monumental contribution to the movement’s rise. After that long march through history, Section 6 focuses on the women’s movement’s key targets, allies and networks, and Section 7 on its recent experience of close collaboration with the state. The last section centres on the Brazilian women’s movement’s reaction to the current conservative backlash that befell the country and the Latin American region at large.

3 Women Organizing a Women’s Movement in a Post-colonial Society The composition and priorities of the women’s movement in Brazil cannot be understood without reference to the country’s broader societal, economic and political landscape, especially its colonial experience.2 Therefore, analysing the colonial experience is paramount (Holanda, 1981), as not only did it shape the country’s racial-ethnic make-up, but also it has had long-term ramifications for the socio-­ locations of the distinct groups of Brazilians and the relationships among them (Evaristo, 2008; Lugones, 2008; Marx, 1998). Take Brazil’s precolonial peoples, for example. The estimated 2–4.5 million indigenous at the onset of the colonization (Melatti, 2014; Robeiro, 1957) now amount to a little over 869,000 individuals, who belong to 305 different ethnic groups, speak 274 languages and are concentrated in specific areas of the territory (IBGE, 2012). More importantly, still according to the last available census (from 2010), 182 of their ancestral lands await demarcation (IBGE, 2012), and their material conditions of existence put them in the lowest rungs of Brazilian society, rendering their life expectancy extremely low – at 45 years, as Bohn (2009) discusses. Evidently, that legacy impinges upon the Brazilian Indigenous women’s organizing and networking (Lippi, 2022; Sampaio, 2021). Their rural dwelling in remote areas of the country, the centrality of Indigenous organizations (some of which lack a gendered perspective) and the fact that a few groups of Indigenous women do not necessarily speak the official language are some of the factors posing difficulties for them to organize as a robust subsegment of the larger Brazilian women’s movement (de Paula, 2008; Ouriques Ferreira, 2013, Sacchi, 2003). Moreover, they bring  Brazil’s socioeconomic standing as a late, dependent capitalist nation and, at the political level, its regimes cycles, state architecture and party system shape the ability of women’s movement actors to organize themselves, articulate their policy demands and have those grievances percolate through the institutions. The author will examine the role of those factors elsewhere, as this chapter focuses on the movement’s heterogeneity and hierarchies. 2

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particular demands to the table (Carvalho & Quintilliano, 2009; Freitas, 2008). Their land claims, for example, are, in essence, sociocultural and ethnic grievances central to their survival, existence and reproduction (Grubits et al., 2005; Sacchi, 2003). As a result, they fight for collective rights as well as individual rights. Among the latter, it is the right to a life devoid of violence against women (Kaxuyana & de Souza e Silva, 2008). In this regard, sexual violence disproportionally affects Indigenous women, especially those from communities threatened by illegal squatting or ever-­growing cities and towns (Freitas, 2008). Not only do the linguistically and culturally heterogeneous groups of Indigenous women deserve attention when one analyses the women’s movement in Brazil, but other segments do as well. After all, the Portuguese colony in the Americas, and later independent Brazil, were major players in the egregious transatlantic trade of enslaved individuals, having sought and received the most significant volume of Africans forced out of their ancestral lands (Cardoso, 1962; Ianni, 1962). According to Gonzalez (1988), that feature transforms Brazil into a key country of what she dubs ‘Amefrica’ (76). To make matters worse, Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish this appalling practice (Bethell, 1970), which it did only in 1888 and did not implement any public policies in the post-abolition period to incorporate the population of freed Africans into society (Fernandes & Bastide, 2010 [1959]; Fernandes, 1972, 2008 [1964]). The activism and resistance of previously enslaved Africans and their descendants born on Brazilian soil also date from colonial times (Funes, 1996). They escaped forced confinement and labour exploitation and founded free societies, known as quilombos (Gomes, 1996; Moura, 2001), where women were active participants (Miki, 2018). Seeking their freedom, the individuals resisting enslavement participated as soldiers in armed conflicts – some of which, such as the Malês Revolt (Reis, 1993), counted with the engagement of African women as well. The resistance of African women (born overseas or in Brazil) has always been remarkable (Mahony, 2008). In the interval between the end of the slave trade (1850) and the abolition of slavery, in a clear demonstration of their entrepreneurial spirit and resilience, freed African women used the proceeds from street food vending to purchase the freedom of their enslaved peers (Graham, 2010; Machado, 2016; Silva, 2014, 2015). In the post-abolition period, they had less difficulty (than African men or men of African descent born in Brazil) in integrating into the job market. Still, they took up occupations, such as domestic workers, known for their high degree of exploitation and informality (Beato, 2004; Silva, 2016). The colonial times’ structural violence (Farmer, 2009) acquired new colours post-abolition. Currently, Brazilian women of African descent are still disproportionately represented in precarious occupations (Werneck, 2008). For them, overcoming the toll that structural violence takes on their life chances while at the same time struggling against anti-Black racism is essential. That is to say that, although they have claims similar to those of other organized women in the BWM, they have demands that are undoubtedly unique to them (Carneiro, 2003; Ribeiro, 2018). This brief overview evinces that Brazil’s colonial legacy sowed the seeds of a highly heterogeneous and uneven women’s movement. As a result, there are, in fact, several varieties of the gender question in Brazil, which are reflective of the

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country’s racial-ethnic make-up, colonization and post-colonial experience. In addition, the country’s process of industrialization, the neoliberal turn, neo-developmental policies and the changes in the political environment in which organized women agitate for their rights (factors not examined in this chapter) also shape the movement. While this ‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano & Ennis, 2000) shaped the Brazilian women’s movement powerfully, it is essential to understand its contours. The following section, thus, examines whether there have been groups of women organized as such agitating for goals other than women’s rights, which does not qualify them as members of the women’s movement.

4 Women Organized Not to Agitate for Women’s Rights Organized women agitate for multiple reasons, and, as mentioned, such activism does not necessarily result in affiliation with the women’s movement (Beckwith, 2000). Given that, have there been organizations primarily composed of and led by women in Brazil whose activities do not qualify them for membership in the country’s women’s movement? Similar to other countries in the region, such as Chile (Power, 1998), Brazil has had experiences of organized women making claims that are very different from, if not antagonistic to, those espoused by the women’s movement and one of its subsectors – the feminist movement (Deutsch, 1997). In at least two periods of the twentieth century, women led women’s organizations to press for issues that did not involve advancing women’s rights. For example, the so-called green-shirted women organized as a cell in the fascist-like movement-party known as Brazilian ‘Integralist’ Action, or AIB, in the 1930s led by Plínio Salgado (Araújo, 1988; Cavalari, 1999; Hahner, 1990; Possas, 2004a, b). As a matter of fact, women comprised 20 per cent of all AIB members (Deutsch, 1997, p. 9). The green shirts’ main objectives were to protect the family and Christian morality against what they perceived to be the impending materialization of an atheist, communist insurrection in Brazil (Power, 2002). Similarly, in the lead-up to the 1964 military coup, organized women from several women’s organizations were the driving force behind the Family March with God and for Freedom (Simões, 1985), creating critical mass support for the toppling of the democratically elected (left-leaning) President João Goulart. Once more, anticommunism and the fight for morality and tradition were prominent in their agenda.3 On the other hand, groups of women also participated in the political process as pro-democracy actors in other instances. For example, as the civilian dictatorship  One might argue that the anti-communist struggle involved the support for a maternalist view of womanhood and, as a consequence, had a gender component. Most definitely, the green shirts and the March women did mobilize using their gendered identities. However, fighting to uphold the status quo is not synonymous with the struggle to advance women’s rights, which is predicated on challenging prevailing norms and/or regulatory frameworks. 3

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led by Getúlio Vargas (1937–1945) ended, women organized to press for amnesty and the release of the large number of political prisoners that remained incarcerated (Moreira Alves & Pitanguy, 1985; Moraes, 2020; Teles, 1993). The same can be observed approximately three decades later. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, women organized as women engaged in the struggle for amnesty and the end of the military dictatorship (Alvarez, 1990; Pedro, 2006; Pinto, 2007; Teles, 1993). Undoubtedly, with the transition to democracy in 1985, those groups, including those led by Black women (Rodrigues & Freitas, 2021), became one of the fundamental driving forces of the women’s movement.4 Nevertheless, at that particular point in time, their struggle was around re-establishing the institutional pre-­ conditions that would enable them to press for the advancement of women’s rights. They deemed restoring the channels of free political participation essential to pursue their gender-centric agenda (Pitanguy, 2003).5 Hence, in Brazil, organized women engaged in contestation in several historical moments but did not pursue women’s rights in all of them. On the occasions they sought women’s rights, what exactly were they fighting for? The following section tracks the diversity of demands over time and discusses whether the Global-North-inspired idea of waves has been utilized to understand the ebbs and flows of the BWM.

5 Feminist Waves: Prevailing Narratives Several analyses of the Brazilian case work with the notion of waves to describe the longitudinal changes of the country’s feminist movement  – albeit not the overall women’s movement (Moreira Alves & Pitanguy, 1985; Pinto, 2007). Understanding this timeline is essential, as it gives clues as to possible definitions of feminism in Brazil or the contents of the feminist struggle over time. From this perspective, the first feminist wave is said to have centred primarily upon the quest for suffrage, especially in the first three decades of the twentieth century (Moreira Alves, 1980; Hahner, 1990). A second wave, which is portrayed as having taken place in the early 1970s, when the country was under military rule, focused primarily on opposing gender-oppressive societal norms and values, which civil laws codified (Golberg, 1987; Pinto, 2010; Sarti, 2004; Soares, 1994, 1998). In a third wave in the mid-­1980s,  They formed the so-called Lipstick Lobby to advocate for women’s rights during the process of creation of a new magna carta, the 1988 Constitution. They were successful in a variety of policy areas, such as the (final) repeal of the 1916 Civil Code that attributed to husbands the legal headship of the family unit; women’s right to family planning; and the state’s responsibility to enact policies to curb violence against women, and to decrease gender-based inequalities in the workplace (Bohn, 2009; Pitanguy, 2003). 5  That does not mean that actors from the BWM did not engage with state or governmental actors during dictatorial periods to make gender-centric demands. For example, the suffragettes engaged with Vargas to press for the extension of the right to vote for women 2 years after the 1930 political maneuver that prevented an elected president from taking office (Hahner, 1979, p. 202). 4

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intersectional agendas are thought to have emerged with full force amidst organized women’s involvement in shaping the newly re-established democratic rule (Alvarez, 1990; Pitanguy, 2003). Finally, some noted a fourth wave surfacing in the 2000s, in which issues such as the struggle against sexual harassment took centre stage. This wave has been anchored upon the extensive use of information technology (particularly by the so-called young feminists) and street protests, especially multitudinous marches (Martello, 2021). Thus, some authors do resort to the idea of waves to discuss feminist organizing in Brazil. Those types of periodization rely on a specific definition of feminism – and one whose exclusions are worth analysing. In this regard, Pinto (2007) puts forward a somewhat clear distinction between the feminist movement and the overall women’s movement in Brazil when they write: At the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s, women of distinct social classes and ideologies fought against the high costs of living [carestia, in Portuguese]. In this struggle, one would find both women associated with the Brazilian Federation of Women, whom the Communist Party strongly influenced… and elite women who organized in the Association of Ladies from Santa Teresa to fight for the same cause. This type of movement continued to exist up until the 1970s, especially in the poor neighbourhoods….” However, “Those movements cannot be considered feminist in their formation or even their purposes, given that the women involved with them did not fight for the change in the roles that society attributes to them. (p. 44; author’s translation from Portuguese)

Although it is unclear what the fundamental objectives of upper-class women from Santa Teresa were when they joined the fight against rising costs of living, this quote evinces that some narratives about the women’s movement and feminist movement in Brazil deem the struggle to improve one’s material condition of existence not central to the feminist platform of action – which is somewhat surprising given the conflation among race-ethnicity, class belonging and gender imbalances in Brazil. Pitanguy (2003) agrees that the feminist agenda differs from the programme of organized women against high costs of living or those who participated in peace movements (during war WWII) or in amnesty campaigns (in the context of Brazil’s last transition to democracy) (26). For Soares (1998), the lines between feminism and the overall Brazilian women’s movement became progressively blurred as the latter gradually incorporated feminist ideas into its agenda. Interestingly, as mentioned above, the organized action by women to conquer the right to vote (and to stand in elections) is deemed part of feminism. The Brazilian suffragettes, whose work dates back to the 1880s (Pinto, 2007, p. 15), were highly educated, elite women from extremely wealthy and politically connected families. Given their social location, they could live and attend university overseas (especially in Western Europe), where they came into contact with the struggle for the extension of political rights to women. To provide some historical context, according to the 1872 census, in the decade that preceded the suffragettes’ early activism, 15.71 per cent of the Brazilian population were enslaved individuals, and 13.43 per cent of all free women and 0.06 per cent of all enslaved women knew how to read and write – in comparison with 23.43 per cent of all free men, 0.12 per cent of all enslaved men (Brasil, 1874). Thus, even as far as the cohort of free women is

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concerned, the suffragettes occupied a position of pronounced privilege  – which does not by any means reduce the impact of their contribution to women’s rights. However, in an apparent contradiction with the tacit definition of feminism quoted earlier, Pinto (2007), for instance, considers the suffragettes to be feminists, even though – this author states – the ‘struggle for inclusion does not present itself as [the search for] an alteration of gender relations, but as a complement to the good functioning of society; i.e. without changing man’s position, women fought to be included as citizens’ (p. 14–5, author’s translation from Portuguese). In other words, the wave-based prevailing narratives on feminism make evident an imbalance when the efforts of elite women are compared with the contributions that lower-class and racialized women have made.

6 Potential Origins of the Women’s Movement in Brazil While plenty of authors have written about the dawn, evolution and boundaries of feminism in Brazil, comparatively less has been penned regarding the origins of the women’s movement at large. When did organized women begin to agitate for women’s rights even if they did not identify with feminist discourse? The struggles carried out by African women and women of African descent have already been noted. In the pre-abolition period, in the 1870s and 1880s, free women fought for their right to increased access to institutions of higher learning in the country. Still, that demand, rather than stemming from an organized group, arose primarily from the efforts of individual women, some of whom contributed to, or published, newspapers or other publications dedicated to women’s issues (Hahner, 1981). Yet historiographic evidence indicates that women organized as women began agitating for their rights at least as early as the first years of the 1900 decade (Pena, 1981), amidst the initial phase of industrial capitalism in the country (Cardoso de Mello, 1982; Singer, 1974). Although those women participated in the overall struggle for better working conditions in the existing factories (from which perspective they could be seen as female labour activists), they did strive to attain gender-­ specific demands. For example, they demanded the same wages as those received by their male counterparts and the regulation of the working hours for female workers, or the right to work the same number of hours that men worked – and not for more extended periods, as it was the practice (Hahner, 1981; Fraccaro, 2018). From this perspective, the 1906 protests that seamstresses led in the textile factories located in the countryside of the state of São Paulo, followed by the 1907 strikes (and the ones in 1917), stand out as monumental events marking organized women’s early activism, which centred on the demand for gender equity in the workplace (Pena, 1981; Teles, 1993). The Union of Seamstresses (Samara & Matos, 2000, p. 784) was an example of women leading women’s organizations that fought to expand women’s rights. Later on, several essential and pioneering studies focused on the contributions of working-class women to that struggle (such as Blay, 1978; Souza-Lobo, 1991; Saffioti, 1976, 1981).

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This initial phase of the women’s movement’s fight for women’s labour rights either preceded or happened in parallel to the intensification of the struggle for suffrage in the 1910s and 1920s. However, the tumultuous 1930s fostered a moment of abeyance for both movements. The plot that ousted the sitting president (Washington Luís) and prevented an elected president (Júlio Prestes) from taking office in 1930, along with a short war following the 1932 Constitutionalist Revolution (Fausto, 1995), culminated in Getúlio Vargas’ provisional government, and the passage in 1932 of a reform of the electoral code, which extended voting rights to literate women (Hahner, 1981). Needless to say, given the country’s inequality when it comes to access to education, poor women farmers, destitute rural women workers and racial-ethnic minority women ended up being disproportionally affected by the literacy requirement. Furthermore, reflecting other civil codes that established men’s superior position within the family unit, married women could only vote provided they received authorization from their husbands to go to the ballot box (Limongi et al., 2020). Two years later, the 1934 Constitution enshrined women’s right to vote and stand for elected office. In other words, the suffragist movement had attained on those years its primary goal. Following those changes, ten women got elected to state assemblies, two to the federal chamber, and several to city councils (Miguel et al., 2015, p. 122). However, with Vargas’ coup d’état in 1937, elections remained suspended in the country until 1945 – a period in which men and women alike could not vote. Organized women’s labour activism also weakened. Paradoxically, in a period akin to a ‘conservative modernization’ (Moore Jr., 1966), in which the closure of the channels of free political participation parallels a period of economic growth unleashed by a vigorous process of industrialization, the Vargas’ years substantially increased the body of labour rights. In 1932, Vargas issued a decree (Decree 21–417-­ A, May 17, 1932) that prohibited employers from dismissing expectant women due to their pregnancy, guaranteed women the right to 8 weeks of maternity leave (paid by the employer) and the right to two pauses during the workday to nurse newborns in their first 6 months. In addition, in businesses that employed more than 30 women, it was the obligation of the employer to provide a space for infants to stay during their breastfeeding months. More importantly, in what ex post factum seems like a delayed response to one of the demands of the seamstresses in their 1906 protests, the same decree, in its very first article, determined that ‘without distinction of sex, to each work of equal value corresponds an equal wage’ (Decree 21–417-A, 1932: Article 1). The 1934 Constitution incorporated the seamstresses’ other demands into its text: It established the 8-hour working day – for all workers (Brasil, 1934). Nevertheless, even though those and further labour-related gains were significant for working women (and shifted their struggle towards full implementation), the Vargas period was unmistakably dictatorial. He declared a state of siege on some occasions, prohibited strikes and imposed firm control on labour unions (Fausto, 1995)  – which also helps explain why women’s activism withered during that interregnum. Brazil’s re-democratization with the end of Vargas’ era in 1946 turned out to be a short-lived democratic experience, which lasted less than two decades. It was

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succeeded by another, much lengthier, period of democratic breakdown. From 1964 to 1985, military dictators ruled the country, giving rise to the so-called dark years, notorious for their brutality, repression, extrajudicial killings and suspension of liberties and freedoms (Skidmore, 1988). However, unlike Vargas, the military dictators allowed some subnational elections to take place (albeit in a highly controlled fashion), which enabled organized women to engage in ‘forum shopping’ (Sawer & Vickers, 2001). In other words, they began targeting governors and mayors (in the cities where mayoral elections took place) in their search for public policies for women, particularly their demand for state responses to the issues of violence against women (Bohn, 2020), and (especially after 1979) the expansion of the day-­ care system (Teles, 1993, p. 103), which, as mentioned earlier, Vargas had addressed on paper. In other words, the early activism of women workers around labour-­ related women’s rights continued to bear fruit several decades later.

7 Targets, Allies and Networks While the previous section argued that the narrative about the women’s movement must incorporate more fully the contributions of waged women workers to the struggle for women’s rights, this one takes, once more, a longitudinal perspective to examine the main targets of the BWM’s collective action. For the most part, the entirety of Brazil’s women’s movement (i.e. its feminist contingent included) sought state responses to their agenda of demands.6 In some cases, given the nature of some of their claims, they targeted the central government. For example, the suffragettes demanded a modification of the definition of political citizenship enshrined in the constitution and, consequently, had to act at the national level. Doing away with the aforementioned 1916 Civil Code was a similar type of struggle, as it fell under the federal government’s jurisdiction. Interestingly, when military dictators were in charge, and women’s movement actors turned their focus to subnational governments, they attained some gains, primarily related to the need for the state to develop policies to curb violence against women (Bohn, 2009, 2020). It is worth noting that, in those instances of interaction with state actors, women’s movement actors debated the dangers of a possible co-optation of their movement by the state vigorously (Pitanguy, 2003). Women movement actors had similar concerns regarding political parties  – another entity with whom some occasionally partnered. While some women’s groups opposed joining political parties for the sake of the movement’s independence (Schumaher & Vargas, 1993), others joined them and created women’s cells or units within the party structures. For example, the Communist Party in the  In some instances, society at large is the target. For example, in its interaction with the federal government during PT (or Workers’ Party) administrations, the women’s movement pressured the central government to fund campaigns to increase the social visibility of the issue of violence against women, and later to popularize a law tackling the issue (Bohn, 2020). 6

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pre-Vargas era (i.e. pre-1930) had a sizable contingent of organized women (Teles, 1993). Similarly, the MDB party, or the Brazilian Democratic Movement, congregated women groups in its structures, as it was one of the two parties allowed to exist from 1966 to 1979 (Kinzo, 1988; Skidmore, 1988). In addition, women’s groups helped create the Workers’ Party (or PT, in Portuguese) and conquered important space inside this party, established in 1980 (Borba et  al., 1998). Nevertheless, other parties also had women’s cells. As a matter of fact, elected women come from parties that belong to the most different areas of the ideological spectrum (Bohn, 2007, 2009, 2021; Pinto & Silveira, 2018). Moreover, a small proportion of elected women seems to be ‘heirs’ of the seamstress that agitated for better rights in 1906. Those female politicians have had a long-term trajectory in labour unions (Miguel et al., 2015), where they militated for women’s labour rights and developed their own political and electoral capital organically. For their part, Brazilian political parties began devoting space in their programmes to women’s issues in the late 1890s (Carone, 1979) – even if they did not include women in their ranks then. Some of the topics included in those programmes were women’s suffrage, civil equality, improvement of women’s access to education and the end of the indissoluble character of marriage (Costa, 1997). However, nowadays, women in Brazil remain under-represented in most party structures (Wylie, 2018) and do not fare well in legislative elections, despite the approval of the gender-­based quota law in 1997, which has had grave implementation shortcomings (Araújo 2005, 2010; Bohn, 2021; Wylie et al., 2019). Finally, as for networks, the Brazilian women’s movement has always had strong international connections and was profoundly influenced by other movements from overseas. It is worth recalling here that elite women returning from their overseas studies played a crucial role in pushing the struggle for suffrage forward (Avelar, 2002; Hahner, 1990) – as they had the intellectual capital as well as the domestic political connections to do so. Similarly, Italian anarchist women who immigrated to the country left an imprint not only on Brazilian women’s early labour activism but later in the 1930s (Rago, 2009, p. 229). Another illustration of such flows is the work of the exiled upper-class women who returned from Paris or California in the 1970s and spearheaded the creation of women’s groups to initially reflect on women’s condition and later articulate actions to seek the expansion of women’s rights in Brazil (Goldberg, 1987: 81, 135). Furthermore, BWM actors took part in and were influenced by international networks supporting women’s movements. For example, in response to the 1975 United Nations’ International Women’s Year, some Brazilian women mobilized and created women’s organizations to advance women’s rights in Brazil (Barsted, 1995; Moraes, 1985). Similarly, women’s organizations, including women rural workers’ associations and Black women organizations, participated in several Latin American meetings that congregated their counterparts in the region (Alvarez et  al., 2003; Teles, 1993) and supranational events, such as the Beijing Conference in 1995 (Ribeiro, 1995). Those were two-­ way flows in that BWM actors took their particular claims to those international events while gaining insights from their participation in those arenas (Costa, 1997; Machado, 1995).

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8 BWM’s Recent Collaboration with the Central Government With the arrival of an institutionalized left-leaning party (Hunter, 2007, 2010; Keck, 1995) in the presidency in 2003, large segments of the feminist and women’s movements in Brazil began a process of close cooperation with the central government to help shape public policies for women (Bohn, 2009). Once that partnership began, reflecting its diversity and hierarchies, the movement presented many different kinds of demands to the central government. As a result, in addition to pressing for pan-movement requests – such as better laws and services to curb violence against women – BWM actors, organized in multiple networks, brought their group-­specific claims to the table. As Bohn and Levy (2021) detail, whereas in the 1980s and 1990s, movement actors sustained broad, nationally articulated networks based upon particular policy areas, such as health care and education, in the 2000s and 2010s, there was the emergence or consolidation of intersectional-based networks, such as the National Network of Afro-Brazilian Young Feminists, for example. In keeping with their ancestors’ struggles (as described in other parts of this chapter), this organization has a complex set of claims, some of which are gender-centric such as educational opportunities, labour market integration and sexual rights; others cross boundaries, such as the protection of practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions, for instance (Carvalho & Quintilliano, 2009). If the close collaboration with the PT central governments (2003–2016) created the opportunity to expand or strengthen other types of networks, it also resulted in policy gains and disappointments. Regarding the pan-movement agenda, a significant achievement was the approval of the so-called Maria da Penha Law to curb violence against women (Bohn, 2021). Another pan-movement issue, combating the sex trafficking of women and girls (Faria, 2008; Piscitelli, 2008), received a new legal framework and a dedicated national plan (Zúquete et al., 2016). Some initiatives benefited women from the lower economic strata, such as the conditional cash transfer programme, Bolsa Família, which, by design, prioritized the mother of the family (Bohn, 2011), and the federally funded popular housing programmes, which placed single women heads of households higher in the priority pool of recipients (Bohn & Levy, 2021). Disadvantaged women from rural areas gained access to legal documents and benefited from legislation ensuring joint titles of rural properties (Butto, 2011). At the intersection of gender, race-ethnicity and class, the approval of the new legislation that increased the rights of domestic workers was an important step forward (Fraga & Monticelli, 2021). As was the passage of the new legislation to curb anti-Black racism, especially in the marketplace (Andrighetto & da Silva Barbosa, 2020). There were gains for another contingent of the women’s movement, that of sexual minority women, who, in other moments of the country’s history, had been the target of hostilities by other women movement actors (Teles, 1993, p. 123). The federal legislature resisted the approval of same-sex civil unions. Still, federal courts eventually issued decisions mandating justices of the peace to celebrate those unions, thus extending to them the same rights that common-law heterosexual

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couples enjoy. The biggest disappointment pertained to one of the historical demands of the feminist movement and large sectors of the women’s movement: The decriminalization of abortion did not take place (Machado, 2016), separating Brazil from its neighbours in the region (González-Vélez et al., 2019; Gustá, 2021; Lamas, 2021; Pousadela, 2021). Those gains prompted a reaction from other actors. Despite their heterogeneity, conservative political actors in the federal legislature, especially some religious caucuses, acted in unison to block bills proposing advances in reproductive rights and those of sexual minority Brazilians. Although Pentecostal Evangelical politicians played a crucial role in defeating those agenda items, they were not alone. Catholic leaders, other Evangelical politicians, morally conservative federal congresspeople and even the Armed Forces lent support to the blockage of those measures (Machado, 2016). Moreover, some of those political actors supported the controversial impeachment of the first woman president in Brazil’s history, Dilma Rousseff (Santos & Jalalzai, 2021), and later the victorious presidential campaign of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. Sexual and reproductive rights and the rights of sexual minorities have thus become part of the basis upon which conservative political actors mobilize followers and garner electoral and political power, not only in Brazil (Bohn & Levy, 2021) – but in other parts of Latin America as well (Biroli & Caminotti, 2020).

9 Backlash in Brazil and Resistance Since its inception, the government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022) put in motion an agenda for women that prioritized their roles as mothers, guarantors and reproducers of what it saw as the moral reservoir of the nation, which – his administration argued – stemmed from Brazilians’ innate (socially conservative) character (Bohn, 2022). Furthermore, Bolsonaro’s government’s open hostility towards independent civil society actors, including women’s movement organizations of the most different types, put them on guard. Anticipating those policies, some organized women created campaigns against his presidential election, such as #Ele Não (Not Him) and ‘Women Against Bolsonaro’, which originated in cyberspace but later on took up the streets (Bittencourt et al., 2019; Couto Jr. et al., 2020; Pelúcio & Paz, 2020). As a result, throughout Bolsonaro’s years, there was a growing sense among large segments of the Brazilian women’s movement that it was a moment of resistance (Ramos et al., 2021; Snyder and Wolff, 2019). They feared setbacks in the implementation of existing public policies for women (Ávila et al., 2021) and regressions in their rights, especially the potential approval of congressional bills that could increase the rights of the unborn, thereby hardening even more the already restrictive reproductive rights (Ricci, 2021).

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10 Concluding Remarks When analysing the Brazilian women’s movement (BWM), some authors utilize the plural form to refer to it. Instead of a single movement, they speak of movements, such as Alvarez (1990), Alvarez et al. (2003), Carneiro (2016), Pons Cardoso (2016) and Wylie et al. (2019). This chapter has listed several factors that lend credence to such characterization. First, organized women in Brazil are intrinsically heterogeneous. Historically, not all women’s organizations have been part of the women’s movement. This chapter briefly examined occasions in which women organized and mobilized (primarily through marches, using pamphlets, etc.) for various other causes, such as to support a domestic version of a fascist society (the AIB women), to oppose what they perceived to be an imminent communist revolt, and for regime change (both for a democratic breakdown and for re-democratization). Consequently, as others have pointed out (Beckwith, 2000; McBride & Mazur, 2008), understanding the contours of the women’s movement in any given country demands hyper-­ vigilance against essentializing women and their activism. The case at hand, thus, demonstrates that women organized as women in associations led by women can agitate for goals not directly related to the advancement of women’s rights. When focusing on those belonging to the women’s movement, heterogeneity is again very noticeable. The BWM is highly diverse regarding social class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and ability. The chapter argued that the intersectional features of the movement stem from the colonization period, which subjugated indigenous women and enslaved African women, and whose effects are enduring. Colonial violence (Quijano & Ennis, 2000) decimated several indigenous groups and expelled them from their ancestral lands. They are now concentrated in remote areas of the country, which the Brazilian state is supposed to protect but are not adequately cared for. In addition, as indicated, Indigenous women face several barriers that make organizing difficult, such as linguistic differences, long distances and a feeble resource base (Sacchi, 2003). Colonial and post-colonial oppression has also impacted African women and women of African descent born in Brazil. From this perspective, they had to contest the social order that institutionalized slavery first and then fight for survival in a country devoid of public policies to absorb formerly enslaved individuals (Fernandes, 2008 [1964]) before being able to devote the bulk of their attention to the quest for women’s rights and to disrupt patriarchy – to which they also added the related anti-Black racism stance. In that regard, their trajectory is similar to that of women of African descent in other social contexts (Roth, 2004). Interestingly, the inherent diversity of the Brazilian women’s movement has created different accounts regarding who is and who is not part of the feminist struggle. This chapter detailed that some authors analysing the BWM work with the idea of waves of contention. However, the wave-based periodization does not consider the efforts of actors whom those authors deem to be the non-feminist contingents of the movement, creating hierarchies and an unevenness regarding which movement actors are and are not engaged in the fight against patriarchy. Consequently, in addition to poorly articulating the struggles of women of African descent, the prevailing

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narratives overlook the contributions of waged women who organized as women to struggle for women’s rights in the labour market. As discussed, the seamstress-led contention mostly paralleled the fight for the extension of suffrage to women, which well-connected, upper-class, primarily white women headed. Moreover, on several occasions, salaried, poor women also organized to push for a state response to rising living costs, which disproportionately affects them. Thus, there have been clear hierarchies within the Brazilian women’s movement, which have also generated historiographic imbalances. Ultimately, accepting that the social location (Young, 2000) of women of African descent informs their action means concurring that they cannot completely divorce the fight against patriarchy from the struggle against anti-Black racism and structural violence. Similarly, comprehending how the social location of waged, poor (mostly racialized) women impact their activism demands a recognition of the toll that socio-­ economic inequality takes on their lives and their priorities for collective action. While feminism does involve adherence to, and self-identification with, a discourse that seeks to undo women’s oppression due to gender, the contribution to the BWM of actors that some might label as non-feminist has been remarkable. In other words, in post-colonial societies, women’s diverse social locations mean that they bring multiple issues to the table – which ‘mainstream’ or elite women might sometimes have difficulty recognizing as part of the struggle for women’s rights. Nevertheless, the contributions of ‘subaltern’, or non-elite groups of women, from the past and the present, must be properly acknowledged. All these actors have left an indelible mark on the movement and are the source of its vibrancy and resilience.

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Moreira Alves, B. (1980). Ideologia e feminismo: A luta da mulher pelo voto no Brasil. Vozes. Moreira Alves, B., & Pitanguy, J. (1985). O que é feminismo. Brasiliense. Moura, C. (2001). A quilombagem como expressão de protesto radical. In C.  Moura (Ed.), Os Quilombos na Dinâmica Social do Brasil. EDUFAL. Munro, E. (2013). Feminism: A fourth wave? Political Insight, 4(2), 22–25. https://doi. org/10.1111/2041-­9066.12021 Pateman, C. (1988). The sexual contract. Stanford University Press. Pedro, J. M. (2006). Narrativas fundadoras do feminismo: Poderes e conflitos (1970–1978). Revista Brasileira de História, 26(52), 249–272. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-­01882006000200011 Pelúcio, L., & Paz, D. (2020). #paslui: Feminismos brasileiros no hexágono europeu. Revista Estudos Feministas, 28(3), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-­9584-­2020v28n371498 Pena, M. V. J. (1981). Mulheres e Trabalhadoras Presença Feminina na Constituição do Sistema Fabril. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Pinto, C. R. J. (2007). Uma História Do Feminismo No Brasil. Fundação Perseu Abramo. Pinto, C. R. J. (2010). Feminismo, história e poder. Revista de Sociologia e Política, 18(36), 15–23. Pinto, C., & Silveira, A. (2018). Mulheres com carreiras políticas longevas no legislativo brasileiro (1950–2014). Opinião Pública, 24(1), 178–208. https://doi.org/10.1590/1807-­01912018241178 Piscitelli, A. (2008). Entre as “máfias” e a “ajuda”: a construção de conhecimento sobre tráfico de pessoas. Cadernos Pagu, 31, 29–63. Pitanguy, J. (2003). Movimento de Mulheres e Política de Gênero no Brasil. In S.  Montaño, J.  Pitanguy, & T.  Lobo (Eds.), As políticas públicas de gênero: Um modelo para armar: O caso do Brasil (pp.  23–40). CEPAL. https://www.cepal.org/pt-­br/ publicaciones/5907-­politicas-­publicas-­genero-­modelo-­armar-­o-­caso-­brasil Pons Cardoso, C. (2016). Feminisms from the perspective of afro-Brazilian women. Meridians, 14(1), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians.14.1.02 Possas, L.  M. V. (2004a). O Integralismo e a mulher. In R.  M. F.  Cavalari (Ed.), Integralismo: Ideologia e organização de um partido de massa no Brasil (1932–1937) (2nd ed.). Arquivo do município. Possas, L. M. V. (2004b). Vozes femininas na correspondência de Plínio Salgado (1932–1938). In A. M. C. de Gomes (Ed.), Escrita de si, escrita da história. FGV Editora. Pousadela, I. (2021). Uruguay, revolution re-imagined: Liberty, equality, sorority. In S. Bohn & C. Levy (Eds.), Twenty-first-century Feminismos: Women’s movements in Latin America and the Caribbean (pp. 144–178). McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP. Power, M. (1998). Allende must go! In Right-wing women in Chile: Feminine power and the struggle against Allende, 1964–1973 (pp. 217–248). Penn State University Press. Power, M. (2002). Spartan mothers: Fascist women in Brazil in the 1930s. In P.  Bacchetta & M.  Power (Eds.), Right-wing women: From conservatives to extremists around the world (pp. 155–167). Routledge. Purvis, J. (2004). Grrrls and women together in the third wave: Embracing the challenges of intergenerational feminism(s). NWSA Journal, 16(3), 93–123. Quijano, A., & Ennis, M. (2000). Coloniality of power, eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(3), 533–580. Rago, M. (2009). Do cabaré ao lar: A utopia da cidade disciplinar e a resistência anarquista – Brasil 1890–1930: A utopia da cidade disciplinar e a resistência anarquista – Brasil 1890–1930 (4th ed.). Paz & Terra. Ramos, T. O. R., et al. (2021). Estudos Feministas na Resistência. Estudos Feministas, 29(1), 1–7. Reis, J. J. (1993). Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia (A. Brakel, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press. Ribeiro, M. (1995). Mulheres Negras Brasileiras de Bertioga a Beijing. Revista Estudos Feministas, 3(2), 446–446. Ribeiro, D. (2018). Quem tem medo do feminismo negro? (1a edição). Companhia das Letras.

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Ricci, L. (2021, March 23). “Bolsa estupro”: Entenda como o PL 5.435/2020 fere o direito da mulher. Estado de Minas. https://www.em.com.br/app/noticia/nacional/2021/03/23/interna_nacional,1249757/bolsa-­estupro-­entenda-­como-­o-­pl-­5-­435-­2020-­fere-­o-­direito-­da-­mulher.shtml Robeiro, D. (1957). Culturas e línguas indígenas do Brasil. Educação e Ciências Sociais, 1(6). Rodrigues, C., & Freitas, V. G. (2021). Black feminist activism in Brazil: Political discourse in three sections. In S. Bohn & C. Levy (Eds.), Twenty-first-century Feminismos: Women’s movements in Latin America and the Caribbean (pp. 230–263). McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP. Roth, B. (2004). Separate roads to feminism: Black, Chicana, and White feminist movements in America’s second wave. Cambridge University Press. Rucht, D. (2004). Movement allies, adversaries, and third parties. In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule, & H. Kriesi (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to social movements. Wiley. https://onlinelibrary. wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470999103.ch15 Sacchi, Â. (2003). Mulheres indígenas e participação política: A discussão de gênero nas organizações de mulheres indígenas. Revista AntHropológicas, 14(1+2). Saffioti, H. (1976). A Mulher na Sociedade de Classes: Mito e Realidade. Saffioti, H.  I. B. (1981). Do artesanal ao industrial: A exploração da mulher : um estudo de operárias têxteis e de confecções no Brasil e nos Estados Unidos. Editora HUCITEC. Sampaio, P. F. (2021). Indígenas mulheres entre colonialismos e resistência de longa duração – Séculos XX e XXI. Cancioneiro. Retrieved June 6, 2023, from https://www.editoracancioneiro. com.br/product-­page/indígenas-­mulheres-­entre-­colonialismos-­e-­resistência-­de-­longa-­duração Santos, P. A. G., & Jalalzai, F. (2021). Women’s empowerment and disempowerment in Brazil: The rise and fall of Dilma Rousseff. Temple University Press. Sarti, C. A. (2004). O feminismo brasileiro desde os anos 1970: Revisitando uma trajetória. Revista Estudos Feministas, 12, 35–50. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-­026X2004000200003 Sawer, M. (1990). Sisters in suits: Women and public policy in Australia. Allen & Unwin. Sawer, M., & Vickers, J. (2001). Women’s constitutional activism in Australia and Canada. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 13(1), 1–36. Schumaher, M.  A., & Vargas, E. (1993). Lugar no Governo: Álibi ou conquista? Estudos Feministas, 1(2), 348–364. Silva, L. H. O. (2014). Aprendizado da liberdade: Estratégias de mulheres escravas na luta pela emancipação. Mnemonise Revista, 5(1), 66–82. Silva, L. H. O. (2015). A Escravidão dos Povos Africanos e Afro-Brasileiros: A Luta das Mulheres Escravizadas. ORG & DEMO, 16, 85–100. https://doi.org/10.36311/1519-­0110.2015. v16n00.5138 Silva, L. H. O. (2016). Paulistas afrodescendentes no Rio de Janeiro pós-­abolição (1888–1926). Humanitas. https://ihggcampinas.org/2018/11/20/paulistas-­afrodescendentes-­no-­rio-­de-­ janeiro-­pos-­abolicao-­1888-­1926/ Singer, P. (1974). Desenvolvimento Econômico E Evolução Urbana: (Análise Da Evolução Econômica de São Paulo, Blumenau, Pôrto Alegre, Belo Horizonte E Recife). Companhia Editora Nacional. Skidmore, T. E. (1988). The politics of military rule in Brazil, 1964–85. Oxford University Press. Snow, D., & McAdam, D. (2000). Identity work processes in the context of social movements: Clarifying the identity/movement nexus. In S. Stryker, T. J. Owens, & R. W. White (Eds.), Self, identity, and social movements. University of Minnesota Press. Snow, D. A., Soule, S. A., & Kriesi, H. (Eds.). (2004). The Blackwell companion to social movements. Wiley. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470999103.ch15 Snyder, C. K., & Wolff, C. S. (2019). The perfect misogynist storm and the electromagnetic shape of feminism: Weathering Brazil’s political crisis. Journal of International Women's Studies, 20(8), 87–109. Soares, V. (1994). Movimento Feminista Paradigmas e desafios. Revista Estudos Feministas. Soares, V. (1998). Muitas faces do feminismo no Brasil. In T. Godinho (Ed.), Mulher e política: Gênero e feminismo no Partido dos Trabalhadores. Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo.

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Souza-Lobo, E. (1991). A Classe Operaria Tem Dois Sexos: Trabalho, Dominacao E Resistencia. Editora Brasiliense. Tarrow, S. G. (1998). Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. Taylor, V. (1989). Social movement continuity: The women’s movement in abeyance. American Sociological Review, 54(5), 761–775. https://doi.org/10.2307/2117752 Teles, M. A. (1993). Breve História do Feminismo no Brasil. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Valk, A. M. (2008). Radical sisters: Second-wave feminism and black liberation in Washington, D.C. University of Illinois Press. Werneck, J. (2008). Nossos passos vêm de Longe! Movimentos de mulheres negras estratégias políticas contra o sexismo e o racismo. In J. Werneck (Ed.), Mulheres negras: Um olhar sobre as lutas sociais e as políticas públicas no Brasil. Criola. http://bibliotecadigital.abong.org.br/ jspui/handle/11465/886 Wollstonecraft, M. (1988). A vindication of the rights of woman: With strictures on political and moral subjects. Norton. Wylie, K. (2018). Party Institutionalization and Women’s Representation in Democratic Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wylie, K., dos Santos, P., & Marcelino, D. (2019). Extreme non-viable candidates and quota maneuvering in Brazilian legislative elections. Opinião Pública, 25(1), 1–28. https://doi. org/10.1590/1807-­019120192511 Young, I.  M. (2000). Representation and social perspective. In Inclusion and democracy (pp. 121–153). Oxford University Press. Yuval-Davis, N. (1997). Gender and Nation (1st ed.). Sage Publications. Zúquete, J. G. P. E. D. S., Souza, E. R. D., & Deslandes, S. F. (2016). Concepções sobre o tráfico de mulheres para fins de exploração sexual: Um estudo com representantes institucionais no Brasil e em Portugal. Cadernos de Saúde Pública, 32, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1590/0102-­ 311X00075415

Chapter 4

Chile’s Feminist Spring: Impasse and Continuity of Women’s Demands for a Life Free of Sexism Lucía Miranda Leibe

Contents 1  Introduction 2  Methodology and Data Collection Technique 3  The History of Women’s Empowerment 4  Women’s Movements: Political Effects on the Transition to Democracy 5  Feminist Branches: Tensions and Organisational Logics 6  May 2018: Generational Change and the Threat of a New Backlash 7  Conclusions References

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1 Introduction The feminist movement in Chile has a long history. The cycles of feminist mobilisation generated cultural and institutional changes (Jaquette, 1994). The pressure exerted by feminist and women’s organisations, both through mobilisation and articulation with elite and political institutions, allowed substantial improvements in women’s rights. Two of these conquests, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, were women’s suffrage and parity in the constituent process (Figueroa, 2021; Andrade Zubia & Miranda Leibe, 2021).

The author would like to thank Fondecyt/ANID (Project 3200160) and FLACSO Chile for their support and funding to carry out this research, as well as Beatriz Roque, research assistant at FLACSO and student at the Catholic University of Chile, for her help in the initial stage of data collection. L. Miranda Leibe (*) Postdoctoral Research at the Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias Sociales y Juventud (CISJU), Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez, Santiago, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. M. Pousadela, S. R. Bohn (eds.), Women’s Rights in Movement, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8_4

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The year 2018, when activists from different universities took over their universities, in some cases for more than four months, was a milestone in the history of the feminist movement. In fact, the so-called Feminist Spring1 coincided with a series of feminist awakenings in the Latin American region, but Chile’smobilisation process was the only one to emerge from within universities (Ponce, 2020).2 This paper seeks to answer the question about the evolution of feminist demands since the return to democracy and the factors that prompted students to join the feminist movement in 2018. To answer these questions, we reviewed texts on the evolution of the feminist movement and its demands, analysing information collected through ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews conducted at the beginning of these feminist mobilisations in the metropolitan region of Santiago de Chile during 2018. We also conducted fieldwork in three regions of Chile: Valdivia, where the Feminist Spring began at the Austral University; Concepción, where the first national feminist meeting was held; and Valparaíso, where the strongest repression of university takeovers took place. In other words, activists from the four most active university centres in the country were interviewed for this work. The key role of feminism in the process of vindicating women’s civil, political and economic rights prompted Julieta Kirkwood (1986) to state that “[w]ithout feminism there is no democracy”. The analysis of this process of revision (and disruption) of the dominant paradigm will allow us to identify the milestones in the feminist movement process in Chilean political history. Meanwhile, the validity of feminist demands is affirmed by the cyclical process of advance and setbacks in women’s rights. To understand the nuances of the feminist movement in Chile (Snow & Trom, 2002), this research combined two qualitative strategies: ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews. Thirty-nine interviews were conducted with feminists from the student movement. The empirical analysis is preceded by a theoretical review and previous case studies on both Chile and other Latin American countries. The chapter is organised in five sections. The first one describes the theoretical and methodological process. The second explores the origins of feminist and women’s movements in Chile, their advances, protagonists and main legacies. The third section analyses the role of the Mothers’ Centre (CEMA) Foundation as well as the Women for Life movement and the role of women’s organisations during the transition to democracy after the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The fourth section analyses the branches of the movement and their evolution; finally, the fifth section

 We prefer the expression “Feminist Spring” to “Feminist May” because the mobilisations began in Valdivia in April and spread to May. “Feminist Spring”, indeed, better reflects the fact that the mobilisation began at regional level and then spread to Santiago, the city capital of Chile; the expression “Feminist May”, on the other hand, renders invisible the build-up to the beginning of this process in the capital. 2  Mexico followed in Chile’s footsteps with the great feminist students’ mobilisation of 2020. 1

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examines the 2018 movement and its implications in a context where gender equality in representative bodies is increasingly accepted. The main findings support the idea that one not only “becomes” a woman (Beauvoir, 1957) but also “becomes” a feminist; that is, through a succession of personal events, feminism is adopted as a means of “escape” from a pattern that would otherwise lead to silence, suffering and continued reproduction of the sexist logic of submission to a patriarchal system.

