A Free Community of Equals

GSD: Sonia Alvarez http://www.antenna.nl/~waterman/alvarez2.
html
Advocating Feminism: The Latin American NGO

"Boom"
Sonia E. Alvarez
Department of Politics, University of California at Santa Cruz
On-going processes of democratization, coupled with

changing international norms, neo-liberal policies and
State reform, have dramatically altered the conditions
under which feminist and other struggles for social
justice unfold in Latin America today. The restructured
terrain on which feminists must now wage their
battles, in turn, has triggered a significant
reconfiguration of what I will refer to as the Latin
American feminist movement field—privileging some
actors and actually or potentially marginalizing
others.
My talk today focuses on the most visible, and

increasingly controversial, actors in this reshaped
movement field, actors who have been especially
prominent in "advocating feminism" in national and
transnational policy arenas: feminist
non-governmental organizations (NGOs). NGO-like
feminist groups, of course, have been around since
the origins of Latin American feminisms’ second-wave
in the 1970s—indeed they prevailed early on among
feminist groups in some countries. And feminist NGO
surely have helped improve the immediate life
conditions of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of
women and have been instrumental in promoting
potentially progressive gender policies in a variety of
national contexts—despite the less-than
"citizen-friendly" current Latin American and global
order. However, as the title of my talk suggests, I will
argue that, in recent years, there has been a veritable
"boom" in more formal or institutionalized feminist
organizations specializing in gender project execution,
policy assessment, and social services delivery. What I
refer to as the NGO boom of the 1990s is marked by a
regionwide shift away from feminist activities centered
on popular education, mobilization, and poor and
working-class women’s empowerment and a move
toward policy-focused activities, issue-specialization,
and resource concentration among the more
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GSD: Sonia Alvarez http://www.antenna.nl/~waterman/alvarez2.html
technically adept, transnationalized and

professionalized NGOs within the feminist field.
After first offering a snapshot of NGOs’ location within

the reconfigured Latin American feminist field, I will
analyze how the shifting terrain of local and global
gender politics has increased the demand for feminist
organizations able to deliver "gender-specialized"
services. I will argue that changing international donor
and development policies, together with structural
adjustment and the growing erasure of local States
from the realm of social policy, may be propelling
States and inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) to
turn to some feminist NGOs as "experts on gender"
rather than as citizens’ groups advocating on behalf of
women’s rights. Governments and IGOs increasingly
seek out the more professionalized sectors of the
feminist field to evaluate "State policies with a gender
perspective" and execute targeted social service and
training (capacitación) programs for "at-risk" poor and
working-class women—potentially distancing NGOs
from their key societal constituencies, compromising
their ability to critically monitor policy and advocate
for more thoroughgoing (perhaps more feminist?)
reform.
These recent developments deeply trouble many NGO

activist-professionals and have infuriated their
militantly "autonomous" feminist critics. Many in both
camps worry that growing numbers of feminist
organizations seem to have been driven to focus their
energies and resources on more technical, less
contestatory activities, to the actual or potential
detriment of more effective national or international
policy advocacy and other modalities of feminist
cultural-political intervention. I will conclude by
suggesting that the trends propelling the feminist NGO
boom are neither inevitable nor irreversible and that
current debates surrounding NGOization within the
Latin American feminist field may well point the way
toward revitalized feminist rights advocacy as we
enter the new millenium.
This essay draws on fieldwork conducted in Brazil,

Chile, Peru, and Colombia during the summer of 1997,
as well as my previous research on Latin American
participation in the preparatory processes for the
recent string of UN Summits—especially the Fourth
World Conference on Women (see Alvarez 1998 for an
analysis of the Latin American Beijing process). I
should make clear before I go any further that I am
directly implicated in the story I’m about to tell.
During the three years (1993-1996) I served as
Program Officer in Rights and Social Justice for the
Ford Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I evaluated,
selected and funded gender-related research and
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advocacy projects, worked closely with a wide variety

of feminist NGOs, and found myself—as never before
in my fairly lengthy career as a US feminist
"internationalist" activist and student of Latin
American women’s/social movements—smack in the
middle of transnational flows of feminist ideas and
resources. The ensuing analysis therefore constitutes
more than an academic exercise or an effort to solve a
"social scientific puzzle." It also grows out of my
abiding concern as a hybrid Latina/Latin
American/Latin Americanist activist-scholar to
interrogate critically our always changing,
multifaceted, and sometimes-contradictory
cultural-institutional-academic practices as feminists.
NGOs and the Reshaping of Latin American

Feminisms
How Latin American activists practice their feminism

has changed significantly in the 1990s. Feminism—like
many of the so-called new social movements that took
shape in the region during the 1970s and 1980s—can
today more aptly be characterized as an expansive,
polycentric, heterogeneous discursive field of action
which spans into a vast array of cultural, social and
political arenas. As I have argued elsewhere (Alvarez
1998), Latin American feminisms have experienced a
notable process of decentering and diversification over
the course of the past decade. That is, the
reconfigured feminist movement field today spans well
beyond social movement organizations or SMOs,
conventionally conceived. The 1990s saw a dramatic
proliferation or multiplication of the spaces and places
in which women who call themselves feminists act,
and wherein, consequently, feminist discourses
circulate. After over two decades of struggling to have
their claims heard by male-dominant sectors of civil
and political society and the State, women who
proclaim themselves feminists can today be found in a
wide range of public arenas—from lesbian feminist
collectives to research-focused NGOs, from trade
unions to Black and indigenous movements, from
university women’s studies programs to mainstream
political parties, the State apparatus, and the
international aid and development establishments.
The diverse women who transit in this wide-ranging

movement field interact in a variety of alternative and
official publics and through a number of media. New,
more formalized modalities of articulation or
networking among the multiple spaces and places of
feminist politics have been consolidated during the
1990s. These range from regionwide identity and
issue-focused networks, like the Red de Mujeres
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Afro-Latinoamericanas y Caribeñas and the Comité

Latinoamericano de Defensa de los Derechos de la
Mujer (CLADEM), to networks focused specifically on
impacting the UN process, such as the Regional NGO
Coordination established in preparation for the Fourth
World Conference on Women (FWCW).
NGOs have played a central role in setting up and

sustaining these various forms of formal articulation
among a vast range of actors in the feminist field. In
producing and circulating numerous newsletters and
publications, organizing issue-focused conferences and
seminars, establishing electronic networks and a wide
gamut of other communications media,
professionalized NGOs also have functioned as the key
nodal points through which the spatially dispersed and
organizationally fragmented feminist field remains
discursively articulated. They have been crucial to
sustaining what I call social movement webs—the
capillary connections among feminists and their
sympathizers who now occupy a wide variety of social
locations. During periods when movements experience
mobilizational lulls (in fact, the most common social
movement condition under situations of
politics-as-usual), such webs—maintained principally
by NGOs with professional staff dedicated to
"outreach" and articulation—have played a key role in
keeping feminist issues "alive," at least among
policy-makers, IGOs and donors—if not always as
successfully keeping them "hot" in the larger public
debate (see Alvarez 1997a and b).
But just what exactly are feminist NGOs? What

distinguishes them from non-feminist NGOs and from
other actors in the broad-ranging feminist field?
Though the concept of non-governmental organization
is sometimes indiscriminately deployed in
development discourse to refer to any social actor not
clearly situated within the realm of the State or the
market—from peasant collectives and community soup
kitchens to research-oriented policy think
tanks—among actors in the Latin American feminist
field, the term "feminist NGO" has come to denote
particular kinds of groups with distinctive orientations
and practices.
Indeed, in recent years, feminists in some countries

(such as Brazil) have ever more commonly drawn a
sharp distinction between NGOs and "the movement."
The former are typically characterized as having
functionally specialized, paid, professional staff and,
sometimes, a limited set of volunteers, receive
funding from bilateral or multilateral agencies and
(usually foreign) private foundations, and engage in
pragmatic strategic planning to develop "reports" or
"projects" aimed at influencing public policies and/or
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providing advice or "asesoria" to the movimiento de

mujeres and varied services to low-income women.
Though sometimes engaging in similar asesoria and
policy-oriented activities, the latter is commonly
understood to be made up of "militant" feminist
groups or collectives that have largely volunteer, often
sporadic, participants (rather than "staff"), more
informal organizational structures, significantly smaller
operating budgets, and whose actions (rather than
"projects") are guided by more loosely defined,
conjunctural goals or objectives. But such a stark
distinction between NGOs and "the movement"
underplays the hybrid character of most feminist
NGOs, ignores important differences in the timing and
degree of movement NGOization in different countries,
and obscures the diversity of NGO activities and
practices.
Prevailing characterizations of NGOs—in both social

movement and scholarly discourses—often fail to
capture the specificity of those operating within the
feminist field. The academic literature most commonly
defines NGOs as "intermediary organizations" that
"are typically composed of middle-class, educated and
professional people who have opted for political or
humanitarian reasons to work with (or on behalf of)
the poor and the marginalized" (Pearce 1997, 259).
These grassroots support organizations (GSROs)
"channel international funds to [member-serving
grassroots organizations or] GROs and help
communities other than their own to develop" (Fisher
1998, 4).
While feminist NGOs in most Latin American countries

