Gender and the Politics of Gradual Change

This book explores recent social policy reforms and innovations in Chile. Focusing on four major reform episodes — health, pensions, childcare, and maternity leave — Silke Staab unveils the complex interplay of factors that have shaped the successes and failures of actors pursuing positive gender change in social policy. She shows that even in highly constrained settings positive gender change is possible, but that its scope and quality are bound to vary in response to sector-specific institutional constraints and opportunities.

• South American politics
• Institutionalism
• Chilean politics
• Latin American politcs
• Gender equality
• Healthcare
• Maternity leave
• Childcare
• Pensions
• latin american politics

“This is a must-read for those wanting to understand how progressive change in gender relations occurs, and the role of ideas, institutions, and actors play in producing change. Based on rich qualitative data, Staab provides new insights into the gendered institutional context for policymaking in Chile, showing the obstacles and opportunities for policy change embedded in four different policy arenas. Most important, Staab powerfully demonstrates the central role of gender in policymaking: Ideas about men’s and women’s appropriate roles and the material consequences of gendered societal structures are constitutive features of the policy process even in policy areas presumed to be gender neutral.” (Professor Susan Franceschet, University of Calgary, Canada)

“Silke Staab’s excellent book provides a comparative analysis of attempts to ‘engender’ four different social sectors within Chile and in doing so highlights the institutional complexities that occur within each sector. Her rigorous analysis helps us to understand why, even under a progressive government, ‘pro-gender’ reform can be successfully implemented in some arenas, while being highly constrained in others. Her analysis is supported by a wealth of empirical evidence and provides an invaluable resource for scholars and practitioners alike.” (Dr. Jasmine Gideon, Birkbeck, University of London, UK)

“Staab has produced an excellent book that makes an important contribution to the study of comparative social policy. Creatively combining insights from historical institutionalism and feminist political science, her rich comparison of four sectors - two traditional (pensions and health) and two in line with more recent work 'feminising' welfare regime (childcare and maternity leave) - opens up the concept of welfare regime to reveal the uneven results of reform initiatives. Her choice of the Chilean case is also most apt as such countries in the Global South have been at the centre of social policy innovation in the new millennium.” (Professor Rianne Mahon, Wildrid Laurier University, Canada)

“Silke Staab’s book has made a major theoretical and empirical contribution to our growing understanding of the factors influencing Chilean social policy. Focusing on the period 2000-2014 she critically examines four policies with specific implications for women’s equality, showing how each met with different challenges and produced different outcomes. The book’s analytic framework, drawn from feminist political theory and institutional analysis, frames a nuanced and persuasive account of Chile’s gradualist post-Pinochet evolution. This is a book that will be welcomed by scholars of Latin America, as well as by those who specialise in gender studies and social policy.” (Professor Maxine Molyneux, University College London, UK)

• UN Women, New York, USA

  Silke Staab

Silke Staab is a research specialist at UN Women in New York, USA. She holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Manchester, UK. Her work on gender, politics and social policy has been published in journals like Social Politics, Development and Change, and Third World Quarterly. She is also co-editor of Global Variations in Political and Social Economy of Care (with S. Razavi, 2013).

Policies and ethics