2 Methodology and Data Collection Technique The empirical data collection was developed in two stages: The first one included ethnographic observation and interviews in the framework of student assemblies at the San Joaquín campus of the Pontificia Universidad Católica (Pontifical Catholic University, PUC) between May and November 2018. I attended a total of five assemblies, which gave me an insight into the assemblies’ intention to take over the PUC headquarters. I also attended and observed three demonstrations organised in conjunction with groups from other universities, which allowed me to contact feminist spokespersons and activists from other universities in the metropolitan region, whom I interviewed between September 2018 and June 2019. At this stage I interviewed 27 feminist students pursuing various degrees at PUC, Universidad Diego Portales (Diego Portales University, UDP), Universidad de Chile (University of Chile, UCH) and Universidad de Santiago (University of Santiago, USCH). The age range of the participants, undergraduate students at the time, was 19–36 years old. The second stage began in 2020, and it involved contacting and interviewing some feminists who initiated the Feminist Spring with the takeover of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Universidad Austral (Austral University) in Valdivia on 17 April. I also interviewed feminists from different university campuses in Concepción and Valparaíso. Twelve interviews were conducted at this stage. The interviewees were selected using the snowball technique. The conversations took place in  locations chosen by the interviewees themselves within walking distance of the respective campuses, they lasted between 30 and 90 min and were audio-recorded and transcribed in full. All the data thus collected was anonymised. The interviews were structured around three levels of analysis, seeking to delve into the value and ideological aspects associated with the interviewees considering themselves feminists, examining the logics of organisation and articulation (as well as whether or not they belong to political parties) within the feminist student movement and finally considering the strategies adopted to make their demands visible. For the purposes of this chapter, I will use the information provided by the interviewees about their motivations to join the feminist movement.

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3 The History of Women’s Empowerment The history of the feminist movement in Chile is long, fluctuating between considerably high profile and periods of scarce visibility before the group’s demands were institutionalised (Kirkwood, 1986; Valdés & Weinstein, 1993; Stoffel, 2008; Mora & Ríos, 2009). As was the case in the rest of Latin America, Chilean women obtained and exercised their political rights before their civil rights were recognised and guaranteed (Ríos Tobar et al., 2003: 253). Feminisms are many and diverse, ranging from radical feminism to liberal feminism (Reyes-Housholder & Roque, 2019); the problem, however, is that these conceptual categories come from outside Latin America and do not always apply to the reality of the region (Escobar & Álvarez, 2018, p. 30). The concept of liberalism, for example, does not have the same connotation in Europe as in Latin America – in the case of feminism, it had a rather elitist and conservative undertone (Molyneux, 2003, p. 92). Beyond their differences, however, feminist movements seem to have followed similar trajectories in the different countries in the region, sexism being the common reason for the difficulties in materialising feminists’ demands. Since the formation of modern states, women were excluded from public spaces and relegated to the private (Pateman, 1989)3 . In the case of Chile, Castillo (2021) identified this pattern in the 1833 Constitution, which, after expressly stating that, “[i]n Chile there is no privileged class”, denied Chilean women the right to vote, denying them the status of citizens (14–15). More than a century of semantic debates was to pass before Chilean women could vote in 1949. As late as 1945, while the poet Gabriela Mistral won the Nobel Prize for Literature – filling Chile and Latin America with pride – her fellow countrywomen could not vote (Eltit, 1994, p. 48). Sexism, both in its open and hostile version and in its benevolent version – that is, expressing sympathy for the female gender while reproducing stereotypical logics about the role of women in society  – hinders the advancement of women’s autonomy (Miranda Leibe et al., 2022). The difference between the two is that hostile, more traditional sexism generates widespread social rejection, as traditional sexism values women negatively and validates men’s greater power. While also stemming from the traditional view based on the sexual division of labour and confines women to the private, benevolent sexism romanticises the roles played by women in that space, as wives, mothers or poetical objects. In the case of benevolent sexism, the patriarchal system offers “protection” to women as long as they consent to the continued reproduction of these traditional roles to fulfil the “needs” of men (Glick & Fiske, 1996). Feminist and women’s mobilisations have been driven, in one way or another, by the desire to end sexism. In early twentieth century Latin America, they sought to end sexism, which excluded them from the public and from political rights (Kirkwood, 1986). Molyneux (2003) distinguishes between practical interests  Paxton (2008) criticises the paradigm that allows regimes that do not recognise women’s right to vote, i.e. half of their population, to be considered democracies. 3

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which, while focusing on women, reproduce gender stereotypes based on benevolent sexist views, and strategic interests, which seek to break down such stereotypes. The type of interests thus defended is closely linked to the degree of rupture with ambivalent sexism, a major obstacle to substantive gender representation (Miranda Leibe et al., 2022). Some studies place the origins of women’s political participation in periods prior to the recognition of their right to vote. In 1912, in fact, the Liga de Damas Chilenas (League of Chilean Ladies) was founded; it had “a profoundly Catholic nature”, identified as the prelude to the women’s section of the Conservative Party (Sanhueza, 2020, p. 37). In 1913, women’s centres named after Belén de Zárraga were created in the saltpetre area of northern Chile, with a strong anticlerical profile and promoting gender awareness among women workers (Chuchryk, 1994, p. 66; Kirkwood, 1986; Valdés & Weinstein, 1993: 35). Amanda Labarca was a key figure in the process of promoting feminist consciousness. In 1919 she joined the National Women’s Council, promoting awareness of the civil obstacles experienced by women when trying to obtain greater social justice (Eltit, 1994, p. 69–73). In 1922, Chile’s first feminist political party was created, composed entirely of women; named Partido Cívico Femenino (Women’s Civic Party), it included key figures such as Estela La Rivera de Sanhueza, Elvira de Vergara and Berta Recabarren. The conservative counterpart was Acción Nacional de Mujeres de Chile (National Women’s Action of Chile), formed in 1924. While the origins of the Chilean feminist movement can be traced back to 1913, the beginning of its rise can be dated to the early 1930s (Kirkwood, 1986). In 1935, the Movimiento Pro-Emancipación de las Mujeres de Chile (Movement for the Emancipation of Women in Chile, MEMCH) was created under the key figure of Elena Caffarena, with a clearly feminist and left-wing leaning that would later converge in the Federación Chilena de Instituciones Femeninas (Chilean Federation of Women’s Institutions, FECHIF). In contrast, the Conservative Women’s Party, created in 1941, never took part in feminist meetings. Feminism was highly controversial in Chile, often associated with the bourgeoisie or educated middle- and upper-class women (Forstenzer, 2017, p.  165; Marino, 2019, p.  9). However, the elitist view of the feminist movement renders invisible the political participation prior to the creation of the MEMCH. Although in 1949 they were able to vote in all the country’s regions (Valdés & Weinstein, 1993), Chilean women remained at the mercy of husbands or fathers: they lacked autonomy to administer their property or to exercise guardianship over their children (Eltit, 1994, p. 254). In other words, they had won rights to participate in public decision-making but lacked personal autonomy in physical and economic matters; they had not been emancipated. After conquering political rights and getting the first women deputies and senators elected, from 1953 onwards, the feminist movement entered a phase of decline and subsequent invisibilisation4 (Kirkwood, 1986).  The word “invisibilisation” is used instead of “silencing” because it describes more accurately what happened to the women’s movement during its institutionalisation (Franceschet, 2003). 4

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At the beginning of the twentieth century, trade union organising was the most articulated space and the main vehicle for the struggle for political rights available to women (Gálvez & Todaro, 1987). Political parties, due to their composition and structure, were more of a threat than an opportunity to channel women’s demands (Kirkwood, 1986; Tessada Sepúlveda, 2013). This is why women belatedly began to integrate into progressive party organisations, and did so at the high cost of generating splits and oppositions between political feminists and autonomous feminists. Socialism, in particular, offered a friendly face to women, promising both gender and class emancipation (Molyneux, 2003). Despite their integration into political parties, women “were never able to put forward women’s demands from their liberating perspective” (Kirkwood, 1986: 70). Women’s militancy in political parties did not exceed 10 per cent, with party membership being very “family-based” in nature5. This led Kirkwood (1986) to accuse “female politicians” (as opposed to feminists) who consented to be part of the parties’ political framework only to be betrayed by these political organisations and sidelined from feminist demands as amnesiacs (79–80).6 The tension between the branches of the feminist movement became increasingly evident, to the extent that many of its internal divisions remain just as much, if not more, in force. The MEMCH and the Círculo de Estudios de la Mujer –  later split into the Centro de Estudio de las Mujeres (Center for Women’s Studies, CEM), and La casa de la Mujer La Morada (Women’s House La Morada, “La Morada” meaning “The Purple one”) – were the centre of feminism, revealing the controversy involved in calling oneself a feminist7. The original Círculo de Estudios de la Mujer (Women’s Study Circle) split precisely because of tensions over issues such as abortion and divorce, vetoed by the more conservative currents linked to the Catholic Church (Tessada Sepúlveda, 2013, p.  110). While the MEMCH was pluralist in nature, bringing together women from all social classes and socio-economic strata, the Women’s Studies Circle was made up of educated, middle-class women (Eltit, 1994). It is possible to distinguish a women’s movement from a feminist movement on the basis of its demands and objectives. According to Beckwith (2005), women’s movements are characterised by “the politicisation of their life experience as  The concept refers to the fact that women activists in political parties at the time had family ties to male members of the same parties. 6  In 1986, Kirkwood identified two groups within the women’s movement that dealt with women’s emancipation in different ways: politicians and feminists. This taxonomy was adopted by other authors (Forstenzer, 2011). Although they are sometimes referred to by other names, such as militants versus independents, all works coincide in characterising some as institutionally integrated into political parties (i.e. as party militants) and others, not (Franceschet, 2003). During the fieldwork performed for this research, a third branch with distinctive characteristics was identified, which we shall refer to as performative because of its emphasis on performance as political visibilisation strategy (Miranda & Roque, 2021). 7  Feminist identity has been addressed by different works focusing on cases from Latin America (Lagarde, 1994; Masson, 2007; Mendoza, 1996) as well as from countries in the Global North, like Australia, the United States and European countries (Downing & Rush, 1985; Liss et al., 2001; Hemmings, 2011; Eisele & Stake, 2008; Zucker & Bay-Cheng, 2010). 5

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women” (585). The interests claimed by these movements were predominantly practical. The nature of their demands, and their ability to make them heard in the Chile of the late 1980s and early 1990s, very hostile to feminism, was based on the fact that the protagonists were mothers, daughters, sisters or wives of disappeared detainees. This means that they were heard because they reproduced the traditional roles that legitimised them. They were under the “protection” of benevolent sexism. In this way, they managed to circumvent the dictatorship-imposed blockade on women’s participation (Chuchryk, 1994, pp.  71–73; Tessada Sepúlveda, 2013). Women’s organisations predominated, with only a few so-called feminist exceptions (Castillo, 2021), but so-called popular feminism also emerged, reconciling feminist and class issues. Indeed, it was through soup kitchens that cooking became a political resistance practice, turning the private into the political (Tessada Sepúlveda, 2013, pp. 106–107). The aspiration to redefine state institutions from a gender perspective is what characterises feminist movements, which seek to break down gender stereotypes based on the belief that women are oppressed or disadvantaged in comparison with men and that such oppression is illegitimate (Suárez-Cao et  al., 2021; Weldon, 2002). In other words, they “challenge the power structures and relations that cause female subordination” (Molyneux, 2003, p. 128).

4 Women’s Movements: Political Effects on the Transition to Democracy The military dictatorship began on 11 September 1973 with the coup d’état that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. On 17 October of that year, the National Women’s Secretariat (SNM) was founded to channel women’s support for the coup and thus “provide an ample field of action to women who had so selflessly and responsibly participated in the struggle for Chile’s freedom in the Marxist era” (Lechner & Levy, 1984, p. 51). In conjunction with the CEMA Foundation, the SNM did a fine job of indoctrinating women in the stereotyped reproduction of gender roles for working-class women, whose numbers reached more than two million between 1973 and 1983. The CEMA Foundation and the SNM were considered the “civilian trench” of the military regime (Lechner & Levy, 1984, p. 4), the former as a private foundation and the latter as a governmental body. They carried out training, indoctrination8 and resistance activities (Valdés et al., 1989). By 1973, the ratio of indoctrination and training activities of the CEMA centres was 30/70; as the possibility of a plebiscite

 Training activities consisted of workshops in sexist trades, such as home education and first aid, as well as literacy and household economic management. Indoctrination activities included civic orientation and national current affairs seminars (Lechner & Levy 1984, pp. 70–71). 8

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to put an end to the Pinochet regime approached, the ratio reversed to 67/33 (Lechner & Levy, 1984, p. 71). CEMA’s structure was hierarchical, and the institution treated its members in a paternalistic manner that infantilised them. At its head was its president, Lucía Hiriart, wife of the head of state, seconded by the vice-presidents of the metropolitan area and the country’s regions. Its board of directors was headed by an executive director appointed by the president. They were followed by volunteers, mostly wives of officers of the armed forces or law enforcement agencies, each of whom was in charge of some 10 CEMA centres. They were followed in hierarchy by the members who, through the Mothers’ Centres, with some 30 members each, were tasked with expanding the training and indoctrination activities. Resistance within CEMA, although it did not have much leeway due to the latent threat of being reported, consisted basically of “playing dumb” when asked to support political activities, boycotting coordinators when they were speaking, or simply “putting up with it”. In this sense, most interviewees stated that they ended up withdrawing from participation in the mothers’ centres (Valdés et al., 1989). Indoctrination activities, which so characterised the CEMAs after the coup d’état, did not prevent the emergence of meeting spaces, prompting gender role consciousness-raising processes as described by MacKinnon (1991). The mothers’ centres, in fact, predated the military regime, which simply took them back and used them to its advantage (Munizaga & Letelier, 1988). Had it not been for the dictatorship and the indoctrinating character it conferred on them, the CEMAs could have been key actors in a cultural transformation that altered traditional gender roles (Valdés et al., 1989, p. 30). The effects of the CEMA and the SNM were evident in the poll results prior to the 1988 plebiscite. The values claimed by “housewives” were linked to nationalism, anti-communism and authority (Gallardo, 1989). Although it was not possible to speak of a homogeneous political stance among women, the position of so-called “active” women was close to those of men, of a progressive type and associated with freedom, equality and consensus (Gallardo, 1989, pp. 28–34). Running parallel to CEMA’s and SNM’s actions to reinforce the patriarchal order, women’s demonstrations were held, a struggle against the authoritarian regime.9 The women’s human rights movement was characterised as “plural and heterogeneous”, albeit “sharing common objectives and demands” (Forstenzer, 2011, p.  3). It was a space where [women] “from their gender condition […] reflected on the prevailing authoritarianism and their situation in Chilean society”. The women’s mobilisations of the late 1980s were therefore strongly linked to their

 The literature identifies cycles of high visibility and cycles of absence, the so-called silences or what Kirkwood (1986) identifies as “crisis, fall and rebirth”. Before the process of women’s mobilisation against the dictatorship, the “feminist silence” lasted almost 25 years, after obtaining the right to vote. The conservative women’s movement, for its part, had had its awakening before the military coup, during the years 1970–1973, in the mobilisation against the Allende government (Power, 2008). 9

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role in opposition to the military dictatorship, under the slogan “Democracy in the country and in the home”. If the turn-of-the-century mobilisations were guided by the search for autonomy in the decision-making process, this second stage was prompted by the search not only for political autonomy. After all, the great driving force behind the Women’s Movement for Life was the struggle against the Pinochet dictatorship (Baldez, 2002), but also the search for physical and economic autonomy. Indeed, they proposed a radical change project to modify established gender relations and class domination, a task performed organically with the leftist political parties of the time. Paradoxically, women, who were more active than men in political action against human rights violations, were also the ones who voted in greater proportion in favour of the continuity of the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1988 plebiscite (Gallardo, 1989). Every phase in the expansion of women’s rights has had a conservative, sexist counterpart that sought to confine women to a “virtuous role of wife and mother”, contrary to feminist ideals. The advances of the progressivism of the early nineteenth century, present in the Belén de Zárraga centres, were followed by the setback, 60  years later, represented by Pinochet’s coup d’état. For 19  years, the dictatorship survived on the strength of Catholic and conservative impositions. Women for Life and the Civility Movement, among others, battled against this regressive process (Chuchryk, 1994, p. 70). The traditional family model prevailing in Latin America was a major obstacle in making progress towards women’s full autonomy (Molyneux, 2003; Thomas, 2019). The impossibility to make a decision over their own bodies restricts women’s full physical autonomy as regards both sexual and reproductive rights and protection from violence. The right to legal, safe and free abortion thus becomes the way to accommodate the family model to the will of women, instead of the patriarchal father engendered by the state and the church (Álvarez, 1994, p. 16). In reaction to this, conservative and right-wing governments pursued the “retraditionalisation of the family”, restricting family planning and divorce (Molyneux, 2003, p. 112; Thomas, 2019). In these contexts, although it does not usually challenge gender inequality or conventional gender roles, maternalism might help promote women’s autonomy. Indeed, in conservative societies maternalistic discourses are sometimes the only legitimate way for women to enter the public sphere (Ramm, 2020, p. 24). Therefore, women’s activities were not always perceived as political, because they were performed under the protection of civil society movements that protected them (in a sexist benevolent manner) as mothers or wives; this explains they were admitted by regimes that repressed political activities. As democratisation advances, political parties resume their central role, the political arena is reconstructed, and, once again, the separation between the social and political spheres is clearly delineated. Women’s activism then retreats back into the private sphere and becomes invisible, largely because “their link to private life has been relied upon rather than broken” (Franceschet, 2003, p. 10).

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Chilean women entered a relationship with the state as mothers, an area in which the Chilean state was successful, as shown by the maternal health figures and the decline of infant mortality. However, when it came to other roles, the state did not support women (Goldsmith Weil, 2020), and their participation in paid employment, politics and business remained low even by regional standards. Public policies relied on the benevolent sexism of the Marianist model (Montecino, 1993; Morandé, 1987; Stevens & Soler, 1974), romanticising women’s surrogate role in society and limiting their autonomy10. Women sought to achieve practical and strategic interests in the three dimensions of autonomy, physical, economic and decision-making process, and this process went through a cycle of advances and setbacks (Andrade Zubia & Miranda Leibe, 2021). Women’s movements went through similar cycles when it came to having their demands heard. The lack of stable links between state and society caused setbacks as the political colour of the administration changed (Friedman & Tabush, 2019, p. 3). The end of the military dictatorship and the advance of the democratic transition resulted in the feminist movement in Chile losing strength and convening power as the visibility of its internal conflicts and disputes increased, especially within the Women for Life movement11. The creation of the National Women’s Service (SERNAM) resulted in the establishment of power relations between different segments of the movement, contributing to the division between those inside and those outside the emerging gender policy networks (Franceschet, 2003, p. 19). Nonetheless, the institutionalisation of the movement as feminists reached institutional positions had a positive counterbalance. Indeed, the so-called femocrats, or feminists in the state bureaucracy, began to play a key role and started to be consulted to formulate public policies because of their technical knowledge, no longer as part of mobilised groups (Bensa Morales, 2018, p. 16).

5 Feminist Branches: Tensions and Organisational Logics Research on previous periods of intense feminist mobilisation in Chile (Kirkwood, 1986; Safa, 1990; García Castro & Hallewell, 2001; Forstenzer, 2017) concluded that Chilean feminist movements, like other Latin American organisations, were

 Marianism, which vindicates the Virgin Mary, a suffering and self-sacrificing mother, as the stereotypical model of femininity, is defined as “the cult of female spiritual superiority”. It teaches that women are semi-divine, morally superior and spiritually stronger than men; it is, in short, a clear expression of benevolent sexism (Stevens & Soler, 1974). 11  The tension between the political branch (party militant) and the autonomous branch (averse to political parties) made the confrontation irreversible when women politicians acceded representative and ministerial positions while they were criticised by the autonomous branches because they postponed the demands (abortion, divorce, etc.) of classic feminists. 10

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mostly composed of autonomous and militant segments. Each branch within the movement has different internal organisation logics that creates tension among them. Molyneux (2003) identifies three types of women’s collective action in Latin America: independent, in association with other groups or under the direction of other collectives. The independent or autonomous groups are made up of organised women who do not recognise “any kind of authority and are not subject to the domination of other political agencies” (Molyneux, 2003, p. 229). The tensions between autonomous and militant respond to the traditional feminist debate about being “inside” or “outside” political institutions (Banaszak, 2010). In the case of the Chilean feminist movement in the 1990s, Ríos Tobar  et  al. (2003) found that 70 per cent of feminists were or had been members of a political party, mainly on the left (Álvarez, 1994; Chuchryck, 1994). The average age of party militants was over 35, while young women in Santiago were more reluctant to join political parties. The authors also identified differentiated militancy patterns between feminists from the country’s regions and those from the capital city. More recent studies on the feminist student movement of 2018, alongside the two characteristic currents of the feminist movement of the 1970s and 1990s, identified a third group of feminists called movement-prone or “performative”, because it concentrated on deploying performances and also on account of its connection with art (Miranda Leibe & Roque López, 2019). In the fieldwork carried out during the takeover of the PUC headquarters, it was observed that, although they agreed on the demands that should be raised institutionally, the three branches of the movement differed in the way they organised themselves internally (Miranda Leibe & Roque López, 2021). In previous periods, the confrontation between the autonomous women who considered militant women as traitors for adapting to the political institutionality during the period of transition and return to democracy caused the movement to collapse (Lamadrid Alvares & Benitt Navarrete, 2019; Ríos Tobar et al., 2003). In contrast, in more recent times, the emergence of the branch helped the movement remain more harmonious and predominantly autonomous, i.e. detached from political parties although associated with feminist and women’s organisations at national and regional level. Ethnographic observation and interviews showed that each feminist branch is organised around distinctive political strategies to achieve consensus (Miranda Leibe & Roque López, 2019). Militants are characterised by a more traditional political organisation, with hierarchical structures and strong links with political parties. Independents tend to have a more horizontal organisational structure that, while accepting party affiliation, does not actively participate in political parties. The performatives also adopt a predominantly horizontal and unstructured decisionmaking format, but they reject any form of institutionalised participation in political parties. The following chart presents excerpts from interviews illustrating each feminist branch’s approach to political parties (Table 4.1). There is a certain correlation between the feminist branch to which they belong and the factors that lead activists to identify themselves as feminists. The process of

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Table 4.1  Positions vis-à-vis political parties, by feminist branch of membership Performative “I have always been against militancy, I believe the movement has to be autonomous because it is against the hierarchy of militancy [...] all political parties have a hierarchy in which sexual dissidence and women are always relegated”.

Militant “Militancy has always been a tool for organising and uniting forces and carrying out long-term political projects. One of the most valuable things the feminist wave left us this year was precisely that it questioned why we often relapsed into patriarchal practices, asymmetry and power conflicts”.

Autonomous “I [have not been] a militant in any party. In [the records of the electoral service] I appear as registered in Revolución Democrática because I signed so that they could become a party [...], but I am not an active militant nor do I commune so deeply with Revolución Democrática”.

Source: Author’s own elaboration based on interviews

self-identification of the students interviewed is also linked to the process of revising history with new perspectives. Several interviewees referred to emblematic figures in Chile’s political history, as well as the role of women in the country’s return to democracy. The fieldwork performed between 2018–2023 allows us to account for the political articulation within the movement by branch of membership. When asked about the reasons that led them to identify themselves as feminists and become activists in the movement, the main reason given by the interviewees referred to situations of violence and male chauvinist, with a prevalence of 54 per cent. Twenty-six per cent mentioned a person close to them who motivated them to identify as feminists, and 20 per cent said the motivation was a literary work. The motivations thus identified can be classified into three categories: a book or intellectual person, with recurrent references like Simone Beauvoir and Judith Butler; a personal trigger, such as participating in women’s circles, which allowed them to recognise as violent, sexist or abusive certain situations they had previously experienced; and a person or figure close to them, from mothers or grandmothers to teachers12. As shown in Fig. 4.1, independent feminists are more likely to identify as feminists because of a personal event; militant feminists are more likely to be influenced by a close figure; and performative feminists are more likely to be motivated by an intellectual element (Schuster Ubilla et al., 2019, p. 233).

 One of the factors described by the theory is the identification of a sense of injustice or inequality that affects them (Downing & Rush, 1985). Likewise, starting college often prompts students to recognise themselves as feminists (Lewis et al., 2018). Other relevant factors include the role of mothers and grandmothers (Liss et  al., 2001) and the generation to which they belong (Duncan, 2010). 12

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Source: Own elaboration based on interviews conducted during fieldwork. Fig. 4.1  Feminist identification factors by feminist branch of membership. (Source: Own elaboration based on interviews conducted during fieldwork)

6 May 2018: Generational Change and the Threat of a New Backlash On 17 April 2018, the Feminist Spring came to the fore during the takeover of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Universidad Austral in Valdivia. From that date onwards, a sequence of events followed, reporting violations of students’ rights at their universities. The students’ demands were very similar regardless of university. As one interviewee said (Fig. 4.2): The members of the Coordinadora Feminista Universitaria devoted themselves to collecting petitions from all Chilean universities. [...] The petitions were very similar13.

The Chilean feminist movement in higher education has a distinct tradition of political participation, the students resorting to the movement to articulate their demands (Avendaño, 2014; Barozet, 2016; Ponce, 2016). Since 1984, the students’ political participation has been structured through the Confederation of Chilean Students; the student movement of 2011 resulted in the notable incorporation of elected representatives from private universities into the organisation (Ponce, 2016). The Coordinadora Feminista Universitaria (University Feminist Coordinator) was

 To explore the degree of overlapping demands of the 2018 student feminist movement, regardless of feminist branch of membership, see Miranda and Roque (2021). 13

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Source: Author’s own elaboration based on interviewees’descriptions and events registered in social media. Fig. 4.2  Chronology of mass feminist events in 2018. (Source: Author’s own elaboration based on interviewees’ descriptions and events registered in social media)

created in 2016. Student mobilisations have taken place at regular intervals14 over the last 20 years. Although the Feminist Spring’s spearhead was the denunciation of harassment and abuse suffered by female students at the hands of teachers and colleagues, the bulk of their demands consisted in putting an end to sexism in the areas of physical autonomy of female students and the economic autonomy of subcontracted staff. Thus, the demands can be grouped into five dimensions: non-sexist education, tackling sexual violence and discrimination, procuring care and reproductive work, sexual and reproductive rights and working conditions and subcontracting (Miranda Leibe & Roque López, 2019). Just as the Women’s Movement for Life of 1983 garnered international attention and pressured for change (Chuchryk, 1994, p.  65), the Autonomous Feminist Student Movement of 2018 was the driving force behind a plebiscite and the  In 2001 the so-called mochilazo (backpack revolt) took place, a series of student protests against a proposed public transport fare hike. In 2006, the Revolución Pingüina (Penguin Revolution, a reference to the colours of secondary school uniforms) took place, demanding the reform of the Constitutional Organic Law on Education. In 2011, the “student winter” protest was held, demanding high-quality, free and non-profit education. Every 5–7  years, student demands occupy the political agenda (Bellei et al., 2014). 14

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approval, with more than 75 per cent of the popular vote, of the proposal for a constituent process with gender equality, the first in the world.15 Following the rejection of the new constitution in the Chilean national plebiscite of 4 September 2022, a new constituent process is in the making, with substantive modifications in the way the text was drafted; gender equality, as well as the representation of aboriginal peoples, seems to be a battle won. The national context was different this time. In 2018, female students were able to position themselves as feminists. While equality in the constituent process creates the possibility of a backlash from men who fear their chances of grabbing power will be reduced, it is also an opportunity to observe how existing practices and male domination norms are broken (Franceschet & Thomas, 2015). The advancement of women’s autonomy in decision-making processes was gradual. Chile had a woman as head of state on two occasions; a women’s ministry was created, and the proportion of women in parliament has increased.16 In 2021, the country made world news when the Constituent Convention chose as president a woman of Mapuche origin (Ontivernos, 2021). Advances in women’s rights have generally excluded women from indigenous groups (Thomas, 2019). Elisa Loncón’s election as president of the Convention effectively put an end to a centuries-old stigma, not only as regards women’s limited access to high representative positions but also with respect to the exclusion the Mapuche people were subjected to by the Chilean state (Friedman & Tabusch, 2019). The road ahead is not smooth: a few months after taking office, Loncón had already been the victim of harassment by detractors both in the Constituent Assembly itself and in social networks and the mass media; she had to protect her physical integrity (Tercera, 2021). The media and social networks should take responsibility for the type of messages uploaded to and disseminated through them; however, sexist and hate discourses are scarcely restricted, even expelling activists from the platforms. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that words are often followed by actions, and these activists end up being physically endangered (Campos, 2021). Following the pink tide and the progress made in certain areas, it became clear that reaching agreements on advancing some women’s interests is easier than moving forwards in other aspects. Reaching agreements on strategic interests on full physical autonomy, i.e. freedom over one’s own body, and issues such as the legalisation of abortion or strict policies against gender-based violence, becomes more difficult. In contrast, women’s practical interests, such as autonomous decision-­ making, which “do not challenge deeply entrenched norms, such as the advancement of social rights or women’s political representation” (Friedman & Tabush, 2019, pp. 2–3), encounter fewer obstacles.

 According to data from Chile’s Electoral Service, 78.27 per cent of voters were in favour of replacing the Constitution, and 78.99 per cent voted in favour of doing so through a constitutional convention (Escudero, 2021, p. 2). 16  The Chilean Congress is currently made up of 35.5 per cent women, more than 10 percentage points higher than the 23 per cent resulting from the 2017 elections (Parline, n.d.). 15

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The threat of reversals in women’s rights is a particularly relevant issue. In Latin America, and especially in the Southern Cone, women’s predominant strategy to guarantee their rights to autonomy over their own bodies has consisted in activating judicial processes, similar to the way they tackled human rights violations cases during the dictatorship (Pousadela, 2013). In this sense, social movements play a key role in positioning pending issues as subjects of law (Pousadela, 2013). The danger of “judicialisation of social movement” identified by Ruibal (2021) in cases in which feminists use the judicial system to guarantee their rights could be sidestepped in Chile if the sexual contract (Pateman, 1989) is revised by drafting a new Constitution. Based on a case study in Brazil in contexts of legislative minority, Bohn and Levy (2019) found that when the ruling coalition must depend on socially conservative parties’ alliances (as is the case under fragmented, multiparty systems with a proliferation of Pentecostal and religious parties), some historical demands by feminist movements may not translate into public policy (247). This situation was observed in Brazil during the Lula administrations, when these conservative groups blocked and prevented progress on women’s sexual and reproductive rights (Bohn & Levy, 2019). In Chile, the rise of far-right parties like the Republican Party,17 as well as the weight of the churches’ networks close to the political elite in traditionally Catholic parties like the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), may bring the danger of setbacks closer to women’s rights. “Femocrats” are therefore key actors in channelling the demands of feminist movements and processing them through the institutional apparatus (Franceschet, 2003).

7 Conclusions Women in Chile have a long history of political participation through both institutionalised and non-institutionalised mechanisms (Jelin, 1987; Gálvez & Todaro, 1987). The distinction between women’s movements and feminist movements is useful to understand the ultimate goal of each, the former being more traditionalist and the latter more progressive, with a tendency to break with the sexist logics of patriarchal domination. Given feminists’ disenchantment with political parties, the motivation to actively participate in feminist politics has evolved. In recent decades, these demands have taken on a more feminist slant, with women’s strategic interests prevailing in the scheme of things, seeking to overcome the structures and logics of subordination (Molyneux, 2003). History has shown that every time a right-wing or conservative party takes power, the acknowledgement of the rights previously won by women suffers a regression (Friedman & Tabusch, 2019). The “classic” literature on political processes of

17

 Formed on 23 January 2020 (Partidos Constituidos | Servicio Electoral de Chile, n.d.)

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transition to democracy has tended to present power alternation as an indicator of democratic consolidation (Morlino, 1986); however, recent setbacks in women’s rights indicate that these conceptualisations need to be revised (Paxton, 2008). If women (and other historically excluded groups) are not included in every level of state power, there can be no democracy (Franceschet & Thomas, 2015). The alternation in power can be recognised as an indicator of democratic consolidation as long as the new power holder does not backtrack on already recognised and guaranteed rights. Over the last decades, obtaining the right to accede to decision-making positions and representation has advanced towards a struggle to achieve full physical and economic autonomy. Feminist and women’s movements around the world, including Chile, are a fine sample of this through their slogans. The fine line between freedom of expression and the proliferation of sexist discourse in different media also requires that media laws be revised to remove attacks and aggression. These attacks, furthermore, have been shown to often go beyond “just words” and put into action, endangering the physical integrity of feminist activists. In the framework of a constituent process that has come to revise the social and sexual pact on which Chilean society was constituted, having parity in the Assembly is clearly an opportunity to re-examine the traditional logics of male domination (Franceschet & Thomas, 2015) and to seek the recognition and guarantee of Chilean women’s rights in a transversal manner, that is, including women who have always been left out by the state (Friedman & Tabusch, 2019; Thomas, 2019). The challenge now lies in getting a new Constitution approved and ensuring that political institutions respond to re-genderisation through a new sexual pact (Pateman, 1989) recognising women not only as objects but above all as subjects of  rights (Pousadela, 2013). The so-called femocrats play a key role in this regard (Zaremberg & Rezende de Almeida, 2021; Friedman & Tabusch, 2019), and so does overcoming the internal tensions among feminist branches, which the performative current seems to be contributing to.

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https://repositorio.uc.cl/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11534/52722/Tesis%20final%20corr%20 Camila%20Sanhueza.pdf Schuster Ubilla, S., Santos Pérez, A., Miranda Leibe, L., Roque López, B., Arce-Riffo, J., & Medel Vera, E. (2019). Una mirada al movimiento feminista en Chile del año 2018: Hitos, agenda y desafíos. IBEROAMERICANA.  América Latina  – España  – Portugal, 19(72), 10.18441/ ibam.19.2019.72.223-245. Snow, D.  A., & Trom, D. (2002). The case study and the study of social movements. In S. Klamdermans & S. Staggenborg (Eds.), Methods of social movement research (pp. 146–172). University of Minnesota Press. Stevens, E. P., & Soler, M. (1974). El marianismo: La otra cara del machismo en América Latina. Diálogos: Artes, Letras, Ciencias Humanas, 10(55), 17–24. Stoffel, S. (2008). Rethinking political representation: The case of institutionalised feminist organisations in Chile. Representations, 44(2), 141–154. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00344890802079631 Suárez-Cao, J. (2021). Reconstructing legitimacy after crisis: The chilean path to a new constitution. Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, 13, 253–264. Tercera, L. (2021, July 18). Delgado aborda solicitud de protección para Elisa Loncon y refuerza que debe hacerse un “análisis para otorgarle la seguridad de Carabineros.” La Tercera. https:// www.latercera.com/nacional/noticia/delgado-­aborda-­solicitud-­de-­proteccion-­para-­elisa-­ loncon-­y-­refuerza-­que-­debe-­hacerse-­un-­analisis-­para-­otorgarle-­la-­seguridad-­de-­carabineros/ JCLEYXNSYBAVVL4RJIICHF46TE/ Tessada Sepúlveda, V. T. (2013). Democracia en el país y en la casa. Reflexión y activismo feminista durante la dictadura de Pinochet (1973–1989). Cuadernos Koré. Revista de historia y pensamiento de género, 8, 96–117. Thomas, G. (2019). Working within a gendered political consensus: Uneven Progress on gender and sexuality rights in Chile. In E. J. Friedman (Ed.), Seeking rights from the left. Gender, sexuality, and the Latin American pink tide (pp. 115–143). Duke University Press. Valdés, T., & Weinstein, M. (1993). Mujeres que sueñan: Las organizaciones de pobladoras : 1973–1989. Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales. Valdés, T., Weinstein, M., Toledo, M. I., & Letelier, L. (1989). Centros de madres 1973–1989: ¿solo disciplinamiento? Programa FLACSO-Chile. Weldon, S. L. (2002). Protest, policy, and the problem of violence against women: A cross-national comparison. University of Pittsburgh Press. https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/ pitt:31735045729609 Zaremberg, G., & Rezende de Almeida, D. (2021). Blocking anti-choice conservatives: Feminist institutional networks in Mexico and Brazil (2000–2018). International Feminist Journal of Politics, 23(4), 600–624. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2021.1954047 Zucker, A. N., & Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2010). Minding the gap between feminist identity and attitudes: The behavioral and ideological divide between feminists and non-labelers. Journal of Personality, 78(6), 1895–1924. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-­6494.2010.00673.x

Chapter 5

Feminist and Women’s Activism in Colombia Emma Doris López Rodríguez and Martha Isabel Meriño Fontalvo

Contents 1  Introduction 2  Feminist Activism in Colombia 3  Recent Manifestations of Feminist Activism in Colombia 4  Broadening Participatory Spaces and Inclusion 5  The Conservative Reaction 6  Concluding Remarks References

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1 Introduction Social mobilisation has become the main strategy to vindicate rights, and it has also turned into the arena for political struggle in defence of human rights and against class privilege and social, economic, political and gender inequality, in opposition to corruption, racism, classism, sexism and various forms of abuse and violence. Social mobilisation insists on state commitment as a way of guaranteeing the effective, progressive implementation of these claims for justice and equity and the governments’ response to them. Since its beginnings, the feminist and women’s movement developed diverse strategies of political advocacy and demands to have their rights recognised. To this aim, it was nourished by varied organisational experiences, through dialogue with the various currents of feminist thought and practices, and also with other global and local discourses by which it was influenced. This chapter gives an account of the organisational processes of women and feminists in Colombia in the period beginning in 1991, the promulgation date of a Political Constitution that expanded the framework of rights and freedoms. In order to address the issue, we propose qualitative, documentary and descriptive research,

E. D. López Rodríguez (*) · M. I. Meriño Fontalvo Universidad Simón Bolivar-Barranquilla & Fundación Teknos, Barranquilla, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. M. Pousadela, S. R. Bohn (eds.), Women’s Rights in Movement, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8_5

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based on the strategy of collecting textual and contextual bibliohemerographic sources gathered for this purpose and using observation techniques, content analysis and mixed files. The chapter begins with a historical survey of feminist activism in Colombia, after which some of its recent manifestations are presented, and analyses, on the one hand, the processes of inclusion and expansion of participatory spaces and, on the other, the conservative reaction to Colombian feminist and women’s activism.

2 Feminist Activism in Colombia An analysis of feminist activism in Colombia requires an understanding of the history that shaped and structured it. The feminist ideas that swept Europe and North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reached Latin America through various channels, including the socialist movement, which came from the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. This facilitated the access to these ideas by women who had just arrived from the countryside and gradually joined the urban working life, also easing the questioning, appropriation, resignification and diversification of these concepts. The arrival of socialist ideas in the twentieth-century Latin America enabled another way of reading feminism, not only through the incorporation of social and political issues linked to social justice demands in the face of the dictatorial nature of the governments that proliferated on the continent but also on account of the violence exercised by the political and military elites in power. Thus, Latin American feminisms sustained a political revolution that did not begin by seizing power or contesting it, but with the questioning of the cultural foundations of the political and symbolic order on which it lays. This basically includes the criticism of patriarchy and, more recently, of the modern-colonial version that reorients it. Voices denouncing multiple subjections (to class, race, gender and sexuality, among others) emerged in this context. This “polyphony” of Latin American feminism (Lamus Canavate, 2018) resulted in multiple forms of activism in every social sphere. The feminist discourse was constructed not only through its intersection with the socialist discourse or that of democratic economic development (López Rodríguez & García Terán, 2019) – it was also influenced by Marxism and intellectual currents linked to the decolonial programme. In Latin America, the claims for identity (which had already made strides in North America, thanks to the migration of intellectuals from countries recently liberated from colonial oppression) were taken up again with the support of the academic-political projects in the region. This represented, then, the advent of feminist discourses and practices inspired by “post” notions – postmodern, post-structural and postcolonial – in confrontation, primarily, with the so-called hegemonic feminism. Thus, together with postmodern and postcolonial positions, a new path of decolonial reflection opened up (Castro-Gómez & Grosfoguel, 2007), and it is already established in the regional context. Relatively recent in Colombia, it is assumed to be anti-racist, anti-capitalist and anti-­patriarchal.

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Today, the debates on indigenous peoples and people of African descent, and the Afrofeminisms and the community, peasant and popular feminisms are being addressed in a decolonial context (Lamus Cavanate, 2021). Lélia González, who promoted “Amefricanity” from a feminist perspective, and Julieta Paredes, who advocated feminist activism from a pedagogical perspective, clearly stand out in this current. Another marked influence on the feminist and women’s movement is related to globalisation and the technological advances in telecommunications since the 1990s, which offered organisations new cohesion and mobilisation manners, allowing them to multiply and to diversify. The social media, the university training programmes, the political schools of the organisations, the feminist and women’s NGOs multiplied and further extended the reach of their programmatic agenda and their written output and research. In this way, they were able to expand their participation and expression in other areas of the sciences, the arts and culture; this led to the uncontainable irruption of new women’s groups. Many of them self-identify as feminists, and others prefer to identify themselves as defenders of women’s rights; however, both share spaces and projects with other initiatives and demands (Lamus Canavate, 2018), because feminist demands are basically focused on eliminating the inequalities of (patriarchal) power. According to Karim (2022), other women in progressive movements engage in actions and demands of a feminist nature, and others directly target gender inequality, without necessarily identifying with the “feminist” label. The latter is particularly true of poor rural women and many others who choose not to identify with feminism in order to avoid a negative political backlash or reaction. At this point, it is important to mention the stance of women who adhere to autonomism and their position in the political tension between left and right. They are generally reluctant to identify with either of these two political positions, both in terms of militant practice and party affiliation, even if these are considered necessary in the struggle against patriarchal power and in sustaining the spaces they conquered. However, for Falquet (2014), autonomism is a numerical minority, and therefore it has little political impact, often consisting in informal, ephemeral groups and individual activists who, like the feminists, criticise the neoconservative and neocolonial order but also question the gender category as a tool for depoliticising feminism, a reductionist concept that leads to the neglect of other social relations of power. However, in an interview with Sentiido (2020b), Beatríz Quintero, a visible protagonist of the second wave of feminism in Colombia, expressed that “Feminism guarantees a freedom different from security, with more equality and autonomy, and there are people afraid to take the leap towards autonomy”. At any rate, women’s movements, in this fourth wave, are pushing for equality, autonomy and freedom. On the other hand, a process of institutionalisation of liberal democratic feminist and women’s movements began by the end of the twentieth century. At state level, this was accompanied by the predominance of technocratic approaches to political participation and public policy advocacy (Lamus Canavate, 2010). The liberal-­ inspired feminism of this period – whether mainstream or hegemonic, depending on one’s interpretation  – was driven by highly educated women at universities and

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research centres, which expanded along with an intense process of “NGOisation” of feminist and women’s social movements. Indeed, another prominent element of this period was the incorporation of the gender category in the discourse and practices of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as well as in feminist academia, the media and the state, through gender equity policies won by the movements (Lamus Cavanate, 2021). From this perspective, NGOs represent a before and after experience in the blueprint of feminism. Indeed, according to Álvarez (2019), NGOs establish networks of action formally and informally articulated, interconnecting not only NGOs and collectives bearing the feminist label but also liaising individuals and more or less formalised groups located in various spaces of civil society that identify as such.

2.1 The 1991 Political Constitution and the Feminist Agenda Women’s and feminist social movements experienced an upsurge in the 1990s, a historical moment that allowed them to play a role in the discussion and drafting of the new Constitution. This was mainly articulated through their participation in the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), which gave rise to constitutional norms even if they were not consensual. “In spite of this, several meetings were held to define a joint agenda in the ANC. Women’s groups actively participated in the pre-­ constituent process and in the working groups it promoted” (Buchely Ibarra, 2014, p. 89). The Women and Constituent Assembly National Network was the predecessor of the National Network of Women, now 30 years old. This national network was conceived as a convergence and articulation space for independent women and women’s organisations as well as feminists and leaders present in different regions of Colombia. From the beginning, these women played a fundamental role in the pre-­ constitutional process, especially in the recognition of women’s rights in the country and in disseminating the Constitution. This process marked the transition from a state based on the rule of law to a social state based on the rule of law. For the first time, women were able to participate as constituents and candidates, an advance in the construction of a new legal model oriented towards material equality (contemplated in Articles 13 and 42 of the 1991 Political Constitution), influence in scenarios of participation at decision-­ making levels (Article 40), with increased influence in the incorporation of concepts such as gender perspective or approach, equal gender opportunities (Articles 107, 127 and 272) and systems aimed at protecting women (Articles 43 and 53). In general, the constitutional norms allowed the women’s and feminist movement to enter a new stage in public discussion, now from a feminist perspective, also linked to the institutional framework. Thanks to the role of academia and the support of aid agencies, issues such as parity, care, basic income, sexual and reproductive rights and abortion entered the agenda, and women’s movements demanded affirmative action from the state through the implementation of public policies.