are typically made up of university-educated,
middle-class (and most often white or mestiza)
women and many do work in some capacity with poor
and working-class women’s groups, they are distinct
from non-feminist GSROs in at least two key respects.
First, most feminist NGOs do not see themselves as
working only "help others" but also to alter gender
power relations that circumscribe their own lives as
women (see also Lebon 1993 and forthcoming). In a
comprehensive survey of 97 Mexican feminist NGOs,
María Luisa Tarrés found that "a strong identitarian
component . . . marked the logic of women’s NGOs . .
. the space created by the NGO stimulates a
reelaboration of the identity of its members as social
and political subjects" ["un fuerte componente
identitário . . . marca la lógica de ONGs de mujeres . .
.el espacio creado por la ONG da lugar a una
reelaboración de la identidad de sus integrantes en
tanto sujetos sociales y políticos"] (Tarrés 1997, 4).
Second, the vast majority of NGO

activist-professionals also view themselves as an
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integral part of a larger women’s movement that

encompasses other feminists (in other types of
organizations or "sueltas") as well as the poor and
working-class women for or on behalf of whom they
profess to work. As one interviewee affirmed, "In
Peru, NGOs have a double identity . . . we are centers
and we are movement" [En el Peru, las ONGs tienen
una doble identidad. . .somos centros y somos
movimiento"]. Not all NGO professionals I interviewed,
however, shared in this hybrid identity. Some
understood NGOs as providing "a critical voice of a
technical and professional character that contributes
to the movement" ["una voz crítica de caracter técnico
y profesional que aporta al movimiento"].
The extent or degree of NGOization of the feminist

movement, of course, varies significantly among
countries in the region—reflecting the distinctive
political environments in which feminisms unfolded,
the country-specific priorities and preferences of
international donors, and the particularities of feminist
movement development in a given locality. In Brazil,
for example, a sharper contrast between NGOs and
"the movement" is today drawn by many activists
because early feminist groups were mostly of the
more informal, feminist collective variety. Relatively
few early groups received external funding or had paid
administrative or professional staff. The process of
institutionalization of the feminist movement in the
form of more formal, professionalized groups—which
only in the late 1980s came to refer to themselves as
NGOs (Landim 1993)—accompanied the pace of
Brazil’s protracted and "phased" political transition
process. Thus, both feminist and non-feminist NGOs
"multiplied in the 1980s (50 percent of Brazilian NGOs
were created between 1980 and 1990)," partly, as
Lebon suggests, due to "the expansion of international
cooperation and the emphasis on privatization by
neo-liberal governments" (1997, 7). But the gradual
liberalization of the political environment in which
social movements operated and the "gendered
political opening" promoted by some
opposition-controlled state governments in the early
to mid-1980s also prompted growing numbers of
feminists to formalize their organizations and develop
greater policy expertise by the end of that decade
(Lebon 1993; Heilborn and Arruda 1995; Alvarez 1990
and 1994; Soares et al. 1995).
Tarrés similarly emphasizes that "in the case of

Mexico, the weight of the context is fundamental" ["en
el caso de México el peso del contexto es
fundamental"] in accounting for the proliferation of
feminist NGOs (1997, 25). She argues that while the
post-1977 political reforms ultimately absorbed some
sectors of the opposition into the institutional party
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system, "there were activists who, in not accepting

this arrangement, were left without a political
organization. A kind of market of activists without
parties is thereby created" ["hubo militantes que al no
aceptar este arreglo se quedaron sin organización
política. Se crea así una especie de mercado de
militantes sin partidos. . ." ] (1997, 51). She further
maintains that:
"The members of NGOs come from this market of

activists without party. Their previous participation
experiences, the relationship to feminism, a certain
disillusionment with the authoritarianism that surfaces
when incorporation into an institutional party is
debated, and the offer of importan financial support
for NGOs from the year of earthquake forward,
constitute the factors explaining the increase and
diversity of organizations dedicated to transforming
women’s condition. [Las integrantes de las ONGs
provienen de este mercado de militantes sin partido.
Su experiencia de participación previa, la relación con
el feminismo, un cierto desencanto con el
autoritarismo que sale a flote cuando se debate la
incorporación a un partido institucional y la oferta de
importantes apoyos financieros para ONGs desde el
año del terremoto en adelante, constituyen los
factores que explican el aumento y diversidad de
organizaciones dedicadas a transformar la condición
de la mujer] (1997, 52).
Tarrés found that after 1980 and especially after

1984, the previously slow and stable growth in NGOs
dedicated to women’s issues—which formed at the
rate of one per year—accelerated significantly, with
over ten a year being founded in 1984, 1987, and
1990 (1997, 12).
By contrast, most Colombian feminists I intervieweed

concurred with Maruja Barrig’s assessment that "as
compared to other countries in the region, the feminist
movement has not expressed itself principally through
NGO channels," but rather "small activist
organizations prevail . . .which participate as such in
various activities of the movement, in a volunteer
capacity", ["a diferencia de otros países de la región,
el movimiento feminista no se ha expresado
principalmente por el canal de las ONGs. . . se
presentan [organizaciones de activistas] de
dimensiones pequeñas, que . . . participan como tales
en varias actividades del movimiento,
voluntariamente. . ."] (Barrig 1997b, emphasis in the
original). Context matters here as well. The
clientelism, corruption and "narcodemocracia" that
permeate the Colombian regime, the historically weak
presence of the State in much of the national territory,
and the endemic political violence that flows from the
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above would hardly seem conducive to setting up

specialized NGOs aimed at influencing public policy. As
Barrig further notes, the over 3,000 NGOs affiliated
with the Colombian Confederation of NGOs are less
professionalized than their counterparts in other
countries, incorporating significant numbers of
volunteers among their staff (1997b, 10). Still, the
post-1986 political decentralization, coupled with the
1991Constitution (which mandates State consultation
with civil society in development planning), have
fueled a process of increased institutionalization in
various Colombian social movement fields. And as I
shall discuss below, there also seems to have been a
marked increase in State sub-contracting of NGO
services for policy execution and social services
delivery. Several feminist activists I talked with
emphasized that, "there are two types of NGOs here:
some are ‘historic,’ others more recent, which emerge
after the Constituyente process, and are sometimes
narrowly focused, opportunistic, and very nepotistic"
["hay dos tipos de ONGs aqui: algunas históricas,
otras recientes que surgen despues del proceso
constituyente, algunas veces puntuales, oportunisticas
y muy nepotistas"].
In Chile—whose heinous 17-year dictatorship and

shock-treatment-induced poverty made opposition
movements favored recipients of international
humanitarian aid and liberal foundation monies—many
second-wave feminist groups, who formed an integral
part of that opposition, appear, by contrast, to have
been able to institutionalize their organizations fairly
early on. Given State repression and government
indifference to the hardships neo-liberalism heaped
upon poor women, many of those early NGO-like
feminist groups centered their attention on supporting
the survival struggles of women of the popular classes
and organizing with them against the Pinochet
dictatorship (Frohmann and Valdés 1995; Gaviola
1994; Chuchryk 1994; Schuurman and Heer 1992).
Since the return of civilian rule and a new "post-social
democratic" brand neo-liberalism in 1989, many
Chilean feminists I talked with suggested that those
links to the "base" have been largely severed, for
reasons that I shall explore further below.
In any given context and over time, the types of

activities prioritized by feminist NGOs also have varied
significantly. As in the Chilean case, most if not all
NGOs emerging early in Latin American feminism’s
second wave focused their activities on popular
education and women’s empowerment or provided
services and asesoria to poor and working-class
women’s organizations. Some still do. MEMCH—an
umbrella organization of popular women’s groups
"gone NGO" since the return of civilian rule—continues
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to view itself as a "bridge between feminism and the

popular classes" ["puente entre el feminismo y las
mujeres populares"] and offers a variety of training
courses and other services to women from the urban
periphery. Tierra Nuestra runs an Escuela de
Capacitación para Mujeres Lideres in Santiago’s
Southern zone and promotes the "autonomous
organization" of the 64 grassroots women’s groups
with whom they continue to work. Similarly,
Colombia’s current post-Beijing coalition, coordinated
by the Bogotá-based NGO, Dialogo Mujer, proclaims
its intention to foster a "feminismo popular de la
diversidad". Tarrés found that fully 90 percent of
Mexican feminist NGOs provide direct services to their
targeted publics and "the mayority claims to be
oriented toward women of the popular sectors,
whether they be urban residents, peasants or
indigenous women" ["la mayoría afirma orientarse
hacia mujeres de los sectores populares, sean estas
urbanas, campesinas o indígenas"] (1997, 19, 18).
Some feminist NGOs, such as CFEMEA in Brazil and

