A Multigeographical Approach to Women's Family Relations in Public Policies

LUNA, DAYANA; ROVIRA RUBIO, RAYÉN; YUFRA, LAURA CRISTINA

Budapest

Conferencia; 2nd European Conference on Politics and Gender; 2011

Central European University

In this paper we examine various aspects on how public policies understand and influence women and their family relations.Although we have quite different research backgrounds, we share a common theoretical frame. Our starting point to carry out this study is an interweaving of those different backgrounds with a shared set of conceptual tools. We focus on public policies from the point of view of the Anthropology of Policy (Shore and Wright, 1997) and the governance theory (Foucault, 1979; Rose, 1996).Specifically we go through a law of immigration in Spain, which evidences implicit assumptions about family and the relations among family members. We also examine a program directed towards extreme poverty in Chile that focuses on women as a main door towards intervention. Finally, we study a sexual and reproductive health program in Mexico, which aims at the regulation of sexuality and reproduction through women's bodies. Our findings lead us to promote critical debates on different angles about policies and its effects on gendered family relations.