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According to Buchely Ibarra (2014), these constitutional transformations had an impact on different dimensions of women’s lives. The development of equality jurisprudence in favour of formal equality changed the centres and peripheries of constitutional law, and gender took centre stage. This also changed the assumptions of constitutional law, mainly in the distinction between public and private, allowing the creation of an institutional language for the analysis of gender issues. This was underpinned by feminist participation in the constituent process that led to the drafting of the new Constitution. Claudia Mejía is a former director of Sisma Mujer, an organisation which, together with the National Women’s Network, spearheaded women’s visibility in the constituent assembly. She acknowledges that feminist women did not possess a representation of their own in this stage  – there was a very heated debate about whether the constituent assembly should be reached through political parties or autonomously. Thus, women with political party affiliation coalesced with their parties, and autonomous women were not strong enough to obtain their own representation, “which forced us to get together, and we agreed on some points and presented a single agenda to the constituent assembly. We won all points except the one the liberal constituents said would put them at odds with the Catholic Church; they did not want to join that conversation [on abortion] because they needed it for other reforms” (Sentiido, 2020a). To a certain extent, the achievements of feminist mobilisation were turned into norms; thus, the 1991 Political Constitution also corresponds to the process of institutionalisation of the struggle against discrimination and violence against women, which enabled the formulation, years later, of Law 1257 of 2008 on the prevention of violence against women. The Follow-up Committee of the above-mentioned law included the participation of women; it also opened up decentralisation processes that allow for the participation of women from the various regions of the country. At this point, it is pertinent to highlight the mission entrusted to Colombia by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) through the creation of the UNESCO Chair: Prevention of Violence against Women. The first in Latin America, this Chair was launched in 2022 in the city of Barranquilla, and it counts on the support of university institutions and civil organisations promoting and defending women’s right to a life free of violence. Presidential Decree 1719 of 2020 established norms against discrimination and violence and created the Mechanism for the Comprehensive Approach to Sex and Gender-Based Violence against women, children and adolescents. It aimed at ensuring inter-institutional coordination at national, departmental, district and municipal levels of the technical and operational response to manage knowledge, promote the right to a life free of violence, prevent violence and provide care, protection and access to justice for girls, boys and adolescents and female victims of violence based on sex and gender. Its role also includes coordinating and articulating the technical and operational public policy actions of the different authorities and agents of the National Family Welfare System and the National Women’s System. These processes of institutionalisation sought to guarantee the stability and permanence over time of the demands of women and feminist organisations, thereby

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preventing setbacks resulting from the discontinuity between government administrations. They also pursued the configuration of an articulation mechanism for three bodies  – a national coordination and management body, a nationwide technical body and territorial committees – to address the violence based on sex and gender in a comprehensive manner. The creation of this articulation mechanism gathered momentum as a result of the pressure from the women’s movement, which tried to secure a guarantee for their human rights that took into account the cross-cutting nature of gender equality and its different manifestations.

2.2 Armed Conflict, Peace Process, Women’s Movement and Feminism If the constituent process was a historical-political milestone in women’s and feminist activism, the same was true of the armed conflict, which affected a substantial part of Colombia’s contemporary history, a period in which the women’s movement was not able to remain on the sidelines. Different instances can be identified in the relationship of Colombian feminist and women’s movement with the armed conflict and with the negotiation processes between government and insurgency, which ended with the Havana peace agreement. These instances saw different positions taken by different segments of feminist and women’s organisations. One of the emblematic situations that unified feminist activism and the women’s movement in Colombia was, precisely, related to the armed conflict. According to Herrera and García (2009), the armed conflict of the 1990s resulted in a new sociopolitical reality characterised by the formation and presentation of demands by collectives reacting to the violation of their rights. These demands were mainly led by mothers, daughters and sisters of direct or indirect victims of the armed conflict. During this violent period in Colombia, women confronted the state, notorious for its absence and violence. Women joined forces for their rights and for the construction of a country that would promote justice, memory and reconciliation, now with a new purpose: the empowerment of women. This approach brought together the demands of both feminist and non-feminist women’s collectives. In this process, the women’s movement adopted certain features from feminism, specifically its postulation of the need to fight patriarchal power. This “can be seen in the fact that women victims of the conflict were victimised in a different manner than men. Therefore, crimes such as forced displacement developed in a disproportionate way with respect to women” (Osorio Sánchez et al., 2018, p. 56). However, it should be remembered that most founders of the women’s movements of the 1970s, corresponding to the second wave of feminism and a moment of national tension due to the armed conflict, came from other social and political struggles of the time. Influenced by the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions, they demanded processes of transformation of the social, political, economic and legal order and raised the banners of social justice and anti-capitalism, or against

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militarism and the state (López, 2018). Other specific demands were added to these claims, such as the implementation of public policies for women, and specifically sexual and reproductive health care. Since the origins of the feminist and women’s movement, the state’s response to feminist demands in Colombia resulted in welfarism patterns and the reproduction of the sexual division of labour (López, 2018). This has resulted in the design and implementation of aid and special protection programmes for women under the premise that women need greater support in their care chores in the (unpaid) reproductive work within the family, but not in the (remunerated) productive work, which requires other commitments in terms of social justice and equity. In the most recent peace negotiation process between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC guerrillas (2012–2016), the spectrum of political demands and the level of participation of social movements and human rights defenders broadened, including sectors of feminism linked to sexual diversity and people from the LGTBQI+ community fighting for greater guarantees and the elimination of multiple inequalities, discrimination and violations of fundamental rights (Caribe Afirmativo, 2017). In the post-agreement (or post-conflict, according to some sectors) period, the exemplary actions carried out by women at local level stood out from the rest, such as the activities of the Women’s House of Bogotá and other women’s organisations in the capital city. In the midst of the negotiations between government and guerrillas, these organisations held the First National Summit of Women and Peace, whose political impact was reflected in the creation of the Women and Peace group in Havana, bringing the issue of violence against women in the armed conflict context to the peace agreements’ negotiations (Sentiido, 2020a). In spite of their progress, the leadership of women, whether feminist or not, was incipient, as their participation was marked by their pronounced numerical inferiority and their capacity for political advocacy. According to Chaparro and Martínez (2016, cited in Garrido Ortolá, 2020), the presence of women in support roles in the negotiation processes was 9.71 per cent (Belisario Betancur), 62.92 per cent (Andrés Pastrana), 38.46 per cent (Álvaro Uribe) and 65.78 per cent (Juan Manuel Santos), which illustrates the process of ebb and flow of the struggle of women and feminists at different moments in the history of the nation. The ebb was repeated during the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2022. Compulsory confinement brought with it a worrying shift from women’s mobilisation to immobilisation in a context of an enormous increase of domestic violence. According to reports by the Observatory of the Antimilitarist Feminist Network, between January and November 2020, more than 569 murders of women were reported; femicides are said to have increased by 9.4 per cent compared to the same period the previous year. Agencies like the World Health Organization mentioned the social and economic repercussions of the pandemic without ignoring women’s particular exposure to abusive contexts and violence, which increased the risk for their lives. In this sense, the humanitarian crisis and women’s political demands for equality gave way to a mobilisation seeking to safeguard life in situations of vulnerability and risk.

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In spite of the health restriction measures, in April 2021, right at the third peak of the pandemic, a national strike took place that lasted until mid-June. Although the trigger for this “outbreak” was defused withdrawing the tax reform project from Congress, demonstrations continued in some areas of the country. In this context of general national mobilisation, women’s and feminist organisations took up the agenda of non-violence against gender violence, urging the state to activate protocols for the care, security and protection of women’s lives in the face of the increased violence during the confinement period. More recently, in the context of the election of the President of the Republic of Colombia for the period 2023–2026, a large national mobilisation of the various sectors of the feminist and women’s movement took place, this time in support of the vice-presidential candidacy of Francia Elena Márquez Mina. Márquez’s appearance on the political scene, mediated by the symbolic representation of her leadership, meant the rise to power of subaltern sectors in the face of the conservative political hegemony of more than 50 years. Indeed, she was a black woman, from a popular background, and was connected with the environmental movement, but the main reason was the content of her proposal. Her platform focused on social inclusion, the vindication of rights and the establishment of a Ministry of Equality as one of the elements for the construction of peace, political, social and economic equality for women and the LGBTQI+ population and other minorities, such as racial and ethnic groups. Summing up, the marked influence of feminist and women’s movements worldwide reoriented not only the social and political activism of women in Colombia but also the attention paid to some categories and theories debated by them, including inclusion/exclusion and sexual or gender identity (Herrera and García, 2009). However, as López Rodríguez and García Terán (2019) argue, there is more of a record of the collective actions and political debates that accompany women and their identity struggles, rather than theoretical-political and strategic bodies of a project as a social movement. In any case, peace, a demand present in social struggles in general, takes on particular relevance in contemporary Colombian feminist activism, due to the circumstances bequeathed by the conflict, the post-agreement and the pandemic. Through critical reflection and mobilisation, different ways of leading social and political processes were constructed, ranging from the demand for national reconciliation to the guaranteed recognition of sexual and gender diversity. In this way, they influenced political scenarios and parties with mobilising criticism for the construction of a new society structured around coexistence with solidarity, social justice, equity and peace.

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3 Recent Manifestations of Feminist Activism in Colombia 3.1 Academy At the end of the 1960s, the Women’s Collective emerged in Bogotá, which actively participated in pro-abortion events of 1979; the Casa de la Mujer emerged from it, with the participation of female academics. Coincidentally, Women and Society emerged within the National University of Bogotá. It became an emblematic feminist organisation in Colombia, later institutionalised as an academic unit promoting gender studies (Archila, 2013). López (2018) argues that academia played a significant role in women’s social movements. These movements were strengthened in the political and educational spheres and also through legislation acknowledging women’s rights. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC, 2023), the average number of years of study for women aged 25–59 in Colombia increased from 7.8 years in 2002 to 8.8 years in 2002 and to 10.2 years in 2021. In contrast, several studies and analyses show that the incorporation of women into university teaching in Colombia was slow compared to other countries in the continent (Wills Obregón & Londoño Lopez, 2007). The increase reflected by ECLAC today is the result of different elements, one of which is related to gender studies at university level. However, the non-recognition or lack of institutional support for these processes of inclusion on the part of the heads of some universities focused on generating dialogue spaces for exchanges between the social and the academic. As a result, relevant scenarios for feminist activism were lost, particularly with regard to the mobilisation of ideas, the generation of thought and the dissemination of theoretical knowledge. Certainly, since the recognition of their rights in Colombia, women’s access to higher education increased significantly. However, this growth did not translate into a similar increase in the possibility of occupying leadership positions at universities and in research activities. To date, Professor Olga Ester Salcedo, appointed chancellor of the National University of Colombia, is the only woman to obtain this leadership position in a public university. Women’s lack of opportunities and visibility in academia is one of the great challenges or debts owed to women in the country. The picture is similar in scientific research, with a greater number of women in research assistant positions and a striking shortage of women leaders of research centres and projects (Gallego Torres & Fino Peña, 2021). Also worth noticing is the increase in the number of research groups in the country’s universities that included feminism, gender, gender violence and women’s human rights, among others, in their lines of research and postgraduate programmes. This resulted in extensive scientific production evidenced by the publication of journal articles, book chapters and books available in libraries, and it can also be noticed in the establishment of women’s documentation centres, repositories, web pages and networks. All of this contributed to the advancement of knowledge on women’s rights and favoured effective advocacy for women’s participation in academia.

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3.2 Local Experiences Beyond academia, there is important work on women’s organisation and participation, which also contributed to the enrichment of political debates and actions in Colombia. López (2018) refers to the particular experience of Bogotá: between 2003 and 2013, when it had a local government with a gender perspective, the city undertook organisational processes built on that basis and implemented a gender policy that strengthened the women’s social movement with feminist demands and identitarian discourses. This experience did not always have positive results, and consequently generated frustration, with considerable emotional and psychological consequences for some protagonists. Although there were innovations suggested by the women’s movement, such as the incorporation of the demands of sexual diversity and others referring to race, racism and black feminism (López, 2018), the frustrations were due to the fact that “these achievements have not been for everyone, nor have they allowed us to unravel the logics that underlie other forms of oppression” (Bernal Olarte, 2018, p. 88). Another activism experience at local and community level that should be mentioned for its originality occurred in Medellín, Antioquia. There, between 2017 and 2019, some 2000 women organised a movement defined as feminist and called Estamos Listas (We Are Ready). This political-electoral movement was the first registered feminist political party. Plural and diverse, it included housewives, grassroots female leaders, teachers, domestic workers and household workers, among others. Its origin was local, but “after the results of the 2016 Peace Plebiscite, it decided to work on a political alternative to contribute to extend the political and democratic transition to the rest of the country. From that moment on, and during 2018, a process of organising and expansion took place in Medellín” (Estamos Listas, n.d.). The movement was created for electoral purposes, to participate in the municipal elections, in which more than 2000 women collectively ran for the city council. Their programme focused on tackling violence against women and implementing a gender-sensitive policy. This interesting experience motivated and mobilised many women, and was replicated nationwide. One of its most relevant results was the prominence of Dora Saldarriaga, who won a seat in this local political space, after which other regions began to ask to join the movement (Oquendo, 2022). Also, Colombian feminist and women’s activism found one of its models for social action and political advocacy in the Colombian Caribbean or Atlantic Coast, in the northern part of the country, mainly due to its cultural, racial, religious, social, economic and political diversity, which translates into plurality. As expressed by Orozco Cantillo (2014), the region enjoys great diversity, thanks to the convergence of the cultural identities of its territories; it is the amalgam of variegated knowledge and abilities, cultures, textures, climates, flavours and ethnicities (Herrera Huérfano et al., 2014). This gives feminism a differential approach to the territorial and the political, precisely by thinking outside the centres of thought and enunciating its distinctive contribution from there. This refers to the fact that, in Colombia, the debate by central and peripheral areas was historically and systematically

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legitimised not only as regards knowledge but also with respect to the kind of political action that possesses the capacity make an impact beyond the local. As in the rest of the country, the feminism on the Atlantic Coast was initially promoted by upper-middle class women. It was encouraged from the centre of the country – the capital city – by academic women who, after being educated abroad, returned with new knowledge and a strong desire for change, proclaiming slogans that affirmed such novel notions as “the body as territory”, freedom, the proposal to try other forms of family organisation, criticism of the patriarchal system, the right to divorce and sexual education, among others (Herrera & García, 2009). Promoting and disseminating these new ideas contributed to feminist activism and gave way to new adjustments in their agendas. Women’s movements, both nationally and in the Caribbean region, had two approaches, advocacy and resistance, that is, oriented towards improving and developing norms, institutions, plans and policies, as well as resisting territorial conflicts that victimise women (Luna and Villarreal, 2011, cited in López, 2018). This does not imply ignoring the differences in the positions sustained by the realities of the women’s sectors that represent, make up and defend them in each space; it rather promotes the plurality of worldviews. This is arguably the most representative factor of the feminist social movement in Colombia, especially if we analyse the political and social representations and leaderships that emerged from the perspective of Caribbean women. Thus, the Caribbean node of the National Women’s Network is made up of feminists who pursue four objectives: a life free of violence, women’s political participation, sexual and reproductive rights and women’s participation in constructing and maintaining peace. As part of the organisations in the Colombian Caribbean present at national level, the Teknos Foundation – Women’s Network against Violence, which not only promotes a life free of gender-based violence but also works in environmental management  – has been developing its work for more than a decade in the city of Barranquilla. This space for local, departmental, regional and national articulation is part of the technical secretariat of the UNESCO Chair: Prevention of violence against women, together with university institutions and allied civil organisations. The official launch of the Chair took place in 2022 in this city in the Colombian Caribbean, with the presence of the High Presidential Commissioner for Women’s Affairs. In this way, commitments were made to strengthen existing legal provisions, such as monitoring the implementation of the gender approach of Law 1257 of 2008 and the National Development Plan of 2022–2026. Likewise, in Riohacha, La Guajira, there are also important organisational spaces such as the Empowered Women’s Organisation, the Villanueva Chapter Women’s Association, the Urumita Association of Displaced Persons, the Armour of God Foundation and the Jawapia Social Foundation. In Santa Marta, Magdalena, we can mention the Santa Marta Women’s Network, Asopaz, Women of Edumag (Magdalena educators’ union), Land of Hope, Santa Marta Neighbourhood Committee, Association of Entrepreneur Peasant Women of Magdalena, Future Women  and the Association of Women Victims of the Armed Conflict, among

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others. Finally, the National Women’s Network, the Women’s Network and the Association of Social Work of San Andrés may be found in San Andrés Islas. Also in the local context and on the issue of eradicating violence, the women’s social movement of the Roundtable for the Eradication of Violence was one of the experiences that produced the greatest advances in the Caribbean region. This is “a consultative articulation space to formulate policies, plans and programmes contributing to prevent and punish violence against women; it is based on a perspective of dialogue that integrates action and experiences of attention, prevention, and punishment of violence against women, to identify the mismatches between norms and practices and the obstacles that obstruct access to justice” (López Rodríguez & Avendaño Carrillo, 2019). The Mesa emerged in the Caribbean region, specifically in the department of Atlántico, in reaction to exacerbated violence, including a growing number of cases of femicides and death threats, which women’s movements made visible, arguing that they should be addressed as a problem in the sphere of public health and public order, dealing with this social conflict from a gender perspective. The Roundtable was built and constituted, thanks to the above-mentioned movements, after giving visibility to the problem of insecurity through the media and holding public actions such as sit-ins, marches, walks and pots and pans demonstrations. The institutionalisation of the Departmental Roundtable to Eradicate Violence against Women (Decree No. 000907 of 2015, partially modified by Decree 000298 of 2017) was one of the significant achievements of the women’s social movement for democracy in the department of Atlántico. This decision granted the governor the power to form the Roundtable without undermining the voice and vote of the women in the movement. The Mesa is enabled to act as a consultative and advisory body; to review programmes related to the prevention, care, punishment and intervention in cases of violence against women; to forge alliances to achieve these goals; and to act as mediators and coordinators of district, municipal, departmental and national government levels to agree on mechanisms to overcome structural barriers undermining the prevention of violence against women or the comprehensive care of the victims of such violence (Gobernación del Atlántico, 2018). This constitutes a means of interaction between civil society and governmental actors. It is worth noting that, between 2021 and 2023, the Roundtable for the eradication of violence against women began a new transition towards a space called “Departmental and District Inter-sectoral Committee for the prevention of violence based on sex, gender, care, protection and access to justice for children, adolescents and women victims of violence”, on the strength of Presidential Decree 1710 of 2020. Thus, various spaces exist in the country for women’s participation and articulation strategies to make their rights visible in institutional and mixed scenarios, such as the consultative councils for women, the municipal women’s roundtables, the women’s citizen oversight bodies, women’s confluences, the roundtable for monitoring Law 1257, the roundtable for life and peace and the roundtable for the right to make their own decisions. In the department of Atlántico, the Women’s Consultative Council was created by Decree 000226 of 2019, as a space for women

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to participate representing organisations in a diversity of areas, such as disability, victims, LGBTQI+ population, sports, culture, youth and academia, among others. This Consultative Council is the body in charge of coordination, articulation, agreement and co-responsibility among women’s organisations, groups, networks and the departmental administration, in the framework of the Public Policy on Women and Gender Equality (Gobernación del Atlántico, 2019).

4 Broadening Participatory Spaces and Inclusion Black feminism, anti-racist feminism and lesbofeminism stand out among the multiple influences on feminist and women’s activism in Colombia, mainly due to the former movement’s decolonial commitment and their critique of “hegemonic feminism”. Their presence broadened the inclusive vision in the country, easing the articulation with the Afro and transwomen’s agenda.

4.1 Afro-Colombian Women The Afro-Colombian, black, Palenquera and Raizal communities represent, in demographic terms, a significant proportion of the total population of the insular and continental Caribbean region. It is therefore important to reflect on the political and cultural role of these women’s organisations in the organisational processes of the region and the country, and on the impact of poverty and violence, which have historically plagued these territories and affected the families living in them (Lamus Canavate, 2012). This is how the first considerations about their organisations and articulations came about. These women’s groups demand social mobilisation strategies with greater solidarity and restorative justice practices, deconstructing stereotypical representations of Afro-descendant women. To this end, they seek to recover practices of good Afro-descendant living and build black feminisms that are emancipatory and situated in each context, not homogenous but open to the cultural and political dynamics of black/Afro women (Corpas Figueroa, 2018). Likewise, Lamus Canavate (2012) argues that, in the decades since the 1991 Constitution, academic and political debates about the problems derived from the “racialisation” of the African-descendant population have increased, and their numerical, historical and cultural presence as a constituent part of Colombian society has gained relevance. Previously, this population was invisible as an ethno-­ political category, and it was only at the end of the 1970s that it became visible, after the first UNESCO Congress on Black Culture of the Americas. Talk of “negritudes” began at this event, with the participation of defenders of the art and culture of these communities such as Manuel, Juan and Delia Zapata Olivella. Black community groups and processes became particularly relevant after the 1991 Political Constitution and Law 70 of 1993. The Cimarrón Movement (1982)

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and the Black Communities Process brought together dozens of groups in places like Guapi (Cauca) and Guachené (Valle), as well as organisations in cities like Barranquilla, Cartagena, Bogotá, Medellín and Cali. The efforts of academia to make black women visible as an object of study for historiography in the social sciences are worthy of notice, unveiling realities silenced by androcentrism, which has a dominant presence there. Women’s groups, however, emerged somewhat in the shadow of male or mixed groups. In a context in which ancestral customs, myths and practices were safeguarded, Afro-descendant women’s movements succeeded in preserving their customs, such as funeral rites, typical hairstyles and clothing, which remained alive in the local culture. Palenquero women are named after their place of origin, San Basilio de Palenque, a community near Cartagena formed by black slaves’ descendants who preserve their own language (Palenque) and customs. They travel daily to the city of Cartagena to sell fruits and traditional sweets, where they can be identified by their colourful dresses. The Afro-Colombian women’s movement made a significant contribution to maintain the Palenque language, creating a sense of belonging and appropriation rather than a negotiation of cultural elements. It also contributed to the household economy independently of men (Duran, 2021). One of their main demands is that culture may be transformed and that tradition not be used as an excuse to perpetrate violence against women (Avella Bermúdez, 2017).

4.2 Transgender Women Also pushing for specific demands associated with their own needs is the LGBTQI+ community. In Colombia, transgender-specific issues and topics lacked visibility, suffered low recognition and possessed scarce resources. Gradually, however, this community designed its own spaces for participation and agenda, even if it still needs to be articulated and consolidated as part of the LGBTQI+ movement’s agenda (Sánchez Barrera, 2017). In some territories of the Colombian Caribbean, LGBTQI+ movements participated in joint struggles with feminist movements holding public actions, commemorations and symbolic acts on significant dates, also aiding in the construction of an inclusive country with democracy, social justice and peace (Caribe Afirmativo, 2013). The municipalities in the Colombian Caribbean where Peace Houses have been operating since 2018 are Maicao, La Guajira; Ciénaga, Magdalena; Soledad, Atlántico; and El Carmen, Bolívar. They seek to become spaces for LGBTQI+ civil society to participate in peace-building processes, based on the idea that equality and respect for diversity guarantee a stable and lasting peace. In recent years, feminist and LGBTQI+ social movements saw progress in their demands, uniting in the midst of differences and diversity in common struggles for the right to a life free of violence, with political parity, sexual and reproductive rights and social development in the country (Caribe Afirmativo, 2018).

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It is worth noting that the final report of the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition, entitled “My body is the truth” – an investigative document put together with the help of the Caribe Afirmativo organisation – concludes that LGBTQI+ people “were threatened, displaced and sexually assaulted to force them to leave their territories” (Comisión de la Verdad, 2022). This situation reveals that human rights were consistently violated, weakening the social fabric to the detriment of the organisational processes and social demands of this population. The globalisation dynamics, the emergence of the Internet and alternative media permitted the emergence of organisational initiatives. Fully aware of their rights, these organisations managed to empower, recognise and strengthen movements with a significant presence of Afro/Black women, peasant women, rural women, victims, LGBTQI+ women, human rights defenders, trade unionists, health workers, environmentalists, community mothers, young people, ethnic and ancestral populations, people with disabilities and older women, among others. Feminists or not, they organise themselves to defend women’s rights, according to Sánchez Barrera (2017), forming networks with people from civil society and non-­ governmental organisations who share the same interests and identify with women’s empowerment and with their reasons for mobilisation. It is also worth mentioning that conservative religious sectors are growing in Colombia, opposing LGBTQI+ equality, the decriminalisation of abortion and sexual and reproductive rights. Olga Amparo Sánchez, director of the Women’s House in Bogotá, said in an interview that the growth of the orthodox religious mentality “is a global strategy (present) not only in Colombia, arousing interest from many Christian churches because they offer a message of optimism, something like, if you comply with certain guidelines you earn Heaven; this has transcendence and weight for people; this fits in with their needs and their search (for meaning)” (Sentiido, 2020c). In this sense, the political and media impact of these conservative sectors in rejecting what they call “gender ideology” must be underlined. This would have been the ghost haunting Colombia if the Plebiscite for Peace been of 2016 had triumphed, and was a fundamental part of an intense and successful political campaign against this Consultative Process.

5 The Conservative Reaction The strength shown over the years by feminist activism in Colombia faced the rejection of an important sector of Colombian society with conservative roots, which denies and restricts the social participation of feminist and women’s activism. It also seeks to preserve a supposedly natural order through a fierce counter-attack on women’s rights, especially against feminists, for their profile contrary to the androgynous hegemony. Indeed, Colombia is one of the countries in the region with the strongest presence of a conservative elite in power. These are powerful actors with political ideas

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that rely on a rhetoric based on (natural) rights to justify violence and repression. A paradigmatic case was seen in the demonstrations of support during the campaign of former president Iván Duque Márquez (2018–2022). Indeed, under his mandate, the feminist policies passed were insufficient. As Corredor (2021) notes, head-on anti-gender campaigns classify feminist and queer interpretations of gender as “gender ideology”, “genderism” and “gender theory”, a rhetorical effort to delegitimise both feminists and LGBTQI+ people and their respective collectives. The prejudices in Colombia against the social movement that fights for equality replicate many discriminatory attitudes found in Latin American countries, claiming that feminists are careless in their personal appearance, hate men, want to change everything, cannot agree on anything and take everything to extremes (Valdivieso, 2017). For her part, Villafranca (2019) states that still there are judges, women and men, who specialise in violence against women but reject feminism: they do not want to be described as feminists because of the prejudices associated with a social and political movement that fights for equality between men and women, and also due to the rejection it generates. In recent decades Colombia has made important achievements promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment, but there is still a long way to go (UN Women Colombia, n.d.).

6 Concluding Remarks History owes a great debt to women from the moment it deliberately decided to exclude them from the narratives and visions of the world, ignoring their participation as important actors, their sensitivity, their contributions, their views and legitimate needs. Women’s voices were silenced or delegitimised, and their active participation in the development of societies was undervalued. As a result, history was written from an androcentric perspective that promotes and invigorates machismo, as it shows men as subjects capable of great enterprises and sacrifices in wars, but says little or nothing about the role of women in the production and construction of coexistence spaces. The above considerations show the multiplicity of feminist activism due to the scenario in which it develops: in spite of the various subjections women suffered, feminism developed as a polyphonic voice. NGOs were among the institutions that promoted feminist action, an amalgam of the manifestations of feminist and women’s activism. In addition, the participation of this movement played an invaluable role in key junctures as the armed conflict and the promulgation of the Political Constitution of Colombia. As well as a key juncture, the armed conflict represents an almost structural situation of social and political relations in Colombia, but it does not stop there, as the sum of interests, activities and commitments is transferred to various manifestations, such as academia, local experiences and the activism of Afro-Colombian women and transwomen. This whole picture had critics and provoked a conservative backlash. Powerful actors systematically expressed, through rights-based rhetoric, the justification of

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violence and repression of feminist and women’s activism. This repression may also be seen from a symbolic and sociocultural point of view. It is essential for Colombia that women, feminist or not, continue to be the seedbed of a new social, political and cultural order, that they continue to demand their rights as human rights and that they continue to play a fundamental role in the process of generating confidence in the production of substantial changes to replace the patriarchal, sexist, racist and extractivist model still in place. From a scientific perspective, the relevance becomes evident of advancing and deepening the recording and reconstruction of all these processes, with women’s intersubjective actions as their nodal point. Although they are recorded in some way, they require more systematic and in-depth collection and processing these procedures, which allow for the mapping not only of the organisations but also of their projects and strategies. This is a way of contributing to future processes of articulation and defining joint resistance strategies to face the multiple forms of violence to which they are exposed as individuals and movements.

References Álvarez, S.  E. (2019). Feminismos en Movimiento, Feminismos en Protesta. Revista Punto Género, 11, 73–102. https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-­0417.2019.53881 Archila, M. (2013). Aspectos sociales y políticos de las Mujeres en Colombia siglos XX y XXI. Colombianista. https://colombianistas.org/wp-­content/themes/pleasant/biblioteca%20 colombianista/03%20ponencias/18/Archila_Mauricio.pdf Avella Bermúdez. (2017, August 10). Las raíces del feminismo palenquero. Cerosetenta. https:// cerosetenta.uniandes.edu.co/las-­raices-­del-­feminismo-­palenquero/ Bernal Olarte, A. (2018). Políticas públicas de igualdad de género. Claves para un debate pendiente. In F.  Gil Hernández & T.  Pérez-Bustos (Eds.), Feminismos y estudios de género en Colombia: Un campo académico y político en movimiento (1st ed., pp. 73–92). Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Facultad de Ciencias Humanas. Escuela de Estudios de Género. chrome-­­ extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/http://www.codajic.org/sites/default/files/ sites/www.codajic.org/files/Feminismo%20y%20Estudios%20de%20G%C3%A9nero%20 en%20Colombia.pdf Buchely Ibarra, L. F. (2014). Género y constitucionalismo. Una mirada feminista al derecho constitucional colombiano. Ciencia Política, 9(8), 83–107. Canavate, D. (2021). La irrupción de una nueva ola feminista: ¿La cuarta ola? La Manzana de La Discordia, 15(2), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.25100/lamanzanadeladiscordia.v15i2.9808 Caribe Afirmativo. (2013). Voces y sentidos para re-pensar la diversidad sexual y de género en el caribe colombiano. Colombia. Caribe Afirmativo. http://caribeafirmativo.lgbt/docs/Voces%20 &%20sentidos%20para%20re-­p ensar%20la%20diversidad%20sexual%20y%20de%20 genero%20en%20el%20Caribe%20colombiano.pdf Caribe Afirmativo. (2017). Arco Iris en Blanco y Negro. Reflexiones en torno a derechos, condiciones de vida y construcción de Paz de personas LGBTI en el Caribe colombiano. Caribe Afirmativo. https://caribeafirmativo.lgbt/caribe-­afirmativo-­presenta-­linea-­base-­derechos-­las-­ personas-­lgbt-­los-­municipios-­las-­casas-­paz/ Caribe Afirmativo. (2018). Entereza: Mejorando la respuesta a casos de violencia contra mujeres lesbianas, bisexuales y trans. Caribe Afirmativo. Castro-Gómez, S., & Grosfoguel, R. (2007). El giro decolonial: Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global.

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Comisión de la Verdad. (2022). Mi cuerpo es la verdad: experiencia de mujeres y de personas LGBTGI+ en el conflicto armado. Comisión de la Verdad. https://www.comisiondelaverdad. co/sites/default/files/descargables/2022-­07/Informe%20final%20Mi%20Cuerpo%20Es%20 La%20Verdad%20mujeres%20LGTBIQ.pdf Corpas Figueroa, J.  N. (2018). Aproximaciones al estado del debate sobre estudios de mujeres negras/afrocolombianas, desde una lectura feminista en el siglo XXI. Investigaciones Feministas, 9(2), 255–271. Corredor, E. S. (2021). On the strategic uses of women’s rights: Backlash, rights-based framing, and anti-gender campaigns in Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement. Latin American Politics and Society, 63(3), 46–68. https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2021.24 Gobernación del Atlántico. (2019) Decreto no. 000226. Gobernación del Atlántico. https://www. atlantico.gov.co/images/stories/gacetas/Gaceta-­21-­de-­julio-­de-­2019-­OK.pdf Duran, J. (2021). Mapeo de feminismos negros, en Abya Yala, reexistencia transfronteriza “entre aquí y allá.” ECLAC (2023). Promedio de años de estudio de la población de 25 a 59 años de edad según sexo y por área geográfica [Data set]. https://statistics.cepal.org/portal/cepalstat/dashboard. html?theme=1&lang=es Estamos Listas. (n.d.). Quiénes Somos. Estamos Listas. https://www.estamoslistas.com/ quienessomos Falquet, J. (2014). Las «Feministas autónomas» latinoamericanas y caribeñas: Veinte años de disidencias. Universitas Humanística, 78, 39–63. Gallego Torres, A. P., & Fino Peña, L. (2021). Género y educación superior. Pensar La Ciudad. https://pensarlaciudad.udistrital.edu.co/miradas-­de-­ciudad/genero-­y-­educacion-­superior Garrido Ortolá, A. (2020). El papel de las mujeres en los acuerdos de paz en Colombia: La agenda internacional. Política y Sociedad, 57(1), 77–97. https://doi.org/10.5209/poso.60270 Gobernación del Atlántico. (2018). Mesa Departamental promueve acciones para erradicar violencia contra la Mujer. Gobernación del Atlántico. https://www.atlantico.gov.co/ index.php/mujer/10349-­mesa-­departamental-­promueve-­acciones-­para-­erradicar-­violencia-­ contra-­la-­mujer Herrera, E., & García, Y. (2009). Trayectoria del movimiento de mujeres en Barranquilla y el Departamento del Atlántico (1975–2009). Universidad Simón Bolívar. Herrera Huérfano, E., Rugeles Gélvez, M.  V., Sotelo Carreño, A., & Vega Casanova, J. (Eds.). (2014). Emergencia del territorio y comunicación local: Experiencias de comunicación y desarrollo sobre medio ambiente en Colombia. Editorial Universidad del Norte. https:// scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=F6cQx78AAAAJ&citat ion_for_view=F6cQx78AAAAJ:jSAVyFp_754C. Karim, N. (2022). Movimientos Feministas y de Mujeres en el Contexto de la Eliminación de la Violencia Contra las Mujeres y las Niñas: Implicaciones para Financiadores y Donantes. Fondo Fiduciario de las Naciones Unidas para Eliminar la Violencia contra la Mujer. chrome-­­ extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://untf.unwomen.org/sites/default/ files/2022-­0 6/2022_SP_Feminist%20and%20Women%27s%20Movements_v02_compressed.pdf UN Women Colombia (n.d.) La situación de las mujeres en Colombia. UN Women Colombia. https://colombia.unwomen.org/es/onu-­mujeres-­en-­colombia/las-­mujeres-­en-­colombia Lamus Canavate, D. (2010). De la subversión a la inclusión: Movimientos de mujeres de la segunda Ola en Colombia, 1975–2005. Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia. https://publicaciones.icanh.gov.co/index.php/picanh/catalog/book/162 Lamus Canavate, D. (2012). El color negro de la (sin) razón blanca: El lugar de las mujeres afrodescendientes en los procesos organizativos en Colombia. Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga, Instituto de Estudios Políticos, Bucaramanga. https://repository.unab.edu.co/ handle/20.500.12749/10952

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Lamus Canavate, D. (2018). Trayectorias feministas: Transformaciones globales y locales (II). La Silla Vacia. https://www.lasillavacia.com/historias/historias-­silla-­llena/ trayectorias-­feministas-­transformaciones-­globales-­y-­locales-­ii-­/ López, M. (2018). Acciones de movilización de las mujeres dentro de un proceso de construcción e implementación de política pública. In F. Gil Hernández & T. Pérez-Bustos (Eds.), Feminismos y estudios de género en Colombia: Un campo académico y político en movimiento (1st ed.). Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Facultad de Ciencias Humanas. Escuela de Estudios de Género. López Rodríguez, E.  D., & Avendaño Carrillo, D. (2019). La Mesa de erradicación de las violencias contra las mujeres en el departamento del Atlántico – Barranquilla una mirada desde los movimientos feministas. In L. d. V.  García Terán, R.  Baiz Villafranca, & E.  D. López Rodríguez (Eds.), Mujer, género, movimientos feministas y políticas públicas de protección: Colombia y Venezuela. Ediciones Universidad Simón Bolívar. https://bonga.unisimon.edu.co/ handle/20.500.12442/4403 López Rodríguez, E. D., & García Terán, L. del. V. (2019). Narrativas y desafíos de los movimientos de mujeres y los movimientos feministas: Una mirada internacional. In L. d. V.  García Terán, R. Baiz Villafranca, & E. D. López Rodríguez (Eds.), Mujer, género, movimientos feministas y políticas públicas de protección: Colombia y Venezuela. Ediciones Universidad Simón Bolívar. https://bonga.unisimon.edu.co/handle/20.500.12442/4403 Oquendo, C. (2022, January 21). Estamos Listas, el movimiento de mujeres que busca llegar al Congreso en Colombia. El País. https://elpais.com/internacional/2022-­01-­21/estamos-­listas-­ el-­movimiento-­de-­mujeres-­que-­busca-­llegar-­al-­congreso-­en-­colombia.html Orozco Cantillo, M. (2014). Horizontes culturales del Caribe colombiano. La Iguana Ciega. Osorio Sánchez, E.  G., Ayala García, E.  T., & Urbina Cárdenas, J.  E. (2018). La mujer como víctima del conflicto armado en Colombia. Academia & Derecho, 16, 49–65. https://doi. org/10.18041/2215-­8944/academia.16.5977 Sánchez Barrera, E. L. (2017). El movimiento LGBT (I) en Colombia: La voz de la diversidad de género. Logros, retos y desafíos. Reflexión Política, 19(38), 116–131. Sentiido. (2020a, March 4). Claudia Mejía: Mi vida entera ha estado marcada por el feminismo. Sentiido. https://sentiido.com/claudia-­mejia-­mi-­vida-­entera-­ha-­estado-­marcada-­por-­el-­feminismo/ Sentiido. (2020b). Beatriz Quintero: El feminismo es radical porque incomoda. Sentiido. https:// sentiido.com/beatriz-­quintero-­el-­feminismo-­es-­radical-­porque-­incomoda/ Sentiido. (2020c). Olga Amparo Sánchez: Nací rebelde. Sentiido. https://sentiido.com/ olga-­amparo-­sanchez/ Valdivieso Ide, E. A. (2017). ¿Por qué persisten las inequidades de género a 20 años de Beijing? Hipótesis inspiradas en el pensamiento sistémico. In M. Sagot Rodríguez (Ed.), Feminismos, pensamiento crítico y propuestas alternativas en América Latina. CLACSO. https://doi. org/10.2307/j.ctv253f52b Villafranca, R. (2019). Violencia contra las mujeres en Venezuela avances y retrocesos del movimiento feminista en la reivindicación de los derechos de las humanas. In L. del V.  García Terán, R. Baiz Villafranca, & E. D. López Rodríguez (Eds.), Mujer, género, movimientos feministas y políticas públicas de protección: Colombia y Venezuela. Ediciones Universidad Simón Bolívar. https://bonga.unisimon.edu.co/handle/20.500.12442/4403 Wills Obregón, M. E., & Londoño Lopez, M. (2007). Inclusión sin representación. La irrupción política de las mujeres en Colombia. 1970–2000. Universidad del Valle, Centro de Estudios de Género, Mujer y Sociedad.

Chapter 6

The Right to a Complete Life: Struggles of the Dominican Feminist Movement Esther Hernández-Medina

Contents 1  I ntroduction 2  A Historically Transnational Movement: Its Trajectory and Its Main issues 3  The 1990s as an Inflection Point: “NGOisation”, Beijing, and Collaborating with the State 4  The Causales: Revitalisation and Generational Change in the Dominican Feminist Movement 5  Anti-Rights Groups: Conservative Backlash in the Dominican Republic 6  Final Remarks: The Dominican Feminist Movement, Going Back and Moving Forwards References

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1 Introduction In 1932, Abigail Mejía, a leader of the Dominican feminist movement, stated that all feminists wanted was for women to have the right to live “a complete life” where they could exercise their rights and perform their obligations as full citizens. Against all odds, Mejía, along with other extraordinary feminists like Petronila Gómez, Celeste Woss y Gil, Evangelina Rodríguez, and others, pursued this goal and continued the fight for women’s rights started by their predecessors in the nineteenth century, which continues to this day. This chapter traces the contemporary versions of this struggle, how they are informed by the movement’s history, and the potential lessons that might be derived from its setbacks and achievements based on its

E. Hernández-Medina (*) Latin American Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies, Pomona College, Claremont, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. M. Pousadela, S. R. Bohn (eds.), Women’s Rights in Movement, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8_6

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distinctive features as a relatively smaller movement dealing with a particularly conservative national context even in comparison with the region as a whole.1 This chapter is part of a research project on the Dominican feminist movement I have conducted since the mid-1990s (e.g. Hernández Medina, 1995, 2011, 2018). My goal is to showcase the movement’s crucial and often unknown contributions, including its proposal to create the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in 1981 and hosting the First Encounter of Latin American Black Women in 1992, where the Network of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean and Diaspora Women was created (Simmons, 2011). The project builds upon the existing literature as well as multiple rounds of interviews with feminist activists, scholars, and other key informants in the Dominican Republic as well as my own privileged access and positionality as a member of the movement for almost three decades (Dinçer, 2019). The project also draws upon analysis of Dominican and international media and selected legal and congressional documents made available to the public. Apart from the literature on feminist movements in the region I refer to throughout the chapter, I also examine the Dominican feminist movement using three main theoretical frameworks. First, I build upon Touraine’s (1981) and Castells’ (2010 [1999]) “French school” social movement framework (Hannigan, 1985). Their perspective allows me to pay close attention to the ways in which the Dominican feminist movement defines its overall goal, identity, and adversaries (Castells, 2010 [1999]). To use Touraine’s (1981) original language, social movements are the combined result of three principles: a “principle of totality” (expressed in their goal), a “principle of identity” (identity), and a “principle of opposition” (adversary). In Castells’ adaptation of Touraine’s theory, “identity refers to the self-definition of the movement of what it is, on behalf of whom it speaks. Adversary refers to the movement’s principal enemy, as explicitly identified by the movement. Societal goal refers to the movement’s vision of the kind of social order, or social organisation, it would wish to attain in the historical horizon of its collective action” (Castells, 2010 [1999]: 73–74). Second, I also borrow from Castells’ (2010 [1999]) characterisation of progressive or “project identity” vis-à-vis reactionary or “resistance identity” movements. This I use as a way of examining the conflictive interaction between Dominican feminists and their adversaries, mainly the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and the leaders of conservative Protestant denominations. For Castells, “a project identity emerges when social actors, on the basis of whatever cultural materials are available to them, build a new identity that redefines their position in society and, in so doing, seek the transformation of overall social structure” (2010 [1999]: xxvi). In fact, he explicitly situates the feminist and environmental movements as “two of the most significant such social movements in our context” (Idem).  The Dominican Republic shows one of the lowest levels of “social tolerance” in Latin America and the Caribbean using the proxy of attitudes towards LGBTQI+ persons occupying public posts: only 24.6  per cent of Dominicans agreed with such a possibility in 2006, and this proportion increased to just 37.9 per cent in 2016 (PNUD, 2019). 1

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On the contrary, resistance identity is “generated by those actors who are in positions/conditions devalued and/or stigmatised by the logic of domination, thus building trenches of resistance and survival on the basis of principles different from, or opposed to, those permeating the institutions of society” (2010 [1999]: 8). Project identity movements might begin as resistance identity action, such as CONAIE, the Ecuadorian confederation of indigenous nations created “to preserve their lands and identities”. They may then become project identity actions, as when CONAIE expanded its goals and became a “globalisation (movement) from below”, as its leaders defined it (2010 [1999]: 151). The former movements are proactive and future oriented, whereas the latter are reactive and focus on the past.2 Lastly, I use Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony to look at how Dominican feminists have historically challenged dominant narratives regarding women’s rights. Gramsci (2003 [1971]) famously reframed the philosophical concept of hegemony to examine how elites can continue to control most of the population without having to resort to direct repression, i.e. by manufacturing people’s consent. In his view, ‘social hegemony’ is the supposedly ‘ spontaneous’ consent given by large masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys on account of its position and function in the world of production” (2003 [1971]: 145). Building upon Gramsci’s work, Crehan (2002) proposes three key elements to the cultural and political control by the elites: (1) the capacity to define the rules of the game; (2) the ability to use the state apparatus to impose their views and practices as legitimate; and (3) the power to infiltrate most other groups in society through alliances or domination. Conversely, Crehan (2002) emphasises that counterhegemonic strategies exercised by subordinate groups must therefore include the following: (1) developing the capacity to connect their own situation with overall trends; (2) offering their own interpretations of their own history and the history of their society; and (3) providing independent depictions of themselves to fight delegitimising attacks. I argue that Dominican feminists and their allies consistently use these counterhegemonic strategies to compensate for their relatively low numbers and limited access to resources. And they do so by following the practices used by their predecessors at the beginning of the twentieth century by organising internationally with media savvy to counteract the disproportionate power and influence of their adversaries. The clearest example of these tactics can be seen in the 20-plus-year fight to secure the decriminalisation of abortion in a country which not only prohibits abortion but also penalises practitioners and women receiving this medical care (Human Rights Watch, 2018; Acevedo, 2021). Indeed, multiple studies show that the  There is a third type, “legitimising identity”, “introduced by the dominant institutions of society to extend and rationalise their domination vis-a-vis social actors” (Castells, 2010 [1999]: 8). Castells identifies this kind with Gramsci’s original definition of civil society. Indeed, for Gramsci, “civil society is formed by a series of ‘apparatuses,’ such as the Church(es), unions, parties, cooperatives, civic associations, and so on, which, on the one hand, prolong the dynamics of the state, but, on the other hand, are deeply rooted among people” (Castells, 2010 [1999]: 9). 2

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feminist movement has successfully transformed public opinion so that a majority of Dominicans now support the call to decriminalise abortion under certain circumstances, las tres causales,3 in spite of the extreme political and cultural power of the Catholic Church and conservative Evangelical denominations. The following sections examine these developments in several ways: first, looking at the historical trajectory of the Dominican feminist movement and the main issues it has prioritised; then, analysing its composition, repertoires, and resources, including the movement’s relationship with the Dominican state, the fight around the causales, and how it led to an emergent generational change in the movement and the religious denominations it battles amid the ongoing conservative backlash in Latin America (e.g. Alvarez, 2019; Estrada Álvarez et al., 2020). Finally, the last section provides some preliminary lessons based on the distinctive features of the movement as well as the elements in common with other feminist movements in the region.