Casa de la Mujer in Colombia, today also center their
work on promoting and monitoring gender-related
legislation. The latter group, for example, has worked
closely with Afro-Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba
and other women parliamentarians on both "women’s
issues" and non-gender-specific public policies so that
they might "integrate gender to their general
programmatic agenda" ["integrar el género a su
agenda programática general"]. Still others seek to
articulate grassroots work with policy-focused or more
macro forms of cultural-political intervention, pursuing
"rights advocacy" not just to promote more
progressive policies but also to engender cultural
change. Themis, a feminist NGO based in Porto
Alegre, Brazil, for example, offers legal training
courses for grassroots women community leaders and
organizes specialized workshops on gender and the
law for judges and other legal professionals, while also
engaging in litigation to advance feminist
jurisprudence. The regional feminist legal rights
network, CLADEM—of which Themis forms
part—claims to work to develop a radical critique of
the law, to be more than a pressure group, to
intervene in the cultural, and promote
empoderamiento. They are currently spearheading a
transnational Campaña de la Declaración Universal de
los Derechos Humanos desde la perspectiva de
género, organized to mark the December 1998 on
50th anniversary of that UN declaration, for example,
but their stated objective is not merely to impact the
UN. Rather, they view "the process" to be as
important as "the final objective"; the campaign is
being primarily waged as "tool for education of
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women’s human rights" ["una herramienta de

educación en los derechos humanos de las
mujeres."].
While many feminist NGOs continue to struggle to

provide asesoria and promote conscientización among
popular women’s organizations and strive to push
gender policy beyond the narrow parameters of Latin
America’s actually existing democracies, however, the
material resources and political rewards for doing so
appear to be drying up. The global and local premium
is increasingly placed on NGO gender policy
assessment, project execution, and social services
delivery. Amid the heterogeneous actors that today
constitute the expansive feminist movement field,
specific types of NGOs and NGO activities have
attained particular prominence. And it is this
shift—and not a proliferation of feminist NGOs as such
(which, as I’ve noted, varies considerably from
country to country)—that marks what I call the boom
in Latin American feminist NGOs. I now turn to the
factors—largely external to the feminist movement
field—which have propelled this change.
The Expansion of Local and Global Demand for

Professionalized Feminism
In the 1990s, I want to suggest, more purportedly

"gender-friendly" national, regional, and global policy
environments have directly fueled a growing demand
for specialized, policy-relevant, expert knowledge
about women and gender—expertise increasingly
supplied by more techinically skilled, professionalized
feminist organizations. The heightened feminist focus
on policy advocacy, monitoring, and assessment must
also, of course, be understood as a pragmatic,
proactive response to changed Latin American and
global political-policy contexts that claim be to more
receptive to gender equity claims.
To be sure, all actors in the Latin American feminist

field have been pushed to revisit the practices they
originally developed to confront the decidedly
"gender-hostile," authoritarian political conditions of
the 1970s and 1980s. The range of political options
available to feminists was then far narrower and
working in and with the opposition to authoritarian
regimes or national-security democracies was a
foregone conclusion. It was simpler, if hardly easier,
"back then" to be "united in our goals," several of my
interviewees declared, and many recognized that
sometimes "the women’s movement was united as
opposition but not necessarily in relation to feminism
as such" ["la unión del movimiento era en cuanto
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oposición, no necesariamente en relación al feminismo

en si"]. But democratization (or, minimally,
"civilianization") processes have complicated that
strategic picture considerably. One Chilean feminist
succinctly captured the strategic quandaries facing
many in stating, "I so long to be opposition" ["yo
añoro tanto ser oposición."].
In assessing the new political landscape, Peruvian

feminist and Regional NGO Forum coordinator for the
Latin American preparatory process for the Beijing
Summit, Virginia Vargas, sums up a view currently
shared by many among the more professionalized,
transnationalized NGO sectors of the feminist field,
who are no longer always self-evidently in "the
opposition":
"The movement of the 1990s—already facing

transition or democratic consolidation processes—has
changed its form of existence, its logic, its dynamic
and has launched new emphases. One of the
significant changes has been the modification of an
anti-statist posture toward a critical-negotiating
posture in relation to the State and formal
international arenas. This has also meant a change
from a defensive sort of autonomy and a
confrontational dynamic (necessary, without a doubt,
in the early stages both due to a necessity for political
affirmation and the existence of dictatorship on the
region) toward a logic of negotiation, but from a
strong and proactive, and therefore, dialogical
autonomy. [El movimiento de la década del
90—enfrentado ya a los procesos de transición o
consolidación democrática—ha cambiado de forma de
existencia, de lógica, de dinámica y ha comenzado a
levantar nuevos énfasis. Uno de los cambios
significativos ha sido la modificación de una postura
antiestatista hacia una postura crítica-negociadora en
relación al Estado y a los espacios formales
internacionales Ello ha significado también el cambio
de una autonomía más bien defensiva y una lógica y
dinámica más bien de confrontación, (necesaria a
todas luces en las primeras etapas tanto por necesidad
de afirmación como por la existencia de las dictaduras
en el continente) hacia una lógica más bien de
negociación, pero desde una autonomía fuerte y
propositiva y, por eso, dialogante]."
Indeed, many governments now brandish more

democratic discourses and there has been a veritable
deluge in "políticas públicas con perspectiva de
género" in recent years. At least rhetorically, most
Latin American States have embraced some version of
"gender equity" promotion and adopted an impressive
number of policies, programs and plans putatively
aimed at improving the status of women. So even
11 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

feminist activists who don’t share Vargas’ view that

the movement must adopt "a critical-negociating
posture in relation to the State" ["una postura
crítica-negociadora en relación al Estado"] have been
pushed as never before to position themselves
vis-à-vis formal national and international political
arenas. As one member of the Grupo Amplio para la
Liberación de la Mujer, a feminist collective active in
Cali, Colombia, for over 20 years, explained, "we were
anti-elections, anti-State. . . we don’t know the State,
especially those of us who come from the Left . . .
until a few years ago, we refused to deal with the
State . . . but now it’s not a matter of whether we
should deal or not, [the State] is simply there" [fuimos
anti-electoreras, anti-Estado…no conocemos al Estado,
especialmente las que hemos sido izquierda . . . hasta
hace pocos años, nos negabamos a lidar con el
Estado. . . pero ahora ya no es si sí o si no, ya esta
ahí"].
Indeed, it is hard for feminists not to "deal" or contend

with States that now appear to be speaking their
language. Colombia’s "White Book on Women" (Libro
Blanco de la Mujer)" asserts the Samper
administration’s avowed commitment to "Pay Society’s
Debt to the Colombian Woman" (Pagar la Deuda de la
Sociedad con la la Mujer Colombiana) (Presidencia de
la República de Colombia 1994). And the Chilean
government proclaims in its "Equal Opportunities Plan
for Chilean Women, 1994-1999," that "The current
administration considers overcoming discrimination
against women to be a political imperative of the
utmost importance" (SERNAM 1994, 5). National
leaders from Fujimori to Cardoso to Zedillo have
echoed such pledges to enhance gender equity and
have similarly declared their intention of "promote
women" and "incorporate" them into "development."
During the regional preparatory process for the Beijing
Summit, a wide gamut of long-standing
feminist-inspired reforms—ranging from more
equitable participation in public and family life to
reproductive rights—made their way into the language
of the Latin American and Caribbean Platform for
Action and were thereby elevated to the status of
norms of regional governance.
Governments appear to have begun to translate some

of those norms into legislation. Laws establishing
quotas to ensure women’s representation in elected
office have been passed in countries such as
Argentina, Brazil, and Peru and are presently under
discussion in Chile and Bolivia, for example. Sixteen
States have adopted legislation and some have set up
specialized police precincts or promotorias to deter
"intra-familial violence" (Americas Watch 1991;
Blondet 1995; Nelson 1996). More widespread still has
12 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

been State promotion of social programs targeting the

poorest of poor women, such as those aimed at
female heads-of-household (Jefas de Hogar) in Chile,
Colombia, and Peru or temporary agro-export workers
(temporeras) in Chile.
In virtually all countries in the region, specialized

State machineries charged with proposing and
monitoring (though seldom implementing) such
programs and policies have been created (Waylen
1996; Lind 1995; Schumaher and Vargas 1993;
Friedman, 1997). In some cases, such those of Chile’s
SERNAM (Servicio Nacional de la Mujer) and Brazil’s
CNDM (Conselho Nacional dos Direitos da Mulher),
significant sectors of the feminist movements actively
advocated the creation of State women’s
machineries—though the ultimate mandate, design
and performance of the specialized agencies actually
created typically fell far short of feminist expectations
(Valenzuela 1997; Schumaher and Vargas 1993). In
other cases, such as the Consejería para la Juventud,
la Mujer, y la Família established in Gavíria’s Colombia
or Fujimori’s recently created PROMUDE (Ministério de
Promoción de la Mujer y del Desarrollo Humano), the
founding of such women’s State institutions appears to
have been motivated by more pragmatic, when not
outright opportunistic, considerations—such as the
fact that bilateral and multilateral grants and loans
now often require evidence of government sensitivity
to "women’s role in development."
In several countries, a considerable number of NGO

activist-professionals have gone to work in these
specialized machineries. The current Sub-Directora of
Chile’s SERNAM, for example, was a member of one of
the country’s most prominent feminist NGOs, as are
the present directors of Colombia’s recently
established Dirección Nacional de Equidad para las
Mujeres and Brazil’s CNDM. And as I shall elaborate
below, these State institutions have increasingly
employed professionalized feminist NGOs to execute
and evaluate gender programs and policies.
While feminists in most countries continue to

passionately debate the relative merits of denouncing
the new specialized machineries as co-optative
political shams or selectively collaborating with them
to advance gender justice, the possibility of
"advocating feminism" from within the State has
become the regional norm. Indeed, despite the
manifold contradictions and limitations of Latin
America’s actually existing democracies, it is today far
more conceivable to pursue feminist-inspired policy
reforms than under earlier conditions of unbridled
State terror and more brazenly exclusionary,
authoritarian politics.
13 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

