Gender in Latin America / Edition 1 available in Paperback
Gender in Latin America / Edition 1
- ISBN-10:
- 0813531969
- ISBN-13:
- 9780813531960
- Pub. Date:
- 10/23/2002
- Publisher:
- Rutgers University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0813531969
- ISBN-13:
- 9780813531960
- Pub. Date:
- 10/23/2002
- Publisher:
- Rutgers University Press
Gender in Latin America / Edition 1
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Overview
Chapters are arranged around themes such as gender and poverty, gender and population, gender and health, and gender and employment. Each chapter begins with an introduction to the core issues, and debates in the relevant field in order to set specific regional experiences within their global as well as regional contexts. The authors also refer to new bodies of literature on the subject, including those on men and masculinity, fatherhood, and sexuality.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780813531960 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rutgers University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/23/2002 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | (w) x (h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Nikki Craske is director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Liverpool and senior lecturer in Latin American Politics. Her publications include Women and Politics in Latin America (Polity Press and Rutgers University Press) and Gender and the Politics of Rights (coedited with Maxine Molyneux).
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Gender in a Changing Continent
SYLVIA CHANT
This book explores configurations of gender in key social, political, economic and demographic aspects of contemporary Latin American societies. The themes covered – politics, legislation, social movements, poverty, population, migration, employment, health, sexuality, families and households – interrelate in important ways. We elaborate on these connections at various points in the book, as well as indicating how issues pertaining to gender in Latin America are informed by, and themselves inform, wider international debates on theory and policy.
The volume focuses on the last fifty years, with particular emphasis on the last three decades of the twentieth century. During this period many countries in Latin America have emerged from the shadows of authoritarian regimes, whether civilian or military, in which there was limited scope for civil society activity among women or men. In the case of military dictatorships, particularly in Central America and the Southern Cone, state terrorism was frequently deployed in the attempt to paralyse all kinds of 'subversive' action, including feminism (see Feijo6 and Gogna, 1990; Fisher, 1993; Molyneux, 2000; Rivera Puentes, 1996b). While women still managed to be active in exile as well as to contribute to the transition to democracy in many parts of the continent, the initially high expectations that women would participate fully in national political life thereafter were less than satisfied (see Craske, 1999; Fisher, 1993:2; Jaquette [ed], 1994). In addition, since the early 1980s most countries in Latin America have fallen under the shroud of crippling external debt crises and long-term programmes of neoliberal economic restructuring. The latter have included greater opening up to global competition, deregulation of labour markets, and a 'rolling back' of the state from economic life, and from social protection and provision. In many cases these moves have been associated with deepening poverty (especially in urban areas), rising precariousness in people's livelihoods, and particular hardships for low-income women. Paradoxically perhaps, these trends have formed the backdrop to the most intense period of feminist organising in Latin American history, and the introduction throughout the region of state apparatus and legislation oriented to advancing the cause of gender equality and/ or women's rights. If it is surprising that so many gains have been made by and for Latin American women in this 'generally unfavourable economic milieu' (Deere and Leon, 2000b:31 ), it was precisely women's efforts which played a part in creating the conditions to make them happen. As Molyneux (2000:64–5) notes:
The collapse of military rule in the 1980s and the return of civilian governments to power were accompanied by a deepening of the restructuring process, but in the context of a greater commitment to social justice and "good governance". ... Partly under the influence of the international women's movement, partly due to the greater self-confidence and organisational strength of national women's movements, and partly in an effort to present a modern face to the world, newly elected democratic governments recognised women as a constituency that required representation in the state.
While gender is inherently dynamic, whatever the historical juncture, a number of important changes have accompanied the growth of institutional support for women in Latin America in the late twentieth century. Prominent among these are the interrelated trends of a general (if differentiated) decline in fertility across the continent, rising levels of education and employment among women, a weakening of patriarchal household arrangements (linked, inter alia, with upward trends in divorce and growing numbers of female-headed households), and, in some quarters, a brewing 'crisis' of masculine identity (see Chant, 1997a, 2000; Escobar Latapí, 1998; González de la Rocha, 1994, 1995; Güendel and González, 1998; Kaztman, 1992; Safa, 1995a,b). Alongside these processes, it is possible to discern diminishing gaps in 'quantitative' indicators of gender inequality, including literacy and educational attainment, and male-female headcounts in formal politics, even if, in most contexts, women's shares of GOP per capita and of managerial and professional employment continue to lag far behind those of men (see Tables 1.1 and 1.2). Our main concerns in the light of these transitions is to examine what they signify for gender at the start of the twenty-first century. Are gender inequalities in Latin America lessening over time, or simply changing in nature? How far is gender a more important basis of inequality than other axes of difference such as class, 'race' and sexuality? How do these combine with one another, and with what effects? What kinds of strategies might be advanced to create conditions for greater gender equality in Latin American societies in the new millennium?