2 A Historically Transnational Movement: Its Trajectory and Its Main issues The Dominican feminist movement has a long history of transnational practice, and this is behind the fact that “Dominican women’s international influence has long been disproportionate to the relative geopolitical position of their nation” (Manley, 2018). The origins of the movement go back to the women teachers or normalistas4 first trained by poet and educator extraordinaire Salomé Ureña de Henríquez in the early nineteenth century (Candelario, 2005; Martínez-Vergne, 2005; Zeller, 2012; Candelario et  al., 2016; Fernández Asenjo, 2015, 2016; Manley, 2017, 2019;  Perdomo, 2022). This pioneer group entered the Dominican public sphere strategically claiming, rather than deconstructing, the gendered construction of positive traits associated with women in order to use this “moral superiority as  Las tres causales (in Spanish) are three exceptional circumstances or “causes for exception” already considered, even if nominally, in many legal systems in the rest of Latin America, but which are still penalised under the Dominican Penal Code. These circumstances are when the woman’s life is in danger, when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, and when the foetus has genetic defects that make it unviable outside the womb. It is important to note that Latin America is already a very restrictive regional context regarding cisgender women’s reproductive rights: according to the Centre for Reproductive Rights (CRR), “97 per cent of women of reproductive age live in countries with restrictive abortion laws” (CRR website “Latin America and the Caribbean  – Key Facts” accessed at https://reproductiverights.org/our-regions/latin-america-­ caribbean/ on 2/14/22; see also Center for Reproductive Rights, 2019). 4  The term normalistas comes from the Spanish concept of escuelas normales or teacher-training schools these pioneering women would attend, as education was one of the few, if not the only, profession open to women at the time. These schools offered opportunities for women beyond due to gender and class restrictions, as was the case in other countries in the region. Given this role, at the time they were deemed as dangerous by many: “The perceived danger emerged from [the possibility that] being a teacher would allow single life to middle-class young women and social mobility to low-income ones” (Zeller, 2012: 28). 3

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justification for their inclusion in the creation of national identity” (Zeller, 2012: 11; Martínez-Vergne, 2005; Candelario, 2005; Mayes, 2008; Manley, 2017, 2018). The normalistas, in their role as the first politically active, organised women in the country, focused on promoting the Dominican national project5 and honouring national symbols, and worked to achieve the unidad antillana, the ideal of unity among the Spanish-speaking Antillean island nations of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic espoused by figures such as José Martí, Ramón Emeterio Betances, and Hostos (Mayes, 2008; Zeller, 2012). They were also “the first Dominican women to rehearse new forms of political action” (Zeller, 2012: 38–39; Martínez-Vergne, 2005). For instance, they often participated in public events to help the population get used to the presence of women in the public sphere.6 They did so by performing scripted symbolic practices, such as always wearing white to link their participation with ideals of purity and virtue in public life (Zeller, 2012). Notably, normalistas would take a more explicitly feminist stance in advocating for women’s participation in the public sphere at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century (Candelario, 2005; Zeller, 2012; Candelario et al., 2016; Perdomo, 2022; Contreras, 2023). A key feature of the Dominican feminist movement is that it was international from the very beginning, as evidenced by the abundant correspondence between its leaders and their peers in Cuba, Spain, Puerto Rico, and the United States at the turn of the century, and their participation at the international conferences organised by feminists in other countries (Candelario, 2005; Zeller, 2012; Candelario et al., 2016; Fernández Asenjo, 2016). For instance, this was the case with young writer Mercedes Mota and her speech at the 1901 International Council of Women Congress in Buffalo, New  York (Candelario, 2005). Mota exemplified the elite of white- or light-skinned women who constituted the majority of feminist activists during this period in the Dominican Republic and in the rest of the region, a precedent the movement still contends with to this day.

 This project, in turn, had a clear class bias as leading male political figures saw bourgeois Dominican women playing an important role in the task of building the nation as a continuum with traditional gender roles, even though they did not see them as equal citizens and saw the participation of working women as “unimportant”. In their view, “Unlike their working-class sisters, upperand middle-class women possessed the physical attributes and had access to the material wherewithal—education, money, property—that made possible the renovation of the Dominican ‘race’. Although obliquely, political, and literary figures at the turn of the 19th Century recognised bourgeois women’s value transmitting the characteristics ascribed to their class” (Martínez-Vergne, 2005: 122). 6  Low-income women of colour were always present in public spaces as workers, as was the case in the rest of the hemisphere, whereas many normalistas were middle- and upper-class, light skinned or white women. Nonetheless, the presence of women in political or civic public life was an abnormality up until las normalistas (female normalistas) engaged in these efforts. Additionally, it is important to remember that las normalistas also included women of colour and/or from low-­ income backgrounds, like Salomé Ureña, a woman of colour herself. Also, later educators attempted to include less-advantaged students through scholarships, at least partially paid for by city government (Zeller, 2012). 5

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However, Petronila Gómez, one of the few women of colour among the feminist leaders of the time, defied the norm by connecting Dominican feminists with the most important transnational feminist networks, such as the International League of Iberian and Hispanic American Women based in Madrid, Spain, and led by Carmen de Burgos (Candelario, 2005; Zeller, 2012; Fernández Asenjo, 2016). In fact, Gómez founded the very first feminist organisation in the country, the Dominican Feminist Central Committee, in 1925; it was a branch of the League, but the Committee disbanded in 1931 (Candelario, 2005; Mayes, 2008). Elite women’s refusal to follow the “social” agenda proposed by the Committee was one of the reasons why Abigaíl Mejía founded the Club Nosotras, a feminist literary group, in 1927 (Candelario, 2005). Their refusal also expressed the class and racial divide that later fuelled the rivalry between Gómez and Mejía (Fernández Asenjo, 2016). Apart from the disbanded Feminist Central Committee and Club Nosotras, the two most important feminist projects were the pioneering editorial work of Fémina magazine, founded in 1922 by Petronila Gómez in San Pedro de Macorís, and the feminist organisation Acción Feminista Dominicana (AFD), founded by Abigail Mejía, Celeste Woss y Gil, Delia Weber, and others in Santo Domingo in 1931 (Candelario, 2005; Mayes, 2008; De la Rosa Hidalgo, 2014; Zeller, 2012; Candelario et al., 2016; Fernández Asenjo, 2016; Contreras, 2023). Both projects were highly strategic in the ways they navigated Dominican society at the beginning of the twentieth century. For instance, Gómez published Fémina in her own press to guarantee its ideological independence. At the same time, Gómez and the rest of the editorial board sought prestigious male public figures as allies in order to downplay the fact that this feminist publication was, by its very nature, infringing upon the gendered social rules of the time (Fernández Asenjo, 2016). Fémina magazine was financially strangled by the regime (De la Rosa, 2020), whereas AFD joined the dictatorship in a strategic move to open opportunities for women through access to the vote, which the dictatorship granted them in 1942 (Candelario, 2005; Mayes, 2008; Zeller, 2012; Candelario et al., 2016; De la Rosa, 2020). However, the decision situated the AFD in the highly problematic position of legitimising the regime and its efforts to present itself as a modern government similar to others in the hemisphere, as women’s participation in politics signalled “the total absence of conflict, violence and threats to free speech” (Zeller, 2012: 13). Despite the repression exercised by the Trujillo government, the alliance between the AFD and the regime cannot be seen only as an imposition on the former. On the contrary, AFD feminists decided to work with Trujillo because many of them aligned with the dictatorship’s modernising, elitist, and whiteness-centred national project. This was a stark contrast with Evangelina Rodríguez, one of the few feminist leaders of colour, who “challenged Dominican feminism’s whiteness and blindness to the plight of poor women” (Mayes, 2008: 351).7  “To be sure, AFD feminists confronted a stark political reality during the first decade of the Trujillato but, justifying the AFD’s complicity with the regime as a decision forced upon feminists, produces a Dominican feminist history narrative that ignores its complex development and erases the stories of women like Rodríguez, who resisted authoritarianism” (Mayes, 2008: 350). 7

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Once women were granted the vote, their participation was organised through the Female Section of the only political party, Trujillo’s Dominican Party and through other organisations, to present the illusion of an autonomous civil society (Candelario, 2005; Mayes, 2008; Zeller, 2012; Candelario et al., 2016; De la Rosa, 2020). A young AFD member, Minerva Bernardino, displaced both Mejía and Gómez as the regime co-opted the fight for women’s rights. Trujillo designated Bernardino to represent the Dominican Republic before the Inter-American Women’s Commission and at most international conclaves, including her role as one of the few women signing the United Nations (UN) Declaration of Human Rights (Candelario, 2005; Zeller, 2012; Candelario et al., 2016; De la Rosa, 2020). At the same time, the regime relegated feminist leaders like Petronila Gómez and Evangelina Rodríguez—the first Dominican female doctor—to oblivion while promoting its own damas trujillistas (Trujillo’s lady followers), such as Bernardino and Carmita Landestoy (Mayes, 2008; Fernández-Asenjo, 2015; Manley, 2017). Later, and until the end of the dictatorship in 1961, women were organised more broadly into the Dominican Party and in the local branches of multiple international organisations like the Inter-American Commission on Women (Zeller, 2012; Fernández Asenjo, 2015). More importantly, women’s participation during this period followed the maternalism-paternalism model implemented in the region by several autocratic regimes. In this paradoxical framework, Trujillo became the nation’s “disciplinary father” while, at the same time, he heavily involved elite women in public policy and state-building through their roles as mothers (Manley, 2017): The corresponding paradox of Trujillo’s—and later Balaguer’s—style of paternalism is twofold: in these exchanges over the proper protection for families and mothers, women became important, visible players in the public political arena of politics. As the messengers for maternalist policies, the feministas trujillistas and later balagueristas helped reproduce the regime’s paternalism in their small towns and provinces, on the national stage, and even in some international arenas. (Manley, 2017: 7)

The last days of the dictatorship included another crucial precedent for the feminist movement and the country as a whole: the assassination, ordered by Trujillo, of Minerva, María Teresa, and Patria Mirabal on 25 November 1960 (Manley, 2018). Known by their underground code name, “the butterflies”, the Mirabal sisters were members and leaders of the secret political movement 14 de Junio against the dictatorship. Dominican American writer Julia Alvarez (1994) popularised their story in her novel In the Time of the Butterflies. After the regime fell with Trujillo’s assassination in May 1961, the rest of the decade was a particularly convoluted period marked by political instability, the 1965 civil war, the ensuing US intervention, and the beginning of the repressive “12 years” under Trujillo’s self-proclaimed “courtesan”, President Joaquín Balaguer. Balaguer borrowed Trujillo’s playbook, also encouraging maternalism as a women’s participation model, for instance, in his famous designation of an all-female group of governors at the beginning of his tenure in 1972 (Pineda, 1996 [1984]; Manley, 2017). Yet, this was the case of women leaders across the political spectrum, including the first female vice-presidential candidate, Josefina Padilla, from

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the Social Christian party PRSC.  Even for leftist female leaders, such as 14 de Junio’s Tomasina (“Sina”) Cabral and Carmen Josefina (“Piky”) Lora, “the national liberation programme was revolutionary, and yet it still hinged crucially on their sacrifices as wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters” (Manley, 2017: 132). Nonetheless, the 1963 Constitution under centre-left President Juan Bosch, the first democratically elected leader after the end of the dictatorship, included fundamental changes guaranteeing women’s economic autonomy from their husbands, legalising divorce, and even removing legal differences between children born in and out of wedlock. Although short-lived, as they disappeared with the coup d’état that toppled Bosch 7  months later, such provisions became an important precedent regarding women’s rights (Mayes, 2018; Durán, 2018). Following the maternalist model, the most important feminist organisation of the 1960s, the Federación de Mujeres Dominicanas (Federation of Dominican Women, FMD) also included “the stability of the Dominican family” among its goals (Manley, 2017: 140). Founded in 1961, the FMD provided a platform for feminism to re-enter the public sphere as many left-leaning women (particularly middle-class women and students) participated in public demonstrations, provided educational opportunities for their low-income peers, established offices in multiple provinces, and publicly called on the United States and the UN to help defend human rights in the country (Pineda, 1996 [1984]; Arregui, 1988; Manley, 2017; Durán, 2018). Unlike their ideological rival, the conservative Asociación Patriótica Femenina Dominicana (Dominican Female Patriotic Association, APFD), the FMD also served as an important training ground for several feminist leaders of the 1970s and beyond  (Manley, 2017), like Magaly Pineda, Lourdes Contreras, and Gladys Gutiérrez (Ortega, 2019; Tatem Brache, 2009, 2015). The 1970s inaugurated the Dominican feminist “second wave” with the advent of consciousness-raising study circles and increasing mobilisation (De la Rosa Hidalgo, 2014; Manley, 2018). The end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, in particular, represented a turning point for the movement as women on both ends of the political spectrum started to collaborate with one another as a result of several factors: the disappointment felt by leftist activists8 due to the lack of understanding shown by their male peers regarding gender equality; the decrease of the violent tactics used by Joaquín Balaguer’s authoritarian regime; and the influence of international feminism (Manley, 2017). This resulted in a transition from “a relatively bipolar struggle between balaguerismo and social revolution to a more expansive discussion of women’s global oppression” (Manley, 2017: 220). Three key events became the most visible manifestations of these ideological changes: the celebration of International Women’s Year in the country, the Seminario Hermanas Mirabal, and the approval of gender equality legislation at the end of Balaguer’s tenure in 1978. The UN  International Women’s Year provided crucial  These activists were part of “society’s democratisation struggles, for the return of [political] exiles, against authoritarianism, against the repression during Joaquín Balaguer’s first administration, with women from different organisations in the context of a highly centralised society” (De la Rosa Hidalgo, 2014: 285; translation ours). 8

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opportunities for feminist and other female activists as countries prepared their participation at the First World Women’s Conference held in Mexico City in September 1975. In the Dominican case, “Balaguer, like Trujillo, desired the international attention women’s equality might bring to his leadership, and so he eagerly complied with the wishes of the international leaders of the celebration” (Manley, 2017: 222). Key figures like Trujillo and Balaguer loyalist Licelotte Marte de Barrios, on the right, and feminist pioneer Magaly Pineda, on the left, were able to put aside their differences and build cross-party alliances to take advantage of this favourable international environment (Pineda, 1996 [1984]; Manley, 2017). Marte de Barrios coordinated a national process of consultations, consciousness-raising activities, and multiple studies leading to the country’s participation in the UN Conference in Mexico City, an event widely considered as a watershed moment in the history of the global feminist movement (Manley, 2017). The Dominican feminist movement’s ongoing engagement with transnational organising was also decisive at the beginning of the 1980s, especially at the First Latin American Feminist Encounter in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1981 (Arregui, 1988; De la Rosa Hidalgo, 2014). According to protagonists like writer Angela Hernández, the Encounter was an opportunity for many Dominican activists to “see, all of a sudden, a panorama ignored by us” (Hernández, cited in De la Rosa Hidalgo, 2014: 274). One of the longest-lasting consequences of the Encounter was the pivotal role played by Dominican feminists when they proposed what would eventually become the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The 19-member Dominican delegation to the Feminist Encounter suggested establishing 25 November as a commemorative day in the fight to eliminate violence against women in the region, honouring the legacy of the Mirabal sisters. Fellow Latin American feminists approved the resolution and started holding events around this issue on that date (Manley, 2018), while Dominican and other Latin American feminists working in international organisations lobbied for its inclusion as an international day at the UN (Mones, 2021). This was finally achieved in 1999, when the UN General Assembly approved Resolution 48-104 (UNESCO, 2021) proposed by the Dominican government (Mones, 2021). During the 1980s, an important number of feminist activists also abandoned their “double militancy” in leftist and feminist organisations, as their growing awareness led them to question the inequalities their parties reproduced among women and men (De la Rosa Hidalgo, 2014; Tatem Brache, 2015). At the time, the rupture was a common trend in the region, as most leftist political parties saw “women’s liberation” only as a future by-product of the resolution of class-based inequality, and most male members stigmatised and discriminated against women who challenged their privileges (Curiel, cited in De la Rosa Hidalgo, 2014). These developments heavily influenced the types of feminist and women’s organisations founded in this period; several of them still exist to this day. Early on, such organisations were closely associated with the leftist political parties that feminist activists were still part of. Then, there was an important intermediate phase where female and male

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activists created several popular education centres, including the notably progressive Centro Dominicano de Estudios de la Educación (CEDEE).9 There was a third moment in the 1980s after second-wave feminists abandoned their leftist parties and created many emblematic feminist non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and collectives that serve as the institutional backbone of the movement to this day. These include the first self-proclaimed feminist NGO in the country, Centro de Investigación para la Acción Femenina (Research Center for Female Action, CIPAF); Asociacion Tú Mujer (Association You Woman); the artistic collective Las Marchantas, led by feminist artist and cultural worker Xiomara Fortuna; the collective Mujer y Salud (Woman and Health, later known as La Colectiva); the Centro de Servicios Legales para la Mujer (CENSEL, Legal Services Centre for Women), and the movement Casa por la Identidad de la Mujer Negra (House for Black Women’s Identity) (Simmons, 2011; De la Rosa Hidalgo, 2014; Manley, 2017, 2018; Mayes, 2018; Tatem Brache, 2009, 2015; Ortega, 2019) According to several second-wave feminists interviewed for this project, the 1980s was a fruitful period of collaboration among urban and rural women, breaking historical class and race-based divides from previous eras  (also see  Tatem Brache, 2009, 2015; Ortega, 2019). The most important rural women’s organisation in the country, the Confederación Nacional de Mujeres del Campo (National Federation of Women from the Countryside, CONAMUCA), founded in 1986, also emerged in this decade and continues to be the largest and one of the most important feminist organisations to this day. At the time, Pineda (1996 [1984]) emphasised that the expansion of women’s organisations in the previous decade was stronger in rural areas than in the cities. Unlike its peers in other developing countries, the Dominican feminist movement did not have an important influence among middle-­ class women; instead, it saw itself as a “feminism with popular roots” and devoted itself to popular education and investigación-acción (research-action) initiatives with women from rural and urban marginal locations (Pineda, 1996 [1984]; Arregui, 1988; Hernández Medina, 1995). International aid too played a vital role during the 1980s as the Women and Development (WID) perspective entered the development industry because of the mobilisation of the global feminist movement and the implementation of the UN  International Decade for Women (Bessis, 2004). At the same time, multiple agencies preferred to work directly with civil society organisations to avoid government corruption, contributing to the exponential proliferation of NGOs in the Dominican Republic (Paiewonsky, 2002). Two key consequences of this development were the increasing professionalisation of Dominican NGOs and “a reduction in their levels of autonomy to define their own agendas and priorities” (Paiewonsky, 1994a, b, 2002: 23; Figueiras, 1995). These features would become highly problematic in the following decade and beyond.  The informal encounters, workshops, and study circles that guided feminist activists of this era in their decisions took place first at CEDEE and then at the house of Clara Báez, one of the most important feminist activists of the period and, to this day, one of the most notable social science researchers in the country (Aldebot, cited in De la Rosa Hidalgo, 2014). 9

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3 The 1990s as an Inflection Point: “NGOisation”, Beijing, and Collaborating with the State The 1990s constituted a second turning point for the Dominican feminist movement due to the convergence of three crucial trends: the increased professionalisation of the movement through NGOs mentioned above, the movement’s active participation in the process before and during the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and the first attempts at collaborating with the state on a more permanent basis  through wide-reaching policy partnerships. Looking at these developments will allow us to start examining the repertoires, networks, and alliances the movement relies upon to this day. The feminist NGOs and collectives that emerged in the 1980s became more professionalised, in great part, to take advantage of the high priority gender equality had in the international aid industry at the time, which included UN agencies’ preparation towards Beijing in September 1995 (Bessis, 2004). After this so-called NGOisation of the Dominican feminist movement in the second half of the 1980s (Paiewonsky, 1994a, b, 2002; Figueiras, 1995), the 1990s marked the institutional consolidation of these NGOs and the beginning of relatively stable partnerships between the movement and the state. Under the guidance of regional feminist leader Magaly Pineda, CIPAF pioneered these initiatives, sometimes under heavy criticism from other civil society organisations (Hernández Medina & Tatem Brache, 2017; Tatem Brache, 2015; Ortega, 2019) At the time, CIPAF’s main partnerships with the state took place in the areas of education and labour, particularly on non-sexist education, with the Dominican Ministry of Education bringing feminist public officials from Spain’s Equality and Social Development Ministry, and with the Dominican Ministry of Labour improving working conditions for female workers.10 These questions, along with issues like reproductive rights, political participation, and the elimination of violence against women, were also part of the Plan de Igualdad de Oportunidades para las Mujeres (PIOM) or Equal Opportunities Plan for Women CIPAF, presented in 1992 and based on a series of regional consultations convened with feminist and women’s organisations around the country (Tatem Brache, 2015; Ortega, 2019). The Dominican Republic’s participation in Beijing in 1995 exponentially increased the feminist movement’s institutionalisation and visibility as it actively took part in the “going global” moment examined by Alvarez (1998) in Latin America. This was the case first because of the massive participation of Dominican feminists both at the conference and at the NGO Forum (one of the largest delegations from the region). It was also related to the movement’s deliberate usage of the

 CIPAF even re-engineered its Research Division and transformed into a Public Policy Area focused on health and labour, whereas the Popular Education Division undertook the task with the Ministry of Education. The author worked at CIPAF at the time and was designated Labour Policy Coordinator, while Giselle Scanlon became Health Policy Coordinator, both under the leadership of Amparo Arango, Division Director, and Magaly Pineda as CIPAF’s Executive Director. 10

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“boomerang” tactic (Keck & Sikkink, 1997), which consisted in partaking of international forums to get policy resolutions approved and later pressure the national government. Movement leaders like Magaly Pineda and Sergia Galván used their transnational networks and expertise to guide and provide information not only to other feminist organisations in the country and the region (Hernández Medina & Tatem Brache, 2017) but also to government officials attending Beijing, like they had done at the previous UN conferences on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993), Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), and Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995). The 1990s are considered, especially among the most seasoned (i.e. second wave) feminist activists, as the most fruitful phase to date as regards legal gains advancing women’s rights. Indeed, this package of legislative reforms was “the most important one for Dominican women since getting the right to vote” (Paiewonsky, 2002: 38). Reforms included the passage of one of the “first-­ generation” gender-based violence prevention laws in Latin America in 1997 (UNDP, 2017), the creation of the Women’s Secretariat (later Ministry)11 in 1999, the first Gender Quotas Law, and the modification of the Agrarian Law to favour rural women, among others (Senado República Dominicana, 2021). Similarly to what happened in the 1970s, such gains were the result of a sustained process of collaboration among feminist activists and female leaders in political parties which also created special gender commissions at the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate. Additionally, feminist leaders and female politicians established key coordinating mechanisms beyond the official gender commissions. On the movement’s side, the Women’s Area NGO Coordinator emerged in 1989 as the main coordinating network, while the Women Politicians Forum was the key mechanism for women in political parties, and the Women’s Secretariat (later Ministry) consolidated as the key national gender mechanism (Figueiras, 1995; Paiewonsky, 2002; Báez, 2002). Notably, the Women’s Area Coordinator was created as a result of a DGPM-UNICEF project intended to facilitate the internal articulation of the women’s movement, although it declared its political autonomy shortly thereafter (Paiewonsky, 2002; Báez, 2002). The professionalisation of feminist NGOs (including the establishment of the NGO Coordinator), the movement’s increased collaboration with the state, and the country’s notable participation in Beijing also impacted the institutionalisation of gender equality in the state itself. The establishment of the new Women’s Ministry in 1999 (Durán, 2018) and the first National Gender Equality Plan (known by its Spanish acronym, PLANEG) in 2000 were the most important manifestations of this early mainstreaming process. During the 1990s, the Ministry benefited from the increased interest of UN agencies in supporting it to comply with the Beijing Platform of Action, and the crucial leadership role played by iconic politician and

 The institution was created as the Women’s Secretariat in 1999 through Law 86-99. It became the Women’s Ministry in 2010, when the new Constitution transformed all Secretariats into full-­ fledged Ministries (Durán, 2018). 11

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feminist Gladys Gutiérrez even against her party’s lack of interest in “women’s issues” (Paiewonsky, 2002). However, in spite of the movement’s long-term partnership with and ongoing demands on the Dominican state, the status of the gender equality agenda in the country still reflects Paiewonsky’s (2002) assessment at the beginning of the twenty-­ first century while assessing the creation of the main state mechanism set up to that effect. At state level, the implementation of a national mechanism focused on influencing public policies and positioning itself as an instrument for gender mainstreaming stands out among these measures, with a revamped DGPM,12 later elevated to ministerial rank. Paiewonsky argues that even though there was a certain level of receptiveness in some state institutions, such support was often fragmented or “a product of individual initiatives”. More importantly, “they were not supported by global political regulations, defined as explicitly assumed commitments, nor are they accompanied by institutional processes that ensure their continuity and permanence” (Paiewonsky, 2002: 15). Moreover, although the 1990s represented an inflection point given the multiple national and international policy gains achieved during this period, the Dominican feminists’ emphasis on the institutional arena also meant paying less attention to the movement’s “popular roots”. This conflict in their priorities also prompted a growing fragmentation, particularly with the decline of the Women’s Area NGO Coordinator at the end of the decade (Paiewonsky, 2002). Financial and ideological difficulties soon replaced the effervescence of the 1990s, with aid agencies moving away from support work to reduce gender inequality, and independent feminists growing even more critical of recipients of this support. Even though these phenomena affected feminist movements in the region as a whole (Alvarez, 1992; Beckman, 2007), the consequences were particularly visible in the Dominican Republic. The internal divisions caused by these financial and ideological problems led to a crisis exemplified in the Eighth Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter, the event held in Juan Dolio, Dominican Republic, in July 1999 (Beckman, 2007). The Eighth Encounter reflected, in a more muted manner, deep-seated divisions voiced in the previous Encounter in Cartagena, Chile, among self-proclaimed “autonomous” feminists who very vocally started to criticise the so-called “institutionalised” sector, which the former saw as complicit in the depoliticisation of the movement in the region. The relative sidelining of grassroots mobilisation also experienced by the Dominican feminist movement during the 1990s was one of the key arguments of

 Dirección General de Promoción de la Mujer (DGPM), the General Directorate for the Promotion of Women, was the original national gender mechanism in the Dominican Republic. Created in 1982 through Presidential Decree 46-82 (Durán, 2018), the DGPM “languished for 12 years as a third-rank governmental agency, with an insignificant budget and minimum [level of] influence on state policies. The few relevant initiatives the DGPM developed before 1996 – such as the legal reform proposals and the motion to create the Women’s Area NGO Coordinator—emerged from projects financed by UNICEF” (Paiewonsky, 2002: 27; translation ours).

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las autónomas’ (autonomous feminists) critique. Additionally, they saw the Latin American feminist movement’s active participation in Beijing and other international conferences as highly problematic.13 On the contrary, las autónomas advocated for “a strategy of political and financial autonomy”, and other feminists presented similar arguments (Beckman, 2007). The Eighth Encounter also revealed that the movement’s internal divisions across race and class “remain strikingly unresolved”, as demonstrated by the exclusion felt by Haitian and other Afro-Caribbean attendees and the fact that the relationship between Haitian and Dominican women became one of the most “politicised” issues at the event (Beckman, 2007). In the case of the Dominican feminist movement, even though Casa de la Identidad hosted the First Encounter of Latin American Black Women in 1992, race and racism were not among the movement’s priorities, with few exceptions including Identidad and the Movimiento de Mujeres Domínico-Haitianas (Movement of Dominican-Haitian Women, MUDHA) led by the late extraordinary activist Sonia Pierre. At the 1992 Encounter, Afro-descendant women from all over the region created what is now the Network of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean and Diaspora Women. Similarly, Dominican feminist autónomas who attended the eighth Encuentro and also challenged the NGOisation undergone by the movement articulated a more general critique of them, understood as the result of the hegemonic practices of white, heterosexual, and middle-class women within Latin American feminist movements. Later, two of these feminist scholars, Ochy Curiel and Yuderkys Espinosa, became Decolonial Feminism leaders in the region, maintaining that such practices are closely intertwined with the inability of hegemonic feminisms to challenge both racism and colonialism (Curiel, 2005; Espinosa  Miñoso, 2004; Espinosa, 2009). Younger Black lesbian feminists, particularly the Tres Gatas collective (Yaneris González, Jeannette Tineo, and Arcy Rosmery), continued this critique while expanding the repertoire of artivist work initiated by feminist artists like Xiomara Fortuna but in the visual arts (Quinn, 2015, 2021).

4 The Causales: Revitalisation and Generational Change in the Dominican Feminist Movement Abortion rights are the most strategic issue for the contemporary Dominican feminist movement as the Dominican Republic is one of the very few countries in the world to penalise abortion under all circumstances (Human Rights Watch 2018; Center for Reproductive Rights, 2019, 2023). The issue constitutes an essential part of the movement’s counterhegemonic interventions in society (Gramsci, 2003  “Uncompromising in their critique of feminists they identified as ‘gender technocrats’ who churn out state-funded reports ‘with a gender perspective,’ who act as consultants for the World Bank, and who represent ‘Latin American women’ at international conferences, the ‘autonomous’ feminists argued that an elite corps of women sold out feminism to a reformist agenda” (Beckman, 2007). 13

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[1971]; Crehan, 2002; Hernández Medina, 2011, 2018, 2020a, b; Cotes Javier, 2014; Morales Pacheco y Tatem Brache, 2022) as “they confront the dominant power and ideology, led by Catholic hierarchies, whose mainstay is the denial of the rights of this half of the population” (Cotes Javier, 2014: 26; also see Paiewonsky, 2023a). Along with gender-based violence against women, abortion is the issue the movement has positioned more consistently in the public agenda since the 1990s (Paiewonsky, 2002; Quinn, 2021; see also Ministerio de la Mujer, 2019). As I argue elsewhere (Hernández-Medina, 2020a, b), it represents a crucial test for Dominican democracy, especially because it mostly affects Afro-descendent, low-income women, who represent the majority of women in the country. In a country which not only prohibits abortion but also penalises practitioners for providing it and women for receiving this medical care, unlike its peers in the region, instead of fighting for overall decriminalisation, the Dominican feminist movement has strategically focused on decriminalising abortion under three causales: (1) when the mother’s life is in danger; (2) when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest; and (3) when the foetus is not viable after birth (Cotes Javier, 2014; Hernández-Medina, 2018, 2020a, b; Morales Pacheco y Tatem Brache, 2022). This pragmatic strategy was successful in transforming public opinion, since a majority of Dominicans now support abortion under the causales. In 2008, only 34  per cent agreed with decriminalising abortion under these three exceptions, whereas between six and eight out of every 10 people in the country support abortion in these exceptional  circumstances in multiple surveys (Balbuena, 2018; Hernández-Medina, 2020a, 2020b); Morales Pacheco y Tatem Brache, 2022). Notably, a survey conducted exclusively on the issue of abortion in 2018 found that 79 per cent of the population agreed when the life of the mother is in danger, 76 per cent when the foetus is inviable, and 67 per cent when the pregnancy is the outcome of rape or incest (UnTold Research, 2018). More recent data for 2018/2019 indicated that 61.2 per cent of people approved abortion when the life of the mother is in danger, 61.1 per cent when the foetus is inviable, and 49.6 per cent when the pregnancy is the outcome of rape or incest (Espinal et al, 2019). I argue that the contemporary fight for the causales has gone through three phases. The first stage goes from 2004 to 2010, and it includes a crucial juncture in 2009 during the national debate around the anti-choice provision or Article 30 proposed in the Constitutional project introduced by then President Leonel Fernández, which established the “inviolability of life since conception”. The second phase started in 2010 with the approval of the 2010 Constitution and its inclusion of the content of Article 30 (then in Article 37) and ended in 2021 (Hernández-Medina, 2018, 2020a, b). The third and current stage began in May 2021 with the establishment of the Causales Camp across from the National Presidential Palace. During the first stage, the movement mobilised primarily through the Women’s Forum for Constitutional Reform, a network founded in 2004 that brought together most feminist and women’s organisations and individuals fighting for the right to choose during this period. The network emerged amid the consultations convened by then President Mejía, who sought a constitutional reform permitting his

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re-­election. The Women’s Forum was successful at including key feminist demands such as recognising unpaid care work and using non-sexist language in the constitutional text, but it was unsuccessful at eliminating Article 30 (Hernández-­ Medina, 2020a). The counterhegemonic tactics used by the movement in all three periods are consistent with the ones examined by Crehan (2002): (1) developing the capacity to connect their own situation with overall trends; (2) offering their own interpretations of their own history and the history of their society; and (3) providing independent depictions of themselves to fight delegitimising attacks. However, such tactics showed important variations over time. In the first period, the movement presented the extreme situations reflected in the causales by emphasising the need to comply with the international human rights framework and the secular nature of the Dominican state, all the while using an attractive visual campaign and gathering support from influential public figures. Conversely, the narratives of the movement’s adversaries—particularly the Catholic Church leadership—ignored extreme cases, silenced progressive Catholics, and publicly attacked legislators who disagreed with and ultimately voted against Article 30 (Hernández-Medina, 2020a), going so far as to read a list of their names at every mass for months at the height of the conflict in 2009. In fact, the causales constitute a crucial entry point to examine the asymmetries between the Dominican feminist movement and its adversaries, a topic I will come back to in the following section. For instance, a media content analysis conducted in January to October 2007 and January to October 2009 examined the ways in which pro-choice and conservative public figures, reporters, and others addressed the causales, Article 30, and abortion in general. The study found that two of the most influential Dominican newspapers, Listín Diario and Hoy, favoured anti-abortion sectors although in different ways (Cotes Javier, 2014).14 The first period of the causales fight closed with the defeat represented by the inclusion of the anti-choice clause mentioned above in the 2010 Constitution. Understandably, the outcome demoralised the feminist movement and its allies but also contributed to the creation of new modes of activism. In the second phase of the fight, and particularly during the second half of the 2010s, an important regrouping took place. In my view, the seed of this recovery was the creation of the Foro Feminista or Feminist Forum (now Foro Feminista Magaly Pineda). Members created the Foro Feminista as an explicitly activist-centred coordination space based on individual membership, partly as an attempt to learn from the Women’s Forum experience and from the lessons about the excessive influence of NGOs and external funding, which several feminists had warned about (Paiewonsky, 1994a, b; Figueiras, 1995; Curiel, 2005; Espinosa, 2005, 2009). At the same time, the Coalition for Women’s Rights and Lives, a feminist NGO network founded in 2007, became the main institutional platform in the struggle for  The media anti-abortion bias was explicit in Listín Diario and subtle in Hoy where the differences could be seen mainly through indirect mechanisms like titling and iconographic choices (Cotes Javier, 2014).

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the causales during this period. The Coalition and the Feminist Forum complemented each other to various extents depending on the nature of the struggle at the time.15 During the second stage, between 2010 and 2021, both networks continued to highlight the extreme nature of the causales and to recruit influential public figures. However, they also de-emphasised a direct confrontation with the Catholic Church and focused on presenting the issue in a more positive light. The campaign Voy a Favor (I Am in Favour) led by the legendary feminist collective Mujer y Salud (Woman and Health) was the clearest example of this shift, particularly in its symbolic portrayal of the involvement of female and male youth and, particularly, young Afro-descendent women. The campaign also included massive demonstrations in Santo Domingo as well as a substantial use of virtual outlets which made data about the causales accessible (Hernández-Medina, 2020b). It also showcased new actors such as Rosa Hernández, the mother of Rosaura Almonte (Esperancita), the 16-year-old girl who died in 2012 after being denied leukaemia treatment because she was nine weeks pregnant (Human Rights Watch, 2018; Del Rey, 2021; Acevedo, 2021; Hernández, 2021). On the other hand, anti-choice actors inaugurated the surprising alliance between conservative Catholics and Protestants we are witnessing today, and continued to unify their message. Nonetheless, they also shifted tactics responding to changes in the country. As abortion became less of a taboo subject, as shown in the opinion polls mentioned above, leaders in this camp scaled down public attacks against people who agree with the causales while, for the first time, partially acknowledging the extreme situations represented by the causales. Nonetheless, they did so by distorting the facts, for instance, organising campaigns and rallies under the slogan Salvemos las dos vidas (“Let’s save both lives”) ignoring the fact that the causales refer to situations where both lives (the woman’s and the foetus’) cannot be saved (Hernández-Medina, 2020a). More recently, the fight for the causales started a third phase with what multiple feminist activists, including myself, consider a watershed moment in 2021. This new stage constitutes the perfect site to examine the role of younger feminists, as they were the most important factor in the exponential expansion the causales movement went through that year. It started during yet another round of feminist mobilisations around the Dominican Criminal Code, then against the attempt by the new President of the Dominican Chamber of Representatives to get the Code approved excluding the causales in August 2020, right after his party came into office (Quezada, 2020; Del Rey, 2021). Once again, the movement managed to prevent this from happening with the crucial help of long-time allies like the Dominican Academy of Science (Acento, 2021), doctors and nurses’ associations (Hoy, 2021), unions, and several of the most important constitutional lawyers in the country

 Even though several members of Foro Feminista are also employees of many of the NGOs and academic institutions present in the Coalition, they consistently express the need to differentiate between their roles in both networks in order to keep their independence as activists while also contributing to the successful implementation of the strategies devised in both spaces. 15

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(Perdomo Cordero, 2021; García, 2021; Olivo Peña, 2021; Díaz, 2021; Acevedo, 2021; Salinas Maldonado, 2021). Notably, this new round of mobilisations included the movement’s decision to establish a camp in March 2021 across from the National Palace, where the President’s Office is located. Feminist activists, in its majority young and Afro-­ descendent women and some men, stayed at the camp for 73  days, focusing the public’s attention on the causales by implementing a wide array of educational and artistic events around the issue (Perdomo, 2021; Acevedo, 2021; Salinas Maldonado, 2021). As veteran feminist activist Sergia Galván explained, Dominican feminists chose the location because the Presidency is the centre of power in the country and the new President, Luis Abinader, had publicly committed his support for the causales along with his party, the Partido Revolucionario Moderno (Modern Revolutionary Party, PRM), including a famous interview with international newspaper El País in December 2020 shortly after being elected (Martínez Ahrens, 2020; Salinas Maldonado, 2021). The self-proclaimed Resistance Camp served as a novel, powerful focal point “and marked a before and after” in the history of the movement, in the words of Katherine Cabrera, Youth Officer from CONAMUCA, the iconic feminist organisation of rural women that played a crucial role maintaining the Camp. Not only did it put conservative forces on the defensive—it also contributed to expand exponentially the support for the causales throughout the country and abroad. Feminist and women’s organisations established similar camps in different provinces whereas the Camp caught the attention of and generated expressions of solidarity among feminist networks in the region, the United States and beyond, the Dominican diaspora, and multiple media outlets including El País, NBC News, and The Guardian, and elicited support from intellectuals like Noam Chomsky (Acevedo, 2021; Salinas Maldonado, 2021; SWS, 2021; Otras Voces en Educación, 2021). As a result, the feminist movement and its allies significantly increased the “social decriminalisation of abortion” in the country and positioned the issue as the most important trend in social and traditional media for months (CIPAF, 2021). Besides the Camp itself and the massive demonstrations the movement led before and after its establishment, the key component of this third phase was its more deliberate and effective use of social media. Younger and media-savvy activists, many of whom had never been part of the movement but mobilised out of indignation around Congress’ willingness to let women die, set up social media accounts like @rd3causales, sharing videos and infographics explaining the causales, encouraging other young people to rally, and counteracting the distorted messages shared in the same outlets by conservative religious groups. Similarly, young LGBTQI+ activists in the movement RD es de Todes (including some activists who also stayed at the Camp) included the causales in their demands against the elimination of hate crimes based on sexual orientation being considered by Congress (El Mitín, 2021). Also, public figures who were not involved in the issue before (including many influential personalities in politics, the entertainment industry, and the arts) shared their opinions in favour of the causales, while dozens of op-eds in favour of and against the cause appeared in both printed and digital media.

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The massive involvement of young activists signals an important generational change in Dominican feminist activism. However, the movement’s emphasis on abortion also became a place for contention that reflects internal conflicts, particularly the critiques waged by young and/or self-proclaimed decolonial feminists. Groups like Barrio Alante, Junta de Prietas, Aquelarre RD, and individual decolonial feminists challenge “hegemonic feminists”, arguing that the movement fails to represent poor women of colour. Other experts, including anthropologist Tahira Vargas, emphasise that abortion is just one of the multiple issues faced by this majority of women, and yet they implicitly or explicitly support abortion as they use alternative methods to provoke abortions when needed (Interview with Tahira Vargas, November 10, 2020). The issue was not resolved because the Criminal Code is still under discussion. However, despite the internal differences mentioned above, mobilisation around the causales contributed to the current “revitalising” process of the Dominican feminist movement after the partial demobilisation and internal conflicts of the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century (Manley, 2018; Hernández-Medina, 2018). This process also included the creation of feminist consciousness-raising groups similar to those operating in the 1970s and 1980s, such as Tertulia Feminista Magaly Pineda co-founded by the author and Yildalina Tatem Brache, and Coloquio Mujeres RD (Manley, 2018; Hernández Medina, 2018). Younger feminists created similar groups in different locations such as Tertulia Feminista del Sur in Barahona, the biggest city in the southwestern part of the country; Tertulia Feminista Petronila Gómez in Santiago, the second largest city in the Dominican Republic; and Aquelarre RD in Bonao, a mid-size urban centre halfway between Santo Domingo and Santiago (Hernández Medina, 2018).

5 Anti-Rights Groups: Conservative Backlash in the Dominican Republic Using Castells’ (2010 [1997]) framework, conservative religious groups are the main adversary of the Dominican feminist, women’s, and LGBTQI+ movements. In Castells’ adaptation of Touraine et al.’s (1981) social movement typology, “[a]dversary refers to the movement’s principal enemy, as explicitly identified by the movement” (2010 [1997]: 74). In this case, right-wing attacks against the Dominican feminist and LGBTQI+ movements are part of a long-standing tradition on the part of the most conservative religious groups in the country.16 A key component of this

 It is important to note, however, that even though conservative religious organisations represent an important majority in the Dominican Republic, at least in the case of the Catholic Church, the notably conservative perspectives of its leadership are not necessarily shared by many of their followers. For instance, a recent survey showed that 67.8 per cent of voters do not take into account the Catholic Church’s opinion on candidates compared to only 27.9 per cent who do (Olivo Peña, 2021). Additionally, there are some Catholic orders, especially those associated with Liberation 16

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trajectory has been the notable political and cultural power exercised by the Catholic Church, including the prerogatives it receives from the Dominican state as established in the Concordato, the diplomatic agreement dictator Rafael L.  Trujillo signed with the Vatican in 1954 (Paiewonsky, 2002; Lara, 2020). Nonetheless, these movements—mostly but not exclusively religious—benefited from the expansion of conservative Protestant denominations in the country and, maybe more importantly, from the alliances they built in their quest to neutralise the achievements of the feminist and LGBTQI+ movements. Such alliances were almost unthinkable in the past due to the profound differences between Catholic and Protestant conservative groups, and yet they effectively bridged those differences to implement their counteroffensive against the so-called gender ideology allegedly espoused by feminist and LGBTQI+ groups (Yildalina Tatem Brache and Graciela Morales, personal communication, December 5, 2019; Hernández-Medina, 2020a, b). The “gender ideology” dog whistle is part of a transnational strategy started by The Holy See and its allies in reaction to the massive UN conferences of the 1990s, especially the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), and the IV World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) (Goetz, 2020; Bessis, 2004). Ever since, conservative religious organisations of all denominations worked in previously unlikely collaborations across the globe and adopted a strategy: occupying and even co-opting the international human rights public sphere (AWID, 2017; Goetz, 2020). Fundamentalist movements expanded significantly under the “gender ideology” banner in Europe, starting with a campaign against sexual education initiatives in Croatia in 2007. Similar movements originated in Latin America in 2016 against same-sex marriage in Mexico and Colombia. The conservative backlash in Colombia also rejected a sexual education initiative proposed by the authorities and the inclusion of gender perspective in the Peace Accords between the government and the FARC guerrillas (González Vélez & Castro, 2018). Comparable movements were highly vocal in Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Colombia (González Vélez & Castro, 2018), and the Dominican Republic (Yildalina Tatem Brache and Graciela Morales, personal communication, December 5, 2019; Hernández-Medina, 2020a, b). This is what Sonia Álvarez calls a “right-wing tsunami” that “is crashing in on much of the region” (Álvarez, 2019: 305). Moreover, they have been key allies in the Blue Tide of conservative administrations that emerged as a reaction to the Pink Tide of socialist governments of the early twenty-first century (Álvarez, 2019; Torres Santana, 2019). This international context contributed to the reactivation of right-wing movements and conservative religious organisations in the Dominican Republic, even if the country is somewhat of a latecomer in this trend (Yildalina Tatem Brache and Graciela Morales, idem; Hernández-Medina, 2020a, b; Paiewonsky, 2023b, c). Nonetheless, I concur with other analysts (e.g. Perdomo Cordero, 2014) who argue that such reactivation, at least in the case of the Catholic Church, took place to deal Theology, in which some priests have more flexible views on many of these issues but are not able to share them in public because of the hierarchical nature of the Catholic Church.