And Latin American feminisms can surely claim credit

for this change. The many local feminists who chose to
focus their energies on promoting women’s legal rights
consequent to democratization certainly had a major
hand in fostering this apparent gendered political
opening. And the proliferation of specialized women’s
machineries, programs, and policies, in turn,
prompted other individuals and organizations within
the feminist field to similarly reorient their activities
and develop new competencies in State and policy
matters.
The transnationalization of Latin American feminisms

has also induced many local NGOs to develop new
organizational forms and policy skills in order to
advocate for gender justice in regional and global
policy arenas (see Alvarez 1997a and 1998). Since
their unprecedented participation in the Earth Summit
on Environment and Development, held in Rio de
Janeiro in 1992, Latin American feminist involvement
with the "global women’s lobby" has grown
steadily—culminating in their expressive presence in
preparatory processes for the FWCW in 1995.
That transnational women’s lobby has been

instrumental in fostering what feminist international
relations scholars have dubbed an "emergent
international women’s regime" which "has redefined
gender norms as reflected in international instruments
for action" (Kardam 1997, 2). Growing numbers of
Latin American feminist NGOs have developed
expertise in these new "international instruments for
action" and have successfully summoned changed
global "gender norms" when advocating local gender
policy reform (Alvarez 1997a; Sikkink 1995; Keck and
Sikkink 1998). And the increased gendering of
international regimes, in turn, has brought new
pressures to bear on local States, which helps account
for the flood of gender-targeted policies and programs
described above. As Chilean one interviewee put it,
"globalization requires that the State demonstrate
sensitivity to gender . . . resources come tied to that"
["la globalización exige que el estado demuestre
sensibilidad al género. . . los recursos vienen atados a
eso"]. Several Colombian and Peruvian feminists I
talked with similarly stressed that international
pressures have been key in the adoption of seemingly
progressive State gender discourses and policies.
Gendered Citizens or Gender Experts?
I want to further suggest that what some have called

a "New Policy Agenda"—"driven by beliefs organised
14 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

around the twin poles of neo-liberal economics and

liberal democratic theory" (Hulme and Edwards 1997a,
5)—coupled with the "modernizing" aspirations of the
region’s restructured States and the technocratization
of Latin American politics in this era of open markets
and eroding State social policies—also have
contributed to the booming NGOization of Latin
American feminisms as well as other social movement
fields. As Isebill V. Gruhn argues, "[N]ot only is
marketisation and democratisation the current fad in
development thinking but non-governmental
organizations . . . have come to be regarded as the
vehicle of choice—the Magic Bullet—for fostering
currently fashionable development strategies" (1997,
325).
Policies targeting women are among those "currently

fashionable" strategies advanced by Latin American
governments seeking to realize their aspirations to
"modernity" through global markets. The Chilean
government—the putative "jaguar" of development in
the region—professes that "overcoming discrimination
against women . . . has been necessitated by the
government’s three fundamental guidelines for the
current period—strengthening democracy, national
economic development and modernization" (SERNAM
1994, 5). Similarly, Samper’s Libro Blanco de la Mujer
invokes modernity in declaring: "Since the rights of
man which provide the foundations of modern
democratic societies were formulated and
promulgated, the notion of the equality of all human
beings from birth has gradually been converted into a
powerful rhetoric about equity" ["Desde cuando se
formularon y promulgaron los derechos del hombre
que fundamentan las sociedades democráticas
modernas, la noción de la igualdad de todos los seres
humanos desde su nacimiento, se ha ido conviertiendo
en una poderosa retórica sobre la equidad"]
(Presidencia de la República de Colombia 1994, n.p.).
Despite the local and global feminist lobbies’ central

role in advocating for the changed international
gender norms that help foster this brand of modern,
gender-friendly State discourse, however, the terms of
such "incorporation" are not necessarily
feminist-inspired. One Colombian local government
official neatly summed up how feminists’ political
indictment of women’s subordination is too often
translated or tergiversated by State bureaucrats: "now
things have changed, it’s no longer that radical
feminism of the 1970s, now its gender perspectives"
["ahora la cosa cambió, ya no es aquel feminismo
radical de los años 70, ahora es perspectiva de
género"]. Among some staff members of the
specialized government machineries I interviewed,
"gender" seems to have become part of the lexicon of
15 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

technical planning, a power-neutral indicator of

"modernity" and "development" rather than a
power-laden field of unequal relations between women
and men. As the Director of SERNAM in the Santiago
Metropolitan Region emphasized in our conversation,
"our work is as technical as possible . . . and there is a
great deal of work to be done on the operational side
of gender" ["hacemos un trabajo lo más tecnico
posible . . . y hay mucho trabajo que hacer en la parte
operativa de género"].
This new globally stylish imperative to "incorporate

gender" into development planning may be leading
States and IGOs to "consult" local and transnational
feminist NGOs and networks more for their technical
capabilities and "gender expertise" than in their
"hybrid" capacity as feminist movement organizations
advocating for more meaningful citizenship for
women. The director of the women’s office of ECLAC
(Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean), for example, stressed the important role
of feminist NGOs in providing her with asesoria and
stated she regularly counts on them for input on policy
given the budgetary and staff limitations of her office.
Though SERNAM—with its over 350 employees—is
perhaps the largest of the region’s specialized State
machineries, it too regularly turns to the more
"technically competent" of feminist NGOs to conduct
research on indicators of gender inequality, draft
policy statements, or evaluate the effectiveness of its
various targeted social programs.
As specialized State machineries in most of the rest of

the region typically lack staff with expertise in "gender
matters" and are generally understaffed, underfunded,
and often marginalized from centers of power within
the State, professionalized NGOs with trans/national
policy experience have in many cases become their
privileged interlocutors within the feminist movement
field. Though in countries such as Brazil, advice or
asesoria are still often offered free-of-charge by NGOs
anxious to influence the direction of
State-policies-with-a-gender perspective, global
pressures and the technical exigencies of "gender
planning" may lead other specialized machineries to
increasingly subcontract data gathering, policy
assessment and other forms of project management
to select feminist NGOs (Lind 1995, 145; see also
Friedman 1997; Schild 1998 ; Frohmann and Valdés,
1995).
The turn towards feminist NGOs is also inspired by

"modern" governments’ professed intention to
promote "the incorporation and participation of all civil
society in the task of generating new gender social
relations" (SERNAM 1994, 7). And, among the diverse
16 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

organizations that make up civil society, NGOs are

now often proclaimed to be the key "partners" of local
and national governments in advancing social and
economic "modernization."
During the preparatory process for the recent string of

World Summits—particularly Cairo and Beijing—many
Latin American governments called on select feminist
NGOs, along with gender specialists from the
academy, to prepare studies evaluating progress on
gender equity over the last two decades. And in
keeping with the New Policy Agenda’s view of NGOs
"as vehicles for ‘democratisation’ and essential
components of a thriving ‘civil society’" (Hulme and
Edwards 1997a, 6), a veritable UN-Summits bonanza
of grant funds was channeled from Northern-based
private donors and bilateral and multilateral agencies
to those feminist NGOs willing and able (and judged to
be technically competent) to work as "intermediaries"
in promoting the involvement of "female civil society"
in the official and parallel preparatory processes for
these World Conferences. In most countries, those
NGOs already skilled in the art of lobbying—who
possessed policy-specialized staff, had previous
experience in the UN process and earned handsome
foreign funding—were the ones who orchestrated
national and regional Beijing-related events, defined
the larger women’s movement’s Beijing agenda, and
organized the pre-FWCW coordinations and networks.
Despite governments’, donors’ and IGOs’ professed

zeal for encouraging a "thriving civil society,"
however, the criteria adopted in determining which
NGOs will be consulted or funded seldom prioritize the
extent to which such organizations actually function as
intermediaries or conduits for the larger civil society
constituencies officials presume them to represent.
Rather, which NGOs can best "maximize impact" with
the monies allotted or which have the
technical/professional capabilities deemed necessary
for project execution or gender planning appear to be
determinant (Lebon, forthcoming; Barrig 1997a; Motta
1995).
Typically non-membership organizations, most

feminist NGOs are, of course, acutely aware of the fact
that they don’t "represent" anyone. Yet for local
States and IGOs alike, professionalized NGOs appear
to have become convenient surrogates for civil
society. In the Chilean case, María Elena Valenzuela
argues that "SERNAM has privileged interlocution with
institutions made up of experts and professionals
which have contributed through evaluations and
studies to design the themes and options of public
policy" ["el SERNAM ha privilegiado la interlocución
con las instituciones conformadas por expertos/as y
17 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

profesionales que han contribuído a través de

diagnósticos y estudios a diseñar los temas y opciones
de políticas"] and further maintains that through this
strategy "SERNAM has tried to make up for its lack of
interlocution with grassroots women’s organizations,
whose demands are expressed in mediated form
through the knowledge produced by NGOs" ["el
SERNAM ha intentado suplir su falta de interlocución
con las organizaciones [sociales de mujeres], cuyas
demandas son expresadas mediatizadamente a través
del conocimiento producido por las ONGs"] (1997,
22).
"Modern" Neo-liberal States and the Boom in

