Social justice and gender rights

Abstract

Drawing on my recent academic work on democratisation, gender rights and social movements, and on my public role in social policy debates, I present some reflections on setting up social policies, particularly those that have come to be known as gender policies. In doing so, I draw attention to social justice as a basic principle of social policies, and to the gap between the legal and formal aspects of gender rights and their realisation. With respect to democratisation, citizenship and human rights, reflect on the language of needs, translated into rights wielded by the different social movements in Argentina, that have put new issues and problems on the public agenda, and have thus contributed to changing the socio‐political discourse. The rights‐based discourse of social movements has also encompassed poverty and unemployment, which were an issue in the social policy discourses of the 1990s. However, unlike discourses rooted in assistance strategies, current discourses address an increasing politicisation of the realm of production and social reproduction. They include the acknowledgement of differences, the search for dignity, the criticism of existing power relations and the construction of interdependence between actors and organisations. I suggest that there is a new historical moment in women's movements that may contribute to the consolidation of popular feminism in Argentina, together with an alliance among women from different social, urban and rural sectors.