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with significant internal challenges. The Catholic Church has not only been consistently losing followers to Protestant denominations, but its influence on its own flock is considerably lesser. Based on this convergence of international and national factors, these “resistance identity” groups, to use Castells’ terminology,17 are doubling down on slogans like “family values” and “Don’t mess with my kids” while incorporating new strategies designed to distort the concepts and arguments about gender equality, which feminist movements managed to permeate state organisations with since the 1990s (Álvarez, 1998; Hernández-Medina, 2020a, b). Based on interviews and informal conversations with multiple informants, I argue elsewhere that the turning point of this strategic shift in the Dominican Republic was the controversy created by those groups around the Ministry of Education’s Departmental Order No. 33-2019 in May 2019. The Order instructed ministry personnel to expand the gender equality policies the institution had been executing on and off since the creation of its gender equity unit EDUC-Mujer (EDUC-Woman) in the 1980s (Hernández-Medina, 2020a, b). The mediatic attack against the institution, especially focused on then Minister Antonio Peña Mirabal and gender equity unit manager, feminist educator Marina Hilario, represented “a shift away from the use of arguments centred almost exclusively on family values in favour of arguments more similar to those used by the feminist movement and others” (Hernández-Medina, 2020a, b: 2). Conservative groups used (distorted) “scientific” facts to challenge the concept of gender and argued that the policy attempted to “make boys wear pink” and similar arguments conflating attacks against the LGBTQI+ community with those reinforcing traditional gender roles. Conversely, the feminist movement and its allies started the campaign Hablemos de Igualdad (“Let’s Talk about Equality”) to neutralise this narrative and convince the public of the importance of gender equality, but the results were limited. In sum, the conflict represented a crucial moment when “the conservative movement reorganised itself and set political goals for the long haul” (Yildalina Tatem Brache and Graciela Morales, personal communication, 5 December 2019). More generally, Dominican anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQI+ groups followed a three-pronged strategy consistent with their tactics in the rest of the region (González Vélez & Castro, 2018): (1) they occupy institutional spaces by proposing law reforms, sending petitions, and lobbying government and legislative representatives; (2) they occupy public spaces, particularly through massive demonstrations defending “family values”; and (3) they use traditional and social media outlets to coordinate themselves and spread their message. The first tactic is particularly evident in their attacks against las causales examined in the previous section, whereas tactics 2 and 3 included organising multiple rallies, suing a sexual education campaign implemented by PROFAMILIA, the most important sexual and reproductive rights NGO in the country (Hoy, 2013;  At the end of the 1990s, Manuel Castells was already calling our attention to “how resistance identities, usually constructed using the materials inherited from history (god, nation, ethnicity, locality), intensified their impact on the social conflicts and social organisation of our world” (2010 [1997]: xxvi). 17

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PROFAMILIA, 2022), and an ongoing communicational offensive with regional public figures, such as the President of Ecuador’s Pro-Life Network, Amparo Medina (Yildalina Tatem Brache and Graciela Morales, personal communication, 5 December 2019), and Argentine author Agustín Laje, who started being a spokesperson for conservative groups even before the 2019 departmental order was issued. The tactics mentioned above might be new, but, as Lara (2020) critically reminds us, the challenge feminists and other activists face is that the very construction of Dominican citizenship is “inherently Catholic” whereas “the enactment of national character would be explicitly construed as an expression of religious faith and moral personhood” (61). Although Lara examines this construction and its use of a deeply biased concept of moralidad pública (public morality) to deny LGBTQI+ rights in the public arena, the same applies to women’s and feminist movements as the Dominican nation state has been historically defined as “biblically male or female, biblically patriarchal, and biblically heteronormative” (Idem). Such elective affinities make the (often distorted) claims of conservative religious groups resonate more easily with many Dominicans. This factor, combined with the massive economic and political power of Catholic and Protestant denominations, allows them to devote more resources and people exclusively to these ends as well as to infiltrate or lobby the state.18 The gains the Dominican feminists and their allies achieved in this difficult context are notable, yet the movement’s current challenges and possibilities remain remarkably complex, as I will explain in the last section of this chapter.

6 Final Remarks: The Dominican Feminist Movement, Going Back and Moving Forwards On Sunday 13 March 2022, almost 200 women participated in the First Regional Women’s Encounter in the southwestern area of the Dominican Republic. After two weeks holding workshops on gender equality at 18 high schools and neighbourhoods, this groundbreaking event brought together representatives from multiple cities and communities in the Enriquillo Region, including Pedernales, San Rafael, Postrer Río, La Descubierta, Barahona, Las Salinas, El Batey Santa María, Batey 6, Jaquimeyes, and Mena Los Blocks (Anny Jáquez Reyes, personal communication March 17, 2022). The Enriquillo Region is the poorest in the country, with a poverty rate of 37 per cent in 2019 (ONE/MEPYD, 2021). It is also one of the border regions with Haiti, and it has a strong presence of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian  For instance, even though the Ministry of Education continued working on reactivating its gender equality policy despite the enormous mediatic pressure conservative groups exercised against it, several informants familiar with the sector shared that such gains have been indefinitely put on hold as the public official in charge of the gender equity unit designated by the new and allegedly progressive PRM government elected in 2020 is herself a conservative evangelical. The resolution was later abolished by the new Minister of Education. 18

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descent, one of the most discriminated against populations in the country, who live in bateyes, the extremely poor communities of current or former sugarcane workers. The Regional Encounter was convened to commemorate International Women’s Day by the members of Tertulia Feminista del Sur, one of several collectives of young feminists created in the Dominican Republic in the last few years. In spite of the stereotypes still associated by many with feminism, the event attracted female political and community leaders, including two deputy mayors, a city council president, and a city councilwoman, who attended the Encounter along with representatives from other provinces, the national federation of rural workers Articulación Nacional Campesina (National Peasant Articulation), and the leftist political party Frente Amplio (Anny Jáquez Reyes, personal communication March 17, 2022). Initially modelled after Tertulia Feminista Magaly Pineda, the first Dominican feminist Tertulia established in Santo Domingo in May 2016, Tertulia Feminista del Sur has a younger and more diverse membership comprised of students, community organisers, and professionals. Its membership also has a higher proportion of Afro-­ descendant women, closely reflecting the demographic composition of the region and the country as a whole. Their event’s resounding success speaks to the increasingly multidimensional nature of the Dominican feminist movement as it struggles to respond to the challenges of our time. It is a refreshing example of how it can go back to the “popular roots” Magaly Pineda (1996 [1984]) famously talked about while also taking seriously the internal divides across class and race that go back to the times of Petronila Gómez, Evangelina Rodríguez, and Abigaíl Mejía. The Dominican feminist movement is at a crossroads where it needs to “go back” to its roots by working more deliberately with grassroots women and communities in both urban and rural areas, including the expansion of its collaboration with and learning more from the movements led by Dominican women of Haitian descent (Mayes, 2018). The movement, especially through its younger members, is also moving forward by building broader alliances with other social movements, especially those mobilising against inequality based on race, class, gender identity and sexual orientation, and around ecological concerns. The need to expand such alliances is also present among leftist veteran feminist activists like Lourdes Contreras, who advocate to make the connections between feminists and other social movements more explicit (Contreras, 2022). At the same time, Dominican feminists are also struggling with new issues, such as the relationship with transgender women, which has recently become more controversial, even though the LGBTQI+ and feminist movements have been historical allies, and this alliance was renewed amid the fight for the causales. The First Regional Women’s Encounter in the Dominican South speaks to the immense possibilities the near future entails. Nevertheless, how well the movement manages to deal with the challenges examined in this chapter will greatly determine whether Dominican women can achieve the “complete lives” Abigaíl Mejía, Petronila Gómez, and Evangelina Rodríguez dreamed about. That is how high the stakes are.

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Cotes Javier, I. (2014). Derecho a decidir de las mujeres: Asimetrías mediáticas de un debate. In L. Contreras (Ed.), Miradas desencadenantes: Hacia una construccion de la autonomía de las mujeres (pp. 13–60). Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo. Crehan, K. (2002). Gramsci, culture and anthropology by Kate Crehan. University of California Press. Curiel, O. (2005). Identidades esencialistas o construcción de identidades políticas: El dilema de las feministas. In G. E. B. Candelario (Ed.), Miradas desencadenantes: Los estudios de género en la República Dominicana al inicio del tercer milenio (pp. 79–98). Centro de Estudios de Género INTEC. Center for Reproductive Rights. (2019). They Are Girls: Reproductive Rights Violations in Latin America and the Caribbean. https://reproductiverights.org/ they-­are-­girls-­reproductive-­rights-­violations-­in-­latin-­america-­and-­the-­caribbean/. Contreras, M. (2023, April 19). Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo: “Las Sufragistas le crearon un malestar al patriarcado” País Político, April 19, 2023 https://paispolitico.net/ ylonka-­nacidit-­perdomo-­las-­sufragistas-­le-­crearon-­un-­malestar-­al-­patriarcado/. de la Rosa Hidalgo, F. (2014). Impacto del feminismo en las mujeres de los partidos políticos de izquierda, en Santo Domingo en la década de 1980. In L. Contreras (Ed.), Miradas desencadenantes: Hacia una construccion de la autonomía de las mujeres (pp.  267–290). Centro de Estudios de Género. de la Rosa Hidalgo, F. (2020). Movimiento Feminista y participación político social de la mujer dominicana: Primera ola del feminismo dominicano. Master’s thesis, Universidad del País Vasco. Del Rey, M. (2021, January 18). Dominican Republic activists fear total abortion ban banishes women to the dark ages. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ global-­development/2021/jan/18/dominican-­republic-­total-­abortion-­ban Díaz. (2021, February 25). Abogado: Código Penal no se ha aprobado por negación a reconocer a la mujer como “sujeta plena de derechos.” Z 101 Digital. https://z101digital.com/abogado-­ codigo-­penal-­no-­se-­ha-­aprobado-­por-­negacion-­a-­reconocer-­a-­mujer-­como-­sujeta-­plena-­de-­ derechos/ Durán, C. (2018). El Ministerio de la Mujer como parte del proceso de institucionalización del Estado dominicano: Un capítulo en la historia de la mujer. Ministerio de la Mujer. Dincṃer, P. (2019). Being an Insider and/or Outsider in Feminist Research: Reflexivity as a Bridge Between Academia and Activism‖, Manas Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi, 8 (4): 3728–3745. El Mitin. (2021, July 11). Las demandas del Colectivo LGBTIQ+ al Congreso. El Mitin. https:// elmitin.do/las-­demandas-­del-­colectivo-­cuir-­al-­congreso/ Estrada Álvarez, J., Jiménez Martín, C., & Puello Socarrás, J.  F. (2020). Contra Nuestra América: Estrategias de la derecha en el siglo XXI. CLASCO. https://www.clacso.org/ contra-­nuestra-­america-­2/ Espinal, R.; Morgan, J.; Boidi, M.F.; Zechmeister, E.J. (Eds). (2019). Cultura política de la democracia en la República Dominicana y en las Américas, 2018/19: Tomándole el pulso a la democracia. USAID / Vanderbilt / LAPOP / Barómetro de las Américas / INTEC / CESDEM. Espinosa, Y. (2009). Ethnocentrism and coloniality in Latin American feminisms: the complicity and consolidation of hegemonic feminists in transnational spaces. Translated by Ana-Maurine Lara. Originally published in Venezuelan Journal of Women Studies, 14(33): 37–54. Espinosa Miñoso, Y. (2004). Sobre el feminismo hoy. A la búsqueda de un otro sentido del ser y el hacer feminista en este tiempo en G.E.B. Candelario (Ed.). Miradas desencadenantes: los estudios de género en la República Dominicana al inicio del tercer milenio (pp.  101–121). Santo Domingo: Centro de Estudios de Género INTEC. Fernández Asenjo, M. M. (2015). De Maestras Normalistas a ‘Damas Trujillistas’: El Feminismo Dominicano, 1915–1946. Doctoral dissertation, University of Houston. Fernández Asenjo, M. (2016). Activismo político y feminismo en la República Dominicana. Petronila Angélica Gómez y Fémina (1922–1939). Meridional. Revista Chilena de Estudios Latinoamericanos, 7, Article 7. https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-­4862.2016.43547 Figueiras, C. L. (1995). Feminismo en República Dominicana. Género y Sociedad, 3(2), 41–89.

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Goetz, A. M. (2020). The new competition in multilateral norm-setting: Transnational feminists & the illiberal backlash. Daedalus, 149(1), 160–179. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01780 González Vélez, C., & Castro, L. (2018). Colombia: Educación Sexual, Diversidade y Paz: El entramado de la ‘Ideología de Género’. In L.  González Vélez (Ed.), Develando la retórica del miedo de los fundamentalismos: La campaña “Con mis hijos no te metas” en Colombia, Ecuador y Perú (pp. 13–57). Flora Tristán. Gramsci, A. (2003 [1971]). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith, Eds.). ElecBook. García, H. (2021). Pide aprobar Código Penal, si discusión 3 causales pasa a la salud. ZolFM. https:// zolfm.com/noticia/72972/pide-­aprobar-­codigo-­penal-­si-­discusion-­3-­causales-­pasa-­a-­la-­salud. Hannigan, J.A. (1985. Alain Touraine, Manuel Castells and Social Movement Theory a Critical Appraisal. The Sociological Quarterly, 26(4), 435- 454. Hernández Medina, E., & Tatem Brache, Y. (2017). Magaly Pineda, una mujer adelantada a su tiempo. Revista ECOS UASD, 24(14), 295–305. https://doi.org/10.51274/ecos.v24i14 Hernández, R. (2021, April 7). A mother’s plea: How many more Dominican women must die under Draconian abortion bans? Ms. Magazine. https://msmagazine.com/2021/04/07/ dominican-­republic-­abortion-­bans-­decriminalize-­women-­die/ Hernández Medina, E. (1995). La investigación-acción feminista y el movimiento de mujeres en la República Dominicana. Caribbean Studies, 28(1), 128–146. Hernández Medina, E. (2011). “Saquen sus rosarios de nuestros ovarios": Tácticas contra-­ hegemónicas del movimiento feminista dominicano. Seminario Intercambiando Historias: Género y Política en la R.D. Hernández Medina, E. (2018). El “derecho a una vida completa”: Notas incompletas sobre el Movimiento Feminista Dominicano. Revista Estudios Sociales, 41(157), Article 157. Hernández Medina, E. (2020a). “Hablemos de Igualdad”: The Dominican feminist movement and the conservative backlash in Latin America. Winter Meeting of Sociologists for Women in Society. Hernández Medina, E. (2020b). “Take your rosaries out of our ovaries”: The fight for women’s right to choose in the Dominican Republic. Oldenborg Luncheon Colloquium, Pomona College. Hoy. (2013, May 20). Iglesia católica insiste en que se retire campaña de Profamilia y se le quite la personalidad jurídica; dice disfrute de relaciones sexuales incita a la desobediencia. Hoy Digital. https://hoy.com.do/iglesia-­catolicainsiste-­en-­quese-­retire-­campana-­de-­profamilia-­ y-­s e-­l e-­q uite-­l a-­p ersonalidad-­j uridica-­d ice-­d isfrute-­d e-­r elaciones-­s exuales-­i ncita-­a -­l a-­ desobediencia/ Hoy. (2021, April 9). Colegio Médico y Asociación de Enfermeras apoyan las tres causales. Hoy Digital. Human Rights Watch (2018). It’s your decision, It’s your life. The Total Criminalization of Abortion in the Dominican Republic. https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/11/19/ its-­your-­decision-­its-­your-­life/total-­criminalization-­abortion-­dominican-­republic Keck, M. E., & Sikkink, K. (1997). Transnational networks in the movement society. In D. S. Meyer & S.  Tarrow (Eds.), The social movement society: Contentious politics for a new century. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Lara, A.-M. (2020). Streetwalking: LGBTQ lives and protest in the Dominican Republic. Rutgers University Press. Manley, E. S. (2017). The paradox of paternalism: Women and the politics of authoritarianism in the Dominican Republic. University Press of Florida. Manley, E.  S. (2018, November 27). Revitalizing feminism in the Dominican Republic. NACLA. https://nacla.org/news/2018/11/27/revitalizing-­feminism-­dominican-­republic Manley, E. S. (2019). “News of ‘crazy’ women demanding freedom”: Dominican feminist activism in a post-dictatorial state (1961–1990). Caribbean Studies, 47(1), 3–36. https://doi. org/10.1353/crb.2019.0006 Martínez Ahrens, J. (2020, December 26). Luis Abinader: “En la nueva Guerra Fría necesitamos una relación estratégica con Estados Unidos.” El País. https://elpais.com/

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internacional/2020-­12-­26/luis-­abinader-­en-­la-­nueva-­guerra-­fria-­necesitamos-­una-­relacion-­ estrategica-­con-­estados-­unidos.html Martínez-Vergne, T. (2005). Nation and citizen in the Dominican Republic, 1880–1916. The University of North Carolina Press. Mayes, A. J. (2008). Why Dominican feminism moved to the right: Class, colour and women’s activism in the Dominican Republic, 1880s–1940s. Gender & History, 20(2), 349–371. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-­0424.2008.00525.x Mayes, A. (2018). Black feminist formations in the Dominican Republic since La Sentencia. In K. Dixon & O. A. Johnson III (Eds.), Comparative racial politics in Latin America (2nd ed.). Routledge. Ministerio de la Mujer. (2019). Plan Nacional de Igualdad y Equidad de Género (PLANEG III). chrome-­extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://mujer.gob.do/transparencia/ phocadownload/Publicaciones/Planeg/PLANEG%20III%202020-­2030.pdf Mones, B. (2021, October 6). Women’s human rights and the gender equality agenda in international organizations [Guest Lecture]. Esther Hernández-Medina’s class Gender and Development in Latin America, Pomonoa College. Morales Pacheco, G. y Tatem Brache, Y. (2022). Perspectivas de la legalización del aborto en República Dominicana: relevancia política, narrativa y retos. Estudios del Desarrollo Social: Cuba y América Latina. 10(1), 352–368. ONE/MEPYD. (2021). Perfiles de Pobreza Monetaria en República Dominicana, 2010–2019. Oficina Nacional de Estadística/Ministerio de Economía, Planificación y Desarrollo. https://www.one.gob.do/publicaciones/2021/perfiles-­de-­pobreza-­monetaria-­en-­republica-­ dominicana-­2010-­2019/ Otras Voces en Educación. (2021, March 27). Noam Chomsky aboga por las tres causales en carta a arzobispo y todos los obispos dominicanos. https://otrasvoceseneducacion.org/ archivos/373400 Olivo Peña, G. (2021, June 17). Mayoría vota sin tomar en cuenta a la iglesia, apoya educación sexual en escuelas. Acento. June 17, 2021 https://acento.com.do/politica/mayoria-­vota-­sin-­ tomar-­en-­cuenta-­a-­la-­iglesia-­apoya-­educacion-­sexual-­en-­escuelas-­8955222.html. Paiewonsky, D. (1994a). Cavilaciones de una feminista abatida: Crisis personales y políticas. Género y Sociedad, 1(3), 118–133. Paiewonsky, D. (1994b). Institucionalidad, organización de mujeres y consolidación estratégica. Género y Sociedad, 2(2), 67–81. Paiewonsky, D. (2002). Contexto general y principales actores. In D. Paiewonsky (Ed). El Género en la agenda pública dominicana: Estudios de caso y análisis comparativo (pp. 13–63). Centro de Estudio de Género/Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo. Perdomo, L. (2021, March 21). Tras diez días de manifestaciones, campamento por las tres causales se mantiene firme. Diario Libre. https://www.diariolibre.com/actualidad/tras-­diez-­dias-­ de-­manifestaciones-­campamento-­por-­las-­tres-­causales-­se-­mantiene-­firme-­IC25144297 Perdomo Cordero, N. (2014, September 1). El ocaso de la ortodoxia. Acento. https://acento.com. do/opinion/el-­ocaso-­de-­la-­ortodoxia-­8169423.html Perdomo Cordero, N. (2021, May 20). Los mitos sobre las tres causales. El Día. Retrieved May 20, 2023, from https://eldia.com.do/los-­mitos-­sobre-­las-­tres-­causales/ Pineda, M. (1996). The Spanish speaking Caribbean: We women aren’t sheep. In R. Morgan (Ed.), Sisterhood is global: The international women’s movement anthology (pp. 131–134). Anchor Press/Doubleday. PROFAMILIA. (2022). Portal PROFAMILIA. https://profamilia.org.do Paiewonsky, D. (2023a, February 2). La más fundamental de las causales. Acento. February 2, 2023. Paiewonsky, D. (2023b, March 24). El antifeminismo en ascenso. Acento. March 24, 2023. Paiewonsky, D. (2023c, July 21). Descodificando las tretas de la ultraderecha. Acento. July 21, 2023. Perdomo, Y.N. (2022, June 9). Las Sufragistas. Un documento para la historia. Acento. June 9, 2022.

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PNUD. (2019). Informe sobre Calidad Democrática en la República Dominicana. Universalizando derechos para la ciudadanía formal y sustantiva del siglo XXI en América Latina y el Caribe. Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo. Quezada, D. (2020, August 18). Código Penal será conocido sin las causales. El Caribe. https:// www.elcaribe.com.do/destacado/codigo-­penal-­sera-­conocido-­sin-­las-­causales/ Quinn, R.  A. (2021). Being La Dominicana: Race and identity in the visual culture of Santo Domingo (1st ed.). University of Illinois Press. Quinn, R.  A. (2015). “This Bridge Called the Internet: Black Lesbian Feminist Organizing in Santo Domingo”, in Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Cheryl R.  Rodriguez, and Dzodzi Tsikata (ed.). Transatlantic Feminisms: Women and Gender Studies in Africa and the African Diaspora (pp. 25-44), Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Salinas Maldonado, C. (2021, March 31). Las mujeres de República Dominicana reclaman por su derecho al aborto. El País. https://elpais.com/sociedad/2021-­03-­31/las-­mujeres-­de-­republica-­ dominicana-­reclaman-­por-­su-­derecho-­al-­aborto.html Senado República Dominicana. (2021). El Senado reconoce a Milagros Ortiz Bosch por su destacada labor en la administración pública. https://www.senadord.gob.do/ el-­senado-­reconoce-­a-­milagros-­ortiz-­bosch/ Simmons, K.  E. (2011). Reconstructing racial identity and the African past in the Dominican Republic. SWS. (2021, April 27). SWS stands in solidarity with Dominican feminists defending women’s and girls’ lives, health and dignity. Sociologists for Women in Society. http://socwomen.org/ sws-­stands-­in-­solidarity-­with-­dominican-­feminists-­defending-­womens-­and-­girls-­lives-­health- ­ and-­dignity/ Torres Santana, A. (2019). De la marea rosa a la marea conservadora y autoritaria en América Latina: Desafíos feministas (p. 39). Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES). chrome-­extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://library.fes.de/pdf-­files/bueros/quito/15682.pdf Touraine, A. (1981). The voice and the eye: An analysis of social movements. Cambridge University Press. UNDP/UN Women. (2017). From commitment to action: Policies to end violence against women in Latin America and the Caribbean. United Nations Development Program/ United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. https://www. undp.org/latin-­a merica/publications/commitment-­a ction-­p olicies-­e nd-­v iolence-­a gainst-­ women-­latin-­america-­and-­caribbean UNESCO. (2021). International day for the elimination of violence against women|UNESCO. https://www.unesco.org/en/days/elimination-­violence-­against-­women Zeller, N. (2012). Discursos y espacios femeninos en República Dominicana, 1880–1961. Editorial Letra Gráfica.

Documentaries Ortega, A. (2019). Gigantes en el Tiempo: Magaly Pineda. El Informe de Alicia Ortega/Color Visión: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVA3EeG74Ao Tatem Brache, Y. (Producer and Director). (2009). Mujeres extraordinarias, mujeres sin tiempo, mujeres en el tiempo. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Era7jlHhEsk Tatem Brache, Y. (Director) y 1961 (Producer) y Old Man River (Producer). (2015). Mujeres extraordinarias: políticas, feministas, valientes y decididas. Available at: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=arD5ABThK7A Tavárez, J. & Checo, M. (Producers) and Perdomo, Y.N. (Writer) (2008). Las Sufragistas. Un documento para la historia. Historia, selección de textos antológicos, iconografía y curaduría Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo

Chapter 7

Between Institutionalisation and Militancy of Affection: A Journey Through Feminisms in Ecuador Soledad Varea and María Rosa Cevallos

Contents 1  Introduction 2  The Origin of Feminisms and Popular Feminisms in Ecuador 3  Institutional Feminism in the 1990s 4  Urban Feminisms 5  The Struggles for the Decriminalisation of Abortion 6  Conclusions References

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1 Introduction Maternalism and its opposite, women’s right to make their own decisions on maternity, are the mobilising axes around which feminisms developed, from their beginnings to their ulterior massification and the ensuing, though only recent, decriminalisation of abortion in rape cases. On some occasions, women were able to acquire these rights because opportunities arose at the right time, and in some other cases it was thanks to the affections guiding this movement that women could capitalise on these changes to push ahead with their demands. This chapter is based on two concepts: opportunity structures and the politics of affect. The opportunity structures depend on the convergence of certain factors, such as the coexistence of a combination of government agencies  – i.e. various types of state offices, such as health, education, and welfare ministries – preoccupied with feminism issues (Marks & McAdam, 1996, p. 275). At times, they used their ambiguous presence in the state to produce constitutional changes. In the case of Ecuador, a coalition was formed in 1997, articulated as various state offices devoted to the inclusion of feminist concerns in their official agendas. S. Varea (*) · M. R. Cevallos School of Social and Human Sciences, Universidad Central del Ecuador/Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales, Quito, Ecuador e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. M. Pousadela, S. R. Bohn (eds.), Women’s Rights in Movement, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8_7

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This concept underlines the relationship between actors and institutions and their intermittent products. Marks and McAdam (1996) argue that it is not possible to make emphatic claims about certain institutions being more or less beneficial to feminists. Feminisms respond to such opportunities by choosing certain strategies over others, so as to have a direct influence on the opportunities thus open to them. Studies such as Chappell’s (2000) show that in Canada and Australia, for example, the relationship between feminists and political institutions is going through permanent change and the results of these dynamic interactions are relatively unpredictable. In Ecuador, on the other hand, certain policies remained stable, thanks to the process of observation and organisation by feminisms. As an example, even with some changes, the law on violence remains in place since 1990, as do the state offices in charge of implementing them. Sexual and reproductive rights, on the other hand, are undergoing a dynamic situation, moved as they are in and out of the agenda depending on the government in power. Along with the structure of opportunities at state level, the politics of affect played a key role in the actions carried out by feminisms. As in other countries, in Ecuador too such issues as criticism of romantic love, defending the ethics of care, the vindication of bodily experience and the very idea of sisterhood are all evidence of the manner in which affection was central to the history of feminisms up to the present day. Likewise, feminist theories show that patriarchy, male violence and the hetero-cis-normative matrix share not only an ideological content but also affects, emotions and feelings, which are all structured by these devices. Thus, the normative force of these structures is based not only on how they naturalise certain ways of thinking but also on how they consolidate certain ways of feeling (Solana & Vacarezza, 2020a, b). This chapter traces the different stages of feminism in Ecuador, starting with its first manifestations by journalists and teachers, in which the idea of care and protection of motherhood prevailed as a political demand in women’s rights. From this stage on until the 1980s, the role of the state as a patriarchal institution came into question. In addition, a popular form of feminism was constructed in dialogue with the working classes, under the influence of the left-wing parties in which its precursors were actively involved, hence its incorporation in two social segments: on the one hand, what Almeida and Cordero (2017) call “new social movements”, including feminism and its cultural and social demands, and, on the other, social movements in general, encompassing workers and students’ movements, as well as rural and indigenous groups. In this way, while women’s movements in general were part of a broader movement demanding a transition to democracy and fighting Neoconservatism, Troya Fernandez (2007) and Rodas (2005) divide them into self-styled feminist organisations – that is, organisations identifying with the postulates of feminist theory and working with and for women – and women’s organisations. In response to the configuration of new opportunity structures, during the 1990s feminisms found themselves in conversation and interaction with the state and certain international cooperation institutions, and new demands emerged from this

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relationship. Finally, in the last stage – from 2012 on, with the milestone of the so-­ called March of the Whores  – a diversity of feminisms began to manifest themselves, amplified through social media as mechanisms for social transformation and political advocacy. In short, the origin of these movements can be traced back to suffragism, followed by organisations linked to workers’ and peasants’ movements, then to enlightened maternalism and on to institutionalism and finally to a middle-class and literate feminism in dialogue with the left-wing sector, and with environmental and indigenous women’s movements. This chapter is divided into four parts. Firstly, it explores the background of feminisms from the times maternalism was put forward as a political possibility, and the constitution of left-wing popular feminisms. Secondly, it focuses on the homogenisation of what could be characterised as the “First Wave” and the entry into the state – i.e. the constitution of institutional feminism. Thirdly, it analyses the process of massification of feminisms after the last constituent process. In the course of this development, the movement first encompassed a small group of women and then went on to expand to a broad population that not only demanded gender-related rights but also aspired to a new way of living and relating to others. This includes not only the policies of redistribution and recognition but also the transformation of emotional relationships and nature as cornerstones of a new society. This process, in turn, led to a generational fracture of the movement. The last part of the chapter analyses the struggle for the decriminalisation of abortion and the ensuing conservative backlash. This chapter uses a qualitative methodology, based on the analysis of testimonies collected through in-depth interviews with women active in Ecuadorean feminism from the 1980s to 2021. This material was used to reconstruct the life stories of these feminists who, by virtue of their long trajectories, preserve the historical memory of the movement.

2 The Origin of Feminisms and Popular Feminisms in Ecuador Early feminist debates, writings and thinking in Ecuador had a maternalist influence, i.e. they defended certain feminine attributes associated with childcare and family. According to some authors, this was due to a political strategy to distance feminism from the first European wave (Goetschel, 2006a, b; Flores Ángeles & Guerrero Tena, 2014; Bourque, 1996). At the beginning of the twentieth century, motherhood, Catholicism and care in general were fundamental to the construction of the identity of Ecuadorean women, due to the recent depopulation caused by wars and the consequent construction of hegemonic political discourses that assigned the care of the citizens of the homeland to these women (Goetchel, 2006a, b).

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According to other theories, motherhood acquired a central role in Ecuador due to the process of mestizaje or miscegenation, with absent fathers who made maternal figures a fundamental symbol in the development of the nation. In the case of indigenous peoples and nationalities, this symbol was transferred to the Andean cosmovision through its link with the Pachamama figure (Cuvi Sánchez & Martínez Flores, 2001). Goetschel (2006a, b, 2013) analyses the feminist discourses of journalists and teachers in the early days of Ecuadorean feminism. These voices, on the one hand, exalted motherhood and, in return, demanded protective state measures, such as prenatal care, maternity leave and access to childcare. On the other hand, they demanded equality between men and women, especially in terms of political rights (Goetschel, 2006a, b, 2013). Zoila Ugarte de Landívar and Nela Martínez were two among many women teachers who, at the time, along with left-wing activists, expressed their progressive ideas in newspapers and magazines circulating among Ecuador’s elite. Thus, this generation of feminists gained recognition in the more traditional sectors of Ecuadorean society. In other words, in this phase, the main spokespersons of the movement were not marginal actors. While they sought to reach the most excluded sectors of society, they had an impact when it came to redefining women’s identities at the time and constructing a female subject entitled to rights. Nela Martínez continued to write in newspapers and magazines until the 1980s, so it is possible that the left-wing maternalist feminism influenced what we know as popular feminism (Lilia Rodríguez, personal communication; Cordero, personal communication, 2005). Around this time, feminist women in Quito and Guayaquil who were forming small civil society organisations (CSOs) moved, respectively, to the south of the capital and to the Guazmos. They intended to carry out grassroots work focused on economic and sexual and reproductive rights, mainly on the issue of abortion. One of the feminists interviewed for this work, active in the 1980s, analyses the incipient popular feminisms in the following way: Women’s political participation as legitimate actors did not exist in left-wing spaces, where male voices were more powerful. At that time, several sectors questioned the neoconservative proposal of then presidential candidate León Febres Cordero. The Women for Democracy political movement, made up of wives of candidates, and [others] [...] arose from this. When we first met there were about 70 of us. After three years, we were joined by women trade unionists and others. We would meet in each person’s home and invite politicians to discuss various issues. Someone would make a presentation and then a debate would be held. Left-wing women did not want to participate because it seemed to be right-wing to them. (Patricia Palacios, personal communication)

This interview raises the issue of the partial rupture of feminism with the left, which would give way to the relationship of the women’s movement with certain state institutions and political parties which women, until that moment, had had no voice in. According to the interviewees, this allowed them to become feminist political subjects, under the influence of the first wave that privileged political equality.

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In the case of our interviewee, the initial space was Mujeres por la Democracia, and later the Coordinadora Política de Mujeres and the Fundación Mujer y Sociedad, at a time when CSOs were booming in the face of an incipient and fragile state. The CSO Centro Ecuatoriano de Promoción de la Mujer (CEPAM) was born out of a left-wing women’s organisation, and it was very important in the 1980s because it produced the first studies on gender violence. The Liberation Theology was another influential factor, having in earlier stages trained feminists like Lilia Rodríguez and Nela Martínez; its best-remembered representative was Monsignor Leónidas Proaño. According to various indigenous testimonies, he spoke about the voice and dignity of the most depoliticised and marginalised subjects of those years: the indigenous peoples. In this way, he influenced the development of grassroots ecclesial communities. The Liberation Theology carried a lot of clout on the indigenous movement of the 1990s, which in turn had a great influence on the political instruction of many women who later became feminists.

3 Institutional Feminism in the 1990s The 1990s was a very important decade for women at United Nations (UN) level, with international conferences in Cairo in 1994 and Beijing in 1995. According to one witness interviewed for this work, these conferences were attended by women from both right-wing and left-wing political parties. In disagreement with this, the younger women founded the Coordinadora Política Juvenil (CPJ) with the aim of building a political space focusing on the body and sexuality. According to Lilia Rodríguez, popular feminisms in Ecuador underwent a transformation in the 1990s due to their ability to directly influence the state (Lilia Rodríguez, personal communication, 2021). In a book published in those years, Rodríguez (1993a, b) proposed that the work performed with popular sectors, which until then had been carried out by CSOs, should be transferred to the state in order to universalise access to these programmes. As Rodas (2005) and Rodríguez (1993a, b) point out, the first national women’s organisations were created in this decade, international conventions promoting women’s rights were ratified, such as the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women, better known as the Convention of Belém do Pará. Also, laws benefitting women were passed, such as the Law Against Violence Affecting Women and Family (1995); the Labour Protection Law (1997), which resulted in the reform of the electoral law and produced the Law on Quotas (1997) ruling the obligation to distribute candidacies for elective office in equal proportions between men and women; and the Law on Free Maternity and Child Care (1998). A series of state institutions focusing on women were also created, such as the National Women’s Council (CONAMU, 1997), where many grassroots activists

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came to work; the main attribute of this state institution is its work with popular sectors. In the life story of physician Virginia Gómez, a central figure in the history of feminism in Ecuador, it is clear that from the 1990s onwards, the movements began to engage in conversations with the state: I worked for a while at the Ecuadorean Centre for the Promotion and Action of Women (CEPAM), as Coordinator of the Health Area. Then CEPAM decided to set up a centre in a poor neighbourhood and we began to work on the issue of violence in relation to health and reproductive and sexual health risks. Then we started to work more specifically on the issue of violence in the health system through a legal medical service [...] dealing with pregnancies resulting from violence and rape. That’s when we started working with emergency contraception. The first concrete proposal to deal with an unwanted pregnancy was to disseminate the existence of emergency contraception. It was 1994. That year we had some training with people from the Ministry, but emergency contraception was not yet regulated. It was incorporated in 1998, but by then we had already been doing it for four years, CEPAM administering the morning-after pill through the Yuzpe method. (V. Gómez de la Torre, personal communication, 2021)

According to Santillana and Aguinaga (2012a, b), although in the early 1990s there was a movement critical of class inequalities, “[t]he ideological-political introduction of UN-driven premises and national governments entering into agreements to promote women’s human rights ended up taking precedence” (15). According to the authors, this was due to the influence of international conferences whose declarations, of a more ethical-political nature, pushed states in the direction of gender inclusion and alliances in favour of women’s rights. Women from different political leanings participated in the process of drafting the Law Against Violence Affecting Women and Family, led by Lilia Rodríguez. Likewise, according to Ninfa León (2011), women’s organisations that were not necessarily feminist, such as the committees of users of public maternity wards, were involved in the development of the Free Maternity Law. These committees were made up of women who promoted free services in all the stages of reproduction – pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum and parenting – because they themselves had been through these experiences in public institutions. Feminist demands at this stage were related to sexuality and the private as political; hence, the situations of violence experienced by women in their intimate spaces were revealed, and the struggle for the right to decide about their bodies was upheld. As Santillana and Aguinaga (2012a, b) argue, there were three groups with different forms of political action in feminisms: firstly, women who worked in state agencies, influencing public institutions to obtain and maintain women’s rights; secondly, women involved in international organisations, who sought to get the government to strengthen economic, sexual and reproductive rights; and, thirdly, an important group of women who worked outside the state, in small social organisations. These were diverse feminisms within which class and gender encounters were taking place around a common element: questioning Neoconservatism and sexist relations in the context of a broader civil society demanding the institutionalisation of a plurinational state.

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The 1998 Constitution incorporated fundamental women’s rights, some of which were institutionalised. One such case was the right to a life free of violence, introduced as public policy by CONAMU, a government body working with other institutions, such as the Women’s Ombudsman’s Office and the Specialised Legislative Commission on Women and Family: The apparent neutrality prevents the transformation of power relations, and what it achieves are adjustments and adaptations to the system or small concessions that partially placate the existing contradictions. The equal opportunities doctrine continues to be based on the hegemonic male model, which, in a Neoconservative global society has increased sexism and multiplied the manners of exploitation of the female body. (Santillana & Aguinaga, 2012a, b, p. 20)

In the 1990s, international cooperation in Ecuador promoted agendas based on international human rights standards, as a result of which many CSOs devoted to gender issues received international support to push for the inclusion of these issues in the country. In this sense, the women’s movement advanced under the guidance of the agendas of international cooperation and some UN agencies and programmes, in particular UN Women and the UN Population Fund. They deployed three fundamental strategies: strengthening the women’s movement in the country, invigorating state institutions to guarantee women’s rights and promoting dialogue between state and civil society. Years later, in 2012, the same CSOs, again supported by international cooperation, would make proposals to the Constitutional Assembly, many of them around sexual and reproductive rights and the eradication of gender-based violence. The most advanced proposals, particularly those concerning sexual and reproductive rights, were not necessarily accepted; however, the new Constitution paved the way for more progressive demands based on the principle of equality and non-­ discrimination. The presence of young women was fundamental in these demands, especially when issues related to sovereignty over their bodies came up.

4 Urban Feminisms Unlike previous processes, this stage was characterised by affection as the main leverage for political action. The proposal was to radically transform society on the basis of new forms of relationships that ranged from the community and the relationship with nature to sisterhood and care. At the same time as the fight against gender-based violence was institutionalised, escrache (public shaming) was proposed as a way of obtaining justice: the lack of trust in a patriarchal justice system led to the denunciation of violence against women perpetrated by men with a certain social status, outside of legal channels, through social networks or through artistic expression. The milestones that marked the beginning of this stage were the so-called March of the Whores, a parade of urban women’s collectives with demands for rights related to the body, and then the emergence of the platform Vivas nos Queremos, an

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example of how the feminisms networked, communicated and mobilised through social media, with demands focused on extreme violence against women, which in Ecuador as in the rest of Latin America has increased exponentially in recent years. This platform is part of a global movement that denounces women’s deaths simply because they are women. Providing emergency contraception for adolescent women was made compulsory, and at the same time parallel forms of medical care and safe abortions were established as a non-patriarchal means of access to pregnancy termination. In Ecuador, self-styled “young” feminisms emerged from the rupture of women students with feminisms close to the state and institutions, whether public or international cooperation. The emergence of this young feminism is reflected by the life story of Pamela, a member of CPJ and later an official of the National Council of Women. This feminism broke with the first wave movement, guided by the idea of equality as a common denominator beyond class, race, ethnicity or ideology, which made it possible for Women for Democracy to be composed of political parties of all persuasions. At the same time (1970–1980), Liberation Theology was also beginning to influence the indigenous movement, which is where Pamela comes from: I was a militant in the indigenous movement [...] I left Pachacutik [a political party of the indigenous movement] because the issue of women was not important and the issue of young people even less so, because there was this whole generational issue: young people and women [were sent to deal with] the operational issue, [while] the issue of participation was quite inaccessible, because there were mestizo professionals linked to the movement, and an elite was created and so it was difficult for young people to be admitted. However, I participated in some things, [for example] in the indigenous peasant uprising in Chimborazo. [I was excited] to work with indigenous people, [but] they didn’t work on the issue of indigenous women. The Women’s Political Coordinating Committee had three arms: young women, indigenous women, Afro-Ecuadorean women. But once again there was the problem: young women had no real space for participation, they were marginalised. [The compañeras] began to join REDLAC [Network of Feminist Organisations for Sexual and Reproductive Rights], and so we began to work on a project on sexual and reproductive rights and we started a process with these women. It was the first time we got into it headfirst, because it was an issue that motivated us, that caught our attention. Then we began to question many things around the Women’s Political Coordinating Committee, we started to see what it was that united us and we shared the office, we saw women who were empowered politicians. But of course, internally we knew a lot of things, [for example] women colleagues who lived situations of strong violence and were in authority, and we questioned the issue of the autonomy of the body and violence. [So] we began to give another turn to the Coordinating Committee, because the Political Coordinating Committee was made up of all women of all political tendencies. When we began to work on the issue of sexual rights, we started to feel resistance. (P. Quishpe, personal communication, 2021)

As was the case with left-wing political parties, the Liberation Theology did not take into account young women’s issues, particularly those related to sexual and reproductive health. While in other Latin American countries, Liberation Theology became feminist theology, this was not the case in Ecuador, where young women were excluded from political spaces. The CPJ, which Pamela was one of the founders of, thus emerged. The CPJ responded to the need for a political space in which

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to debate issues surrounding the body and sexuality and the construction of a new identity or, in Rancière’s terms, a “proper name” (Rancière, 2007, p. 56). Likewise, some of the women in the indigenous movement, influenced by the ideas of Monsignor Leónidas Proaño, radically separated from Catholicism and converted to Protestantism. Others organised into groups like the Feminist Collective and the Pink House, which later became the Assembly of Popular and Diverse Women. None of these political processes thought about religion, despite the fact that the proposals of feminist theology were almost the same as those of the left-­ wing feminist movements in Ecuador. From 2007 onwards, during the pre-constituent period, feminisms diversified and became more widespread, as happened in other countries in the region. Some focused on working with popular sectors, others with indigenous women and others brought together women from all social strata under the slogan of voluntary, free and safe abortion. They became part of a broad regional movement known as the “green tide”, which in the case of Ecuador originated in the Ecuadorean Front for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, which mobilised the Free Abortion EC campaign. From then on, and as a result of the rupture with young left-wing men, different political spaces of feminist women were formed where the pre-constitutional discussions on abortion took place in 2007. The main debates of the feminist movement revolved around the recognition of domestic work and paid domestic work, the decriminalisation of abortion, and basic, universal income for women. This is where feminisms’ interest in the body, sexuality and specifically abortion emerged most strongly as a unifying factor for women in the pre-National Constituent Assembly of 2007: I got involved in the issue of abortion because of my personal experience and because at Casa Rosa, the issue was discussed with a lot of discomfort, without being able to resolve the experience. So, we decided to talk about the issue of abortion and its criminalisation based on our feminist experience, and to take it to spaces outside Casa Rosa. There, we saw that it was necessary to push the issue to the public space. Luna Creciente got involved because we needed to place the proposal as a social movement. So the space of self-convened women was created, and we began to create a space for self-training in order to have scientific information and to build political arguments, we asked ourselves, Where will we take the issue?, and, What political style will we use? CPJ, for example, did not want us to speak from our experience. We did a design workshop and a graphic campaign based on the theme “I decided to have an abortion”, so we thought that it was not a moral problem but rather a political one, because there was social criminalisation, a silence about many women dying. (Nancy Carrión, personal communication, 2023)

Naming the experience of abortion was a process of debate and subjective construction. Within this framework, a book was published in which personal stories were narrated, with the slogan, “I had an abortion”. The debate prior to the Constituent Assembly also showcased the multiple intersectionalities whereby the struggle for sexual and reproductive rights was also a struggle against exclusion and structural poverty: The Mujeres Autoconvocadas space was formed a year before the Assembly, our intention was to position ourselves on the issue of decriminalising abortion and abolishing prison, so we coincided with other women’s movements. But in this same space there was discomfort,

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as many women avoided in depth conversations about abortion. In their opinion, society was not ready because there was a very strong pro-life discourse. For this reason, there was a process of debate: whether or not to place the issue in the public debate and the Constituent Assembly. (Nancy Carrión, personal communication, 2021)

4.1 The Feminist Movement in the Pre-constituent and Constituent Processes During 2007 and 2008, in response to then President Rafael Correa’s call for the transformation of the Constitution through dialogue and social construction, women from all over the country – urban and rural, of all ages and social classes – held participatory roundtables to discuss their main problems. Institutional feminists, anarchists and activists from political parties and social collectives participated in this process. The meeting point was Casa Feminista de Rosa: In February 2008, 26 women’s social organisations signed a Statement by diverse Ecuadorian women for the right to safe abortion. In it we argued that abortion was already a right won in practice by women: 95,000 women had abortions every year in our country. We demanded honesty to debate our proposal: the extension of safe abortion to all Ecuadorean women. Honesty – with ourselves – was also the starting point of our challenge: to understand the problem of abortion in an embodied way, through our personal experiences, and to explain its illegality as a political problem breaking through the concrete lives of many women. Since then, the memory of our bodies became the subject of our politics, when we decided to break the silence and turn into words the experiences we had silenced, our forced oblivion. To speak in the first person, to affirm, “I decided to have an abortion”, was a political decision we made valuing the human need for the true word, the one that names the experience of each one of us with the world, as a possibility of creation based on deep learning. Our humanity had been constituted in the territory of war between Yes and No in the constituent referendum. Casa Feminista de Rosa brought together various feminist collectives that presented different demands to the 2008 constituent assembly, many of which were considered in the constitutional charter. The main achievements are related to economic rights, for example the recognition of domestic work through universal social security. The great loss of this stage and of the entire Correísta government has to do with sexual and reproductive rights, but especially the criminalisation of abortion in rape cases. (Nancy Carrión, personal communication, 2021)

The 2008 Constitution did indeed include recognition and social insurance for domestic workers. This process was followed by the construction of feminist schools and collaborative workspaces, as well as the publication of magazines in which women prisoners and women outside prison could write. In short, feminisms were democratised, and this was expressed in the marches on 8 March, and above all in the demonstrations of Vivas nos Queremos, which every 25 November made their demands more complex around gender violence and the visibilisation of femicide. Femicide was classified as a legal offence in 2014, but the number of femicides has continued to increase.