NGO Sub-contracting
Among the most striking local examples I found of the

growing global tendency to favor more "technocratic"
of sectors of civil society was the "Concertación
ONG’s-Estado" discourse of the Alcaldia de Santiago
de Cali under the administration of Mauricio Guzmán
Cuevas. In a brochure entitled, "El Rostro Social de
Santiago de Cali," the local government celebrates
"the existence of a great number of non-governmental
organizations" ["la existencia de un gran número de
organizaciones no gubernamentales"] in the city while
stressing that
"Over the years, the work of many of these NGOs has

become more complex. To their initial ideological
convictions, they have incorporated an ever more
technical professional dimension in approaching their
work, such that along with promoting the
development of social subjects, they are equally
interested in generating new institutional forms." [A lo
largo de estos años, el quehacer de muchas de estas
ONG’s se ha vuelto más complejo. A sus convicciones
ideológicas iniciales han incorporado una dimensión
cada vez más técnica profesional para abordar su
trabajo, de manera que junto con impulsar el
desarrollo de los sujetos sociales, están igualmente
interesadas en generar nuevas formas institucionales]
(Alcadia Santiago de Cali 1997, 6).
The same document goes on to state that "NGOs are

professionalizing themselves and they are beginning
to introduce effeciency critieria in their work, which
allows them in their contractual relation with the
Administration to develop and execute social projects
directed as the most vulnerable populations" ["las
ONG’s se profesionalizan y empiezan a introducir
criterios de eficiencia en su trabajo, lo cual les permite
en su relación contractual con la Administración
desarrollar y ejecutar los proyectos sociales dirigidos a
18 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

las poblaciones más vulnerables. . ."] (Ibid., 8).
According to David Hulme and Michael Edwards, such

discourse is fully in keeping with the shrinking State
role in the realm of social policy—a key feature of the
New Policy Agenda:
"[M]arkets and private initiative are seen as the most

efficient mechanisms for achieving economic growth
and providing most services to most people . . .
because of their supposed cost-effectiveness in
reaching the poorest, official agencies support NGOs in
providing welfare services to those who cannot be
reached by markets . . . . NGOs have a long history of
providing welfare services to poor people in countries
where governments lacked the resources to ensure
universal coverage in health and education; the
difference is that now they are seen as the preferred
channel for service-provision in deliberate substitution
for the state" (1997a, 6).
In interviews with Cali public officials, I learned that

NGOs had become a kind of panacea in the city
government’s efforts to become "more than an
executor . . . a coordinator and orienting force in/of
social policies" ["más que un ejecutor. . . un
organismo coordinador y orientador de politicas
sociales"] (Alcadia Santiago de Cali, 6). The local
Secretary of Social Welfare and Community Action
raved about how efficient it was to hire NGOs to
execute government programs: "I could contract
1,000 public servants" ["yo podria contratar 1,000
funcionários"] but instead "I hire 200 NGOs . . . There
are no resources . . . and that way we can do more in
the social realm" ["yo contrato 200 ONGs . . . No hay
recursos. . . y así se puede hacer más en el area
social"]. The head of the División de Mujer y Género of
this same municipal department stressed, "We don’t
execute/implement anything . . . we work with NGOs,
but not will all of them ["Nosotros no ejecutamos nada
. . . trabajamos con ONGs, pero no con todas" ].
While most feminist groups in the city don’t have a

technical profile suitable to the city administration’s
needs, Alcaldia officials have turned to GSROs with
"women’s programs," as well as the local university’s
women’s studies center for technical assistance on
gender matters. The Division of Women and Gender
contracted three GSROs—charged with assessing poor
women’s health needs, promoting community
participation, and training health personnel in
"perspectivas de género"—to set up its Programa de
Salud Integral de la Mujer. Other NGOs were hired to
train "vulnerable" female-heads-of household in hotel
and gastronomical services and the care of children
and the elderly, for the Alcaldia’s Programa de
19 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

Capacitación para el Trabajo.
Feminist faculty at Cali’s Universidad del Valle

complained that cuts in State funding for public
universities also have pushed them in the direction of
services provision. "The university is becoming
‘ngo-ized’" ["La universidad se ‘onganiza’"], one
frustrated feminist scholar affirmed. The women’s
studies center has a standing contract with the Alcadía
in the areas of "advice and training in gender"
["asesoria y capacitación en género"]: faculty have
authored many of the progressive-sounding municipal
documents on gender equity and set up a number of
gender-training courses, mainly for public servants.
University researchers maintained that this contractual
relationship with the local State had made it difficult to
undertake more critical rather than technical studies of
gender politics.
A few feminist and "mixed" NGOs in Cali also have

established convenios with federal government
ministries and IGOs. Fundación Sí Mujer, for example,
offers capacitación to health workers and educators as
part of a national sex education program established
by the federal government in 1993. And the women’s
program of the Fundación FES coordinates two IGO-
and State-funded gender projects: one on Famílias
con jefaturas femeninas, which operates in 24 cities
and subcontracts the services of 26 NGOs; the other a
IDB-funded program dubbed "Capacitación, Promoción
y Desarrollo Integral de la Mujer." Both combine job
training with the now requisite "capacitación en
desarrollo personal." Cali Alcaldia-sponsored job
training training programs for at-risk women as well
as several mounted by the Consejería de la Mujer, in
the Gobernación of Antioquia, also generally include a
"desarrollo personal" component.
Indeed, I found this "personal development" emphasis

to be rampant in programs targeting poor women in
both Chile and Colombia. Verónica Schild provides a
compelling explanation for the widespread adoption of
such programs, arguing that they provide a "measure"
of the "cultural effect of the women’s movement,"
whereby "the days when women could be appealed to
by political parties and governments alike as
homemakers, wives, and mothers . . . are gone.
Women in Chile today are appealed to as individuals,
selves with their own needs and rights." She goes on
to suggest that "government programs, party-based
foundations, and other related initiatives [aimed at
women] all contain a version of the curriculum first
developed by NGOs. (1998, 109).
My findings suggest that many NGOs in fact continue

to offer various capacitación courses for women in
20 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

grassroots organizations; only now increasing

numbers are doing so under government contract.
Schild notes that "the content of personal
development varies from program to program" (Ibid.)
and one could surely hypothesize that it might matter
a great deal whether such programs are administered
by local governments such as that of Cali, the "gender
division" of "mixed" GSROs, or women’s NGOs with a
"hybrid" professional-feminist movement identity. It
might make considerable difference whether feminist
NGOs design and administer training programs or
merely execute or implement ready-made ones,
moreover. We are in desperate need of in-depth,
ethnographic studies that critically examine the
different methodologies and concrete, medium-to-long
term effects of the wide gamut of capacitación
programs conducted by State, private consulting
firms, non-feminist GSROs, and feminist NGOs
throughout Latin America today. It seems imperative
to assess comparatively the content and consequences
of diverse programs lumped under seemingly similar
rubrics, such as women’s integral health or personal
development. At present, most follow-up assessments
or evaluations of the effects of varying capacitación
programs are most often quick-and-dirty, quantitative
ones, often conducted by many of the same NGOs
contracted by governments or IGOs to offer such
courses in the first place.
My interviews in Chile, in particular, suggest that,

despite similar nomenclature, the political effects of
capacitación may vary quite widely. Members of Tierra
Nuestra, the small NGO that works with popular
women’s groups in Santiago’s poblaciones, claimed
that their programs for women differed markedly from
those of PRODEMU (Fundación para la Promoción y
Desarrollo de la Mujer), a para-state/private
foundation created in 1990 by Christian-democratic
sectors of the governing coalition which offers a
variety of craft workshops and other (often sex-typed)
training programs for low-income women—typically
accompanied by a required dose of "personal
development." When asked how exactly their own
capacitaciones and talleres for neighborhood women
differed from PRODEMU’s, Tierra Nuestra staff
stressed that, when "solicited by a local women’s
group," PRODEMU simply responds to "demand" and
provides "narrow or focused and individual support"
["apoyo puntual e individual"] for a specified period of
time (a 2-4 week course on hairdressing or cuisine,
with a required personal development module, for
instance), whereas "we’re always here, responding to
the needs and accompanying collective struggles of
these women," helping in organizing on-going local
activities.
21 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

One might suggest, drawing on Nancy Fraser (1989),

that such differing cultural-political interventions,
while collapsed under the label capacitación, could
have radically divergent consequences for how women
of the popular classes interpret and articulate their
"needs" in the first place. Women leaders of a popular
women’s group in Santiago’s urban periphery insisted
that "the PRODEMU people aren’t interested in
organizing or mobilizing women, they’re interest in the
courses" ["a la gente de PRODEMU no les interesa la
organización y mucho menos la movilización de las
mujeres, les interesan los cursos"] and noted that,
whereas this para-state foundation "works/departs
from the family and works toward women, we work
from women toward the family" ["trabaja desde la
familia hacia la mujer, nosotras trabajamos desde la
mujer hacia la familia"]. These women, who’d been
active in their neighborhood Casa de la Mujer since
the early 1980s—set up by a GSRO during the
dictatorship—were now working as personal
development monitoras for PRODEMU. But they
assured me that their work was "subversive" of the
curriculum developed by that quasi-State agency, that
the content of their class discussions was more like
that of courses offered by their own grassroots
organization.
It seems that in Chile "capacitación con perspectiva de

