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This book explores configurations of gender in key social, political, economic and demographic aspects of contemporary Latin American societies. The themes covered - politics, legislation, social movements, poverty, population, migration, employment, health, sexuality, families and households - interrelate in important ways. We elaborate on these connections at various points in the book, as well as indicating how issues pertaining to gender in Latin America are informed by, and themselves inform, wider international debates on theory and policy.
The volume focuses on the last fifty years, with particular emphasis on the last three decades of the twentieth century. During this period many countries in Latin America have emerged from the shadows of authoritarian regimes, whether civilian or military, in which there was limited scope for civil society activity among women or men. In the case of military dictatorships, particularly in Central America and the Southern Cone, state terrorism was frequently deployed in the attempt to paralyse all kinds of 'subversive' action, including feminism (see Feijoó and Gogna, 1990; Fisher, 1993; Molyneux, 2000; Rivera Puentes, 1996b). While women still managed to be active in exile as well as to contribute to the transition to democracy in many parts of the continent, the initially high expectations that women would participate fully in national political life thereafter were less than satisfied (see Craske, 1999; Fisher, 1993:2; Jaquette [ed], 1994). In addition, since the early 1980s most countries in Latin America have fallen under the shroud of crippling external debt crises and long-term programmes of neoliberal economic restructuring. The latter have included greater opening up to global competition, deregulation of labour markets, and a 'rolling back' of the state from economic life, and from social protection and provision. In many cases these moves have been associated with deepening poverty (especially in urban areas), rising precariousness in people's livelihoods, and particular hardships for low-income women. Paradoxically perhaps, these trends have formed the backdrop to the most intense period of feminist organising in Latin American history, and the introduction throughout the region of state apparatus and legislation oriented to advancing the cause of gender equality and/or women's rights. If it is surprising that so many gains have been made by and for Latin American women in this 'generally unfavourable economic milieu' (Deere and León, 2000b:31), it was precisely women's efforts which played a part in creating the conditions to make them happen. As Molyneux (2000:64-5) notes: The collapse of military rule in the 1980s and the return of civilian governments to power were accompanied by a deepening of the restructuring process, but in the context of a greater commitment to social justice and "good governance"... . Partly under the influence of the international women's movement, partly due to the greater self-confidence and organisational strength of national women's movements, and partly in an effort to present a modern face to the world, newly elected democratic governments recognised women as a constituency that required representation in the state.
While gender is inherently dynamic, whatever the historical juncture, a number of important changes have accompanied the growth of institutional support for women in Latin America in the late twentieth century. Prominent among these are the interrelated trends of a general (if differentiated) decline in fertility across the continent, rising levels of education and employment among women1, a weakening of patriarchal household arrangements (linked, inter alia, with upward trends in divorce and growing numbers of female-headed households), and, in some quarters, a brewing 'crisis' of masculine identity (see Chant, 1997a, 2000; Escobar Latapí, 1998; González de la Rocha, 1994, 1995; Güendel and González, 1998; Kaztman, 1992; Safa, 1995a,b). Alongside these processes, it is possible to discern diminishing gaps in 'quantitative' indicators of gender inequality, including literacy and educational attainment, and male-female headcounts in formal politics, even if, in most contexts, women's shares of GDP per capita and of managerial and professional employment continue to lag far behind those of men (see Tables 1.1 and 1.2).2 Our main concerns in the light of these transitions is to examine what they signify for gender at the start of the twenty-first century. Are gender inequalities in Latin America lessening over time, or simply changing in nature? How far is gender a more important basis of inequality than other axes of difference such as class, 'race' and sexuality? How do these combine with one another, and with what effects? What kinds of strategies might be advanced to create conditions for greater gender equality in Latin American societies in the new millennium?
While we hope to go some way to answering these questions in the following chapters, it is critical to emphasise that a book of this kind can never be exhaustive, and that much historical and geographical texture is sacrificed in the interests of providing a general overview. This problem is greatly compounded in a region such as Latin America, given immense variations in the economic, political, demographic, social and cultural characteristics of its constituent countries. Adding to complexity is the fact that people's experiences and negotiations of gender are cross-cut by myriad, interwoven axes of difference such as ethnicity, class, migrant status, urban/rural residence, family and household characteristics, sexual orientation and stage in the life course. Set against the increasingly rapid changes linked with globalisation in the continent, it is clearly difficult to do justice to all possible permutations of contemporary Latin American diversity. One of the principal shortfalls in the present volume, for example, is that of uneven attention to different sectors of the Latin American population. Although there are growing bodies of gender-sensitive literature on 'minority' groups such as indigenous peoples, gays and lesbians, and on sections of the populace who have not conventionally been the object of dedicated feminist study (men, upper-income groups, the elderly and so on), the bulk of gender research to date has concentrated on low-income, mestiza women in urban areas. This has somewhat inevitably impacted upon who we write about most in the book.
A second caveat pertains to geography, with where we write about most in Latin America being influenced by uneven intra-regional coverage in the literature. Countries such as Paraguay, Uruguay, Panama, Guatemala and Venezuela, for example, do not figure as prominently in respect of internationally accessible work on gender as, say, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. Accordingly, more examples are drawn from this latter group than the former. The fact that our respective fieldwork has taken place in the last four countries is another reason why they feature more frequently in case study sections than those for which our knowledge has come through secondary sources. As for what we write about in the book, our choice of themes is also governed partly by our own research interests. More significant still, however, is that these reflect the topics of some of the most extensive work on gender in the region, both by Latin Americans and by the wider diaspora of Latin Americanists. Indeed, the very nature of the present enterprise emerges out of a rich and ever-expanding body of feminist scholarship in Latin America. Current theory and knowledge owe a large debt to the groundbreaking efforts of academics, practitioners and activists working at a time when gender was an unfamiliar and often deeply unpopular concept, not to mention personally and politically dangerous. Accordingly, we consider it vital to dedicate some discussion, albeit brief, to the development of gender research in and on Latin America over time, and to highlight issues which have become hallmarks in debates on gender in the region, both internally and internationally.