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1. The COVID-19 Pandemic in Latin American and Caribbean countries: The Labor Supply Impact by Gender

Author:
Mariana Viollaz, Mauricio Salazar-Saenz, Luca Flabbi, Monserrat Bustelo, and Mariano Bosch
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
We study the labor supply impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by gender in four Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries: Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, and Mexico. To identify the impact, we compare labor market stocks and labor market flows over four quarters for a set of balanced panel samples of comparable workers before and after the pandemic. We find that the pandemic has negatively affected the labor market status of both men and women, but that the effect is significantly stronger for women, magnifying the already large gender gaps that characterize LAC countries. The main channel through which this stronger impact is taking place is the increase in child care work affecting women with school-age children.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Markets, Labor Issues, Inequality, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Latin America and Caribbean

2. Nela Martínez Espinosa (1912–2004) Women of Struggle, Women in Struggle

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
The second half of the twentieth century was marked by national liberation struggles in the colonised countries of Africa and Asia. In Latin America, neo-colonial structures had subordinated the republics founded as independent countries at the beginning of the nineteenth century, cementing their subaltern position in the international division of labour. During decades of global crisis (1914–1948), Latin America saw battles between an oligarchy that violently sought to make the working class pay the price of the economic meltdown and a left-wing tendency boosted by two processes: the growing peasant and trade union organisations on the one hand, and a radicalised middle class on the other. Observing the new forms of material dispossession that made the promises of republican democracy impossible, peasant and worker organisations advanced a discourse highlighting class conflict and patriarchal and neo-colonial domination. They also voiced new visions of the nation state and the perspectives for democratic and socialist internationalism against the unfolding fascism, inspired by the mobilisations and transformations of public power achieved by the Mexican Revolution and the Russian Revolution. The fight for equality and liberation under the leadership of working people is ongoing in the anti-imperialist struggles of our time. In a myriad of ways, women powerfully shaped and continue to shape this struggle against oligopolistic, patriarchal, racist, and neo-colonial capitalism. In the Women of Struggle, Women in Struggle series of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we present the stories of women in struggle who contributed not only to the wider arena of politics, but who also pioneered the establishment of women’s organisations, opening up paths of feminist resistance and struggle throughout the twentieth century. Praxis, as a knowledge of theory and of organisational methods of struggle as they change and respond to history, gives sustenance to ongoing struggles to face oppression. As militants, we study the diverse organisational methods of these women not only to better understand their political contributions, but also to inspire us as we build the organisations necessary for our fight against oppression and exploitation today. In this third study, we discuss the life and legacy of Nela Martínez Espinosa, an Ecuadorian fighter for the people. Nela was a writer and communist activist[i] from an early age with extensive internationalist experience. As the first woman elected to Ecuador’s parliament, she created one of the country’s first mass women’s political organisations in 1938 and, as the first woman minister of the interior, she was effectively in charge of the country in the chaotic three days that followed the insurrection known as La Gloriosa, or the Glorious May Revolution, in May 1944. Nela’s rich life-long activism teaches us about the history of women in local, national, and international struggles that linked women’s rights with anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperialist struggles throughout the twentieth century. In a speech at Ecuador’s National Congress in 2003 (a year before her death), Nela spoke about becoming the first woman legislator in 1945: I came [to the parliament] for the first time in a trance of my love for this homeland, which is still struggling with itself, but by then had been rescued from a dictatorship that intensified its oppression. Those of us who experienced the dangers of demanding a revolution which was subsequently denied to us were simply moved. A woman in Congress among those who spoke and not simply among those who listened? Those who ruled inherited the colonial way of thinking and acting […] which during the colony destroyed the culture […] of indigenous peoples to the point of becoming part of the norm, the way of life for those who later became the leaders of the republic. The practice that we are speaking of persisted in social norms and especially behaviour. That is why my presence was strange in the National Congress and, on welcoming it, political leaders for the first time also recognised women citizens in the upper echelons of power.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Colonialism, Feminism, and Biography
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Ecuador