género"—offered by feminist and non-feminist NGOs,
women’s GROs, private consulting firms, and many
government agencies—has become a major growth
industry. Much of this involves courses on "desarrollo
personal" and job training programs aimed at the
poorest of the poor, particularly women
heads-of-household, in an effort to keep them from
slipping through the holes at the bottom of the bottom
of the neo-liberal economic barrel. As one former
feminist activist who now coordinates the Oficina de la
Mujer in one of Santiago’s poorest comunas told me,
Chile’s Estado Subsidiario tries to promote "people
with entrepeneurial capacity" ["gente con capacidad
emprendedora"] to compete in the free market; those
deemed to be lacking that capacity are simply further
economically marginalized or disenfranchised. Another
feminist argued that "the Chilean State has begun to
work only with social pathologies" ["el Estado Chileno
ha empezado a trabajar solo con patologias sociales"].
It, like other "modern" Latin American States, has
recodified policies toward women by treating the
consequences of uneven gender power relations and
market-induced exclusion as though they were
"extreme situations" ["situaciones extremas"].
Violence against women is thus seen as a pathological
condition rather than as an expression or consequence
of women’s subordination; and while "jefas de hogar"
22 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

have always existed, their "situation" is now framed as

a social disease that must be combated to achieve
"modernization."
Most feminists I talked with in Santiago were acutely

aware of the problematic motives driving the
burgeoning local capacitación market, but many also
noted that diminishing funding from private donors
and bilateral and multilateral agencies has pushed
NGOs to increase their supply of training programs
and other sub-contracted services. Indeed, the Chilean
government’s much-touted economic success story
has led many donors to redirect funds away from local
NGOs towards others in "needier" societies in the
South. And those agencies that still work in Chile now
often channel funds for "gender programs" into
SERNAM, which in turn contracts NGO services, while
reserving some (relatively limited) funds to distribute
to NGOs and researchers through grant competitions.
Schild maintains that "[o]ften, NGOs are put in the
position of having to compete with SERNAM for
funding . . . . As a result of . . . changing priorities of
foreign and domestic funding, most women’s NGOs,
and indeed most local or community-based NGOs, are
either scrambling to survive or disappearing
altogether. Those that remain are increasingly
dependent on government-funded programs to
survive" (Schild 1998, 105). Barrig estimated that
State funds today account for between 10 and 25
percent of the operating budgets of many Chilean
feminist NGOs (1997a, 12).
In the case of Colombia, Barrig found that "depending

on the size and mission of the institution, as well as its
technical profile, 40-50 percent of the budget of NGOs
comes from State sources" ["Dependiendo de la
dimensión y misión de la institución, así como de su
perfil técnico, los presupuestos de varias ONGs
estarían cubiertos de un porcentaje del 40 a 50% por
sus recursos provenientes del Estado"] (1997b, 10).
In Brazil, this trend is as yet less accentuated. As of
1993, "only 3.2 percent of [feminist NGO] monies
came from Brazilian government sources" (Lebon,
forthcoming, 19). But there, too, sub-contracting may
be on the rise: diminishing international funding has
also led many Brazilian feminist NGOs to strike
convenios with state and local governments. At the
federal level, the Cardoso administration’s
Comunidade Solidária—a "social adjustment" program
similar to those recently established in many countries
in the region "targeted to those groups most clearly
excluded or victimized by structural adjustment
policies" (Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998,
22)—has proclaimed a desire to work in "partnership"
[parceria] with NGOs to improve social services and
provide job training for the poor.
23 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

The growing erasure of the State from the realm of

social policy in Latin America (Benería 1996; Barrig
1996), then, has directly contributed to a significant
shift in the kinds of activities undertaken by growing
numbers of feminist and non-feminist NGOs alike. And
donors also have had a strong hand in this turn
toward more technical, less "activist" kinds of
activities. My interviews (and my own experience at
the Ford Foundation) suggested that funding for
projects centered on feminist mobilization and
"concientizacíon" has become more difficult to secure.
The global donor community or what the NGO world
dubs "international cooperation" has changed its
priorities over time: "The 60s were a the decade of
development and the green revolution, the 70s of one
of solidarity. The 80s was the partnership decade, and
now, in the 90s, what prevails is professionalism,
impact, results." ["A década de 60 foi a do
desenvolvimento e da ‘revolução verde,’ a de 70 foi a
da solidariedade. A década de 80 foi a da parceria, e
agora, nos 90, o que predomina é o profissionalismo,
o impacto, os resultados"] (Reich 1995, cited in Lebon
forthcoming, 10). The factors behind this reorientation
are well beyond the scope of the present paper. But
again my experience as part of the "donor
community" confirms this heightened emphasis on
visible impact and discrete project results. In insisting
on measurable outcomes and national or even
transnational "policy relevance," donors (however
inadvertently and sometimes reluctantly) have helped
reorient the activities and internal dynamics of many
NGOs (Hulme and Edwards 1997a and 1997b; Lebon
forthcoming; McDonald 1996; Barrig 1997a). Also, the
modes of social-political intervention and issues
prioritized by the donor community are
understandably mirrored in the NGO world. That is,
donor demand seems to drive project supply more
often than the other way around: "the privileged
themes are determined by moneis from international
cooperation and the State" ["los temas privilegiados
los determina el dinero de la cooperación y el
Estado"].
I should stress at this point that I’m not trying to

argue that there’s something intrinsically wrong with
feminist NGO’s sub-contracting their services as
experts or executors of government programs,
especially when organizational survival and personal
livelihoods are increasingly at stake. One needn’t
resort to what one Colombian interviewee referred to
as the "democrateria" or facile populism that often
pervades social movement discourse—wherein some
unilaterally invoke radical egalitarian ideals to proclaim
it immoral and anti-democratic for other actors to play
specialized roles within heterogeneous movement
24 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

fields—however, to suggest that such trends may

increasingly threaten to "dehybridize" the heretofore
dual identity of most Latin American feminist NGOs. It
is precisely that hybrid identity that up to now has
formed the mainstay of feminist NGOs’s critical ability
to contest "pathologized" versions of
State-policies-with-a-gender-perspective, advocate for
alternative understandings of women’s rights, and
promote women’s empowerment.
A Growing Chasm between Feminist Activism

and Professionalism?
The competitive local and global "gender projects

markets," coupled with the shifting exigencies of
international cooperation, may make it increasingly
difficult for Latin American feminist NGOs to maintain
the delicate balance between movement-oriented,
contestatory activities and their expanding
technical-advisory relationship to donors, States and
IGOs, however. Executing State programs for "at-risk"
women or evaluating the effects of
State-policies-with-a-gender-perspective still brings
many feminist NGOs into regular contact with the poor
and working-class women’s organizations that were
once their core constituencies. But the nature of those
linkages seems to be changing. Professionalized
feminist groups are now perhaps more typically
present in Santiago’s poblaciones or São Paulo’s
favelas to administer short-term training courses or
conduct surveys to assess the poverty levels of
female-headed households. And as several
interviewees noted, this has worked to distance
feminist activist-professionals from "las mujeres."
The movement face of NGOs is challenged by the

increased premium placed on policy-relevant activities
and by their contractual relationships to States and
donors who expect visible, short-term "results" on
gender projects. Such exigencies may undermine
NGOs ability to pursue more process-oriented forms of
feminist cultural-political intervention—such as
consciousness-raising, popular education or other
strategies aimed transforming those gender power
relations manifest in the realms of culture and daily
life—forms of gendered injustice that defy "gender
planning" quick-fixes.
Some argue that donor privileging of NGO

preparations for the UN Summits, for instance, led
many professionalized feminist groups to neglect their
work with the base. As one Colombian NGO
activist-professional proclaimed, "during the Beijing
process, we abandoned grassroots women for over
25 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

two years" ["durante Beijing, dejamos a las mujeres

durante 2 años"]. In encouraging feminist NGOs to
develop new professional skills in transnational policy
advocacy and funding them to organize specialized
seminars and conduct studies aimed at impacting the
UN process, some in the NGO field felt "the [UN]
conferences entertained or distracted feminists, who
stopped intervening in civil society" ["Las conferencias
entretuvieron tanto a las feministas que dejaron de
incidir en la sociedad civil"].
The hybrid identity of most feminist NGOs was aptly

captured by the Beijing NGO Coordination’s slogan
that perparations for the FWCW would serve the
movement as both "text and pretext." The aim was to
develop skills in national and international policy
advocacy which would enable feminists to influence
the texts of regional and global Platforms for Action,
while simultaneously using the FWCW as a pretext for
remobilizing women’s movements and fomenting
public debate on remedies to gender inequality. Even
when many of the UN-focused activities sponsored by
NGOs involved multiple forms of outreach to
grassroots women’s groups and other actors in the
heterogeneous women’s movement field, however,
many women I talked with maintained that technical
efforts to influence texts sometimes overrode efforts
to use the UN process as a
consciousness-raising/educational pretext. As one
Chilean put it, "professionalization has taken over all
of the space. . . the concientization part has been
practically forgotten. . ." ["profesionalización ha
abarcado todo el espácio. . . la parte de la
concientización está practicamente olvidada. . .]. And
while recognizing that professionalized groups have
done "important work for the movement,"
many—including NGO activist-professionals
themselves—felt there was "a very big chasm between
some NGOs and las mujeres," partly because "they
speak a very technical language" ["un desface muy
grande entre algunas ONGs y las mujeres. . . hablan
un lenguaje muy técnico"].
The technical-professional face of NGOs appears to

