Women in Latin America and the Caribbean - Cepal

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11 normative purposes (Sartori, 2003). Democracy is, and cannot be delinked from, what democracy should be. Descriptive democracy refers to democracy as it actually exists, and prescriptive democracy to the ideal pursued by a society. Throughout history, democracy has invariably been associated with a political entity —a form of State and government— albeit within the framework of different, more or less liberal or radical schools of thought. A review of the literature attests to the breadth of the feminist discussion of the concepts of the individual, citizenship, politics and the State, as well as alignment with different stances on democracy. What is known as “liberal” feminism makes a priority of judicial changes, while more “radical” feminism maintains a debate on the deconstruction of the assumptions underlying the notion of democracy. In many countries, women have been involved in social movements which ask for a more participative democracy. This range shows that, although there is no single feminist definition of democracy, women and women’s movements are contributing to a broad debate on democracy. Feminist movements have criticized the limitations of the concepts of democracy. As early as 1791, the French activist Olympia de Gouges wrote the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen” and presented it before the French National Assembly, for which she was rewarded with the guillotine. In 1792, the British writer Mary Wollstonecraft published “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”, one of the most radical feminist manifestos ever written. Its inspiration was the idea that women do not exist solely for the pleasure of men, and it proposed that women should receive the same treatment as men in terms of education, political rights and labour and should be judged by the same moral standards. Contemporary feminism has resumed the discussion and has criticized democracy for failing to devote sufficient attention to laws and institutions (Betty Friedan). More radically, it has called into question democracy’s omission of the private dimension. The slogan “the personal is political” has spread under the influence of Latin American and Caribbean social movements that have campaigned to change the status of women in legislation and within the State apparatus. Some theorists, including Carole Pateman, have gone even further by asserting that, in reality, there is no such thing as democratic theory because of the patriarchal biases of traditional doctrines; consequently, democratic practice does not exist, insofar as women have never achieved anything resembling egalitarian power in the family, civil society or the State. From this perspective, even countries considered to be democratic are seen as being in transition. They have had to naturalize gender relations and remove the problem of inequality from the sphere of politics (Valcárcel, 1997). The democratic debate in Latin America and the Caribbean has been pursued in a number of different settings in the last few decades. One such arena has been the summits held under the aegis of the United Nations. At these summits, civil society organizations have contributed to the adoption of an agenda in which the struggle for democracy is tied in with efforts to combat poverty, eliminate violence and uphold reproductive rights. During the first world conferences on women, governments —in many cases in the hands of dictators— did not have mechanisms for women’s advancement, and the demands of civil society, sometimes made at great risk, were the main channel for the exercise of democracy. A second, and enormously important, setting for the democratic debate is the struggle for human rights. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, the women miners in Bolivia and innumerable associations of family members of the detained and “disappeared” came to represent the moral reserve of a society threatened by the loss of liberties. The third setting emerged with the return of democracy and the establishment of machineries for women’s advancement, which have become strategic elements that are often at the vanguard of efforts to secure constitutional reform or the adoption of quota laws, as well as other changes inspired by the Beijing Platform for Action.