3. Establishing research priorities on violence against women and girls in the Latin American and Caribbean region

Author:
Carmen Porras Gomez, Ana Landa Ugarte, Ivonne Argueta Vasquez, and Beiby Vaca Parada
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Sexual Violence Research Initiative
Abstract:
While it is recognized that violence against women and children is a multidimensional problem, it becomes necessary to establish research priorities to achieve better use of available resources and to advance more systematically in response to violence against them. In this way, SVRI promoted with its partner organizations to identify global research priorities on violence against women under an open, collaborative approach so that diverse voices and perspectives were included. Within this framework, a collective set of priorities for the Latin American and Caribbean region was developed based on the findings of the Global Shared Research Agenda, including violence against girls. This research considers different sources of information, both quantitative and qualitative. However, it aims to give visibility, presence, and reason to the voices of the experts consulted, with special attention to non-academic voices. Therefore, the Regional Agenda of research priorities of violence against women and girls considers the needs of civil society organizations working in this field. This, in opposition to traditional methodologies built from the priorities of funders or academia, surpassing the ‘expert’ judgment of a limited group of people. The process itself is as valuable as the results when it comes to a new approach. The following report is structured in three parts. The first section presents the objectives and background, the methodology, the scope and limitations encountered. The second part includes the results of the process of collective construction of the Regional Agenda. Finally, the third part displays the conclusions and recommendations.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Women, Gender Based Violence, and Sexual Violence
Political Geography:
Latin America, Caribbean, and North America

4. The Gender of Work

Author:
Gala Díaz Langou, Gimena de León, José Florito, Florencia Caro Sachetti, Alejandro Biondi, and Matilde Karczmarczyk
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for the Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth (CIPPEC)
Abstract:
The Gender of Work is the result of a joint initiative between CIPPEC, the International Labor Organization, UN Women and the United Nations Development Program. It focuses on diagnosing the gender gaps that violate the economic rights of women in Argentina, and to present policy suggestions for removing the obstacles that make it impossible for women’s trajectories in the labor market to be substantively equal to those of men. In the Latin American context specifically (but not exclusively), there are three key issues that public policies should take into account when attempting to close the gender gaps in the exercise of economic autonomy. These can be summarized as (1) a human-rights perspective on substantive gender equality, that connects it with sustainable development priorities as described in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and approved by the United Nations in 2015; (2) the acknowledgement of intersectionality and interculturality when tackling discriminative societal structures and (3) the principle of integrality as fundamental to the achievement of physical, decision-making, and economic autonomy.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, and Labor Policies
Political Geography:
Argentina and Latin America

5. Shoutings, Scoldings, Talkings, and Whispers: Mothers’ Reponses to Armed Actors and Militarization in Two Caracas Barrios

Author:
Verónica Zubillaga and Rebecca Hanson
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
How do mothers deal with chronic violence and the constant presence of guns in their neighborhoods? How do they relate to the armed actors who inhabit their neighborhoods? How do they build situated meaning and discursive practices out of their experiences and relationships with armed actors? We compare the experience of women in two poor and working-class neighborhoods in Caracas. La Caracola, with a long history of civic organizations and drug trafficking, suffers regular, extortionate actions by the police. La Piedad has been ravaged by militarized police operations, which have produced a "warfare mode" among the members of organized criminal groups. Through this comparative ethnographic project we aim to show how, in the midst of state-sponsored depredation and with an overwhelming presence of guns in their lives, women use their traditional cultural roles as mothers to perform everyday forms of resistance vis-à-vis the different armed actors that impose their presence in the barrios. We focus on how women make and communicate meanings; engage in social networks with other women; and employ different discursive strategies as they deal with the armed actors. We foreground women’s experiences in two barrios, asking what material and historical conditions make these different experiences possible. In the mothers’ daily struggles, dramatic discursive actions—from more openly oppositional, such as shouting, scolding, and talking, to more hidden ones, such as, both “circulating gossip” and “captive gossip” to more helpless ones, such as whispering—are their main resources in the micropolitics of their neighborhoods.
Topic:
Security, Civil Society, Gender Issues, Conflict, Violence, Peace, and Social Networks
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Venezuela