While we hope to go some way to answering these questions in the following chapters, it is critical to emphasise that a book of this kind can never be exhaustive, and that much historical and geographical texture is sacrificed in the interests of providing a general overview. This problem is greatly compounded in a region such as Latin America, given immense variations in the economic, political, demographic, social and cultural characteristics of its constituent countries. Adding to complexity is the fact that people's experiences and negotiations of gender are cross-cut by myriad, interwoven axes of difference such as ethnicity, class, migrant status, urban/rural residence, family and household characteristics, sexual orientation and stage in the life course. Set against the increasingly rapid changes linked with globalisation in the continent, it is clearly difficult to do justice to all possible permutations of contemporary Latin American diversity. One of the principal shortfalls in the present volume, for example, is that of uneven attention to different sectors of the Latin American population. Although there are growing bodies of gender-sensitive literature on 'minority' groups such as indigenous peoples, gays and lesbians, and on sections of the populace who have not conventionally been the object of dedicated feminist study (men, upper-income groups, the elderly and so on), the bulk of gender research to date has concentrated on low-income, mestiza women in urban areas. This has somewhat inevitably impacted upon who we write about most in the book.
A second caveat pertains to geography, with where we write about most in Latin America being influenced by uneven intra-regional coverage in the literature. Countries such as Paraguay, Uruguay, Panama, Guatemala and Venezuela, for example, do not figure as prominently in respect of internationally accessible work on gender as, say, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. Accordingly, more examples are drawn from this latter group than the former. The fact that our respective fieldwork has taken place in the last four countries is another reason why they feature more frequently in case study sections than those for which our knowledge has come through secondary sources.
As for what we write about in the book, our choice of themes is also governed partly by our own research interests. More significant still, however, is that these reflect the topics of some of the most extensive work on gender in the region, both by Latin Americans and by the wider diaspora of Latin Americanists. Indeed, the very nature of the present enterprise emerges out of a rich and ever-expanding body of feminist scholarship in Latin America. Current theory and knowledge owe a large debt to the groundbreaking efforts of academics, practitioners and activists working at a time when gender was an unfamiliar and often deeply unpopular concept, not to mention personally and politically dangerous. Accordingly, we consider it vital to dedicate some discussion, albeit brief, to the development of gender research in and on Latin America over time, and to highlight issues which have become hallmarks in debates on gender in the region, both internally and internationally.
Research on gender in Latin America: a brief retrospective
Although isolated studies on gender in Latin America have a long history, dedicated research and writing on the subject took off on a grand scale only in the 1970s. This was the era of the United Nations Decade for Women (1975–1985) which provided two major impetuses to research and action on gender. First, it highlighted how little was actually known about women in any region of the world. Second, in galvanising international interest in 'the position of women', it created an environment in which networks of individuals and organisations felt moved and encouraged to 'deinvisibilise' women. Latin America was no exception in this regard, with the years following the launch of the UN Decade in Mexico City being marked by an unprecedented number of feminist conferences, encounters, campaigns and writings on the part of academics, activists, planners and policy-makers (see Nash, 1986).
Themes and approaches in gender research in Latin America
Early research on gender in Latin America, as in other parts of the world, was predominantly conducted on, by and for women. This is hardly surprising given the feminist groundswell of the 1970s, and the predominance of the 'Women in Development' (WID) paradigm in academic and policy circles. In some respects, WID concern with 'integrating' women into development policy and practice also skewed thematic emphasis towards 'tangible', 'material' and/or 'measurable' aspects of women's lives, such as their economic well-being, their position in the labour market, their fertility and health status, and their representation in politics and public life. Another reason for a focus on the practical aspects of women's lives, especially among low-income groups, was the legacy of theories of Dependency and Internal Colonialism which had emphasised the importance of class in Latin American inequalities (see Scott, 1994). Yet as noted by Melhuus and Stølen (1996:11 et seq.), other more culturalist veins of analysis ran concurrently in work on gender in Latin America, and have steadily assumed a more important place in the literature (for examples see Balderston and Guy [eds], 1997; Coates, 2001; Harvey and Gow [eds], 1994). While many of the material concerns around gender which characterised research in the 1970s continue to preoccupy researchers and activists today – gender segmentation in employment, gender inequalities in access to resources and basic services, and gender disparities in political participation, for example – the contemporary scene is one in which far more explicit acknowledgement is made of gender imagery, symbolism and representations (Melhuus and St0len, 1996: 14). Lest it might be imagined that there have been distinct 'camps' in gender scholarship on Latin America, it should be emphasised that much of the early work on women's 'productive roles' recognised that gender inequalities could not be explained by materialist analyses alone (see for example, Nash, 1986; Nash and Safa [eds], 1980; Scott, 1986c). Indeed, this is one important reason why 'the family', representing a complex confluence of both material and non-material aspects of gender, has long been such a prominent element in gender analysis in Latin America. Although treatment of 'the Latin American family' in Eurocentric overviews of world family patterns, and in economistic policy analyses, has often been characterised as stereotyped, monolithic and gender blind, in feminist writings on Latin America families have seldom been dealt with in ways other than which reflect them as non-uniform, dynamic and as encompassing highly variegated gender relations (Chant, 1991; Cicerchia, 1997; Dore, 1997; González de la Rocha, 1986; Kuznesof, 1989; Jelin [ed], 1991).
