Gender Policies in Progressive Subnational Governments: How Feminist Are They? Examining Three Leading Cases of Argentina and Uruguay

RODRÍGUEZ GUSTÁ, ANA LAURA; CAMINOTTI, MARIANA

New York

Congreso; XXXV Latin American Studies Association Annual Meeting; 2016

Latin American Studies Association

While there are studies addressing gender policies by Pink tide countries, we have less knowledge on how progressive governments have advanced women's rights at the subnational levels. This is a surprising theoretical lacuna given that gender policies are becoming profuse at the subnational governmental level in many Latin American countries. In order to start filling this gap, we examine three early cases of local governments that introduce explicit gender mainstreaming policies to address various forms of inequalities simultaneously: Rosario (Argentina) and Montevideo (Uruguay). Given that these policies have many years of implementation (two decades in each city), we have enough date to examine their content and nature and contrast them with the standards set forth by the literature on feminist policies that draw attention to three issue: the degree of civil society participation, the presence of a wide range of rights, and the existence of a solid institutional structure. We conclude by highlighting the piecemeal adoption of some rights and the contradictions experiences by governments when implementing gender policies.