6. Las mujeres y la construcción de paz: recomendaciones para la Comisión de Esclarecimiento de la Verdad en el proceso de inclusión de la perspectiva de género en el Caribe colombiano

Author:
Diana Gómez Correal, Angélica Arias Preciado, Mónica Durán Scott, Auris Murillo Jiménez, Angélica Bernal Olarte, Diana Montealegre Mongrovejo, Marina López Sepúlveda, and Yusmidia Solano Suárez
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre Desarrollo (CIDER), Universidad de los Andes
Abstract:
Este documento de política pública hace parte de la investigación “Inclusión de las afectaciones vividas por las mujeres y sus procesos de resistencia en las Comisiones de la Verdad de Perú y Colombia: miradas retro y prospectivas de la justicia transicional” liderada por la profesora Diana Gómez. Es producto de un trabajo colaborativo entre el Cider de la Universidad de los Andes, la Red de Mujeres del Caribe, la Colectiva Feministas Emancipatorias, la Universidad Nacional de Colombia sede Caribe, la Universidad del Atlántico y la Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano. El documento de política pública resalta la importante tarea que ha desarrollado la Comisión en la región Caribe con la puesta en marcha de toda la infraestructura institucional que le da forma a la macro-región, los esfuerzos por la implementación de la perspectiva de género y la inclusión de las vivencias de las mujeres en el mandato de la CEV, al tiempo que evalúa los logros y retos que existen en la incorporación de la perspectiva de género. El documento contiene recomendaciones producto de un trabajo de campo que hizo seguimiento a la implementación de la Comisión durante los primeros nueve meses en el Caribe colombiano. Las recomendaciones giran en torno a la inclusión del género y en especial de las vivencias de las mujeres en el mandato de la Comisión, y se estructuran en siete ejes de análisis: participación, esclarecimiento, sanación, reconocimiento de las mujeres como sujeto político, convivencia, funcionamiento de la CEV e informe final. Estos ejes de análisis alimentan los objetivos y mandatos de la CEV.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Women, Social Justice, and Truth
Political Geography:
Colombia and Latin America

7. The coronavirus pandemic and its challenges to women’s work in Latin America

Author:
Diana Gutiérrez, Guillermina Martin, and Hugo Nopo
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE)
Abstract:
The coronavirus pandemic has spread throughout the world and Latin America has not been exempt from its health, economic and social impacts. The economic shutdown, as a result of a combination of stringent measures (self-quarantines, mandatory lockdowns, limited capacity in shops, factories and offices, border closures, etc.), is having a profound economic and social impact. In the labor market it has shocked both supply and demand. Within households, it has resulted in an increase in the unpaid workload, burdening women disproportionately, further reducing the time they can allocate to productive activities. The crisis’s impacts and depth are felt differently by they can widen existing gender gaps. In this paper, the authors explore the impacts of the crisis on employment in sixteen countries in the region. In addition, they analize gender impacts through four lenses: young people, people living in poverty, people living in rural areas and heads of the family. Researchers present a set of policy option aimed at integrating the gender approach into the entire pandemic world. Emphasizing the need for cross-sectional solutions, the authors propose policies in three main areas: the home, work and the spaces between work and home. This will enable socio-economic recovery policies to not only soften short-term impacts, but also further equal opportunities for women and men in the medium and long terms.
Topic:
Economics, Gender Issues, Health, International Political Economy, Women, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Global Health
Political Geography:
Latin America

