Women’s Rights in Movement

This book provides an updated comparative overview of women’s movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, filling some of the gaps left by the existing literature. It brings together case studies of nine countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru – and includes a comparative analysis of the overall evolution of women’s rights movements across the region during the past decades. This analysis shows Latin America as the home to the largest, strongest, and most densely regionally and globally interconnected women’s rights movements in the Global South. Each chapter in this volume seeks to understand where the struggles for women’s rights come from, how they stand today and where they are headed to. To do so, they all use qualitative methodologies, and most resort to first-hand accounts of the processes described and reflections by the actors on their own experiences, collected through surveys, in-depth interviews and/or ethnographic observations. The comparative analysis of the different national case studies reveals the main struggles in which women’s rights movements are currently involved in Latin America and the Caribbean: the quest for political representation within the State and its political institutions; the fight against gender violence and the struggle for sexual and reproductive rights – especially abortion rights. Women’s Rights in Movement: Dynamics of Feminist Change in Latin America and the Caribbean will be a valuable resource for researchers, activists and policy makers interested in the struggles for women’s rights not only in Latin America and the Caribbean, but in different parts of the world. It will be of special interest to sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and other social scientists working in interdisciplinary fields such as gender and social movements studies.