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Finally, the feminist discourse that had not managed to permeate the indigenous communities ended up taking root in the women’s and men’s assemblies and entered the large demonstrations demanding a new relationship with nature from the state, which had an extractivist strategy. This change originated in pre-constitutional discussions, which brought women defenders of nature and feminists together at the same table. This was another great legacy of pre-constitutional and constitutional discussions: a mutually supportive relationship emerged from the dialogue between women defenders of nature, including members of CSOs such as Acción Ecológica and indigenous women defenders of the rainforest, and urban feminisms. Those fighting for the defence of the body and sexual and reproductive rights took up environmental struggles, and women defenders of nature ended up including abortion rights in their demands.

5 The Struggles for the Decriminalisation of Abortion The struggle for access to sexual and reproductive rights, and specifically for the decriminalisation of abortion, was strengthened in the context of the pre-constituent assemblies of 2007 and 2008. Although organised women did not manage to get the issue through the Constituent Assembly, in 2013 the National Assembly proposed the decriminalisation of abortion for rape in all cases. The proposal was presented by Paola Pavón, current prefect of Pichincha and member of the then Alianza País party, identified as Correísta, who worked together with important feminists such as Virginia Gómez and Pamela Quishpe. The proposal was silenced by the presidency and ended in political censure for the Assembly members who submitted the motion. Since then, Correa’s government criminalised abortion, persecuted diverse women who fought its criminalisation and imprisoned women who had abortions. It also persecuted the defence of the environment, another issue dear to young feminisms. Overall, it was a decade in which diverse feminisms were persecuted and stigmatised. For their part, laws and public policies related to gender-based violence evolved in a partial manner (Guarderas & Carofilis, 2020). In addition to being present in Articles 11, 66, 70 and 81 of the 2008 Constitution, the issue is addressed by a set of laws and policies that include the Law Against Violence Affecting Women and Family (1995), the National Plan to Combat Trafficking (2004); the National Plan for the Eradication of Gender Violence Against Women, Children and Adolescents (2007); the Comprehensive National Plan on Sexual Crimes in the Educational Sphere; the Organic Code of the Judiciary (2009); and the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code (2014). In addition, specialised justice spaces for gender-based violence, such as the Ordinances for Equality for Persons of Different Gender Status and the Judicial Units for Cases of Violence Against Women and Family, have been institutionalised by decentralised autonomous governments. The criminalisation of femicide as a consequence of the extreme expression of gender violence also defined

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psychological violence as a form of aggression. At the same time, the Organic Law of the National Councils for Equality and the Law on Labour Justice and Recognition of Unpaid Work in the Home were approved. In contrast with this progress, however, abortion rights suffered a regression. This setback, coupled with the agendas of international organisations and the growth of the legalisation movement across the region, galvanised civil society collectives fighting for the right to reproductive choice. With the antecedent of the Front for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, a series of CSOs and young women’s social movements have promoted campaigns and political actions for the decriminalisation of abortion: The Front was born defending the emergency contraception pill (ECP), which was under attack. [We made a flyer saying that ECP is not an abortifacient, that it is contraceptive, we included phrases from the Pan American Health Organisation, and we signed it as the Ecuadorean Front for the Defence of Sexual and Reproductive Rights, down below were the names of those who subscribed the flyer [...] then the Front appeared with a lot of institutions. There we had a huge problem because the Human Rights Clinic of the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador subscribed this manifesto, because [...] [a fellow feminist lawyer] asked the [director of the Clinic [...] if he wanted to subscribe the manifesto and the guy, who didn’t realise what he was doing, said yes. [...] This reached the ears of the Church and went all the way to Lima, the headquarters of the Episcopal Conference of Latin America, and they put [the director of the clinic] up against the wall. The manifesto was already printed, and they sent us letters saying that the Catholic University had not given its consent and we had to eliminate it (from the flyer), and of course, we didn’t have a written record [...] In the end we crossed that part out with a marker,

In this context in which the lack of progress was evident, organisations like Fundación Desafío have supported women so that they can have safe abortions, and they have done so from a secular perspective, as clandestinity is mainly due to the Catholic morality that permeates the entire health system (Cevallos, 2012a, b). Facing an informed and accompanied abortion is an important turning point in women’s lives, especially for rape victims, hence the importance, according to the director of the Foundation, of the state guaranteeing the right of girls and adolescents to terminate pregnancies resulting from rape in a dignified manner through a reparation law (Atrakouti, 2021). At the same time, medical abortion and support has spread, thanks to the emergence of movements like Las Comadres: young women volunteers who, in a feminist care effort, have started to provide personal support to women seeking an abortion. Las Comadres break the siege of silence and fear surrounding abortion. They use social media like Facebook and messaging services like WhatsApp to offer their services and to campaign to bring the issue of abortion into the public forum. The Aborto Libre Ecuador movement is made up of Las Comadres and several feminist groups and a large number of unorganised young women. Like its Argentine counterpart, Aborto Libre Ecuador uses the green scarf as a symbol of their struggle. Thus, the issue of decriminalisation of abortion burst into the public arena under the leadership of young feminists linked to libertarian and care feminism (Araujo &

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Prieto, 2008). Beyond legal demands, the proposal of these groups is to destigmatise abortion and recognise the legal loopholes in women’s access to safe abortion with loving support. In other words, the discourse focuses less on legality than on feminist support and bodily autonomy. While this strategy marks a generational break, the legal advocacy strategy remains an intergenerational meeting point: all Ecuadorean feminists have converged in the demand for the unconstitutionality of the criminalisation of abortion in rape cases. As this chapter is being written, the Ecuadorean Constitutional Court has decided to decriminalise abortion in rape cases, i.e. to increase the grounds on which abortion is not criminalised. This followed seven lawsuits by CSOs and the Ombudsman’s Office alleging the unconstitutionality of Articles 149 and 150 of the Comprehensive Criminal Code. Ana Cristina Vera thus explains the importance of this milestone resolution: For us it was historical because we managed to avoid [...] forced maternity for women pregnant as a result of rape, who will now be able to make a decision without risking prison or death. It was a tense day [...] It was argued that Article 150, which mentioned women “with mental disabilities”, was discriminatory, that it had to apply to all women [...] They said that we women were going to lie in order to have an abortion, which shows an utter lack of trust [in us] [...] A statement or a complaint from a woman ought to suffice. The issue must then go through the Assembly, which will have to interpret [the Court’s decision]. The Court must establish a process without further victimisation, and based on the principle of trust [...] We believe that we must achieve total decriminalisation, abortion by choice: we cannot continue to be treated as objects of reproduction. To exercise [this right], we need effective policies [...] to implement comprehensive sexual education based on scientific standards, so as to eliminate the barriers preventing access to contraception and the prevention of violence. [Laws and policies that] tell us that we are people and that as people we have the capacity to decide. The Court is the highest constitutional body in a democracy and as such must be respected. We are going to be vigilant so that it generates norms in health matters. The decriminalisation of abortion is an issue of social justice because abortion is common among women: the difference is that those with fewer resources are more likely to die from abortion. What the Court did is decriminalise abortion in rape cases, not in all, so now we have to establish the processes and requirements. (A.  C. Vera, personal communication, 2021)

5.1 Conservative Reaction Along with the democratisation and strengthening of feminism in Ecuador, conservative women’s groups have also accessed power. Until 2006, militancy took place behind closed doors in schools and churches, but since the debate around the PAE, their political action has been increasingly visible in the streets, through “white marches”, as well as through public pronouncements, the drafting of bills and lobbying in the Constituent Assembly. This period has already seen the emergence of political cadres trained to become deputies, university professors, ministers and employees in the upper echelons of public administration.

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These groups, calling themselves “pro-life”, seek to install the idea that life begins at the moment of conception and that abortion is therefore murder and the struggle for decriminalisation is a war waged against humanity, comparable to the Holocaust. Feminisms went unnoticed during a substantially long period, but since 2006 they have turned their attention to what they call “gender ideology” and what they perceive as the promotion of abortion. They have created foundations so that women who have decided to have an abortion do not have the procedure performed. They have intervened in public institutions, and especially in the Ministries of Health and Education, and have grown politically to the point that, during the tenure of Rafael Correa, they took control of sexual and reproductive health policy, focusing on the idea of abstinence and child protection under the shelter of a heterosexual nuclear family. Plan Familia was then promoted as the solution to the growing number of teenage pregnancies in the country. These groups are part of international networks like the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae and the Marian Love Bonds Movement. They have varied funding, links with government institutions and academic and civil society organisations and try in every way possible to influence indigenous communities. The latter, however, is not easy for them because they tend to be people who consider themselves white and have racist positions, and the hard work done by the Liberation Theology makes it difficult for them to enter Chimborazo, for example (Varea Viteri, 2018). But they have managed to penetrate the conservative popular sectors of Quito and Guayaquil, and, more recently, their onslaught has extended to social media like Twitter, with influencers like Mamela Fiallo, who has a million followers and international support and devotes her efforts to post against feminism and women’s rights. She defines herself as a pedagogue, vindicates Spanish virgins and queens and promotes the slogan “feminine, not feminist”, that is, she promotes the return to a subordinate condition and confined to the private space of the home, focused on the formation of heterosexual, monogamous families with the purpose of procreation. Fiallo and her followers oppose not only abortion, considering it murder because they see the embryo as a person from the very moment of conception, but also all the rights won by Ecuadorean women since the origin of feminism. In the 2021 elections, the self-styled “pro-life” movement launched its own presidential candidate and proposed a government plan centred on strengthening the family, education in values and abstinence, contrary to scientific information on sexual and reproductive health, together with the privatisation of the economy. They won three seats in the Assembly, from where they continue to operate against the abortion bill and defend right-wing moral ideas.

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6 Conclusions In the preceding pages, we have characterised feminisms in Ecuador on the basis of two concepts: on the one hand, their frameworks of action, focusing on the processes through which movements negotiate and dialogue with the state and institutions to achieve their objectives, and, on the other hand, the affective approach, analysing the way in which emotions and affections guide political meanings and actions. A relevant theme in this historical journey has been the issue of the right to motherhood and the right to abortion as two sides of the same coin. The history of Ecuadorean feminism was born under the banner of maternalism, and one of its most powerful struggles today is the decriminalisation of abortion. This brings us back to the focus of feminisms on the body as a space in which tensions, struggles and care are interwoven. A central milestone in this process has been the rupture of feminisms with masculine and patriarchal spaces during the 1980s, followed by the construction of a movement with its own voice that demands the recognition of domestic work as a way of making poverty visible and the acceptance of sexual and reproductive rights, mainly the right to abortion as the possibility to decide over one’s own body, as well as the right to political participation and the construction of one’s own spaces. The ruptures within the movement itself have also been highlighted, especially among women who consider it necessary to work from within the state and those who maintain that transformation happens outside the state, through sustained collective work. This rupture has led to the emergence of self-styled “youth” urban movements, which are growing strongly. Gender violence, with femicide as an extreme manifestation, and abortion in rape cases spearhead the struggle since 2012. This is due to a variety of reasons, including the increase of femicides, the growing criminalisation of abortion as a result of the conservative turn of Correa’s government and the definitive rupture of the movement with the Correa project. This opened the way for the massification of feminism, expressed in the “Whore Marches” and the Vivas nos Queremos movement, underpinned by the rise of social media like Facebook and new messaging apps like WhatsApp. The balance is positive, as important rights have been achieved, mainly in the area of gender-based violence, and this is evident in laws and policies. However, abortion in general and abortion in rape cases, which has united feminisms beyond political differences, social class, sexual identification or ethnicity, are still in dispute and have generated a powerful conservative onslaught that puts this and other rights at risk. This chapter leaves us with a series of questions: What will happen with the public policies and laws passed over the last century under an extremely conservative government that lacks the budget needed to address urgent issues, such as gender violence and femicide? How will a national movement that in recent months has grown stronger around the debate on decriminalising abortion for rape be sustained?

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And finally, what rational, institutional and affective strategies will be devised to confront the conservative onslaught?

References Almeida, P., & Cordero Ulate, A. (Eds.). (2017). Movimientos sociales en América Latina: Perspectivas, tendencias y casos (E. Cervio, Trans., Primera edición en español). CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales. Araujo, K., Prieto, M., & FLACSO (Organization) (Eds.). (2008). Estudios sobre sexualidades en América Latina (1a ed). FLACSO Ecuador. Atrakouti, A. (2021, August 23). ECUADOR: “Los derechos de las mujeres atraviesan una situación emergencia desde mucho antes de la pandemia.” https://www.civicus.org/index.php/es/ medios-­y-­recursos/noticias/entrevistas/5242-­ecuador-­los-­derechos-­de-­las-­mujeres-­atraviesan-­ una-­situacion-­emergencia-­desde-­mucho-­antes-­de-­la-­pandemia Bourque, S. C. (1996). Género y Estado: perspectivas desde América Latina. In Encrucijadas del saber. Los estudios de género en las ciencias sociales. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Cevallos, M.  R. (2012a). El temor encarnado: Aborto en condiciones de riesgo en Quito (1st ed.). FLASCO. Cevallos, M. R. (2012b). El temor encarnado. FLACSO. Chappell, L. (2000). Interacting with the State: Feminist Strategies and Political Opportunities. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2(2), 244–275. https://doi. org/10.1080/14616740050137456 CONAMU (1997). Evaluación del cumplimiento de los compromisos del Ecuador en la Conferencia Internacional sobre Población y Desarrollo El Cairo 1994. Quito: CONAMU-UNFPA. Cuvi Sánchez, M., & Martínez Flores, A. (2001). El muro interior. In G. Herrera Mosquera (Ed.), Antología Género (pp. 309–338). FLACSO – ECUADOR. Flores Ángeles, R. L., & Guerrero Tena, O. (2014). Maternalismo y discursos feministas latinoamericanos sobre el trabajo de cuidados: Un tejido en tensión. Iconos. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 50, 27–42. Goetschel, A. M. (2006a). Estudio introductorio. In A. M. Goetschel, (Ed.), Orígenes del feminismo en el Ecuador Antología (1st ed., pp. 13–58). CONAMU-FLACSO-Secretaría de Desarrollo and Equidad Social-UNIFEM. chrome-­extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https:// biblio.flacsoandes.edu.ec/libros/digital/52805.pdf Goetschel, A.  M. (2006b). Estudio introductorio. In Orígenes del feminismo en el Ecuador. Antología. CONAMU-FLACSO-Secretaría de Desarrollo y Equidad Social-UNIFEM. Goetschel, A. M. (2007). Educación de las mujeres, maestras y esferas públicas. Quito en la primera mitad del siglo XX. FLACSO y Abya-Yala. Goetschel, A. M. (2013). Educación de las mujeres, maestras y esferas públicas. Quito en la primera mitad del siglo XX (1st ed., Vol. 0). FLACSO and Abya-Yala. http://revistas.flacsoandes. edu.ec/iconos/article/view/280 Gómez de la Torre, V. (2021). Los derechos de las mujeres atraviesan una situación emergencia desde mucho antes de la pandemia, entrevista de CIVICUS, disponible en https://www.civicus. org/index.php/es/medios-­yrecursos/noticias/entrevistas/5242-­ecuador-­los-­derechos-­de-­las-­ mujeres-­atraviesan-­una-­situacion-­emergencia-­desde-­mucho-­antesde-­la-­pandemia Guarderas Albuja, M. P., & Carofilis Cedeño, C. M. (2020). Contrasentidos en las Políticas contra la Violencia de Género y a los Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos en Ecuador: Una Mirada Situada. In Ecuador: Debates, Balances Y Desafíos Postprogresistas (pp.  209–234). Centro Internacional de Estudios Superiores de Comunicación para América Latina (CIESPAL). http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20201016051518/Stalin-­Herrera.pdf

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León Jiménez, N. (2011). La discusión sobre el problema del estado en el Ecuador desde una perspectiva comparada respecto a América Latina en la década de los ochenta. Quito: FLACSO, Sede Ecuador. Marks, G., & McAdam, D. (1996). Social movements and the changing structure of political opportunity in the European union. West European Politics, 19(2), 249–278. https://doi. org/10.1080/01402389608425133 Rancière, J. (2007). El reparto de lo sensible. Barcelona. Rodas, R. (2005). 100 años de Feminismo en el Ecuador. Revista Renovación, 7, 1–15. Rodríguez, L. (1993a). Género y desarrollo: Nudos y desafios en el trabajo no gubernamental en el Ecuador : un aporte a la discusión de las ONGDs en el Ecuador. CEPAM. Rodríguez, L. (1993b). Género y Desarrollo: nudos y desafíos en el trabajo no gubernamental en el Ecuador. CEPAM. 1994 Mujeres de Solanda. Santillana, A., & Aguinaga, M. (2012a). El movimiento de mujeres y feministas en el Ecuador. Instituto de estudios ecuadorianos; Fundación Rosa Luxemburg. Santillana, A., & Aguinaga, M. (2012b). El movimiento de mujeres y feministas en el Ecuador. IEE, Rosa Luxemburgo. Solana, M., & Vacarezza, N. L. (2020a). Relecturas feministas del giro afectivo. Revista Estudos Feministas, 28, e72448. https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-­9584-­2020v28n272448 Solana, M., & Vacarezza, N. L.. (2020b). Relecturas feministas del giro afectivo Seção Temática Feminismos, Afecto y Política. Revista Estudos Feministas, Florianópolis, 28(2) Troya Fernandez, M. P. (2007). Discursos sobre ciudadanía del Movimiento de mujeres a fines de los 90. FLACSO. Varea Viteri, M. S. (2018). El aborto en Ecuador: Sentimientos y ensamblajes. FLACSO Ecuador.

Chapter 8

Historical Periods and the Wave Metaphor in Mexican Feminism Gabriela Cano and Saúl Espino Armendáriz

Contents 1  Introduction 2  The Waves Metaphor 3  First Period: Intellectual and Professional Emancipation (1887–1916) 4  Second Period: Suffrage and Equal Work (1916–1939) 5  Third Period: Formal Equality and Diplomacy (1939–1971) 6  Fourth Period: Women’s Personal and Bodily Autonomy (1971–1987) 7  Fifth Period: Institutionalisation and Diversification (1987–2010s) 8  Towards a New Period? 9  Conclusions References

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1 Introduction Activist expressions of feminism in Mexico have increased and diversified in recent years. In the capital and other cities, street demonstrations against sexual violence and in favour of reproductive rights gathered strength  especially  since 2016. Protests became massive and mobilised participants from a broad generational and socio-economic spectrum, with plural ways of understanding the theory and practice of activism. At the same time, scholars began to delve deeper into the current state of feminisms and their history using different approaches and disciplines, as seen in the bibliography cited in the text. Parts of this chapter has been published in Spanish: “Olas y etapas en la historia de los feminismos en México”, en Cristina Herrera, Karine Tinat y Silvia Giorguili (coords.) Mirar el mundo con lentes de género. Estudios multidisciplinarios de género en El Colegio de México, México, El Colegio de México, 2023, pp. 53–94. G. Cano (*) · S. E. Armendáriz El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. M. Pousadela, S. R. Bohn (eds.), Women’s Rights in Movement, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8_8

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This chapter proposes a chronological model of analysis to add complexity to the history of feminisms in Mexico. The model engages with the socio-political history of the country. It separates from the approaches that use frameworks of global North to local realities. Such analyses tend to dilute or overlook the singularity and specific features of the languages, agendas and political practices of feminism in Mexico. In this sense, the periodisation of US feminisms, and especially the wave metaphor, is widely used in Mexico. The wave narrative scheme is often used without critical mediation both in academic studies and popular discourses. The discussion of its conceptual implications is recent and limited (Cano & Espino Armendáriz, 2023; Andrews, 2022; Chaparro, 2022; Barrancos, 2020). Delimiting timeline lapses using the periodisation method is an explanatory and narrative resource inherent to the discipline of history. Delineating the time  segments makes it possible to organise events and attribute features that give meaning to a period of time  and facilitate the articulation of historical narratives. However, periodisations also impose analytical and political biases and can lead to oversimplifications. The periodisation outlined here problematises the history of Mexican feminisms on its own terms, providing the basis for new narratives. It is not a rigid temporal framework but rather a flexible chronological skeleton. It is a set of parameters drawn up to stimulate discussion on how to organize feminist history, its periods and generations, in a way that is sensitive to local and regional specificities and transnational exchanges. The proposed periodisation aims to overcome those approaches that place feminisms on the margins of Mexico’s political and social history. Its axis is the history of feminisms therefore, the proposed segments of time begin and end    with events that signal a change or a rupture in the discourses and practices of feminisms. We avoided resorting to conventional periodisations of Mexican history, such as the Mexican Revolution or the presidential terms. Similarly, this work seeks alternatives to the decade-by-decade periodization.  Feminisms constitute only a limited segment of the political initiatives undertaken collectively or individually by women or for women. In other words, feminism does not encompass all forms of women’s mobilisations, but only those that question the social hierarchy of gender. Within its great historical diversity, as a political practice  and philosophical discourse  feminism challenges male power, privilege and authority. It aims to end the subordination of women in a given society. Distinguishing between feminisms and women’s movements is an analytical challenge that requires a deeper understanding of the context  and of historical change. On the other hand, despite the relevance of anti-feminism the proposed periodisation does not engage opposition to feminism (Bard, 2000). It is also important to understand that feminism was a vital movement characterised by internal and external confrontations. Highlighting such the discrepancies aims to underscore the complexities and vitality of Mexican feminisms and not a symptom of its weakness or immaturity (Scott, 2011, 2012). The  geographic mobility of activists  the networks that transcend national and institutional borders, the exchange of different types of resources and the

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negotiation of a common language through international meetings, especially among non-­state actors (Alvarez et  al., 2003)  have been crucial in the history of Mexican feminisms.  Translation and text adaptation projects (Alvarez et  al., 2014) have been also relevant. Although the present periodization was designed for the Mexican context, the fact is that, in order to historicise feminism, a transnational approach is necessary. It permits the insertion of the particularities of Mexican feminism in the global processes, while also contemplating the national history framework  (Saunier, 2009; Iriye,  2013). This perspective leaves behind  the persistent representation of feminism  in Mexican history as a foreign import or a fashion derived from imitating American society (Gamio, 1992; Zapata, 1997). At the other extreme are the accounts that narrate the history of feminisms in Mexico, with a focus on in national circunstances and local poliitical discussions. Such perspectives are often confined to the country’s capital. The accounts of feminism as a foreign influence presuppose that relations between societies are unidirectional. With a transnational approach, it is possible to highlight how, despite power differentials, interactions result in transformations for all parties involved (Joseph et al., 1998). Regional, hemispheric and global meetings, several held in Mexico, allowed for the consolidation of activists’ networks, acting as nodes articulating a discourse and a movement that would otherwise appear fragmented on a country basis (Alvarez et al., 2014). Rather than as an import or influence, it is more useful to think of feminism as a discourse that travels and is transplanted under local conditions (Davis, 2007).

2 The Waves Metaphor The metaphor of the sea waves is perhaps the most frequent narrative strategy to tell the story of feminism in Mexico and other parts of the world. While the image of the rising and receding waves can be helpful  to depict  a basic history  of feminism, the metaphor favours an oversimplification of a complex phenomenon.  It leaves out of the narrative actors and regions that part of the history of global feminisms. Moreover,  it subsumes  local stories  to the narrative of US  white feminism. The widespread  image  is so powerful and it is easy to forget that  it is  a narrative device  that betrays the nuances  of feminisms.  It produces a biased  narrative  and shapes our  understanding feminism, its past, its present and its successive generations. If we accept the wave metaphor,  feminist activism becomes part of an inevitable cycle: the water  rises and recedes until it becomes foam and disappears into the ocean. The crest of the wave represents moments of activism, and the ebbing of the sea alludes to the apparent retreat of feminisms. In American historiography, the first wave alludes to suffragism, the second to women’s liberation and the third to the struggle against intersecting gender and race discrimination (Nicholson, 2010). Transferring this chronology to other parts of the world imposes a straitjacket on local histories of feminisms  to make them fit into a schema designed for the

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USA.  The image of the waves of feminism has its own history. The metaphor emerged as a device for young liberationists to define themselves as heirs to the legacy of suffragette militancy, which they described as the first wave, while defining themselves as the second (Hewitt, 2010). One of the major limitations of the wave metaphor is that it tends to privilege moments of activism over other aspects of feminism. It suggests  that street mobilisations are the most relevant episodes in the history of feminism while intellectual contributions and institutional reforms are of secondary importance and do not quite fit in the in the US or in the global history of feminism. For example, the initiatives of the Inter-American Commission of Women, of great significance for feminism in the Americas, both for the North and the South, do not correspond to any wave (Marino, 2019). In Mexico, the metaphor of the two great waves of feminism also underscores the 1970s’ activists’ identification with women’s rights advocates of the post-­ revolutionary period (Lau Jaiven, 1987; Espinosa & Lau Jaiven, 2010). The wave image still shapes the identity of the new generations of activists, who see themselves as the fourth wave. This new generation of feminists give priority to the the struggle against gender-based violence and uses on-line communication and through social networks. However, the metaphor is showing signs of exhaustion. In recent years other images have been used to represent the strength and scope of feminisms. In Argentina, the mobilisation that achieved the decriminalisation of abortion was described as a “green tide” (Barrancos, 2020), while in Mexico a recent book of feminist essays bears the title Tsunami (Jáuregui, 2018). Both images – the tide and the tsunami – allude to and at the same time distance themselves from old marine metaphors. Indeed, while the waves break on the beach and dissolve into the sea, tides and tsunamis flood and sweep everything away. In order to build nuanced, complex and detailed accounts showing the interrelationship between feminism and the social, political and cultural context of Mexico from a transnational approach, it is necessary to go beyond the wave metaphor. A new flexible chronological model can contribute to place feminisms at the center of new multiple narratives. Our proposal consists of five variable-duration periods. Each period begins and ends with events that mark significant changes in the practices and discourses of feminisms in conection with of the sociopolitical history of Mexico. It is with great caution that we envision a sixth period in the history of Mexican feminism. This new period can encompass the present day fement, multiple identities and contentions active in Mexican feminisms.  Proposing a new periodization is challenging  (Melgar, 2022; Gatopardo,  2021). It entails  building a historical argument and establishing the agenda, actors and practices that are typical of each period as well as pointing the changes and continuites.  

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3 First Period: Intellectual and Professional Emancipation (1887–1916) The first period began at the end of the nineteenth century, when public discussion intensified about women’s access to professions and occupations and their position within family and society. The government of Porfirio Díaz, in power for almost 30 years, promoted higher education for men and women and a few women were thus able to study medicine and jurisprudence. The initial milestone of the period was the professional certification as a medical doctor of Matilde Montoya, the first woman to graduate as a surgeon and establish a practice in the country. The event took place in 1887, and it provoked both sympathetic and hostile reactions in society (Carrillo, 2002). Montoya became a symbol of women’s intellectual capacity and emancipation and defined the terms of the public discussion about women professionals, a debate that stayed alive throughout the period. Women’s access to the liberal professions of medicine and jurisprudence was seen as a desirable sign of the country’s modernisation, as long as they conformed to the gender parameters of the time and attended to their family and domestic obligations as wives, mothers or daughters. The few women doctors and lawyers who did enter the profession did not seek to transform the social order, but only to be accepted by society and peers. They did not reject marriage or motherhood, as their opponents argued, favouring the social fear that women would lose all interest in the home and devote themselves to the laboratory, the clinic or the forum, leaving childcare in the hands of men. Opposition to women professionals flared up at the beginning of the twentieth century. The enemies of the women doctors and lawyers argued that the smaller size and lighter weight of women’s brains were a scientific proof of their lack of intelligence and professional capacity. Secretary of Public Instruction Justo Sierra refuted this argument in 1907, pointing out that the idea of women’s intellectual inferiority was a thing of the past, an old prejudice that Mexican society had overcome. His words were no more than wishful thinking, as the prejudice remained alive for years. The most forceful defence of intellectual education as a means of women’s emancipation came from Laureana Wright de Kleinhans, an essayist, poet and editor of Violets of Anáhuac (Violetas de Anáhuac) (1887–1889), a literary magazine that prided itself on publishing only women writers. Wright de Kleinhans considered that cultivating rational thought and knowledge would favour the coexistence of married women and men and ensure the happiness of the family. In her opinion, the intellectual education of women would not mean a radical transformation of the family or their priority dedication to the home (de Kleinhans, 2005). The civil legislation of the time was influenced by Napoleon’s thought, which dictated the marital subordination of women, was the subject of legal criticism by lawyer Genaro García. The issue, however, did not arouse as much public interest as that of women professionals (García, 2007).

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The outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 is common breaking point in Mexican history. However, is not a significant event in feminism. The associations that supported Ricardo Flores Magón’s movement, the anti-reelectionist clubs and groups that joined Francisco I. Madero’s democratising mobilisation championed social and political causes, but they did aim at transforming the social hierarchy of gender, nor did they mobilise in favour of a women’s political or labour rights. 

4 Second Period: Suffrage and Equal Work (1916–1939) The second period began with the First Feminist Congress of Yucatán (1916), and it covered the final years of the Mexican Revolution and the period of the construction and strengthening of a new state. Voting was perhaps the most controversial public opinion issue in those years, but it was not the only issue that concerned  feminisms  at the time. Work outside the home and the improvement of women’s labour  conditions were of central importance. Sexual education and prostitution were also matters of feminist interest and povoked heated debate in feminist circles. Constitutionalism, the political and military faction that eventually won the political and military victory in the Mexican Revolution and established a new Constitution in 1917, was the only revolutionary group which opened up spaces for feminist discussion. The two feminist congresses held in Yucatán in January and December 1916 were an initiative of the constitutionalist government of the Southwestern state. Their purpose was to combat the influence of the Catholic Church on society, deemed by the revolutionaries as contrary to the social progress of the country. The Constitution recognised women’s labour rights, including maternity and breastfeeding leave and equal pay for men and women doing equal work, but it did not recognise women’s suffrage. The articles pertaining to suffrage were written using the masculine gender, which, according to grammatical convention, included both sexes. However, in the case of suffrage, the constituents did not contemplate women because they assumed that it was obvious that voting was a male-only right. In their view, Mexican women lacked the preparation needed to participate in electoral processes. The principal advocate of women’s suffrage was Hermila Galindo, editor of La mujer moderna. Semanario ilustrado (1915–1919) a weekly political and cultural  magazine that campaigned in favour of constitutionalism and feminism. Galindo petitioned the Constituent Congress for women’s suffrage. Although the petition was ignored, and the vote was not established, Galindo ran for a deputation in the elections held in 1917. In the next decades, other activists used a similar strategy. They campaigned for elected posts in in order to demonstrate women’s capacities for political agitation and organisation (Cano, 2019). The Pan-American Feminist Congress held in Mexico City in 1923 put forward a wide range of feministas issues. Participants dissused labour, citizenship and civil rights for women. and pointed to the importance of work outside the home and the

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need for women workers to have hygienic and affordable dinnig and care facilities. Discussions on sexual morality were particularly heated, and their influence was felt at other feminist meetings of the period. The three congresses of women workers and peasants of the early 1930s, organised by women affiliated to the ruling party – the Partido Nacional Revolucionario, or PNR, the forerunner of the party that would be in power for 70 years – mobilised urban and rural women workers from different parts of the country, but failed to get the party to take a stance in favour of women’s suffrage. The PNR’s gradualist stance lent itself to ambiguity, as it opposed women’s suffrage in practice, but declared itself in favour of women’s suffrage. The vote was a desirable aim in an indeterminate future. The prevailing view among the political elite was that Mexican women were not prepared for electoral participacion. The opposition parties to the PRI included women’s suffrage in its political programme. In 1934  the Frente Único Pro-Derechos de la Mujer was formed in Mexico. Despite following the lead of the Third International, the Front  brougth  together activists and organisations from a broad political spectrum (Oikión, 2018). Its agenda included the promotion of women’s paid work through sewing workshops, laundries and cooperative farms, among other initiatives. In parallel, women’s suffrage became increasingly important within and outside the Front and became a unifying demand in the 1937 midterm elections. Against a backdrop of suffrage mobilisation, President Lázaro Cárdenas submitted a constitutional reform to Congress to recognise universal women’s suffrage. Although approved by Congress, the reform did not materialise because the government’s top leaders increasingly feared that women would vote for the opposition candidate in the 1940 elections. By 1939 it became clear that the reform was not going to succeed. Because of the discouragement and dispersion of activist efforts resulting from this frustrated reform 1939 marked the end of this stage.

5 Third Period: Formal Equality and Diplomacy (1939–1971) Equal citizenship and institucional and political participation were crucial in this period of Mexican feminism extending for more than three decades from 1939 to 1971. It is a era of political centralisation, economic growth and relative social welfare. World War II led to the formation of women’s organisations against fascism in an internal context of national unity. Acting within the state, the so-called “feminist feminism” postulated that political, civic and labour equality was not at odds with women’s priority dedication to the home and childcare nor with the accepted family order that granted husbands authority in the home. This conventional  feminism however  proclaimed itself firm in the defense of women’s equal voting  (Castillo Ledón, 2011).

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It is commonly assumed that the inclusion of women’s rights in the UN Charter (1945) and the Declaration of Human Rights (1948) was a consequence of the growing influence of the USA. However, the initiative came from Latin American diplomats. The experience of the Inter-American Commission of Women, formed in 1928, facilitated the intervention of Latin American feminist diplomats, including Mexico’s Amalia de Castillo Ledón, at the Chapultepec and San Francisco conferences. At Chapultepec, Latin American women introduced the issue of women’s rights, getting governments to commit to include women in their delegations and to recognise the Inter-American Commission of Women as a body of the Pan-American Union, on the same level as other commissions (Cano & Vega, 2016). In San Francisco, Castillo Ledón formed an alliance with representatives from several countries. The small group of delegates succeeded in getting women’s rights explicitly mentioned in the UN Charter despite opposition from the USAs. Equally important was the explicit recognition of women in the Declaration of Human Rights. Castillo Ledón argued that, in some contexts, the phrase “men’s rights” could be misinterpreted to exclude women from the fundamental rights to which everyone is entitled. Her insistence prevailed, and the amendment was accepted in opposition to Eleanor Roosevelt (Marino, 2019). The Mexican government’s position at the United Nations was not entirely consistent with what was happening in the country in terms of equality between women and men. Women’s suffrage was granted in 1947, but only at municipal level. The municipality was the level of government closest to the home and the family and therefore women’s electoral participation was necessary. This was not the case the state and federal level. This same position led the government to refrain from signing the 1948 Bogotá Convention, which committed signatory countries to recognise political equality between the sexes. It was not until 1954 that electoral equality for women was established. Formal equal rights did not correspond to society’s expectations and prejudices that limited women’s political participation. Very few women were appointed or elected for public office. The student movement of 1968 mobilised young men and women and opened up political horizons for a new generation. The political discussions, brigades, demonstrations and, in general, the experience of sudent protest was the political initiation of a new generation of feminists. These activists had been part of the new left of the counterculture (Cohen & Fraizer 2004; Rodríguez Kuri, 2019). Despite the prevalence of traditional gender hierarchies the anti-establishment atmosphere of the student movement  and the sexual revolution  prompted the emergence of a new feminism.

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6 Fourth Period: Women’s Personal and Bodily Autonomy (1971–1987) The first expressions of a new feminism oposing traditional feminine identity marked the beginning of a new period. In 1971 a street demonstration challenged the notion of motherhood as the sole element defining women, thereby lessening or entirely erasing their professional or occupational identity (Acevedo, 1982). In this fourth phase, the feminists of a new generation began their activism underscoring the limitations of formal equal rights. This phase began in the early 1970s with the establishment of new feminist groups and collectives, and it extended until the late 1980s, when the grassroots women’s movement reshaped the agenda. Over a relatively short period, the feminist movement, although composed of small and short-lived groups, succeeded in exerting a significant influence on the nation’s public discussions. The agendas and representations that materialized in these years indicated the development of feminism up to the present day, encompassing reproductive justice, the struggle against violence, and the attainment of sexual and personal autonomy. The social profile of the new feminist groups emerged from the profound social and demographic transformations experienced by the country over the previous two decades. The activists from the newer generations were part of the recently consolidated the urban middle classes in the country. This emerging sector had benefitted from both heightened schooling and the rise of mass media, facilitating the development of a global cultural and political dynamics. Young Mexican feminists were rooted  in university environments, and drew upon  countercultural expressions, Third-Worldism and the demonstration of the new transnational left (Espinosa, 2009). This social composition shaped the demands, discourses and actions of the “women’s liberation movement” groups, as the prevalent feminism referred to itself. Criticiques of double standards in sexual morality – men’s being permissive; women’s restricting and harsh  – was part of the feminist discussions during the first decades of the twentieth century, yet it was not until this period that sexuality and the body took on a central role. While demands from earlier phases – such as equal pay for equal job and career advancement – were preserved, demands for the recognition of domestic labor and childcare gathered unusual strength in this period. The new feminists had revolutionary ambitions to transform society and the family, to liberate sexuality from traditional constraints, and to break down cultural stereotypes and biases in knowledge and the arts  (Aceves, 2019). In their quest, they related themselves with activists from previous generations and redefined the term “feminist”, giving it a progressive meaning. Despite their initial disdain for legislative reforms, feminist protests and mobilisations were centered around the decriminalisation of abortion and the legal criminalisation of different forms of violence against women. Noteworthly, the feminist political identity was embraced only by groups confined to certain cultural and political spheres, which rejected the negative connotations often attached to the term.

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In addition to these agendas, feminist groups shared some of the strategies to advocate for these rights, such as lobbying and allying with partisan groups, protesting in public spaces, forming self-awareness groups (meetings based on personal experiences to recognise social patterns of violence and oppression against women), and publishing their own printed media. The impact of the Mexican magazine Fem (1976–2005) on Latin American countries illustrates the scope of feminism in this period. Feminist visual and performing arts focusing on the body and sexuality reached a significant extent (Aceves, 2019). The majority of these groups were affiliated to parties or groups from the New Left. These activists understood that the struggle against patriarchy, a concept that, at the time, encompassed the structural and universal oppression of women, was inextricably linked to the fight against capitalism. However, significant divergences in the relationship with party structures and the autonomous or subsuming traits of the feminist cause were observed among left-wing activists. Feminist groups perceived reproductive freedom as a substantive part of women’s personal autonomy. Along with the implementation of a new demographic policy by the Mexican federal government promoted  family planning and the decriminalisation of contraceptive publicity, on theier part, feminists promoted the so-called ‘voluntary motherhood’, a comprehensive agenda that included compulsory sexual education in the public and private schools, the rejection of forced sterilisation, access to contraceptive methods and approval of abortion legislation, which became feminism’s emblematic demand. Irrespective of ideological identification, most feminist groups converged around this demand throughout the 1970s, giving rise to the Coalition of Feminist Women (1976). In addition to creative and irreverent protests in public spaces, activists lobbied politicians of various political orientations to change abortion legislation. At the end of the decade, alliance strategies with trade unions independent from state control and socialist parties led to the creation, of the National Front for the Struggle for Women’s Liberation and Rights. The Front had a broad agenda against imperialism, violence against women, and labour discrimination, and rallied for health and social security rights, rights for underage people, and sexual freedom (Frente Nacional por la Liberación y Derechos de las Mujeres, 1979). Feminism at the time was usually confined to activism in Mexico City. However, the 1970s also saw the consolidation of feminist activism and discourse linked to popular sectors in the country’s urban peripheries and rural areas. These groups were often the result of the politicisation and community organisation of socialist and Christian activists linked to the liberation theology. As in previous stages in the history of feminism, it was common for them to reject the “feminist” label, viewed as bourgeois; they also identified with “women’s liberation”, always within the framework of the liberation of Latin American peoples. Their activism was akin to the many Third-Worldist discourses of the time, which emphasised the social, economic and cultural rights of peripheral and colonised countries. The most emblematic organisation of this type of feminism was CIDHAL, a group that emerged in the early 1960s within the networks of radical Catholicism; it was reformed by Betsie

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Hollants towards the end of the decade as the first feminist civil association in the country (Espino Armendáriz, 2022). The sexual revolution provided the cultural framework for these transformations, a paradigm shift that confronted sexual taboos and emphasised bodily pleasure (Felitti, 2012). Initially, the struggle for sexual and reproductive freedom did not specifically demand orientations and practices outside the heterosexual norm. The marginalisation of lesbians’ demands was widespread  in both the gay liberation movement and the women’s liberation movement. Towards the end of the 1970s, the first lesbian activist groups emerged in the country’s capital, almost all with a revolutionary Marxist rhetoric and some including gay men (Fuentes Ponce, 2014). In the following years, the lesbian movement, on one hand, developed among political lesbianism and radical feminism groups and, on the other, within the emerging sexual diversity movement.  The celebration of the International Women’s Year World Conference, convened by the United Nations and held in the nation’s capital in 1975, was significant for both its immediate and long-term consequences. A protocol event in which government world representatives made propaganda speeches highlighting the alleged benefits for women offered by their governments, the Conference was accompanied by a parallel forum, the Tribune of Non-Governmental Organisations. The heated activists’ discussions at the Tribune showed the heterogeneity of the women’s movements of the time. In the national and international media, the complex discussions were reduced into two extremes: on the one hand, an Anglo-Saxon liberal feminism with an agenda centred on sexual and reproductive rights and, on the other, a popular movement of Third World women with social and cultural demands. Although a simplification, this polarisation, typical of the political culture of the Cold War, largely marked the feminist discussions of this and the following period (Olcott, 2017; Fuentes, 2014). A segment of feminists, associated with the Marxist left, boycotted the international event, considering it a stage for the Mexican government’s propaganda. This conference inaugurated a long process of institutionalisation of feminisms in Mexico and the world, a tense process that would distinguish the next stage.

7 Fifth Period: Institutionalisation and Diversification (1987–2010s) The fifth period is characterised by the institutionalisation and accelerated diversification of the feminist movement. These two processes, apparently contradictory, can be explained by the advances made by the equality discourse in academic, state and professional activist settings, alongside the emergence of new groups that diversified feminist activism through the inclusion of specific class, sexuality, race, culture and religion agendas. These debates continue to set the tone for feminism today, although there are some signs that may point to a possible end of this phase.