12 Another sphere of democratic debate developed when the debt crisis hit the region in the 1980s. The countless survival strategies devised at that time by women —mainly from low-income sectors— led to the formation of new leadership roles. For a long time, the political system and, particularly, political parties shunned these movements, and this reaction triggered a mass exodus of women from those institutions. By the start of the twenty-first century, women had become more closely involved with political parties within a democratic context. In many countries, female parliamentarians set up cross-party networks to promote legislative changes in favour of women, such as laws against violence and quota laws. Despite this, and although an increasing number of studies have scrutinized the political role of women in Latin America and the Caribbean, their contribution to the construction of democracy, especially during wartime and in the effort to combat dictatorships and authoritarianism, has not been sufficiently documented. The debate on democracy, democratic governance and gender reveals the tensions and bridges between the usual definitions of democracy —as a political system made up of representative institutions— and the contributions that feminism makes by questioning dichotomies, redefining the boundary between the private and the public and extending the notion of democracy into the family. It also seeks to identify forums for dialogue with public policymakers to facilitate the mainstreaming of gender analysis. Viewed from a gender perspective, one of the questions that arises is whether a democracy that is limited to the electoral process signifies an advance in the status of women. Similarly, it is important to consider the effects of poverty on equality and freedom of citizenship, the importance of sexual and reproductive rights, the impact of poverty-alleviation programmes on women, women’s use of time and their capabilities and freedom to play a role in the spheres of democracy and governance. If women are to be effectively represented, they must be able to participate in institutional politics untrammelled by ingrained cultural stereotypes which associate female party members with responsibilities for caregiving functions. D. STATE AND FAMILY: EQUALITY OF FORM AND REAL INEQUALITY The first great dichotomy underlying the theories of the State is between the public and the private, which, according to Bobbio, 6 spins off into another great dichotomy: that of equals and unequals. The contemporary debate addresses the subject of the State or the political system indistinctly. What makes the two concepts interchangeable, according to Bobbio (1985), is the pursuit of power in its various forms. One of the main concerns of the women’s movement has been the mounting debate regarding the State and the political system, extended into the sphere of the family, which —from other perspectives— was considered the domain of the non-political, with the public sphere thus exerting dominance over the private. From the gender perspective, power does not reside solely in the public sphere, in the political system; it also exists in the private arena and the family. The concepts of gender and gender relations 6 Norberto Bobbio and Michelangelo Bovero (1985) use the term “dichotomy” to refer to distinctions that divide a universe into two jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive spheres which together make up a whole.
Page 2 and 3: LC/L.2738(CRM.10/3) August 2007 The
Page 4 and 5: 1 FOREWORD The Economic Commission
Page 6 and 7: 3 INTRODUCTION The women of Latin A
Page 8: 5 essentially not on biological fac
Page 11 and 12: 8 Convention, but the process has b
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Page 17 and 18: 14 to articulate their efforts in i
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Page 23 and 24: 20 universalist school’s argument
Page 25 and 26: 22 democratic movements, gradually
Page 27 and 28: 24 Table I.2 LATIN AMERICA (20 COUN
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Page 31 and 32: 28 In Costa Rica the quota issue be
Page 33 and 34: 30 Table I.3 LATIN AMERICA AND THE
Page 35 and 36: 32 The differences between the resu
Page 37 and 38: 34 Figure I.4 LATIN AMERICA AND THE
Page 39 and 40: 36 Figure I.6 CARIBBEAN (11 COUNTRI
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Page 43 and 44: 40 Women’s entry to parliament ca
Page 45 and 46: 42 Figure I.10 LATIN AMERICA AND TH
Page 47 and 48: 44 Figure I.12 THE CARIBBEAN (10 CO
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Page 51 and 52: 48 Table I.6 LATIN AMERICA AND THE
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61 of care on women mounts up. This
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63 conditions of employment of work
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65 social security and social benef
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67 disincentive to their recruitmen
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69 seeks to reform the constitution
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71 Box II.4 REGULATION OF EMPLOYMEN
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73 those in rural areas (42.1%), wh
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75 sex and activity (see figure II.
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77 Figure II.4 LATIN AMERICA (SIMPL
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79 Figure II.7 LATIN AMERICA (SIMPL
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81 Box II.6 HAITI. DOMESTIC WORKERS
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83 It is interesting to characteriz
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85 care to the “productive” adu
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87 Box II. 7 (concluded) To sum up,
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89 are also inaccurate, which widen
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91 Some progress has been made sinc
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93 Figure II.15 AVERAGE HOURS SPENT
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95 Country Costa Rica El Salvador G
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97 domestic life is shared between
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99 employee for family reasons. The
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101 In the private sphere, there ha
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103 Table II.4 SEVEN SELECTED CITIE
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105 Box II.12 EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL SE
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107 III. TOWARDS A RESEARCH AND POL
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109 (iii) Contribute to the mainten
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111 Appendix TECHNICAL NOTES The st
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113 Household survey information al
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115 sub-module “home maintenance
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118 _____ (2003), "Políticas para
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120 Carrasco, Cristina (2001), “H
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122 _____ (2003b), “Redes de apoy
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124 Huenchuan, Sandra and José Mig
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126 Montaño, Sonia (2007a), “Emp
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128 Rico, María Nieves (2006), “
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130 _____ (1979), Convention on the
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