8. Gender Gaps in Labor Informality: The Motherhood Effect

Author:
Mariana Marchionni, María Edo, Dolores de la Mata, Lucila Berniell, and Inés Berniell
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
Recent work has quantified the large negative effects of motherhood on female labor market outcomes in Europe and the US. But these results may not apply to developing countries, where labor markets work differently and informality is widespread. In less developed countries, informal jobs, which typically include microenterprises and self-employment, offer more time flexibility but poorer social protection and lower labor earnings. These characteristics affect the availability of key inputs in the technology to raise children, and therefore may affect the interplay between parenthood and labor market outcomes. Through an event-study approach we estimate short and long-run labor market impacts of children in Chile, an OECD developing country with a relatively large informal sector. We find that the birth of the first child has strong and long lasting effects on labor market outcomes of Chilean mothers, while fathers remain unaffected. Becoming a mother implies a sharp decline in mothers’ labor supply, both in the extensive and intensive margins, and in hourly wages. We also show that motherhood affects the occupational structure of employed mothers, as the share of jobs in the informal sector increases remarkably. In order to quantify what the motherhood effect would have been in the absence of an informal labor market, we build a quantitative model economy, that includes an informal sector which offers more flexible working hours at the expense of lower wages and weaker social protection, and a technology to produce child quality that combines time, material resources and the quality of social protection services. We perform a counterfactual experiment that indicates that the existence of the informal sector in Chile helps to reduce the drop in LFP after motherhood in about 35%. We conclude that mothers find in the informal sector the flexibility to cope with both family and labor responsibilities, although at the cost of resigning contributory social protection and reducing their labor market prospects.
Topic:
Economics, Gender Issues, Political Economy, and Women
Political Geography:
Latin America and Chile

9. Introduction: Gender in the Global South: A Complex and Contradictory Agenda

Author:
Natália Maria Félix de Souza
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Contexto Internacional
Institution:
Institute of International Relations, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
Abstract:
The publication of the last of three parts of Contexto Internacional’s special issue ‘Gender in the Global South’ is the opportunity to both celebrate and lament the accomplishments of feminist scholarship in the so-called global South. Reflecting from the Brazilian experience and scenario, it is remarkable how much the women, gender and sexuality agenda has grown in the field of international relations: from a marginal perspective at the turn of the century (Nogueira and Messari 2005), it has now become a major locus of resistance and contestation, which can be attested to by looking at the power plays at the Brazilian international relations association’s annual meetings, the multiplication of feminist collectives inside public and private universities, not to mention the growing number of gender-sensitive research articles published by the main national journals – including this triple special issue. From where I look, there is no doubt that feminism has come to shake the conventions of the area and produce a much more plural and interesting picture of international relations – one which encompasses more voices, stories, subjectivities and narratives. From this standpoint, there is much to celebrate and hope for.
Topic:
International Relations, Gender Issues, Socialism/Marxism, Realism, International Relations Theory, Feminism, and Liberalism
Political Geography:
Latin America and Global Focus

10. From Binary to Intersectional to Imbricated Approaches: Gender in a Decolonial and Diasporic Perspective

Author:
Andréa Gill and Thula Pires
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Contexto Internacional
Institution:
Institute of International Relations, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
Abstract:
This article proposes a re-reading of the problem of gender, or as it has been put, more often than not, ‘the woman problem,’ that resists the reproduction of modern/colonial systems of governance and their political norms, standards, ideals and pacts. In turn, it seeks to open pathways to dialogue with, rather than import, conceptions of gender that respond to the terms through which modern/colonial societies have been forged on the continent of Abya Yala, drawing inspiration from decolonial and diasporic perspectives. To this end, the article maps some of the available channels of the gender debate in what has come to be known as the global South from an array of perspectives that highlight the ways in which the relations between categories of oppression and privilege (such as race, class, sexuality and gender) are reflected and positioned so as to grapple with the coloniality of knowledge, power and being. More specifically, it focuses on three ways of dealing with power dynamics in the context of Abya Yala that have influenced how we conceive and respond to questions of gender. Its primary objective is to investigate the politico-epistemic conditions that structure gender thinking in binary and intersectional ways, and, in turn, open space for imbricated approaches forged from within (post-)colonial histories that do not take as their starting point the importation of theoretical references from places otherwise situated within a global political economy of knowledge/power/being. More than a critique of theoretical standpoints from the global North, in and of themselves, which regardless were not thought to respond to our realities, here we analyse the terms through which gender and feminisms have been put up for debate. Without effectively decentring the Eurocentred references that preoccupy gender thinking in our respective disputes, we risk continued distraction from what is at stake when gender is put on the table: the (im)possibilities of living one’s full humanity on one’s own terms.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Political Theory, Diaspora, Women, and International Relations Theory
Political Geography:
Europe, Latin America, and Global Focus