have been foregrounded as a consequence of shifting
donor and IGO exigencies and State sub-contracting.
While the "policy-relevant" knowledge about
gender-based inequities produced by NGOs has
enabled feminists to mount credible challenges to
currently fashionable
State-policies-with-gender-perspective, there is
growing concern within the feminist field that "the
ability of NGOs to articulate approaches, ideas,
language, and values that run counter to official
orthodoxies may . . . be compromised" and that their
willingness "to speak out on issues that are unpopular
26 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

with governments will be diluted by their growing

dependence on official aid" (Edwards and Hulme1996,
7). Many feminists maintained that, regardless of their
technical competence, NGOs that refuse to play by the
rules of the game or whose discourses and practices
run counter to the "official orthodoxies" de turno may
be losing out in the gender projects market and are
often silenced or marginalized from public debate.
Still others suggested that, despite official claims to

the contrary, less-than-technical criteria are too often
employed by governments and IGOs when
sub-contracting services or hiring NGOs as "gender
experts": "the relationship with the State has been
privatized" ["se ha privatizado la relación con el
Estado"], one Peruvian NGO activist bemoaned. When
NGOs are critical of the government, they are,
predictably, less likely to get contracts or grants,
which some claim results in a tendency toward
"self-censorship beyond even that which the State
requires of you" ["autocensurarte inclusive más allá de
lo que te pide el Estado"]. Resource allocations and
contracts are thus skewed towards those deemed to
be "politically trustworthy" or whose projects have
readily visible "policy relevance." Those resources, in
turn, provide some in the NGO feminist field with
greater access to national and global policy
microphones than others.
Many feminists I talked with, including

activist-professionals from the very NGOs most
regularly summoned for State or IGO gender
consultancies, project/policy assessments, or
capacitación, seemed acutely aware of this growing
bias in favor of particular types of feminist
"intermediary" organizations and activities. Some
were critical of the increased "valorization of
institutionalized NGOs" while "the rest are not even
consulted" ["valorización de las ONGs
institucionalizadas" while "las demás no son
consultadas"]. Recent scholarly analyses of NGOs’
would seem to confirm the bias perceived by many in
the feminist field: "the popularity of certain forms of
NGOs (large, able to absorb donor funding, quiescent)
with donors [and local States] may lead to a widening
rift between well-resourced service providers and
poorly-funded social mobilization agencies" (Hulme
and Edwards 1997b, 281). Such a rift is increasingly in
evidence in the contemporary Latin American feminist
movement field.
Busting the NGO Boom? Manuevering the New

[Gendered] Policy Agenda and Rearticulating the
Activist and Professional Dimensions of Feminist
NGOs
27 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

The most vehement critics of feminist NGOs are the

feministas autónomas—a new, relatively small, but
highly vocal political current within the Latin American
feminist field who claim that NGOs have
"institutionalized" the women’s movement and "sold
out" to the forces of "patriarchy." During the most
recent of the periodic Latin American and Caribbean
Feminist Encuentros, the seventh since 1981, held in
Cartagena, Chile, in November 1996, Chilean
autónomas who organized the gathering brought their
scathing critique of "professionalized feminism" into
the center of debate within the feminist field.
In explaining the origins of their "autonomous

movement" in Chile in the early 1990s, the
Movimiento Feminista Autónomo (MFA) maintained:
"The process of constitution of the autonomous

feminist movement coincides with the process in
which feminism finds itself in general with regard to
defining its relationship to the system. In a period
where the ideology of neoliberalism is taking root . . .
feminism could not remain at the margin of this
historic problematic and therefore two political
currents have assumed clear profile. One, led from the
institutions (la institucionalidad) is represented
fundamentally by women who work for NGOs whose
ideology responds from a gender standpoint to the
neoliberal ideology of pragmatism, the endiosamiento
of the system, mystification. . . and the attempt to
make invisible (la invisibilización) and supplant the
movimiento social de mujeres and the feminist
movement. The other current, the autonomous one, is
the one that ‘stands on the other corner’ (se ‘para en
la otra esquina’), from the standpoint of the
movement and the protagonism of women,
questioning the values of the system and its
institutions."
For a member of the militantly autonomous Bolivian

feminist collective, Mujeres Creando, NGOs have
become "decorative and functional complements of
patriarchal policies" ["complementos decorativos y
funcionales de políticas patriarcales"] and now
constitute a "gender technocracy":
"When we speak of a gender technocracy it stems

from their having put their knowledge to the service of
national and international patriarchal institutionality,
be it at the governmental or state level or in some
calses also entrepeneurial and transnational. They are
not nourishing the femininst movement and worst still
they want to constitute themselves as ‘expert vocies’
that validate and legitimate feminists. [En el momento
en el cual nosotras hablamos de tecnocracia de género
28 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

es a partir de haber puesto su saber al servicio de la

institucionalidad patriarcal internacional y nacional,
sea a nivel gubernamental , estatal como también en
algunos casos empresarial y transnacional. Y no a
nutrir y alimentar al movimiento feminista y para el
colmo quieran constituirse en nuestras "voces
expertas" que validan y legitiman a las feministas].
Others who accuse NGOs of having "indecent relations

with the State" ["relaciones indecentes con el Estado"]
do not consider the women the autonomas
pejoratively dubbed "las institucionales" to form part
of the feminist movement field: "we do not think that
NGOs as NGOs, that is, as institutions, or the gender
technocracy are constitutive parts of the movement.
We believe there may be feminist women working in
these institutions but little by little the institutionalized
and technocratic tendencies will destroy them"
["nosotras no consideramos que las ONGs como
ONGs, es decir, en tanto instituciones, ni la
tecnocracia de género sean partes constitutivas del
movimiento. Creemos que pueden haber mujeres
feministas trabajando en estas instituciones pero que
poco a poco la tendencia institucionalizada y
tecnocrática las esta destruyendo"]. Similarly, one of
the core idealogues of the Chilean autónoma current,
affirms "we maintain that these institutions are not
neutral, that they belong to the system and sustain it,
and that money thereby becomes a political
instrument" ["Sostenemos que estas instituciones no
son neutras, que pertenecen a un sistema y lo
sostienen, y que el dinero pasa a ser entonces un
instrumento político"].
Most damning, in this view, has been NGOs’ loss of

"autonomy." Autonomy, according to this radical
political current, is determined by the particular
location or space presently occupied by women who
are deemed to have left the feminist fold by virtue of
wading too far into patriarchal waters: "For us,
autonomy plays a papel ubicativo [a locational role].
Where do we want to be, where should we plant the
seeds of our work and for whom do we harvest its
fruits?" [Para nosotras la autonomía juega un papel
ubicativo. ¿Donde queremos estar, dónde
sembraremos la semilla de nuestro trabajo y para
quién cosecharemos esos frutos]..
But this brand of Manicheaistic, iron-law-of-oligarchy

discourse is clearly belied by the heterogeneity of
origins, the diversity of practices and the hybrid
identity that still characterizes many feminist NGOs,
most of whose members are quite self-consciously
grappling with some of the very contradictions so
vehemently condemned by the autónomas. Indeed,
many women the autonomas identified with
29 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

"institutionalized feminism" told me, "there’s a good

chunk of reason in what they are laying out" ["hay un
buen cacho de razón en lo que ellas estaban
colocando]." Most expressed concern that elements of
the feminist movements’ agenda had come "too close
for comfort" to that of States and IGOs. As one put it,
"the women’s movement’s agenda has been
desdibujada . . . it is not distinguishable from that of
the government" ["se ha desdibujado la agenda del
movimiento de mujeres. . . no se distingue de la del
gobierno"]. And some NGO activist-professionals went
so far as to suggest that some organizations are
"being functional as NGOs; it’s not good or bad, it’s
just a reality. But we must ask ourselves, functional to
an agenda constructed by whom?" ["nosotras estamos
siendo funcionales en cuanto ONG", no es bueno, no
es malo, es una realidad"; "funcionales a una agenda
que construye quién?"].
Most expressed an urgent need to reassess their

current practices as feminists, to rearticulate the two
faces of NGOs’ heretofore hybrid identity. Still, many
were distressed that the weight of the new local and
global [gender] policy agenda was forcing NGOs to
privilege the technical- professional activities and to
neglect other dimensions of "movement work" so
central to feminist visions of social transformation
shared by NGOers and others in the feminist field.
I want to submit that feminist NGOs are hardly

doomed to become a part of what some scholars have
dubbed the "anti-politics machine" of development
(Ferguson 1994) and that "blanket assessments of
NGOs as either the Third World’s salvation or the
newest vehicle for Western domination" (Starn,
forthcoming, 184) or of feminist NGOs as mere
puppets of planetary patriarchy, as the autónomas
would have us believe, are inadequate. The "New
[gendered] Policy Agenda" is neither as monolithic,
irreversible or internally coherent as some of the more
dire scholarly and activist forecasts might lead us to
think. Latin American feminist NGOs, for example,
have no doubt been able to use funds flowing from the
New Gender Policy Agenda to "make their voices
heard more loudly and more often through lobbying
and advocacy" (Edwards and Hulme 1996, 4)—as they
certainly did during the recent string of UN Summits.
There is more room for maneuver (or jogo de cintura,

as the Brazilians might put it—loosely translated as
"swing of the hips") in this restructured late modern,
post-transtion, and "post-Beijing" terrain of local and
global gender politics. First, those of us in the North
who consider ourselves part of the so-called "global
feminist movement" could take IGOs, Northern States
and donors to task on their professed intention to
30 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

