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9 Women’s Movements in Argentina tensions and articulations graciela di marco There are, therefore, by necessity, many feminisms and any attempt to find the “true” form of feminist politics should be abandoned. —Chantal Mouffe This chapter focuses on the relations between Argentinean women’s movements and the state between the nineties and the early twenty-first century. In this period, processes of structural adjustment and globalization dramatically changed the social structure of Argentina. A significant corpus of law was passed to support women’s rights; however, a gap remains between the laws on the books and an effective defense and protection of such rights. My approach to trace the developments that took place from the mid-nineties to the present takes the vast literature about women’s movements in Latin America into account, starting from considerations of both public and private organizations as spaces where gender discourses are constructed and negotiated in their linguistic and practical implications.1 Gender is constructed; that is to say, legitimized and nonlegitimized gender relations are sanctioned and gender is performed. The state is an organization where different discourses and practices coexist, because it is the result of social processes rather than a unified apparatus pursuing well-defined, homogeneous strategies. Rather than a monolithic, uniform whole, it is a battlefield where different interests fight one another. Pervaded by asymmetric gender relations , the state nevertheless plays a role in the construction of these same unequal power relations between genders. In Argentina, social movements interrelate with the state in countless ways, and these relations also give rise to negotiations of new meanings (Di Marco 1997a). The messages generated by collective action are related to the actors’ demands for subjectivity and visibility at the intersection with other social forces and interlocutors (political parties, religious organizations, and the state). Any attempt at examining the connections among various social movements, women’s movements, and the Argentinean state will necessarily be only partly successful, because it requires fragmenting a relation in progress within a field of democratic conflicts and potentialities. 159 My approach is also based on the tenet that “feminist politics should be understood not as a separate form of politics designed to pursue the interests of women as women, but rather as the pursuit of feminist goals, and aims[,] within the context of a wider articulation of demands” (Mouffe 1992, 382). I therefore start from the existence of numerous forms of feminism, bearing in mind the articulation between feminist politics and that of other social movements rather than establishing an a priori definition of a “suitable” form of feminist politics. Strategies and the identity of actors in social movements implicate one another; we may therefore conclude that different modes of women’s participation in social movements articulated with other issues—whether or not exclusively feminist—may lead to struggles to lessen gender subordination (Cohen 1985; Alvarez 1990, 23; Molyneux 2000, 225). Women’s movements have always featured a relative autonomy compared to other organizational forms, such as political parties and trade unions. The movements that emerged in Argentina during the neoliberal era are similar to the many ways in which women have mobilized around gender interests, whether through women’s organizations, groups composed of both men and women, or associations to demand justice for crimes committed against their children (the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo is a case in point). Women’s collective action during the nineties should be viewed within the context of economic adjustment, the ensuing impoverishment of the population, and its response to this economic situation.2 Both urban and rural movements emerged, which resulted in the growing visibility of working-class women in the public sphere. Collective Action in the Nineties The nineties were marked by numerous social responses to the socioeconomic, political, and cultural model that was setting in. These responses were characterized by the increasing complexity of social and political identities, the steady dislocation of trade unions, and the emergence of a matrix of citizenship and rights (Scribano and Schuster 2001). Mobilizations were composed of workers affected by the industrial rationalization processes and of various middle-class sectors injured by market reforms. Likewise, cities of the interior, immersed in a crisis related to the implementation of provincial fiscal adjustment together with market reforms, organized demonstrations in which entire towns came out into the streets in defense of their interests (puebladas).3 The first roadblocks were carried out by inhabitants of Cutral-Co and Plaza Huincul in the province...

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