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The fifth period began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a time of significant political change resulting from the end of the Cold War and the beginning of Neoliberal reforms in Mexico and the world. The budget cuts and the precariousness of public services that accompanied these reforms  were contested by the mobilisation of women workers, peasants, indigenous women, inhabitants of irregular urban settlements, and members of religious communities (Espinosa, 2009). The popular women’s movement carried on and reinforced the Third World feminisms of the previous period, but also intersected with different left-wing activists at the national and international meetings that played a key role in the history of Latin American feminism (Álvarez et al., 2003). The inaugural milestone of the stage was the IV Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe (EFLAC), held in Taxco, southern Mexico, in 1987. In addition to class-based workers’ movements, among which the trade union activism of seamstresses and employees of the capital’s Metro  subway system clearly stands out, the Mexican feminisms of the time were diversified ethnically. On this issue, the promulgation of the Revolutionary Law of Women of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (1994) may be highlighted as a milestone that would be incomprehensible without considering the long process of mobilisation, politicisation and organisation of peasant and indigenous women that began in the 1980s. This law is the watershed for indigenous and decolonial feminisms in Latin America (Espinosa, 2009; Espinosa & Hernández Castillo, 2013). At the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s, feminism not only consolidated within the popular movement but also within official institutions and spaces. Parallel to the emergence of popular fronts and coalitions, the first academic programmes and centres for women’s studies emerged in Mexican universities. The establishment of the Interdisciplinary Women’s Studies Programme at El Colegio de México in 1983, preceded by several documentation centres and regional congresses, signalled the academic entrenchment of women’s studies in Spanish. The institutionalisation of feminism within state bodies, a process accelerated by the UN Beijing Conference (1995) and culminated in Mexico with the founding of the National Women’s Institute (2001), was accompanied by the professionalisation of feminist activism through non-governmental organisations (Tarrés, 2006). The conquest of these institutional spaces in academia, government and civil society created a strong tension in feminism at the time, as the divide between grassroots feminist movements and feminism understood as academic theory and public policy deepened – a dissociation illustrative of the feminisms of the 1980s and 1990s. The fight against violence is another key element of this fifth period. Denouncing domestic and sexual violence was a central agenda in the previous period, with such important accomplishments as the modification of criminal legislation (now defining rape as a crime with more clarity, and adding sexual abuse and harassment), and Mexico’s 1981 ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). However, it was not until the 1990s that it became a pillar of feminism, and diverse ideological groups united around it. In the 1990s, mechanisms such as CEDAW opened the door for the formalisation of other specific international and national legal instruments. The critical moment

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were the numerous women murdered in Ciudad Juárez on the US-Mexico border in the early 1990s (Monárrez, 2009). The activism and quest for justice around the Juárez murders  led to the new legal concept of feminicide, designed  as a tool to understand the specificities of the murders of women and to penalise them. Feminicide was defined as the gender-motivated murder of a woman in which the state is responsible by omission or complicity. Marcela Lagarde adapted the concept to the local conditions and transformed the concept 'femicide', and in the context of the murder cases in Ciudad Juárez (Ordorica, 2022).

8 Towards a New Period? The power and visibility of feminist activism and feminist expressions in the last 5 years suggest that this could be the beginning of a new period in the history of feminism. However, proposing a periodisation implies postulating the inaugural and conclusive events  for each of these periods with relative clarity. It is difficult to declare a new period on the basis of processes that have just begun, since it is not possible to predict their duration or their characteristics in the years to come. Despite  this cautious stance, it is clear that today’s feminist discourses have acquired a public importance they had not achieved in previous periods. The new generations of women, including university students, activists in peripheral areas of large cities, and young women who have not yet reached adulthood, have taken up agendas from previous periods, such as denouncing violence, and claiming the right to abortion. A sign of present day activism is digital social media, an inmediate form for comunication with massive reach. Enormous marches and demonstrations are the most visible sign of this momentum. In the context of the human rights crisis that has engulfed the country since the so-called war on drugs began in 2006, the struggle against gender-based violence has been one of the movement’s articulating demands. Confronted with the hundreds of thousands of people who have disappeared as a result of criminal and state violence, mothers have politicised their traditional identity, renegotiated the domestic space with their permanent activism, and developed networks that integrate their cause into broader struggles, including feminism (Hernández Castillo, 2019). Since the previous period, with the Ciudad Juárez feminicides, feminicidal violence has been understood as a continuum of aggressions ranging from blackmail and psychological contempt to murder, almost always perpetrated with extreme cruelty. In the last 5 years, reporting sexual violence – including harassment, bullying, intimidation, psychological pressure, and rape  – has reinvigorated and broadened feminist activism in Mexico and Latin America. The accusations triggered by the #MeToo movement in 2017, a global campaign initiated on digital social media, had a significant impact on cultural, academic, labour and governmental spaces in the country. This turning point, the effects of which are still unfolding, seems to constitute a watershed in the history of Mexican feminisms. The National Women’s Strike of March  9,  2020, held on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the

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protests inspired by the Chilean performance A Rapist on Your Way, by the Las Tesis collective, will likely be recognised as milestones of a new period in the history of feminism. While gender as a tool of analysis in the social sciences and as a perspective in public policies was consolidated in the previous period, in recent years its widespread use and interpretations in theories and social expressions contributed to the gradual erosion of sexual binarism and the political articulation of new identities. In the ideological diversity of current feminisms, a polarising debate was ignited where groups and leaders inspired by the radical feminism of previous decades question the status of trans women as political subjects within the movement. Transfeminisms have shown that the boundaries between two sexes are socially constructed, that there are no biological foundations to support their stability, and that ‘male’ and ‘female’ are not universal categories, independent of culture or historical context (Guerrero Mc Manus, 2022). The cause of sexual and reproductive rights has been a constant in Mexican feminisms since being described as “voluntary motherhood” in the 1970s. The legal reform that permitted the termination of pregnancies during the first 12 weeks in what was then  the Federal District (2007) was one of the turning points of this struggle. In recent years, changes in the legal status of abortion at both state and federal levels have accelerated in Mexico. Throughout the country, the only instance on which abortion is not criminalised is rape (GIRE, 2021). However, reforms similar to Mexico City’s were approved in several states, including Oaxaca in 2019; in 2021 in Veracruz, Hidalgo, Baja California, Coahuila and Colima; and in 2022 in Sinaloa, Guerrero, Baja California Sur and Quintana Roo. With these reforms, almost a third of Mexico’s population resides in states where abortion is not criminalised, regardless of reason, up to 12 weeks or shortly thereafter. At federal level, in September 2021 the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation declared that state laws that affirmed equal rights for fetuses and embryos and criminalised abortion were unconstitutional, opening the door to the legalisation of abortion throughout the country. Legal changes and decriminalisation of abortion have in turn constituted one of the main axes of mobilisation by “anti-gender” groups in the country, mostly from Evangelical and Catholic backgrounds (Bárcenas, 2021). Each period is distinguished by the prominence of certain issues and demands. Although it is too early to conclude whether we are at the dawn of a new period or whether the trends from previous years are deepening, it is an undeniable fact that feminism today occupies a central place in the public conversations in Mexico. The pivotal role achieved in recent years by feminist discourses and activism demands a reinterpretation of the history of the movement. Today’s young feminists have reinterpreted, deepened and radicalised the demands of previous generations, while concurrently exposing the limitations of their demands and form of action. Perhaps the struggle for the eradication of gender-based violence is the demand that has the most signficant capacity for mobilisation today. This demand becomes even more urgent given the violence and human rights crisis that the country faces since more than a decade ago.

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9 Conclusions Periodisation is a delicate exercise that involves attending both to the evolution of the processes under study and to the broader events in which these processes occur. Our proposed periods mark internal events and pay heed to the dynamics and developments specific to feminisms, but they are not self-contained. These phases sometimes overlap with conventional sociopolitical periodisations of Mexican history, but they diverge when it comes to identifying the thresholds of the transition. To identify the transition from one stage to another, we have prioritized the milestones of feminisms rather than the usual milestones of conventional periods in the country’s political history. No metaphor can replace the powerful and embedded image of the waves of feminism. The periodisation outlined here is a framework we offer to facilitate the creation of new  narratives that confront the established historiographical discourses,  and that allows for the centering of previously ignored or marginalised actors, the use of bold interdisciplinary approaches with a global framework, the discovery and enhancement of archives, the creative reading of new and old primary sources, and a transnational framework of analysis that interrelates local, national and global scales. Like other political movements throughout its history, feminism has looked to the past to trace genealogies and give meaning to current struggles. In the face of constant accusations that they are a passing fad or an import alien to national identity, memory has been a source of legitimacy and a tradition of resistance for feminisms. The image of the waves arose precisely in this quest for memory, and its endurance is also part of the history of feminisms. We believe that the unprecedented vigour and diversity of current feminisms requires new chronological schemes that open up space for the feminist polyphony of the past.

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Chapter 9

Feminisms in Nicaragua: A Century of Revolutions, Autonomous Mobilisations and Dictatorships Simone da Silva Ribeiro Gomes

Contents 1  Introduction 2  Suffrage and Revolutionary Feminisms: 1920–1996 3  Feminisms in the Liberal Interlude: 1996–2006 4  Afrofeminisms, Africa and Autonomy: 1980 Onwards 5  Feminisms and the Return of the FSLN to Power: 2006–2018 6  Feminisms in the Midst of the April Rebellion: 2018–2021 7  Final Remarks References

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1 Introduction In recent years Nicaragua featured frequently in the news for human rights violations and persecution of political opponents. In 2018, the “April Rebellion” became the focus of attention for the arrests, disappearances and deaths of hundreds of people protesting what they considered a dictatorship. Shortly afterwards, the government’s repression of its political opponents escalated once again and only increased when Daniel Ortega was again re-elected president in 2021. This included the arrests of members of opposition parties, activists and feminists such as Tamara Dávila Rivas of Blue and White National Unity (UNAB), who was taken from her home. Days later, Ana Margarita Vijil, an activist from Monitoreo Azul y Blanco; Cristiana María Chamorro, pre-candidate to the presidency; and Dora María Téllez, ex-sandinist guerrilla member, were also kidnapped. These persecutions and arrests took place in a country of 6.5 million inhabitants, the capital of which, Managua, was the scene of one of the most important political

S. d. S. R. Gomes (*) Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel), Pelotas, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. M. Pousadela, S. R. Bohn (eds.), Women’s Rights in Movement, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8_9

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events of the twentieth century in Latin America, the Sandinista Revolution, which removed a dictatorship of four decades. Around 13 per cent of the population of Nicaragua (from the Nahuatl “land of volcanoes and mountains”) lives in poverty, and the country’s per capita GDP is US$5280,1 one of the lowest in Central America. As for Nicaragua’s main economic activities, it exports primary products and clothing items, like its neighbours in the region, but there are important differences. Remittances from Nicaraguans living abroad reach 14 per cent of GDP, while in Honduras and El Salvador, the figure reaches 24 per cent. The dollar remittances sent by Nicaraguan immigrants are less central to the economy than in the Northern Triangle2 countries. Nicaragua also stands out for its high level of primary education enrolment, which reaches 96 per cent, one of the results of the National Literacy Crusade of the 1980s (López, 2018). This chapter aims to briefly present feminisms in Nicaragua in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In addition to discussing some of the factions of this polysemic movement in the country, we will present some of the main challenges it faces in contemporary times, and how the conservative wave (Biroli et  al., 2020) has influenced the retrocession of women’s rights. This work underlines the gradual emancipation and autonomisation of the distinct feminisms in Nicaragua and their correlation with Sandinism, notably since 2006. A qualitative method was employed, with ethnographic observation in the cities of Managua, León and Chinandenga and semi-structured interviews with five Nicaraguan feminists.3 The participant observation in the three Nicaraguan cities was carried out in November 2016, and so were the first three interviews. The two other interviews with women who participate in the country’s feminist movement were conducted online between June and July 2021. Apart from Dóra Maria Tellez, interviewed by email in July 2017, and whose participation in the 1979 Revolution, together with the FSLN and feminism, are known and well documented, the other names of the other interviewees were changed. The activists participate in popular organisations, with some links to the universities.4 This chapter presents the different phases of Nicaragua’s feminisms, analysing some of its landmark events in recent decades.5 The impasse situations and proposals raised by activists are discussed with an emphasis on the 2018 protests,  According to World Bank data from 2020. Poverty here is measured by the proportion of the population with income below US$3.20, and the GDP per capita is calculated in 2017 dollars at purchasing power parity. 2  The Northern Triangle countries in Central America are Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. 3  Of these, only Dora Téllez is identified by name. The other women, from younger generations and different backgrounds, had their names changed for this research for confidentiality reasons. 4  The feminist activists interviewed for this research were chosen using the snowball method. Except for Dora Téllez, whose email address was requested from people close to her before the period of her current incarceration (since mid-2021, in opposition to the current regime of Daniel Ortega), young interviewees proposed changing names in future interviews. 5  I will use feminist movement and women’s movement as analogous categories so as not to get into conceptual controversies, and henceforth in the chapter, these will be used as native categories according to the presentation of the authors and/or interviewees. 1

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henceforth referred to as “The 2018 rebellion” (Rosa, online interview, July 2021), and we conclude with observations on the impact of the 1979 Revolution on women’s struggles.

2 Suffrage and Revolutionary Feminisms: 1920–1996 The genesis of feminisms in Nicaragua is the subject of dispute. The first wave is said to have started in the 1920s. During this period, Josefa Toledo de Aguerri, editor of feminist newspapers, led the suffragist struggles in Nicaragua, followed by a majority of supporters from urban areas. With the advent of women’s suffrage in 1957, suffragists began to call themselves feminists. However, once they won the right to vote, their organisations gradually disappeared. Most of these women were previously linked to the Women’s Central Committee, affiliated to the Women’s Federation of America, which was dissolved after presenting its “pro-vote exhibition” to Congress in 1950 (Palazón Sáez, 2007). From that moment on, women were able to win a spot in the public arena only if they were members of the Women’s Wing of the Nationalist Liberal Party (PLN), the grassroots support for Anastasio Somoza’s dictatorship (1934–1979). These women, mostly from middle- or upper-class backgrounds, organised themselves autonomously within this party, demanding women’s right to vote and jobs. Since 1950, part of the women in the opposition began to organise themselves against the political-economic measures of the Somoza regime (Montenegro, 2016). At the time, most feminists were linked to Catholicism and belonged to liberal families, organised in parties, such as the anti-Somoza Liberal Party or the pro-Somoza Liberal Party (González Rivera, 2016. This “dual activism”, both partisan and feminist, characterised activism in Nicaragua ever since, in spite of the disappearance of the term “feminist” in the 1960s and 1970s, especially among the Somocistas. In 1963, organisational nuclei emerged within left-wing parties, such as the Organisation of Democratic Women of Nicaragua (1963), linked to the Socialist Party, and the Patriotic Alliance of Women (1966), connected with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). In addition, women demanded participation on trade unions’ boards and in mixed union bodies (Montenegro, 2016). In this period, women’s central demands revolved around defending human rights and questioning the traditional role of mothers. They soon joined the guerrilla resistance and the FSLN capitalised on their organisation as part of civil defence (Palazón Sáez, 2007). According to Molyneaux (1985), women represented 30 per cent of the FSLN’s fighting force. The Revolution also appropriated the symbol of motherhood, exemplified by the Committee of Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs, a group who envisaged mothers as “suffering and revolutionary” women (Chaguaceda, 2011). In the late 1970s, a group of women founded the Women’s Association on National Issues (AMPRONAC), linked to the FSLN and human rights demands. In 1978, in the midst of insurrection, this organisation rallied women around the political banners of their social role as mothers-wives, that is, for the lives of their

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children and husbands. AMPRONAC was part of the United Peoples’ Movement, organised to unify the actions of the various social actors against the dictatorship (De Volo, 2001). It was openly present during the revolts of 1978 and 1979, and had to go underground just before the Sandinista Revolution of July 1979. Rosa comments that, at present, the Sandinist Youth is less articulate, just like the commemorations of the Revolution, which ceased to be celebrated during the daytime and were shifted to the night-time as the number of people involved dwindled (interview, November 2016). The triumph of the Sandinista Revolution produced a significant transformation in the country’s history. Former guerrilla Dora María Téllez6 mentions, for example, the way it opened “a window, advocating important changes for women as regards to responsible parenthood, marriage and divorce, and recognition of stable unions” (email interview, July, 2017). At that moment, the FSLN was consolidating its commitment to the cause of equality for all, and thus the feminist movement’s demands were well received. These demands included expanding available care for mothers and their children; establishing the right to equal protection by revolutionary institutions for children born out of wedlock; and maternity leave for working women (Gomes, 2018). In 1979, the Luisa Amanda Espinoza Association of Nicaraguan Women (AMNLAE) was created; linked to the FLSN, it reached 25,000 affiliates. Its performance was marked by controversy: AMNLAE members reported that a substantial part of the leadership was  controlled by  male party members (Pérez Baltodano, 2003). Thus, according to Sandinista praxis, female emancipation would be ensured by women’s participation in revolutionary tasks, which explains AMNLAE’s organic connection with the party. Its organisation and tasks were similar to the other structures created by Sandinism, therefore, without autonomy or a model of their own, designed for women (Montenegro, 2016). The First World Women’s Conference in 1975, which inaugurated the Women’s Decade, and the Fourth Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter of 1986, both held in Mexico, allowed feminists to network at international level (Chinchilla, 1993). Also in 1975, the Constituent Assembly approved unilateral divorce and secured the same rights for stable union, and the criminalisation of violence against women, among other rulings. In the 1980s, feminist criticism of the political class corruption gained strength, identified as the main culprit of social injustice (Blandón, 2016). It was thus recognised that the achievements achieved of the early years had an impact on women’s lives as well as on the system of male domination and its effect on their lives. One of the slogans of women’s participation at the time was, “No revolution without the women’s emancipation, no emancipation without Revolution”.7 The experiences of feminists in the revolutionary decade (1979–1989) contributed to the recognition of  Dora María Téllez was a guerrilla commander, known for her presence at the seizure of the Presidential Palace in 1978, and for her parliamentary work. She is one of the main referentes of feminism in her country. 7  As Palazón Sáez (2007) mentions about AMPRONAC’s slogan at the time. 6

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how gender, race and class are conditioning factors in women’s lives and the expression of a domination system. In this period, a large number of Nicaraguan women from all social classes joined institutional politics, until then predominantly male. On 8 March 1987, the FSLN, pressured to issue a declaration of commitment to the feminist struggle, approved the constitutional proposal of women’s and men’s equality. This declaration resulted from 2 years of internal discussions with the participation of popular organisations: rural and urban trade unions, professional and student associations, military and women’s associations (Chinchilla, 1993).

3 Feminisms in the Liberal Interlude: 1996–2006 In 1990, the FSLN was defeated by a coalition of opposition parties led by Violeta Chamorro. Its government programme included pacification after years of confrontation and the establishment of a free market economy. Until the electoral defeat of the FSLN, the feminist movement, the revolutionaries and the government had a close relationship. Parts of the feminist leaders were engaged in the armed struggle in the 1970s and in university pastorals and Grassroots Ecclesial Committees (CEBs). After the revolutionary triumph, many activists took on roles in the state and trade unions. Meza and Tatagiba (2016) also mention that FSLN feminists experienced the electoral defeat as the beginning of a rapprochement between the party and the neoliberal state. One of the main changes of the liberal interlude was the autonomisation of the feminist movement. In the early 1990s, the first Women’s Secretariats in mixed organisations and autonomous feminist collectives began to be linked to AMNLAE (Montenegro, 2016). These organisations gathered more strength in subsequent years, with the 52 per cent Festival on 8 March 1991, one of the factors in the genesis of the Autonomous Women’s Movement (MAM). In 1992, MAM signed a “declaration of autonomy”, publicising that it was distancing itself from both the FSLN and the Chamorro government. Intense networking followed, with the influence of foreign organisations (Montenegro, 2016). In 1993, the First National Feminist Encounter took place in Nicaragua, and feminists were redirected to consolidate their presence in the field, resulting, the following year, in a congregation of distinct movements for common political action. This was to be focused on building networks on specific themes and ad hoc coordination of specific issues. Nicaraguan feminisms then replaced the charismatic leadership of the FSLN. Similarly, the movements modified their structure, which became increasingly heterogeneous and entailed new conflicts (Montenegro, 2016). In 1995, there was an important internal split in the FSLN, an important event in the country’s history, with the emergence of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), with dissidents accusing the party of having become “Orteguista” (Yañez, 2013).

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In 1996, with the victory of Arnoldo Alemán from the Liberal Alliance, the FSLN suffered its second electoral defeat.8 The defeat implied that the FSLN would be distancing itself from party control and organised demonstrations; with the new government, feminists, meanwhile, experienced fragmentation and demobilisation (Montenegro, 2016). Women’s groups then presented their demands to the new government, breaking ties with the FSLN and asserting an anti-militarist position without gender hierarchy (Küppers, 2001). Also in 1996, the women’s movement formed the National Coalition of Women, with women from different political parties united around a minimal agenda. As the Alemán government and the Conservative agenda in Nicaragua advanced, feminists played a significant role in raising awareness on gender inequality (Pérez Baltodano, 2003). This period was further marked by a substantive feminist backlash expressed in the politicisation of gender violence within Sandinism, increasing the controversies between Sandinism and feminism (Pirker, 2017). Along with internal tensions within the FSLN, other controversies prompted a split between feminist groups: the more traditional wing of the movement followed AMNLAE, while the rebellious faction organised itself around MAM.  Shortly afterwards, in 1998, Ortega was accused of sexually abusing his stepdaughter Zoilamérica Narváez, daughter of Rosario Murillo, left a mark on Nicaraguan feminism. At the time, seeking to circumvent scandal, Murillo severed relations with her daughter. Although Ortega was prosecuted, the case did not move forwards because the judge in charge of prosecution decided to dismiss it, because the case had prescribed and, as former president, Ortega enjoyed immunity (Morris, 2010). For Lacombe (2009), the FSLN militancy’s reaction was familiar and a matter of internal party politics. The short communiqué issued on 6 March 1998 expressed “categorical support” for the president. AMNLAE activists and party allies sought to play down the scandal, concomitantly claiming to support the struggle against gender violence. After all, since 1998, the Sandinistas had insisted on opposing Alemán’s project as “an update of Somocismo” (Lacombe 2009: 83), underlining the similarities of the right-wing government with the dictatorial past, preventing demonstrations in solidarity with Zoilamérica. These women, years later, formulated their experience in terms of a “complex dynamic of manipulation-culpabilisation/resignation-resistance, particularly in the prolonged incest behind closed doors” (Ibid: 89). With the MRS, feminist groups, through the National Feminist Committee, sought to influence the 2001 elections, won by Enrique Bolaños (2002–2006), of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party. This alliance worked with the party coalitions in the presidential elections of that year, but broke off when the candidates were selected, as feminists vetoed some nominees. The Bolaños government was marked by clashes, mainly focusing on sexual and reproductive policies. Again, in 2006, the MAM allied with the MRS in an effort to oppose the FSLN, launching of its own candidates, who emerged from this union (Meza & Tatagiba, 2016).

 The FSLN lost elections in 1990, 1996 and 2001. It is power since 2006 without interruption, with Daniel Ortega as president. 8

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4 Afrofeminisms, Africa and Autonomy: 1980 Onwards Since the 1980s, Pacific Coast feminism is one strand among the heterogeneous feminist groups in Nicaragua, which can best be understood from the political-­ cultural category of Amefricanidad (Gonzalez, 2020). Afro-Latin American feminists, therefore, embody certain adaptation, resistance and reinterpretation dynamics, as well as the creation of their own forms of Afro-Latin American feminism, which bring back the black diaspora to the fore as a common element. The multiracial and multicultural character of societies in the Americas definitively introduced the gender perspective into the analyses, in spite of the racism underlying Amerindian and African-American societies. The Estatuto de Autonomía de las Regiones de la Costa Atlántica en Nicaragua (1987) was the result of intense negotiations with the state. The situation persists in the differentiated treatment of approximately 300,000 inhabitants divided into 6 ethnic groups: mestizos, misquitos, creoles, sumus, garífunas and ramas (Hegg, 2016). Women identifying with the Costa movement consider their methods more autonomous than those of a self-styled feminism of the Pacific. Costa organisations have been seeking recognition of their rights as indigenous peoples and Afro-­ descendants since the early 2000s, forging strategic alliances to push their demands. For Rosa, the literature has an overrepresentation of revolutionary feminisms that systematically forgets Afro-descendant groups and peripheral women, themselves revolutionaries “since the 1980s, with experiences of cooperatives and community maternity homes”. The agendas of miskitos and Afro-descendant feminists in Nicaragua, for Rosa, would converge with others when they experience prejudice corporeally, and in the same way point to the alternatives offered to the development proposed by the state (online interview, July 2021). Even so, Blandón (2016) points to the lack of an anti-racist praxis in women’s collectives in other spaces in Nicaragua. This is a group of black and indigenous women with high poverty rates, and there is a disconnection from other Afro-­ descendant feminist groups. This homogenising tendency of the feminist movement created discrimination and cultural degradation structures from national governments that exploit indigenous peoples, especially women (Cunningham, 2006). Indigenous women do not see their cultures as a source of gender oppression, because of the complementarity between men and women. Colonisation is thought of as having the effect of eroding this egalitarian ethic, which highlights the importance of indigenous women’s anti-patriarchal struggles for their own culture.

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5 Feminisms and the Return of the FSLN to Power: 2006–2018 The opposition candidates – from right and left – to the FSLN were unsuccessful, and Daniel Ortega’s return to power was marked by judicial manoeuvres and concessions. Firstly, there was the approval of Amendment 147, which reformed the Constitution and introduced the possibility of re-election. This Amendment also turned possible the access of Armed Forces to political positions (previously banned), among other measures. Secondly, the concessions made to the Catholic Church substantially deteriorated women’s lives. Using revolutionary rhetoric, rights were negotiated with the most conservative sectors of society, says young feminist Clara (online interview, August 2021). Thus, the right to legal abortion, one of feminism’s historical demands, was criminalised. The movement was dealt this blow in 2007, as a result of petitions and rallies by the Catholic and Evangelical Churches. That year, the religious wedding of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo sealed the link between the FSLN and the religious sectors. According to Pérez Baltodano (2003), the FSLN reinforced the “dominant providentialist religious culture, becoming one of the main institutional expressions of a culture that pushes the elites to assume that what is politically desirable must always be subordinated to what is circumstantially possible” (2008: 15). Since then, the alliance between Sandinism and Catholicism has been underlined in various demonstrations (Reyes, 2021). The situation has particularly hindered the mobilisation of young feminists while creating intergenerational conflicts and reducing identification with the Sandinista revolutionary project (Gomes, 2018). For feminist Rosa, it becomes impossible to criticise the Sandinista project when activists are told over and over that “it is not the time, and at the same time the generation of women of the April Rebellion [of 2018], in their twenties, [argues] that it doesn’t matter if the aggressor is blue and white, or if he is a rapist, they will (nonetheless) name him” (online interview, July 2021). The fact that it is nearly impossible to hear social movements criticise the government is further compounded by the intense criminalisation of the opposition, notably the “personalities who were together in the Revolution and are currently presented as traitors”, as Clara states. According to Palazón Sáez (2007), in recent years the demand for autonomy has become the only alternative capable of accommodating the feminist agenda, in which gender issues are not subordinated to political interests. Dora Tellez mentions how the year 2007 marked the interruption of the growth of women’s movements, with Ortega’s inauguration, followed by a subsequent persecution of activists and end of external funding and support. Already at that time, “Leaders of the movement were indicted and [...] a radio belonging to women in Jalapa, in the north, was stolen and seized by police and the ruling party, without a judicial order or any explanation”. The Citizens’ Union for Democracy (UCD), a network created in 2007 to press for electoral reforms and an end to FSLN control of the institutions, became the main mobilisation structure against the Ortega government in the following years.

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Azahalea Solís, a feminist with links to MAM, was a UCD delegate. The FSLN seeks to demobilise citizen initiatives it does not control, and particularly feminisms not aligned with Sandinism (Reyes, 2021). Ana, a feminist in León, comments that mobilisations in favour of the government work through coercion. According to her, “It is a government in which people are not allowed to speak out, they are afraid, the repression is visible not so much in the violence, but in the threat of losing their jobs”. This scenario is a stark contrast with Nicaragua’s neighbours in Central America, who have created spaces for popular participation, a field Nicaragua has made little progress in. Since Ortega’s return to power in 2006, access to international cooperation resources, led by Coordinator of the Communication and Citizenship Council Coordinator Rosario Murillo, the First Lady, has declined. The existing spaces for civic participation were reduced, and those that remain became propaganda weapons of the Sandinista regime (Sagot, 2014). The capacity to resist the Sandinista government by the scarce associations was reduced, and the pluralism of society was affected by the harassment and repression of the social actors who do not share the ideology of the “New Sandinism” (Natal & Álvarez, 2014). Under these conditions, the decline of issues related to gender equality was accompanied by the reduction of spaces for feminist organisations to act (Sagot, 2014). Since 2006, the incremental break between social movements and the FSLN and the government’s approximation to religious conservatism does not prevent us from recognising the advances introduced by the FSLN after the revolution. These concern the poorest people in rural and urban areas, with social policies aimed at fighting poverty, notably benefiting women (Gomes, 2018). Dora Téllez highlights other advances, such as “legislation to favour and guarantee women’s access to land, maternity and paternity with equity [...] and parity in party candidacies”. However, despite a certain economic growth and relative social “pacification”, state repression and persecution remain a constant, as seen during the protests against the mining concessions and against construction of the Canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.9 The protest was led by the Peasant Movement Against the Canal, which intensified in recent years. This peasant movement has an expressive action interface with contemporary feminist movements, a frequent  – and united – front against Ortega’s policies. Currently, despite the improved situation of women, machismo remains rooted in society, influencing the backwardness of the material conditions suffered by women. Indeed, they do the lowest-paid jobs and have limited access to social services (Gariazzo, 1991). Moreover, sexual abuse continues to be an important issue. After unsuccessful attempts to sue President Ortega, Zoilamérica appealed to the Inter-­ American Commission on Human Rights in 2002. Ortega was reported for sexual abuse by his stepdaughter, backed by Vilma Núñez de Escorcia, president of the Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights. It is important to underline how this incident  The bid providing the concession to finance and manage the Nicaragua Canal Investment Development HK (HKND) was awarded to a Chinese group as Law 840 in 2013. However, progress has not been made in the works, and the main opposition leaders have been arrested in recent years. 9

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marked the nation’s feminisms, making the left hypothetically more sensitive to internal sexist practices (Oettler, 2009). Additionally, feminists enjoyed a relative capacity to organise and mobilise until 2007. However, after the return of the FSLN, they have been repeatedly harassed, their offices raided and funding and external support disrupted (Dora María Téllez, email interview, July 2017). In 2008, the Managua police blocked the passage of 400 activists who intended to march on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (Gomes, 2018). Concomitantly, there was a procession organised and led by Rosario Murillo in support of the FSLN government. That same year, the government raided the MAM offices, accusing feminists of illegally promoting abortion and engaging in illegal financial dealings (Sagot, 2014). For them, the FSLN has become avowedly hostile to feminist demands, and aligned with a faction of the conservative and religious right, inseparable from a corrupt power system (Lacombe, 2010). The bodies of these women are sometimes the instrument of negotiation between political, economic and religious powers (Celiberti, 2016), and sometimes they become the object of restrictions on freedom and autonomy. Rosario Murillo creates animosity among feminists because her figure disqualifies the historical struggles of Nicaraguan women (Reyes, 2021). As Elise states, the feminists’ strong rejection of the First Lady caused “difficulties for the feminist movement, apart from the fact that she exclusively pursued her political interests” (interview, November 2016). This is one of the setbacks criticised by feminists, such as the pacts with the elites, which undermine the socio-economic conditions of the population. Tax benefit policies for certain types of investments, combined with low minimum wages and more flexible labour laws, are particularly harmful for women (Baltodano & Pacheco, 2014). Added to the high underemployment rate and informal employment, this scenario makes it difficult for workers to react. Adds Dora Téllez: “The subordination of the judicial system to Ortega’s orders affects Nicaraguans in general but has a particularly serious impact on women”.

6 Feminisms in the Midst of the April Rebellion: 2018–2021 The protests that began on 18 April 2018  – popularly known as the “April Rebellion” – were unexpected, especially for its growing dimension throughout the year. Unleashed 2  days before the reform of the Nicaraguan Institute of Social Security (INSS), thousands took to the streets against the decree that increased workers’ contributions and reduced pensioners’ income. In a few days the demonstrations took on massive proportions in several cities. State repression was harsh, with disappearances, arbitrary arrests and deaths at the hands of security and paramilitary forces (Baltodano, 2018). By mid-May, more than 80 people had been assassinated, 850 injured and 440 arrested. Repression became increasingly stronger, but demonstrators still erected makeshift barricades on the main highways (Argueta & Walter, 2020).

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The new inflection in the Nicaraguan political system was another hard blow to the legitimacy of the Ortega government, intensely questioned since the 2016 elections. In this sense, Clara pointed out that discontent with welfare-related agendas had already been announced in 2013. In addition, she also reported several instances of excess by security forces during the #OcupaINSS movement in June of the same year. In spite of the excessive use of force during the repression, Clara reported that this was when women organised in collectives with other unorganised groups, adding to the dialogue between feminists from different generations. Since that date, therefore, with more emphasis in 2018, feminists became the front line of the main rallies in Nicaragua (Reyes, 2021), although feminism was not the main issue in the protestors’ agenda, Rosa commented. The dialogue between different sides was characterised by tension, also observed in other contexts in Latin America, notably in those regarding activism. One of the central issues of the new feminisms is reporting sexual violence, which to some extent was silenced by previous generations, Clara commented, adding that the problem is now getting considerable visibility. Even so, there is still some despair among feminists regarding punishment for sex offenders, especially when male activists from mixed militancy spaces are involved in a substantial number of these cases. Clara illustrates one such case, such as the expansion of workshops given by Nicaraguan Digital Feminism activists in conjunction with intense street protests in 2018, during which young women played key logistics roles, coordinating food supply and humanitarian support networks. At the time, university feminist collectives were also created, such as Las caóticas (“The chaotic ones”), Las malcriadas (“The spoiled ones”) and Las subversivas (“The subversive ones”). Those collectives liaised closely with psychologist activists, who created support groups for victims of the 2018 repression, assisting people incarcerated and mothers, according to Clara’s account. Several groups remain anonymous, as their perception is that the current political environment is not safe, increasingly pushing them to online activities. After all, there are still political prisoners who were not released since the demonstrations, a striking number of activists, around 70,000 (Gómez-Abarca, 2019) who sought refuge in neighbouring countries, mainly in Costa Rica. In addition, laws curtailed freedom were passed since that moment. In 2020, the Foreign Agents Law10 hindered the funding of civil society and human rights activists and the Special Law on Cybercrime11 – known in the country as “Gag Law” – one of whose objectives is to weaken independent media and to silence the opposition.12 Finally, the Law to Defend the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-­ Determination for Peace considers political opponents to as traitors of the people,

 See LEY DE REGULACIÓN (2020).  See LEY ESPECIAL (2020). 12  For more information, see infobae (2020). 10 11

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making them ineligible for elected positions, mainly for political organisation crimes as they organised the protests. Finally, the conservative anti-gender backlash poses a challenge, a confrontation with distinctive features in Nicaragua. The same people who proposed changes in favour of gender equity in the late 1970s now stood together with the Catholic Church to negotiate the loss of women’s rights, exemplified by the draconian anti-­ therapeutic abortion laws of 2006 (Pérez Baltodano, 2003). This is partly the result of President Ortega’s conversion to “regressive Catholicism” (Ramírez, 1999: 24). Catholicism was one of the historical flags of the counter-revolution, notably against armed anti-Sandinism, frequently claiming that feminism was anti-Christian. The Catholic Church also played a role in the criticism of the increasing poverty brought about by the neoconservative policies of the Chamorro government. Soon after, the Catholic leadership of the country chose to remain silent during Alemán’s time in power (Pérez Baltodano, 2003). Common use of the expression “God First” and presidential speeches containing references to providential forces are emblematic of the importance of Catholicism in Nicaragua (Ibid). In 2016, on the eve of Ortega’s re-election, street advertisements mentioned the president and his vice-president, Rosario Murillo, with the slogan “Christian, socialist and supportive Nicaragua”, clearly moving away from the old revolutionary proclamations. Moreover, the increasingly present resurgence of religious discourses invokes the permanence of traditional gender roles. Thus, religious groups began to occupy spaces left by the women’s movement in Central America, and they also forged alliances with governments in order to halt the advances that had been taking place, thus hindering the achievement of feminists’ demands (Sagot, 2014). Still, the ban on therapeutic abortion acted as a certain stimulus for feminists, who increasingly rallied demanding this right. Both this mobilisation and the subsequent demonstrations and movements of 2018 marked the struggle for women’s rights in Nicaragua, as they opened up possibilities for political action around their rights and in favour of a secular state, threatened by the turn of official politics.13 The conjecture can be made that a new phase of activism is opening, attracted by these changes and inserted in a complex scenario. The complexity of their activism may be illustrated by the role of Catholic priests at the dialogue table, which put an end to the street protests when a modicum of consensus was reached, between government and protesters in late 2018. Some churches in Managua served as a shelter for activists to protect themselves from military and paramilitary repression during this period, with the agreement of Managua Bishop Silvio Baez and Father Edwin Román, for example.14

 For more information, see Publicaciones (2009).  For more information, see (OEA Relata Práticas de Terror Pelo Governo Da Nicarágua  – 11/07/2018 – Mundo – Folha, n.d.). 13 14

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7 Final Remarks For Moberg (2005), with the intersection between feminism and state, Nicaragua exemplifies some of the implications of institutionalising a Revolution. The Revolution would have involved transforming some feminist organisations into replicas of the FSLN and its political practices, including ideological uniformity and authoritarian leaderships. However, the year 2006 sharpened the turning point in the country, with women beginning to search for a project capable of articulating their relations with the government from another perspective: not dependent, not aligned (Palazón Sáez, 2007). It was in 2006 that the rupture between feminists and state was consolidated, in the context of the return to power of the party that interrupted decades of Somocista dictatorship. As for the complaints of opposition feminists, the main objection is the alliance between the Sandinistas and the Catholic right, which is said to have resulted in unprecedented difficulties for the political organisation of women in the country. For Clara, the role assumed by the FSLN in the last decade, with conservative groups – religious or otherwise – becoming stronger, entails a loss of rights for women and the criminalisation of the left. With respect to this criminalisation, Ortega continues to resort to revolutionary rhetoric, citing the idea of a “coup” and “foreign influence” to counter any criticism from the opposition. Clara mentions that “The FSLN maintains a leftist discourse, repelling the notion of freedom and equality. Everything indicates that this country is going to become conservative, and the challenge still remains for feminists and other diversity groups”. In this way, the trajectory of feminist activism in Nicaragua is deeply marked by a historical irony: the link between a revolutionary party with emancipatory reforms that benefited women and, in recent years, the connection with the conservative backlash. In recent decades, the scenario has shown intense persecution of feminists by the state. As part of this conservative turn, both in Nicaragua and its Central American neighbours, Sagot (2014) identifies frequent attempts to coerce feminist organisations through state agencies. When speaking of the feminist youth organisations that emerged in 2018, Clara mentioned their necessary “invisibility” as humanitarian support networks. “We are anonymous because it is not safe to talk about what we do in the country”. Rosa underlined that these networks created by women played a key role during this period and were intended to help young people rallying during the intense months of the second half of the year. Finally, recent privatisations and state reforms intensified since 2007, while social policies to fight poverty in recent decades have not contradicted neoconservative prescriptions. Although poverty has decreased overall, it remains high in the countryside and among minorities.15 After all, the population’s poverty results in inequalities that affect the access to education, health and basic services. Women, children and LGBTQ populations are acutely concerned. Moreover, it is a context

15

 For more details, see Nicaragua (2023).

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in which about 70 per cent of the population is between 15 and 64 years old, a large contingent of young people, not infrequently the subject of recent mobilisations.16

References Argueta, O., & Walter, K. (2020). La Función Política de los Militares en Centroamérica: San Salvador, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua. Ediciones Böll. https:// sv.boell.org/es/2021/08/10/la-­funcion-­politica-­de-­los-­militares-­en-­centroamerica Baltodano, M. (2018, April 27). La rebelión del pueblo de Nicaragua | Nueva Sociedad. Nueva Sociedad | Democracia y Política En América Latina. https://nuso.org/articulo/ la-­rebelion-­del-­pueblo-­de-­nicaragua/ Baltodano, O., & Pacheco, E. (2014). El mercado laboral de Nicaragua desde un enfoque de género. Cuadernos de Desarrollo Humano, 6, 8–51. Bey, G., Castanheira, H.  C., & Acuña, M. (2019). Observatorio Demográfico 2019 América Latina y el Caribe. Centro Latinoamericano y Caribeño de Demografía (CELADE)-División de Población de la CEPAL. Biroli, F., Vaggione, J. M., Machado, M. d. D. C., Corrêa, S., & Nunes, M. J. R. (2020). Gênero, neoconservadorismo e democracia: Disputas e retrocessos na América Latina (1a edição). Boitempo Editorial. Blandón, M.  T. (2016). Los cuerpos del feminismo nicaragüense. In J.  P. Gómez & C.  Antillón Najli (Eds.), Antología del pensamiento crítico nicaragüense contemporâneo (pp. 353–370) CLACSO. Celiberti, L. (2016, November 8). Cuando la diestra es siniestra y la siniestra no es diestra Una perspectiva crítica y feminista de las izquierdas latinoamericanas | Nueva Sociedad. Nueva Sociedad | Democracia y Política En América Latina. https://nuso.org/articulo/cuando-­la-­ diestra-­es-­siniestra-­y-­la-­siniestra-­no-­es-­diestra/. Accessed 29 July 2021. Chaguaceda, A. (2011). El movimiento de mujeres y las luchas sociales por la democratización en la Nicaragua postrevolucionaria (1990–2010). Encuentro, 89, 39–62. https://doi.org/10.5377/ encuentro.v44i89.551 Chinchilla, N. S. (1993). Classe, gênero e soberania na Nicarágua. Revista Estudos Feministas, 1(2), 321–347. Cunningham, M. (2006). Indigenous women’s visions of an inclusive feminism. Development, 49, 55–59. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100227 De Volo, L.  B. (2001). Mothers of heroes and martyrs: Gender identity politics in Nicaragua, 1979–1999. JHU Press. Gariazzo, A. (1991, May 1). La revolución no da la solución. La mujer en la Nicaragua sandinista. Nueva Sociedad. Democracia y Política en América Latina, 113, 51–58. https://nuso.org/ articulo/la-­revolucion-­no-­da-­la-­solucion-­la-­mujer-­en-­la-­nicaragua-­sandinista/ Gomes, S. d. S.  R. (2018). Movilizaciones y oportunidades políticas en Nicaragua. Un debate desde el feminismo. LiminaR, 16(2), 17–28. Gómez-Abarca, C. d. J. (2019). Mobilization, repression and exile of young Nicaraguan activists. Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos, 45, 232–268. https://doi.org/10.15517/aeca. v45i0.39778 Gonzalez, L. (2020). GONZALEZ, Lélia. 2020. Por um Feminismo Afro-Latino-Americano: Ensaios, Intervenções e Diálogos. Zahar. 375 pp. (Vol. 27). Editora Zahar. http://www.scielo. br/j/mana/a/8dCkDDv4wgsRGP9YJv9dnsK/?lang=pt

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 According to ECLAC data, see Bey et al. (2019).