promote a "thriving civil society" that would promote

"gender equity" and expand democratization. Many
Latin American feminists I talked with stressed there
was a pressing need for NGOs to devise ways of
negotiating collectively with "la cooperación
internacional," not just about resources and time-lines
for "projects" but also about longer-term
programmatic lines of action and political priorities. In
alliance with our feminist counterparts in the South of
the Americas, we in the North might pressure donors
and development aid agencies to adopt more flexible
criteria in selecting NGO projects for funding—more
explicitly call their bluff, if you will.
If donors have had as strong a hand in skewing the

feminist movement field toward more
technical-professional endeavors as my findings and
other critical studies (Lebon, forthcoming; MacDonald
1995 and 1996) suggest, then they could surely tilt
the scales at least a bit more in the other direction.
Those of us who are social scientists or area specialists
could summon our own "technical expertise" to
demonstrate the ways in which increased NGO
competence in service delivery, project execution, and
policy assessment does not exhaust their potential
contributions to "strengthening civil society."
Establishing funding criteria that would enhance rather
than obstruct NGOs’ historically "intermediary" roles
and "hybrid" political identities would surely be a step
in the right direction. Such measures might include
materially and politically rewarding those NGOs that
deploy innovative methodologies to simultaneously
"reach up" into national and transnational policy
arenas on "behalf of women" while "reaching down"
into the grassroots and "across" to other actors in civil
society and in the heterogeneous women’s movement
field.
Donors could surely also "encourage" NGOs to more

thoroughly involve broader sectors of movement and
civil society constituencies in their "technical"
evaluations of fashionable
State-policies-with-a-gender-perspective, allowing
them more time for consultation, genuine
interlocution, and critical reflection than impact- or
results-driven project chronograms typically do:
agencies too often "expect contracted outputs to be
achieved and are less interested in a learning process
. . . . Time and space for reflection may be reduced. .
." (Edwards and Hulme 1996, 7). Building genuinely
"gender-friendly" polities and democratic civil societies
in the context of historically highly stratified societies,
"illiberal" States, and global economic restructuring,
after all, might require longer-term donor
"investments."
31 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

Against the autónomas’ claim that it is feminists’

ubicación or location in NGOs or the State apparatus
that seals their fate as handmaidens of patriarchal
neo-liberalism, I would submit that there is also
considerable room for maneuver within the
"institutionalized" feminist field. It is clearly possible to
deploy a wide variety of feminist practices from any
given location, even under the adverse
structural-political conditions I’ve tried to outline. The
current capacitación craze is a case in point. As the
case of grassroots women leaders of a Casa de la
Mujer in Santiago suggested, it is certainly possible to
"subvert" the State’s agenda for at-risk women while
executing its projects under contract. And feminist
NGOs no doubt do a better job of combining women’s
"collective empowerment" while administering courses
in "personal development" than do non-feminist
GSROs with "gender programs" or para-state agencies
such as PRODEMU.
The pragmatist in me (like many activist-professionals

in NGOs) is inclined to think that "modern" Latin
American States are going to continue sub-contracting
anyway, so why not "just do it" ourselves? Though we
need rigorous, scholarly assessments of the differing
effects of various modalities of capacitación with a
gender perspective for unsettling prevailing gender
power arrangements, I have tried to suggest that
"hybrid" feminist NGOs which retain solid linkages to
the larger women’s movement field seem to have
been able to strike a balance between feminist
transformational visions and the less than
self-evidently pro-equity goals of "modern" Latin
American States. But it is nonetheless incumbent upon
us as feminists to reflect further on the possible
political consequences of States and IGOs’ growing
tendency to view NGOs—in Latin America and
elsewhere—primarily as expert service providers and
surrogates for civil society.
How much room is available for maneuver within the

confines of State-policies-with-a-gender-perspective,
moreover, will vary in different global and local
political conjunctures and according to specific
characteristics of local States. Barrig’s findings
(1997b), for instance, suggest that Colombian NGOs’
"autonomy" seems to have been signficantly less
compromised, despite a growing dependence on State
funding, in part due to the Colombian State’s own lack
of "institutionalization" and consequent lack of
disciplinary or regulatory capacities. Dealing with the
highly institutionalized, legalistic, and rigorously
disciplinary Chilean State may be another matter
altogether.
32 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

Still, in maneuvering the always shifting terrain of

State gender politics, many NGO activist-professionals
suggested that it is possible to retain a "dual identity"
and "do business" with particular governments on
"proyectos puntuales" (specific projects). But most
insisted that it is imperative for feminists to
continually evaluate and interrogate their contractual
and political relationship with official political arenas
rather than adopting a rigid, "principled" position.
Successfully negotiating such "jogos de cintura
puntuales," however, may be more feasible when
NGOs can invoke collective gendered citizenship
claims and seek the support of others in the feminist
field than when they try to "go it alone" in local and
global gender projects markets. This, many women I
talked with suggested, requires enhanced horizontal
NGO accountability.
The current debates among Latin American feminists

surrounding the NGO boom have gone a long way
toward revitalizing what feminist political theorist,
Jane Mansbridge, has dubbed "discursive
accountability":
"Most politically active feminists in any country work in

occupations, from homemaker to chief executive
officer, whose primary goal is not to advance
feminism. When their work affects women, these
feminists often turn for conscious inspiration to the
‘women’s movement.’ They also, I argue, often feel
internally accountable to that movement. The
entity—"women’s movement" or "feminist
movement"—to which they feel accountable is neither
an aggregation of organizations nor an aggregation of
individual members but a discourse. It is a set of
changing, contested aspirations and understandings
that provide conscious goals, cognitive backing, and
emotional support for each individual’s evolving
feminist identity . . . . If the movement is to maintain
its discursive tension, and if its street theory and
working ideals are to remain responsive to what is
going on in women’s lives, it will always involve
internal combat . . ." (1995, 27).
Social movement fields are constituted by continual

contestation—discursive and strategic. Other actors
recognized to form part of or share in the
ethical-political aims of a particular social movement
field constitute crucial referents for all who identify
with a given movement. Even when the feminist
"other" is a declared public enemy, then—as the
autónomas are to the so-called institucionales—she
remains a silent interlocutor. Virtually every one of the
women I interviewed this past summer in Colombia,
Chile, Peru, and Brazil—women who spanned the full
33 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

range of locations in the contemporary feminist

movement field—had not only heard about the
November 1996 feminist Encuentro. Most also appear
to have felt compelled to reposition themselves along
the discursive axes of debate that materialized or
were crystallized there. And each seemed to have
critically reconsidered her own practices and discursive
strategies within the general framework of the debates
surrounding professionalization and
institutionalization. Rather than signaling a
"fracturing" of a feminist unity that never really
existed, then, current debates may be indicative of the
continued vitality of Latin American feminisms. And, in
fostering a kind of discursive accountability to the
Latin American feminist "other" in relation to whom
one continually re-evaluates one’s own feminism and
feminist practices, they may well point the way
forward for "advocating feminism" more effectively in
the 21st century.
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GSD: Sonia Alvarez http://www.antenna.nl/~waterman/alvarez2.

Advocating Feminism: The Latin American NGO

On-going processes of democratization, coupled with

My talk today focuses on the most visible, and

1 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

technically adept, transnationalized and

After first offering a snapshot of NGOs’ location within

These recent developments deeply trouble many NGO

This essay draws on fieldwork conducted in Brazil,

2 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

advocacy projects, worked closely with a wide variety

NGOs and the Reshaping of Latin American

How Latin American activists practice their feminism

The diverse women who transit in this wide-ranging

3 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

Afro-Latinoamericanas y Caribeñas and the Comité

NGOs have played a central role in setting up and

But just what exactly are feminist NGOs? What

Indeed, in recent years, feminists in some countries

4 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

providing advice or "asesoria" to the movimiento de

Prevailing characterizations of NGOs—in both social

While feminist NGOs in most Latin American countries

Second, the vast majority of NGO

5 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

integral part of a larger women’s movement that

The extent or degree of NGOization of the feminist

Tarrés similarly emphasizes that "in the case of

6 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

system, "there were activists who, in not accepting

"The members of NGOs come from this market of

Tarrés found that after 1980 and especially after

By contrast, most Colombian feminists I intervieweed

7 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

above would hardly seem conducive to setting up

In Chile—whose heinous 17-year dictatorship and

In any given context and over time, the types of

8 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

to view itself as a "bridge between feminism and the

Some feminist NGOs, such as CFEMEA in Brazil and

9 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

women’s human rights" ["una herramienta de

While many feminist NGOs continue to struggle to

The Expansion of Local and Global Demand for

In the 1990s, I want to suggest, more purportedly

To be sure, all actors in the Latin American feminist

10 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

oposición, no necesariamente en relación al feminismo

In assessing the new political landscape, Peruvian

"The movement of the 1990s—already facing

Indeed, many governments now brandish more

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feminist activists who don’t share Vargas’ view that

Indeed, it is hard for feminists not to "deal" or contend

Governments appear to have begun to translate some

12 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

been State promotion of social programs targeting the

In virtually all countries in the region, specialized

In several countries, a considerable number of NGO

While feminists in most countries continue to

13 de 39 23/10/2007 01:13 a.m.

And Latin American feminisms can surely claim credit

The transnationalization of Latin American feminisms

That transnational women’s lobby has been