This volume assesses one of the most important developments in contemporary Latin American women's movements: the engagement with rights-based discourses. Organised women have played a central role in the continued struggle for democracy in the region and with it gender justice. The foregrounding of human rights, and within them the recognition of women's rights, has offered women a strategic advantage in pursuing their goals of an inclusive citizenship. The country-based chapters analyse specific bodies of rights: rights and representation, domestic violence, labour rights, reproductive rights, legal advocacy, socio-economic rights, rights and ethnicity, and rights, the state and autonomy.

Autorentext

ELIZABETH FRIEDMAN Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics, Barnard College, Columbia University JASMINE GIDEON Researcher of Socio-Economic and Gender Issues, University of Manchester MALA N. HTUN Assistant Professor of Political Science, New School University MARK P. JONES Department of Political Science, Michigan State University NIKI JOHNSON Researcher, Institute de Ciencia Politica, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay FIONA MACAULAY Research Fellow, Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London SARAH RADCLIFFE Researcher, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge VIRGINIA VARGAS Member of the Peruvian NGO Centro de Mujeres: Flora Tristán CERI WILLMOTT Freelance Consultant, Social Development

Zusammenfassung
This volume addresses the question of why issues of rights and democracy have become so central to women's movements in post-transition Latin America. As important actors in the stuggle for democracy, women's movements moved from being an oppositional force to one forging new strategies to promote gender justice. The international attention focused on human rights in the 1990s, along with the recognition accorded to women's rights, provided a favourable opportunity for women's movements to advance ideas of inclusive citizenship and to broaden the meaning of rights. The nine country-based chapters assess critically the innovative strategies pursued by Latin American women's movements in their struggle to incorporate rights into the different domains of social and poltical life. Together they cover a range of countries and political contexts, analysing specific bodies of rights and campaigns for legal reform: these include rightrs of political representation, labour rights, reproductive rights, socioeconomic rights, rights and ethnicity, and rights to protection against domestic violence.

Inhalt

List of Tables Abbreviations Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors The Local, the Regional and the Global: Transforming the Politics of Rights; M.Molyneux & N.Craske Engendering the Right to Participate in Decision-making: Electoral Quotas and Women's Leadership in Latin America; M.N.Htun & M.P.Jones Getting Rights for those without Representation: The Success of Conjunctural Coalition-building in Venezuela; E.J.Friedman Taking the Law into their Own Hands: Women, Legal Reform and Legal Literary in Brazil; F.Macaulay In Pursuit of the Right to be Free from Violence: The Women's Movements and State Accountability in Uruguay; N.Johnson Constructing Citizenship in the Poblaciónes of Santiago, Chile: The Role of Reproductive and Sexual Rights; C.Willmott Indigenous Women, Rights and the Nation-State in the Andes; S.A.Radcliffe Economic and Social Rights: Exploring Gender Differences in a Central American Context; J.Gideon The Struggle by Latin America Feminists for Rights and Autonomy; V.Vargas Index