Representing gender in Latin America
Accepting that in the early literature on Latin America seeds had already been sown about the multi-dimensionality of gender, and the need for holistic theoretical approaches, the pluri-vocal nature of gender research on the region has arguably been more overlooked. At first glance it might appear that gender research on Latin America was primarily the domain of 'outsiders'. Just over fifteen years ago, for example, exiled Argentinian academic and activist Marta Zabaleta wrote about the irony embedded in Latin American women reading about themselves through the writings of North American academics, and in a language (English) other than their own. This, she charged, placed them in the 'strange position of making their own acquaintance though the medium of an internationally projected, internationally recognised image of themselves which they played little part in constructing' (Zabaleta, 1986:97). While we do not deny the veracity of this statement, nor the fact that in the early days authors and editors of 'mainstream' (English) texts on gender in Latin America were overwhelmingly European and North American women, inside these volumes Latin Americans featured extensively in citations and bibliographies, not to mention as contributors of chapters (for examples see Harris [ed], 1982; Nash and Safa [eds] 1980, 1986). This, in turn, foregrounded an unprecedented rise from the mid-1980s onwards of Latin American authored and/or co-authored publications on gender available to readers outside the continent (for example, Beneria and Roldan, 1987; Bose and Acosta-Belen, [eds], 1995; González de Ia Rocha, 1986; Jelin [ed], 1990, 1991; Nash and Fernandez-Kelly [eds], 1983; Ruiz and Tiano [eds], 1987). Although Latin Americans have progressively claimed more visible leadership in what is written about their region, what has possibly changed to an even greater degree is not who is writing about Latin America, but who is getting published in English about gender in Latin America. On one hand, the rise in Latin American-authored 'international' texts can be interpreted as a positive sign of receptivity towards other voices in a heavily Northern-dominated academic 'mainstream'. As Molyneux (2001:9) notes 'the countries seen as occupying the "periphery" have moved from the margins to occupy at least an honorific place within contemporary social science'. Yet questions clearly remain about why Latin Americans have to be translated into English to 'count' in any substantial way, and why so many Northern Latin Americanists fail to devote time to writing in the language of the region they study. These issues await more satisfactory resolution in the twenty-first century if terms such as 'globalisation' and 'international feminism' are to have the same resonance in reality as in rhetoric.
From women to gender
Having noted that revisiting early work on gender in Latin America reveals more in the way of continuity than change in both themes and authorship, there has undoubtedly been a progressive shift from a focus on women to gender over time. This is partly a result of wider developments in feminist theorising, and, within the policy sphere, a move (m principle at least) from a WID to a GAD (Gender and Development) approach (see Chant and Gutmann, 2000; Pearson, 2000a). The transition from women to gender embodies two important analytical developments that pertain not only to Latin America but to other regions. The first of these might be summed up as a shift from 'woman' to 'women', insofar as the growing currency of gender as a dynamic social construct demanded greater interrogation of women's differentiation on account of class, age, 'race' and so on. Even if on the surface the roles that women performed in different cultures happened to 'look' similar, the nature and meanings of these roles needed to be scrutinised in context, and not from a single (and more particularly Euro-American) vantage point. The second main aspect of the shift from women to gender has been the greater attention given to the practical as well as theoretical dimensions of gender as a relational concept, not only in respect of other social criteria, but also with regard to public and private interactions and negotiations over gender among men and women. Brief sketches are given of these developments in the context of Latin America in the following sections.
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