Alejandra Ramm & Jasmine Gideon 
Motherhood, Social Policies and Women’s Activism in Latin America [PDF ebook] 

This book is a critical resource for understanding the relationship between gender, social policy and women’s activism in Latin America, with specific reference to Chile. Latin America’s mother-centered kinship system makes it an ideal field in which to study motherhood and maternalism—the ways in which motherhood becomes a public policy issue. As maternalism embraces and enhances gender differences, it has been criticized for deepening gender inequalities. Yet invoking motherhood continues to offer an effective strategy for advancing women’s living conditions and rights, and for women themselves to be present in the public sphere. In analyzing these important relationships, the contributors to this volume discuss maternal health, sexual and reproductive rights, labor programs, paid employment, women miners’ unionization, housing policies, environmental suffering, and LGBTQ intimate partner violence.

Table of Content

1. Motherhood, Social Policies and Women’s Activism in Latin America: An Overview.- 2. Latin America: A Fertile Ground for Maternalism.- 3. “Taking the Nature Out of Mother”: From Politics of Exclusion to Feminisms of Difference and Recognition of Rights.- 4. Constructing Maternalism from Paternalism: The Case of State Milk Programs.- 5. To Not Die in Childbirth: Maternal Health and State Policy, 1930–1980.- 6. Resistance to Sexual and Reproductive Rights: Maternalism and Conservatism.- 7. “Las madres del plomo”: Women’s Environmental Activism and Suffering in Northern Chile.- 8. Technocracy and Strategic Maternalism: Housing Policies, 1990–2014.- 9. LGBTQ-IPV and the Case for Challenging Maternalist Family Violence Paradigms.- 10. Women Miners: Motherhood, Labor Integration, and Unionization.- 11. The Persistent Maternalism in Labor Programs.- 12. Economic Modernization and Redefining Womanhood: Women, Family and Work in a Center Right Wing Government.

About the author

Alejandra Ramm is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Universidad de Valparaíso and Associate Researcher at the Social Sciences Research Institute (ICSO) at the Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), Chile. 





Jasmine Gideon is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, UK.