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González Rivera, V. (2016). Legados antidemocráticos: La primera ola de feminismo y el movimiento de mujeres somocistas en Nicaragua, de la década del veinte a 1979. In J. P. Gómez & C.  Antillón (Eds.), Antología del pensamiento crítico nicaragüense contemporáneo (pp. 323–344) CLASCO. Hegg, M. O. (2016). Problemática étnica, región y autonomía. In J. P. Gómez & C. Antillón (Eds.), Antología del pensamiento crítico nicaraguense contemporâneo (pp. 373–394) CLASCO. Küppers, G. (2001). De la protesta a la propuesta… a la protesta? In Género, feminismo y masculinidad en América Latina (pp. 11–49). Fundación Heinrich Böll. Lacombe, D. (2009). L’affaire Zoilamérica Narváez contre Daniel Ortega ou la caducité de « l’homme nouveau ». Problèmes d’Amérique latine, 73(3), 73–100. https://doi.org/10.3917/ pal.073.0073 Lacombe, D. (2010, 9/10). ¿“Luchar contra el peor escenario”? Construcción del Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres y debates de la militancia feminista en el contexto pre-electoral nicaragüense (2004–2006). Presentación para el congreso de la Asociación de Estudios Latinoamericanos LASA, Toronto, 6 a 9 de octubre. LEY DE REGULACIÓN DE AGENTES EXTRANJEROS, 1040. (2020). http://legislacion. asamblea.gob.ni/normaweb.nsf/9e314815a08d4a6206257265005d21f9/3306286cd4e82c 5f06258607005fdf6b?OpenDocument LEY ESPECIAL DE CIBERDELITOS, 1042. (2020). http://legislacion.asamblea.gob.ni/normaweb.nsf/($All)/803E7C7FBCF44D7706258611007C6D87?OpenDocument López, M. A. (2018). Una misión noble: Cruzada Nacional de Alfabetización, Nicaragua – 1980. Independently published. Meza, H., & Tatagiba, L. (2016). Movimentos sociais e partidos políticos: As relações entre o movimento feminista e o sistema de partidos na Nicarágua (1974–2012). Opinião Pública, 22, 350–384. https://doi.org/10.1590/1807-­01912016222350 Moberg, S. (2005). El movimiento de mujeres y el Estado nicaragüense: la lucha por la autonomía. Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection, paper 437. http://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_ collection/437. Accessed 26 June 2021. Molyneaux, M. (1985). Mobilization without emancipation? Women’s interests, the state, and revolution in Nicaragua. Feminist Studies, 11(2), 227–254. Montenegro, S. (2016). Un movimiento de mujeres en auge. In J. P. Gómez & C. Antillón (Eds.), Antología del pensamiento crítico nicaraguense contemporâneo (pp. 307–322) CLASCO. Morris, K. E. (2010). Unfinished revolution: Daniel Ortega and Nicaragua’ struggle for liberation. Lawrence Hill Books. Natal, A., & Álvarez, A.  M.. 2014. La sociedad civil en Centroamérica a una generación del conflicto armado: ¿avances o retrocesos? Universidad de Colima. https://www.academia. edu/34860400/LA_SOCIEDAD_CIVIL_EN_CENTROAM%C3%89RICA_A_UNA_ GENERACI%C3%93N_DEL_CONFLICTO_ARMADO_AVANCES_O_RETROCESOS Nicaragua: Panorama general. (2023, April 4). [Text/HTML]. World Bank. https://www.bancomundial.org/es/country/nicaragua/overview OEA relata práticas de terror pelo governo da Nicarágua—11/07/2018—Mundo—Folha. (n.d.). Retrieved May 16, 2023, from https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2018/07/oea-­relata-­ praticas-­de-­terror-­pelo-­governo-­da-­nicaragua.shtml Oettler, A. (2009). Nicaragua: Orteguismo y feminismo. Iberoamericana, 9(33), 178–181. https:// doi.org/10.18441/ibam.9.2009.33.178-­181 Palazón Sáez, G. (2007). Antes, durante, después de la revolución... la lucha continúa. Movimiento feminista en Nicaragua. Lectora: Revista de Dones i Textualitat, 13, 115–132. Pérez Baltodano, A. (2003). Entre el Estado Conquistador y el Estado Nación: Providencialismo, pensamiento político y estructuras de poder en el desarrollo histórico de Nicaragua. IHNCA/ UCA Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica, Universidad Centroamericana: Fundación Friedrich Ebert en Nicaragua.

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Pirker, K. (2017). Militancia sandinista y movilización social en Nicaragua: La profesionalización del compromiso. Revue internationale des études du développement, 230(2), 79–102. https:// doi.org/10.3917/ried.230.0079 Publicaciones—Informe Alternativo La educación sexual pública y la penalización del aborto terapeutico en Nicaragua. (2009). http://movimientofeministanicaragua.org/index. php?option=com_rokdownloads&view=file&Itemid=32&id=32 Ramírez, S. (1999). Adiós muchachos: Una memoria de la revolución sandinista. Aguilar, Altea. Reyes, M.  J. D. (2021). Feministas frente a la cultura patriarcal de la Revolución Sandinista y la Rebelión de Abril. Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies/Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes, 46(3), 400–424. https://doi.org/10.108 0/08263663.2021.1970343 Sagot, M. (2014). La democracia en su laberinto. El neoliberalismo y los límites de la acción política feminista en Centroamérica. In A. Carosio (Ed.), Feminismos para un cambio civilizatório (pp. 40–66). Fundación CELARG, CLACSO y Centro de Estudios de la Mujer. Yañez, M. (2013). El FSLN en el marco de su Primer Congreso Nacional en 1991. X Jornadas de Sociología. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires.

Chapter 10

Feminisms in Peru in a Context of Crisis Violeta Barrientos-Silva

Contents 1  I ntroduction 2  T  he Antecedents of Peruvian Feminism 3  Feminism in the Twenty-First Century: Resurgence in the Midst of National Political Crisis 4  Brief Government of an “Indigenous” President, Social Explosion and Shift to “Authoritarian Neoliberalism” References

   189    190    191  203    205

1 Introduction This chapter focuses on the challenges of Peruvian feminism, which resurfaced in the twenty-first century and reached its climax with the Ni Una Menos (Not One Less) march in August 2016.1 This work analyses the characteristics of the new feminisms of the twenty-first century and their coexistence with the organisations from the previous century, also examining the interactions among feminist groups and between feminism and the state and the political forces. It is important to note that the above-mentioned turning point coincided with the onset of the crisis of the democratic neoliberalism, a period that began in 2001. The trend in favour of certain women’s rights was reversed in 2021, the bicentennial year, when conservative forces from both the left and the right dominated Congress and Pedro Castillo was elected in a context of crisis of representation. The fall of his weak government in December 2022 was followed by a wave of social violence and  Ni Una Menos was the rallying cry of a demonstration in Argentina demanding an end to violence against women in June 2015. 1

V. Barrientos-Silva (*) Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Perú e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. M. Pousadela, S. R. Bohn (eds.), Women’s Rights in Movement, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8_10

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the consolidation of an authoritarian neoliberal government led by Castillo’s former vice-president. This work draws on surveys administered to 18 activist groups founded in the last six years and interviews with 12 feminist leaders from different generations, some of them part of feminism since the previous century.2 To this must be added the author’s own observation as a member of various feminist groups and assemblies.3 The research focuses on the moment and circumstances of the emergence of these groups and movements, their composition, the diversity of their members, their scope – local, national or regional – their relationship with the state and other social actors, their dynamics and conflicts, their main achievements and their politicisation. For the interviews, we considered as “feminists” the women who consider themselves feminists and who defend the so-called strategic gender interests (Molyneux, 1985): gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive rights, sexual division of labour and political and economic equality. It should be stressed that not all women’s groups are feminist: feminism initially identified with a Westernised urban women’s option, although after its emergence in the mid-1970s it broadened its social base to include more popular sectors. Also, it gradually extended to the interior of Peru, as the country became more democratic.

2 The Antecedents of Peruvian Feminism To understand Peruvian feminism, one must take into account the drastic geographical division of the country, with the Andes mountain range as a natural frontier between the Western modernity of the Spanish-speaking coast and the cultural and economic subalternity of the Andes and the Amazon. Peru was a country ruled by the military4 and authoritarian governments, and from its independence until 1980, it upheld a colonial oligarchy allied with foreign capitals that excluded women and illiterate people, mainly indigenous peasants and Afro-descendants, from political life5 (Basadre, 1978, p. 21). In 1981, illiteracy reached 26.14 per cent among women and 9.86 per cent among men (INEI, 1981). Two historical eras coexisted in the capital and the interior of the country. The industrialisation level was low, further compounded by ethnic discrimination. In addition, the state was weak when it came to uniting the population and satisfying  The survey was conducted in 2021, and the interviews between 2021 and 2022.  The author was a member of one of the Ni Una Menos groups; is part of Feministas por la Democracia (Feminists for Democracy), a discussion group made up of historical feminists and young leaders aimed at creating a current of opinion through social media and public pronouncements; and was a member of the recent 8M and 25N assemblies. 4  Until 2021, the country was governed 57 per cent of the time by the military or by military-backed civilians (Morote, 2003). 5  Year of the first universal suffrage election. The vote for literate women was granted in 1956. 2 3

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its demands. All of this resulted in a complex scenario for social movements, to the extent that, in the absence of oligarchic or weak civilian governments, it was the military dictatorships that eventually decided the democratising advances or setbacks for women during the twentieth century (Zapata, 2023). Until 2016, feminism developed mainly in the capital city, although the work of feminist centres through projects financed by international cooperation extended to several regions of the country, where it had thousands of beneficiaries. This feminism focused on equality, and it mainly followed Western codes, the human rights tradition and multilateral organisations. There is an explanation for this. Although Peru features a majority of indigenous population, since the second half of the twentieth century, the country experienced a disintegration of its indigenous identity, with the population moving to urban centres seeking salaried positions linked to a market economy, a process defined by Aníbal Quijano as “cholification”. It was the “chola” population that drove the strongest peasant movement in Latin America, which in the 1960s eventually led to the agrarian reform (Quijano, 2014) and populated the outer belts of coastal cities. In this way, the indigenous movement was not strong because of “the existence of an alternative cultural project for indigenous people, the class project offered by the Marxist left, which was more successful in Peru than in Ecuador and Bolivia” (Paredes, 2010). Indigenous people “preferred an approach based on class and a non-ethnic scheme as a strategy to avoid discrimination” (Paredes, 2010).

3 Feminism in the Twenty-First Century: Resurgence in the Midst of National Political Crisis 3.1 Twenty Years of Feminist-Friendly Democratic Neoliberalism The feminism linked to the international women’s rights agenda promoted by the United Nations in the 1970s emerged during the progressive military dictatorship that came to power in 1968. A small group of early intellectuals who studied the situation of women worked in conjunction with public policy makers, while peasant women and women from popular urban sectors were mobilised by the government itself in support of its reforms.6 At the time, feminists favoured issues related to the crisis of the family; women’s work, whether as carers or wage earners; and co-education. The military’s departure from power at the end of the 1970s coincided with the emergence of the first women’s rights non-governmental organisations (NGOs), dedicated to collaborative work with grassroots women in projects financed by international cooperation.

 Cf. Inca Plan, art. 23.

6

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The general elections brought along universal suffrage and a new social democratic constitution in 1979, coinciding with the first terrorist attack by Sendero Luminoso, which started the “people’s war against the bourgeois state” in the 1980s. This period of political violence interrupted the incipient democratisation process and strengthened the hard-line military that controlled the Quechua-speaking area of Peru in the southern Andean region. Along with the great economic crisis and hyperinflation of the 1980s, the political violence hit the women’s movement hard and installed, from 1992, the autocratic, neoliberal government of Alberto Fujimori, backed by the armed forces. In 2001, a strong popular mobilisation led to Fujimori’s resignation and initiated a 15-year period of “democratic restoration”. During this neoliberal democratic period, human rights and women’s rights NGOs were able to negotiate policies with the state. However, the work of both movements was not articulated, at least until after the first five  years. The main reason was that the Catholic Church largely organised the human rights movement, with an emphasis on civil and political rights violations during the period of political violence.7 In this context, feminists, with their demands for sexual and reproductive rights as human rights, constituted a disruptive element. Unlike the processes that took place in other countries in Latin America, such as Argentina, there was no continuity between the demands of human rights movement and those of feminism. During the same period, the foundations of the extreme neoliberal economic model remained intact under the Constitution of 1993, instituted by the Fujimori administration. Governments timidly addressed gender issues, especially in fields related to education. These small advances provoked a reaction from fundamentalist ecclesiastical sectors that fought for control of government areas related to women, health and education. Conservative religious forces, allied with the Fujimori autocracy, forged some form of cultural opposition to the human rights policies of neoliberal democratic governments. This movement grew gradually without causing much concern among the political forces (Mujica, 2009; Barrientos et al., 2008; Fonseca, 2022). The reason was the incorrect perception that the conservative vote was a problem only for feminists and the LGBTQI+ movement and that it was not a threat to democracy. By 2010, the state gave a strong accolade to these forces through legislation on religious freedom, granting other Christian churches the same status and economic privileges as the Catholic Church (Huaco, 2011). In addition to denying cultural diversity and maintaining ideological indoctrination in schools, this facilitated the implementation of actions against the human rights of the LGBTQI+ population and the freedom of women to decide whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term (Navarro Floria, 2018).

 As democracy was restored in 2001, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was instituted, which had a limited gender approach on human rights violations during the period of political violence that began in 1980 (Mantilla, 2001). 7

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3.1.1 From Democratic Neoliberalism to the Great Political Crisis Since the 2011 elections, as in other countries, the issue of women’s reproductive rights and gender equality was at the centre of the presidential election confrontation between democratic neoliberals and the authoritarian and populist neoliberal stance of Fujimorismo (Ugaz, 2011). In 2016, new elections pitted Pedro Pablo Kuczynski against Keiko Fujimori. This time, the congressional vote of Fujimori’s party, Fuerza Popular (FP), reached an overwhelming 73 seats against only 26 for Kuczynski (BBC, 2016). The momentous Ni Una Menos march in Lima and the provinces took place on 13 August 2016, two weeks after the presidential inauguration. However, it did not strengthen the weak victory of “democratic neoliberalism”, a short-lived affair. The Ni Una Menos march called for an end to violence, which for the government translated into a demand for improved state, police and judicial services to address this situation. The feminist centres committed to achieving progress through co-­ education and comprehensive sexual education in schools also demanded the prevention of violence. During 2016, the Ministry of Education was under siege from the pro-Fujimori caucus, to the point of censuring the minister and initiating a legal dispute over the so-called gender ideology in the school curriculum (Muñoz & Laura, 2017). That same year, an alliance of traditionalist religious groups was formed under the name Con mis hijos no te metas (CMHNTM),8 rejecting public education’s “gender ideology”. In order to weigh up with the Ni Una Menos march, CMHNTM held demonstrations with church support in January and March 2017 (Castro, 2017). In the midst of this contest, Kuczynski’s mandate succumbed to congressional majority; the president eventually resigned on 21 March 2018. Kuczynski was succeeded by the first vice-president, Martín Vizcarra, who managed to get rid of the pro-Fujimori majority in Congress, resorting to a constitutional measure that allowed him to dissolve it on 30 September 2019. Vizcarra was receptive to the demand to end feminicides: he even met personally with feminist collectives on 6 January 2020 and invited demonstration organisers to be part of the Work Group of the National System for the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women,9 and in April 2019 he decreed the National Policy on Gender Equality (El Peruano, 2020). After the parliamentary elections of 26 January 2020, Congress was fragmented, and the executive was left without its own caucus. However, on 25 June 2020, the new Congress approved gender parity and gender alternation in the candidates’ lists for the elections (Infobae, 2020). Vizcarra was ousted due to pressure from the new Congress and allegations of corruption. Following a coup threat from Congress, in November 2020 Francisco

 The name Con Mis Hijos No Te Metas (Don’t Mess with My Children) alludes to the view that children “belong” to the pater familiae, a private entity that stands above the law of the state. 9  See Observatorio Nacional (2023). 8

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Sagasti was appointed president in charge of calling elections in April 2021. Sagasti, a centrist conservative, formed a single cabinet, headed by an NGO feminist, lawyer Violeta Bermúdez. The cabinet was the first in Peruvian history to be quasi-parity. Paradoxically, feminism achieved representation in the highest spheres of power just as representative democracy was collapsing. 3.1.2 The Momentous National Ni Una Menos March of 2016 The #NiUnaMenos national march of 15 August 2016 was a milestone that followed the demonstrations held in Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico in June 2015. The Peruvian national march #NiUnaMenos rally was held simultaneously in Lima and different cities in the country, drawing between 200,000 and half a million marchers in Lima alone, massive figures that feminist organisations never before had been able to achieve. Given its background of repressive governments, from a historical perspective, Peru was not characterised by large street demonstrations, but images from two high-profile cases of violence against women created an uproar when they were made divulged.10 These cases led to many other women from the closed group Ni  Una Menos: Movilización Nacional Ya (Not One Less: Take To The Streets Now), created on Sunday 17 July 2016, and the fan page Ni Una Menos: Tocan a una, tocan a todas (Not One Less: Touch One, Touch All) (Caballero, 2018, p. 17), raised more awareness, and these organisations were gradually joined by more participants. The former self-awareness groups in which feminists shared their experiences in person were now replicated online. Without the limits of physical interaction, the communication of their experiences multiplied exponentially; as a result, they moved from the virtual realm to the streets. The Internet, according to Castells (1999), proved to be a means of social organisation and interaction. In truth, no collective that existed before the march had such a rallying power. This was in reality the citizenry’s emotional response under the consensus of non-­ violence against women. Several facts corroborate this. First, there had previously been a substantive exchange of experiences of violence against women on Facebook; that initial group included members of feminist collectives. Second, the march brought together people very different from those who usually attend feminist marches: family groups of parents, children and even pets, professional women’s groups, companies and even ministries who came without fear of repression because it was a consensual demand not summoned by a political or activist group seeking to profit from the event. Third, the march expressed indignation and an urgent demand (“Put an end to violence”) without advancing in the analysis of its causes. Fourth, the attendance at successive marches commemorating 15 August in the following years dwindled until it disappeared during the COVID-19 pandemic. The emotional factor present when taking to the streets is identified by Castells (2012)

10

 These were the Arlette Contreras and Lady Guillén’s cases.

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as the origin of some social movements: “[s]ocial movements do not only arise from poverty or political despair. They require an emotional mobilisation triggered by anger at blatant injustice and, as a result, by hope for the possibility of change” (p. 211). However, the demonstration would not have happened without some preconditions. The country was very different from the 1980s, when feminist groups emerged. It was more urban,11 and migration to the coast was substantial. Forty per cent of the population was middle class; the country was under the global orbit of the market economy and neoliberalism. The state’s economic apparatus was efficient, but this did not include social services. The country was characterised by corruption in the administration of justice and deficiencies in the education and health systems.12 In line with Flesher’s (2015) argument about the continuity of movements in periods of latency, the Ni Una Menos march was not only a spontaneous reaction of society, it featured the presence of several groups of young people who were debating the issue of gender, binarism and sexual diversity, and whose rights were being recognised in other countries. This was not the case in Peru. The demands of queer and feminist collectives formed before the Ni Una Menos march called for the recognition of the right to control one’s own body and sexuality and respect for diversity, and heteronormativity was also questioned (Muñoz & Barrientos, 2018). The XIII Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe (XIII Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting) held in Lima in November 2014 was another opportunity for the movements to converge. Feminism had undergone a period of latency. After the Fourth International Women’s Conference in the 1990s, it obtained an institutional space in the state; meanwhile, gender studies were being held in academia. Interestingly, students did not identify themselves as feminists, but rather as taking an interest in gender specialisation.13 Epstein (2009) notes a decline of the feminist movement characterised by less political radicalism, settling into better working positions in a competitive system. In the late 1980s, Kate Millet complained bitterly that having been one of the great figures of feminism, she could not get a job in academia to make a living. It seemed that once feminist goals were institutionalised, radical activists were no longer needed, only specialists.

 According to the 2017 census, four out of five Peruvians live in urban centres: 58 out of every 100 live on the coast (32 in Lima), 28 in the highlands and 14 in the Amazon region (Contreras & Cueto, 2018). 12  In spite of Peru’s economic growth, which reached 5.3 per cent between 2000 and 2014, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2017–2018, Peru ranked 127th out of 137 countries in studies measuring the quality of their education systems. As for health, it had only 1.6 hospital beds per one thousand inhabitants. Sixty per cent of workers were informal market, and young people’s wages averaged US$280 per month (Schwab, 2017). 13  As a lecturer in one of the country’s Master’s programmes in gender, I asked a class of more than 20 participants, mostly women, how many of them were feminists, and only 3 claimed to be. 11

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The demonstration generated solidarity. Political parties and companies,14 and the government itself, identified with the cause. There were struggles and divisions among groups seeking credit for the march. The organisations that enjoyed greater social influence due to their connections or affiliation with feminist or LGBTQI+ NGOs were challenged, leading to the fragmentation of the large group of activists that pioneered the march. On the other hand, organisations that lacked this power resorted to the strength of groups and assemblies, demanding spaces for democratisation rather than the reproduction of power from their group peers. The result was the emergence of factions in dispute over the Ni Una Menos brand, already established as a recognisable name in various marches abroad. All of them, however, and not just one single group, were Ni Una Menos. The forcefulness of the march prompted the emergence of new actors in the feminist movement. From one moment to the next, they found themselves on the same level as the older activists and NGOs that had been there since the previous century. What was on the table was their “convening power” and their desire to occupy both the streets and the media, where the feminism of the previous century had not been present with such strength. The demonstration also provoked a conservative response waving the “life” and “children’s innocence” flag in the face of an enemy: feminism. It was then that the CMHNTM collective was institutionalised (Meneses, 2019). It sought to spread the discourse against “gender ideology” and to promote binarism. It also pursued the objective of slowing down the advance of sexual and reproductive rights in state policies, and rallying conservative religious groups against “communist” or liberal governments (Gallego & Romero, 2017). Like Ni Una Menos, it had an international reach both because of its funding from US Evangelical churches and the events it catalysed at Latin American level.15 One of the achievements of the march was making visible the issue of violence against women and other topics related to bodily autonomy, which consequently became important to society as a whole (IPSOS, 2022). As a result, regulations were issued to curb old practices such as street harassment, and to promote gender-free language and co-education. All of this was possible while a neoliberal democratic government was in power, albeit precariously.

 Posts from July 2016 can still be viewed at the time of writing (Falabella Perú, 2016; Ripley Peru, 2016). 15  CMHNTM brought together other conservative churches at the Congress for Life and Family in Panama in 2019 and then convened in Lima the following year (Ojo Público, 2019). 14

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3.2 Characteristics of the Twenty-First-Century Feminism 3.2.1 Personal Affirmation By 2021, after two years of confinement due to the pandemic, the struggle for the Ni Una Menos brand ceased, and each group had its own name and identity: Mujer Dispara (Mujer Dispara, n.d.), Serena Morena (Serena Morena Perú, n.d.), Awqa Feminista, Colectivo Feminismo Rural and Paro Internacional, among many others. As many groups were born as there were interests and forms of expression around violence against women: cultural, artistic, related to reproductive freedom, feminist strikes and the struggle for body and territory. Feminist and sexual diversity collectives expanded to other regions beyond Lima, including Arequipa, Cusco, Iquitos and Huánuco; however, because of economic centralism and poverty in the country’s regions, the largest number of activist groups continued to be concentrated in the capital. The youngest members were born in a country that was more urban than rural, in the Internet and computer age, amid economic and financial globalisation, and after AIDS in the previous century brought sexual diversity to the fore. The average monthly income of women activists in Lima – between 250 and 500 dollars – is low in relation to the cost of living in the capital, even among women with college degrees. Staying in activism, therefore, is an effort, as it involves mobilisation expenses and contributions to logistical resources. The profile of these new feminists is much more popular than that of the 1980s. It includes 19–23-year-olds who belong to the second or third generation of people who migrated from the interior of the country to the capital city.16 They are digital natives – many of them are communicators – and the most radical ones share a taste for perreo17 and dare to display their naked bodies. These expressions are far from the practices of indigenous or peasant women, who continue to experience racism in the city. Peruvian feminism could be regarded as self-assertion on the public stage in the city, which is not necessarily a priority for women who live in the countryside and prioritise community or family interests.18 Being a feminist today implies a personal affirmation of respect for subject autonomy. This claim was unknown until the 2016 march, when one could aspire to be a gender professional without being a feminist. Today, being a feminist is more closely identified with denouncing violence, which has achieved social consensus. Hence, feminist groups are made up of women of all ages, from young students to  They are not just university students seeking social validation, and they can be more radical: Zorras de Abajo (Underground Bitches), Awka Feminista (Rebel Feminists), Amigues del Sol (Sun Friends) and Los Bichos (Bugs). These are urban groups who use social media. 17  Popular class dance from the Caribbean, with very macho lyrics. 18  Women in the Andean peasant community have productive roles: they are the labour force, they organise and distribute the labour force, they manage the resources of the family unit, and they guarantee the availability of labour (Cf. Casós, 1991). 16

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women over 50 who never participated in any group. According to our interviews, women are motivated to participate by the possibility of exchanging experiences in groups promoting self-awareness and denouncing violence. Being part of a collective means having some power, visibility and protection. The affirmation of the self finds space in the democratic field of the media, facilitated by the lack of mediation by any “authority”, present in the printed medias and in academia. The social allow everyone to become visible. Over the last years, cases of feminicide, disappearances and sexual violence have been tackled. Groups of associations of families of feminicide victims have been formed to seek justice, just like the families of victims of political violence.19 By mid-2021, an internal study by the Global Fund for Women in Peru estimated that there were 280 anti-violence groups. The demand for non-violence is linked to this personal affirmation. The development of the demand, its approach and the resulting actions will make it clear whether it is limited to the improvement of state services for the prevention and care of victims of violence or whether it has a broader political scope. Self-assertion is possible for activist of a collective, but not for a feminist institution. The difference in their discourses and behaviour has also led to confrontations between collectives and pre-existing feminist NGOs, in order to watch each other’s backs in public pronouncements or denunciations. Because they are more numerous and aggressive, the former can exert pressure and end up breaking alliances with the latter. Because of their different actions, power and positioning, NGOs have always been under suspicion, which has conspired against the complementarity between these two aspects of feminism. Relations between NGOs and groups born since 2016 were tense at first because of their different dynamics and power differences. However, the country’s political crisis and the need to survive the pandemic prompted more fluid articulations to increase their capacity to address larger issues. 3.2.2 Assemblies and Alternative Forms of Exercising Power The new collectives have also tried out new methodologies and ways of “being feminist” that are different from the professionalisation of feminism in the last century. Self-convening20 to events and meetings was pitted against structured functioning. They take into account community experiences inspired by Bolivia and Ecuador, uniting the care of the body and the territory. They are concerned with self-care as regards nutrition and claim the right to free time and physical spaces to play, generally appropriated by men. The horizontality of the digital era favoured assembly dynamics, without hierarchies. Self-convened, face-to-face assemblies did not take place on the premises of  The politicisation of families linked to political violence is much greater than that of families of femicide victims. 20  This is the convening of an assembly without anyone claiming the right to organise it or lead it, which is then be decided by the assembly. 19

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a member so as to avoid power relations; instead, they met on the premises of entities outside the march, or even in public parks. The search for equality among participants drew attention to personal differences that could harbour inequalities: indicators of race, class, adult-centrism, neurodiversity, disability, transgender and sexual diversity, among others. The most successful articulation experiences resulting from the 2016 march took place in the Assembly of Women and Diversities, which brought together a substantive number of groups and individuals, and the Green Assembly demanding reproductive freedom, as well as assemblies organised to celebrate emblematic dates. The demand for a certain type of behaviour in the assemblies claimed the spotlight. The assemblies were attended in a personal capacity, also gathering members of collectives or NGOs. A horizontal type of feminism was sought, without structures, leaders or stable spokespersons. The problem with this vision was that, lacking strategic planning, the assemblies did not move towards more far-reaching objectives than the organisation of specific activities. There was also the risk of producing tensions that would end up causing more division than unity, as if the assembly’s own objective for action were the assembly itself and not an external enemy to be defeated. This revealed the interest of some groups in achieving hegemony in the movement. 3.2.3 Punitivism and Cancellation The use of the “feministometer” (Masson, 2007), i.e. the measurement of alignment with feminism and the definition of who qualifies as a feminist and who does not, is well known. If the criterion is “purity”, there is a risk of demanding a certain type of behaviour, the infringement of which may result in cancellation. The demand for absolute dedication to the cause and cancellation of dialogue with external enemies and internal traitors was also a form of communist repression: “It is a form of repression saturated with morality insofar as it is justified on the basis of the ultimate goals of justice, equality and freedom. Communists consider opponents to their project as enemies of humanity” (Sánchez-Cuenca, 2018, p. 83). The discussion of who is or is not a feminist arose on the occasion of important marches such as 8 March (8M), International Women’s Day, or 25 November (25N), the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. There was a frequent dispute between those who argued that the marches should be widely attended, seeking support in the written press and the participation of allied sectors, and those who wanted them to be limited to feminist activism, albeit in small numbers. Although the motivation for participating in a group was to identify with someone similar and share experiences of pain,21 it often resulted in situations of victimisation or cancellation. As we have said, one of the first effects of the presence of the  Sénac (2021) points out that “anger and resistance communities are created in the face of injustices suffered individually, but denounced collectively, in meetings, exchanges and debates in a public space re-appropriated as a place of shared life” (p. 8). 21

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new feminist collectives in the public arena was the awareness of how far actions such as micromachismo, psychological violence and harassment could be tolerated. Because they had been completely normalised, such experiences were not usually identified as violence. On the other hand, judicial authorities were compelled to act promptly to avoid impunity. The poorest and least powerful families found support in the collectives until they were able to form their own group (Familias Unidas Por Justicia, n.d.). However, in the absence of social re-engineering, punitivism could be an easy response from the state, consisting of increasing penalties or criminalising offences.22 Economically precarious relatives of feminicide victims also demanded penalties not lesser than life imprisonment or death penalty in feminicide and rape cases. However, these effects have not been the subject of reflection by the collectives. 3.2.4 Demands and Agendas Peruvian feminism has so far been a feminism of equality, that is, a feminism that demands public policies for non-discrimination. In spite of its intercultural nature, the model has been that of a liberal state that responds to the needs of the population. Historically, feminist groups have sided with the liberal or progressive left, so they could be differentiated in terms of the scope of this demand: a demand focused on achieving greater efficiency of state services, or a demand of greater political scope in other areas, such as education, economy and family structure. Achieving consensus among the population is much easier in the first case. Violence against women is, as in the previous century, a persistent issue on the agenda of feminist and women’s rights groups. In this century, as a result of the Programme of Action of the Cairo Population Conference in 1995 and the emergence of AIDS, sexuality and reproduction issues were not left out of the claims of new groups. They assume that sexuality is diverse without the need to form specific sexual identity groups, with the exception of transgender people. Some claim to be “non-binary” as an evolution towards the abolition of gender, a position that has begun to be challenged by activists called “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), who vindicate biological sex, but this is not a majority position. Articulating common gender agendas is difficult in Peru. The economic and symbolic centralism of the capital renders the rest of the country invisible and normalises the one-way translation of native cultures into Western modernity.

 Some of the regulations were Legislative Decree No. 1323, of 2017, aggravating the penalties for homicide and injuries if women were victims, also creating the notion of sexual exploitation crime, and also the regulation of Law No. 27942 of 2019 for the Prevention and Punishment of Sexual Harassment in the workplace or where educational activities are held. 22

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Andean and Amazonian cosmovisions take into account nature and human beings as a whole, not as subject and object.23 This cultural fracture means that feminism remains anchored in the urban, modern, individualistic, Western, white, hegemonic side, which cannot be accessed if one wants to preserve one’s own identity, since the translation “is one-sided”, i.e. one must transform from “barbarian” to “civilised”, or from “archaic” to “modern” (Quijano, 1993). Poverty is the first problem encountered by the collectives that responded to our survey and that contain class or racial-ethnic intersectionalities  – Coordinadora Andina de Organizaciones Indígenas (Andean Coordination  of Indigenous Organisations), Diversidad Wanka (Wanka Region Sexual Diversity Group), Asociación de Mujeres Negras (Black Women Association). Peasant women defend possession of the land and protection of natural resources, as their livelihoods depend on it. They defend interculturality in order to make their cultural identity prevail, which survives in spite of historical attempts to liquidate native cultures, depriving them of their symbolism and practices. The agendas of women in the city include access to and equal rights in the labour market; women in the countryside demand not to lose possession of their territories and their protection from pollution damage.24 People who were victims of racism were not even considered “human”. “The racial inferiority of the colonised implied that they were not worthy of wages. They were naturally obliged to work for the benefit of their masters” (Quijano, 1993, p. 225). Sojourner Truth’s question – “Am I a woman?” – draws attention to the question of whether perhaps gender struggles are social groups causes that have already been considered subjects. Sixteen per cent of the country’s population has a native language as its mother tongue (INEI, 2021b, p. 16). There are 47 native languages, of which Quechua is the most common, with 22.3 per cent. The language barrier is compounded by cultural subordination, geographical remoteness and poverty of the rural economy.25 The central and southern Andes are Quechua-speaking areas. Violence against women is mostly concentrated in the southern Andes (INEI, 2021a) and among women who live in the countryside or who have a native language as their mother tongue (INEI, 2020). 3.2.5 Two Forms of Action: The Coexistence of Two Feminisms The feminist groups that emerged in this century identify themselves as autonomous, in the sense of self-sustainable. This characteristic would put them in tension with existing NGOs, which continued to work, thanks to projects financed by international cooperation.  This is the origin of the main opposition to extractivism in the Andes and the Amazon, especially in the face of climate change (Silva Santisteban, 2019). 24  Interviews by Silva Santisteban (2019) with Tarcila Rivera, Tania Pariona and Kety Marcelo, president of the National Organisation of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Women of Peru. 25  According to INEI figures for 2021, 30.3 per cent of women in urban areas and 43.1 per cent in rural areas have no income of their own; 34.5 per cent in the jungle, 34.2 per cent in the highlands and 31.2 per cent on the coast have no income (INEI, 2021a). 23

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The new collectives operated fundamentally in real and virtual public spaces – in the streets, during marches, sit-ins, performances, tetazos (bare breasts protests), escraches (public demonstrations outside the homes of alleged offenders) and in performances by percussion bands, all in a self-managed manner and sometimes with the help of NGOs. They were maintained over time, thanks to the exchanges in chats and face-to-face or virtual assemblies around the organisation of marches and activities on dates such as 8M, 25N and 28 September (28S), the Global Day of Action for Legal, Safe and Free Abortion, and the immediate assistance to urgently assist victims of violence and some urgent political actions. The collectives were mostly concerned with public pressure surrounding certain denunciations or fundraising and collecting food for survivors and families of victims. These activities were also carried out on behalf of the groups of protesters, men and women from the southern Andean region, victims of political and racial violence who came to demonstrate in Lima in December 2022. In the latter case, unfortunately, certain attitudes pigeonholed feminists in “provisioning” tasks, replicating the logics of reproduction; several women were even victims of harassment. Older feminist groups, with members from the public administration, political parties, NGOs or academia, were involved in monitoring the passing of bills or decisions of state institutions and were in contact with allies in the government. Their debates involve other types of information and also traditional political analysis. They made statements in the social media and in the written press to draw attention to attempts to erode the rights already obtained or urgent situations in a turbulent political situation. The “street feminism” of this century is different from the Peruvian feminism of the first small groups of the early 1970s, in which social science professionals ended up specialising in the analysis of women’s problems, producing knowledge and approaching the state. It is also different from the institutionalised feminism in NGOs of the 1980s and 1990s, confined to projects financed by international cooperation. Differences can also be observed with feminisms with a political and intellectual tradition, such as that of Argentina, which have a practice of reading and constant reflection on theory and on their own practices (Masson, 2007). This is also due to the historical context described above – strong political repression, electoral exclusion and exclusion from reading and writing, reserved for the criollos of the capital during the Republic, while the worldview of the Andean and Amazonian population, considered archaic, was not taken into account (Vargas Llosa, 1996). The social media, for their part, relativised the power that used to be held by the entities that enshrined power and knowledge: publishing houses, universities and the written press. The power of the social media is available not only to specialists in a certain subject. Their dynamics are different; in fact, they have given power to societies where orality prevailed over writing (Bondi & Zapata, 2006). Social media also became tribunals where men and women considered to be aggressors of women are cancelled, and who can remain permanently on the lists in circulation. Abuse of power is sanctioned even when it is not classified as a crime: infidelities (classified as affective irresponsibility), double standards in militant

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discourse and intimate conduct and abuse of power within supposedly “alternative” groups. All of this speaks of the need for justice in the absence of access to the courts or in the face of naturalised and non-punishable cases of abuse. Being in a community means that the experience of abuse is shared. The social media spread the denunciation by alerting the group, but they also called for collective punishment through media lynching or boycott. As Diana Maffia states, “[t]he idea of cancellation is to generate an immediate rupture, not only an individual rupture, but to call for a boycott: preventing a concert from being held, a certain product from being consumed or a certain subject from spreading their opinions in a certain medium” (Sánchez Marino, 2020). The problem is that if there is no point of return, this also leads to something being closed in ourselves. Young feminist groups suffered a severe shock in 2019, when one artist activist who suffered depression and was collectively accused of physically attacking other female colleagues committed suicide after being denied a prize.

4 Brief Government of an “Indigenous” President, Social Explosion and Shift to “Authoritarian Neoliberalism” When Pedro Castillo came to power in 2021, the regional left was ill-prepared for state management, and so the gender parity in the executive branch of government disappeared, and feminism came to be identified as “neoliberal”, “capitalist”, “privileged” and “western”. The dynamics of feminist demands that generated liberal responses from the state came to an end. The Odebrecht scandal, which affected several Latin American governments, led to the fall of right-wing and centre-right parties, which exacerbated the crisis of representation in the 2021 general elections (DW, 2018). Thus, presidential candidate Pedro Castillo made it to the second round with only 19.11 per cent of the vote against Keiko Fujimori with 13.36 per cent. The left supporting Castillo was regional and misogynist. However, the trend carried over from 2016 continued  – a weak president and a fragmented Congress. Castillo did not have a legislative majority, nor did the far right. After only eight months in office, both branches of government were eroded and reached disapproval levels of 82 per cent for Congress and 60 per cent for the executive branch of government (DW, 2022; La República, 2022a, b). For women, this translated into the disappearance of a context favourable to their rights, reinforcing the negative repercussions the pandemic was already having on their informal businesses and workload (MIMP & UNDP, 2022). Disputes flared among feminist groups over support for Pedro Castillo in the 2021 run-off election. Castillo was neither an organic candidate of his party nor a charismatic leader, and he was not prepared to be president, either. Nevertheless, his opponent, Fujimorismo, had to be defeated. There was also an argument about the value of finally having a government from traditionally subordinate and non-­ hegemonic sectors. The campaign against Castillo, both as candidate and as president, was essentially racist (Villasante, 2021), and the feminist movement, and in

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particular the younger collectives, was sensitive to this. Protests to re-establish his government after his ouster in December 2022 brought South Andean communities to the capital in successive marches accompanied and supported by NGOs and feminist collectives. For the left-wing ruling party, Peru Libre, the priority was not individual rights and freedoms but overcoming the economic model that was the source of inequality. This resulted in an intense attack on NGOs and former officials of previous centre and left governments as political rivals (Infobae, 2022). However, the neoliberal model was not abandoned either. The conservative tendency, coming from a regional environment, reinstated models of male rule, evident in the first cabinet of the executive branch of government. The government abandoned the gender approach (Gestión, 2021) and eliminated references to sexual diversity and non-binarism (Quesada, 2021). With the centre and the left split, the result of the brief period was favourable to the ultraright. Paradoxically, the first Congress elected under the law of parity and alternation, in 2021, was made up of a conservative left and a conservative right, so that elected women voted against comprehensive sexual education and a gender focus on education; these advances had taken years to be implemented (La República, 2022a, b). This was followed by a slew of bills aimed at preventing women’s reproductive autonomy and pushing for educational counter-reform. This underlined the weakness of the quota system, which did nothing to stop the authoritarian and conservative onslaught. After the fall of the government, and despite her promise to resign if Castillo was removed from office, Vice-President Dina Boluarte was sworn in. Some NGOs celebrated her as the first woman to be sworn in as president. This provoked the rejection of several collectives, especially when a social outburst immediately broke out in the southern Andean region; as a result of police repression, 18 people were killed on 9 January 2023, in the city of Juliaca, in the department of Puno. The demonstrations left 60 people dead in the first three months of Boluarte’s government. In the face of severe criticism, Boluarte only managed to reject the protests and blame the calls for her resignation on machismo rather than on her crisis of legitimacy (CNN en Español, 2022; SwissInfo, 2022). Her government already registered the secondhighest number of protest deaths in Latin America since 2000. After four months in power and failed attempts to call elections due to congressional boycott, the Government forged a tacit alliance with the ultraright in Congress, which sought control of all branches of government, including the electoral branch, a turn towards authoritarianism.26 The conservative legislature launched a “cultural battle”27 to dismantle the civil and political rights of the era of “democratic neoliberalism” and to install conservative values of congresspeople, pastors or retired  The congressional ultraright elected the Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees, which immediately resolved, on 23 February, by Ruling 74/2023, to free Congress from judicial control in several matters. 27  A term with which the Latin American ultraright, whether libertarian or religious, announces its war to reclaim culture from the left. Human rights, progressive thought in universities, social memory, have favoured the affirmation of the left; the right neglected these areas and settled for economic power (Laje, 2022). 26

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military officers. As of March 2023, several bills on the concession of “absolute” rights to embryos, abolishing gender-free language and renaming the Ministry of Women’s Affairs as the Ministry of the Family,28 already approved in committees, awaited approval in the single-chamber plenary. The provincial mayor of Lima from 2023, the pro-Hispanic Ultramontane Rafael López de Aliaga, carried out the first closures of gynaecological care and reproductive rights NGOs (Reyna, 2021), also shutting down for some weeks, the Museum of Memory, dedicated to the period of political violence. The scale of the political crisis surpassed all predictions and took feminist groups by surprise. The younger ones will have to decide whether to give up their goals and prioritise national before women’s causes or whether to strengthen themselves internally and rethink their strategies. Political rapprochement with organised sectors of society is limited beyond existing agreements with cleaners’ or sex workers’ unions. The stigmatisation of feminism, which was not even accepted as part of the human rights movement, pushed it to the margins of political culture; the search for autonomy from the left, which has been going on since the previous century, continues to this day, and strategies are needed to make it understood that feminism implies a revolution for both sexes as well as being a movement for self-affirmation.

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Index

A Abortion, 6–11, 15–17, 21, 22, 24, 26–32, 34–37, 57, 72, 75, 81, 92, 93, 103, 111, 112, 122–127, 137, 139, 140, 144–151, 158, 163, 164, 167, 168, 180, 182, 184, 202 Activisms, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 20, 24, 25, 35, 37, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51–55, 58, 59, 75, 89–105, 124, 155, 156, 158, 163, 164, 166–168, 175, 183, 184, 197 Argentina, 2–6, 8–11, 15–37, 46, 158, 192, 194, 202 Authoritarian neoliberalism, 203–205 B Brazil, 2–5, 7–9, 21, 43–59, 82, 128 C Caribbean, 21, 33, 98–102, 121, 176 Chile, 2–5, 7, 9, 49, 67–83, 121 Colombia, 3–6, 9, 10, 21, 89–105, 117, 128 Conservative backlash, 8, 9, 44, 47, 104, 112, 127–130, 139, 185 D Democratic neoliberalism, 11, 189, 191–196, 204 Dominican Republic, 3–5, 7, 10, 110, 113, 115, 118, 119, 121, 122, 127–131

E Ecuador, 3–5, 7, 10, 128, 130, 137–152, 191, 198 F Feminism, 4, 16, 44, 68, 90, 114, 137, 155, 174, 189 Feminist activism, 2, 8, 11, 32, 89–105, 127, 157, 164–167, 185, 199 Feminist claims, 2–4, 9, 16, 17, 20, 23, 45, 49, 74, 104, 184 Feminist movement, 3, 5–11, 16, 21, 25, 33, 34, 36, 37, 44, 45, 49–51, 57, 67–73, 76, 77, 79, 82, 92, 102, 109–131, 145–147, 163, 165, 166, 174, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 195, 196, 203 Feminist social movements, 92, 99 G Gender-based violence (GBV), 1, 6–12, 17, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 32, 33, 37, 81, 93, 99, 120, 123, 143, 147, 151, 158, 168, 190 Gender violence, 96, 97, 141, 146, 147, 151, 167, 178 H History methodology, 156 History of feminism, 142, 155–169

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. M. Pousadela, S. R. Bohn (eds.), Women’s Rights in Movement, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39182-8

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210 I Intersectionality, 3, 26, 145, 201 L Latin America, 2–4, 21, 32, 33, 45, 57, 70, 75, 77, 82, 90, 93, 97, 112, 119, 120, 122, 128, 144, 148, 166, 167, 174, 183, 191, 192, 204 M Mexican feminisms, 11, 155–169 Mobilisation, 5, 7, 27, 34, 67, 68, 70, 74–76, 80, 89, 91, 93, 95–97, 101, 103, 116, 118, 121, 125–127, 156, 158, 160, 161, 163, 166, 168, 180, 181, 184, 186, 192, 195, 197 N Nicaragua, 2–6, 11, 173–186 P Periodization, 51, 58 Peru, 2–5, 8, 11, 21, 128, 189–205 Political representation, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 17, 81 Political trajectories, 55, 128 Politics of affect, 10, 137, 138 Post-colonial, 8, 47–49, 58, 59, 90 R Racism, 48, 56, 58, 59, 89, 98, 122, 179, 197, 201 Representation, 4–6, 19, 22–24, 71, 81, 83, 93, 96, 99, 101, 157, 163, 189, 194, 203 Right-wing conservatism, 82

Index S Sexual and reproductive rights, 1, 6, 8, 10, 16, 22, 32, 35, 57, 75, 80, 82, 92, 99, 102, 103, 129, 138, 140, 142–148, 151, 165, 168, 190, 192, 196 Slavery, 48, 58 Social movements, 2, 16, 17, 37, 44, 82, 92, 95–98, 100, 102, 104, 110, 127, 131, 138, 145, 148, 180, 181, 191, 195 Structures of opportunity, 137, 138 U University women’s feminist, 68, 69, 79 W Waves of feminism, 4, 20, 45, 158, 169 Women, 1, 16, 43, 67, 89, 109, 137, 156, 174, 189 Women’s movement, 2–4, 6–8, 10, 11, 16–18, 21, 22, 26, 29, 43–59, 72, 75, 80, 89, 91, 94–96, 98, 102, 120, 140, 143, 163, 166, 174, 177, 178, 184, 192 Women’s rights, 2–6, 8, 9, 15–37, 43–47, 49–50, 52–55, 58, 59, 67, 68, 75, 81–83, 91–93, 97, 103, 109, 111, 115, 116, 120, 124, 137, 138, 141–143, 150, 158, 160–162, 174, 175, 184, 189, 191, 192, 200 W Youth participation, 101