Gender, maternalism and conditional cash transfers in Argentina

TABBUSH, CONSTANZA

Montreal, Canada

Congreso; XXVII LASA (Latin American Studies Association) International Congress: After the Washington Consensus: Collaborative Scholarship for a New América; 2007

LASA (Latin American Studies Association)

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have blossomed all over Latin American as the prescribed recipe to face the current regional levels of poverty and social exclusion. These are targeted and demand-led inclusive policies centered on mothering as an exit route out of deprivation. By means of focusing on poor families, they tackle current poverty through the provision of cash to women, and social exclusion by promoting children’s human capital formation. This paper concentrates on an analysis and discussion of the multiplicity of existing and competing discourses concerning social inclusion and the representations on gender and the family embodied in two of the main CCTs programmes in Argentina from 2001-2006: the “Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados: Derecho Familiar a la Inclusión Social” (Plan Jefas) and the “Familias por la Inclusión Social” (Plan Familias). These programmes were selected considering their national salience, their rights-based rationale built upon families’ rights to social inclusion, and the diverse mechanisms of social inclusion they provide for poor women. The presentation mixes a variety of data sources: academic literature and studies, legislation of programmes, images and narratives used in their publicity, as well as semi-structured interviews with actors at national and local level, and programme beneficiaries. The case of Argentina is of special interest because it turned to the regional CCT model after doing their suis genesis experimentation, and provides two contrasting scenarios for the links between gender and social inclusion: the first views women as workers and the second one sees women as mothers. This case study should shed some light over the debate concerning the contemporary take on maternity as a route out of deprivation, and the possibilities it could act as a discursive anchor and a platform for women’s empowerment.