Gendered Expertise (original) (raw)
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Defining a Democracy: Reforming the Laws on Women's Rights in Chile, 1990-2002
Latin American Politics and Society, 2008
This article evaluates 38 bills seeking to expand women's rights in Chile and finds that the successful ones often originated with the Executive National Women's Ministry (SERNAM), did not threaten existing definitions of gender roles, and did not require economic redistribution. These factors (plus the considerable influence of the Catholic Church) correlate in important ways, and tend to constrain political actors in ways not apparent from an examination of institutional roles or ideological identity alone. In particular, the Chilean left's strategic response to this complex web of interactions has enabled it to gain greater legislative influence on these issues over time.
Law, social change and lawyers in Chile: From the shrillness of the 60s to the silence of today
law.yale.edu
When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by the existing laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawful occupationwhen they have accommodated all their ideas and all their habits to itwhen the law had long made their adherence to its rules a ground of reputation, and their departure from them a ground of disgrace and even of penalty-I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their minds and their feelings; forcibly to degrade them from their state and condition, and to stigmatise with shame and infamy that character, and those customs, which before had been made the measure of their happiness and honour. E. Burke
This article analyzes how the lower criminal courts in Chile transitioned from an inquisitorial to an adversarial justice system between 2000 and 2005 as part of the Criminal Procedure Reform. Drawing on the frame analysis of the street-level bureaucracy and judicial ethnography, I examine the transition between two different types of judicial bureaucracy from the perspective of the actors who implemented the reform. The study is based on in-depth interviews with officials and judges of both inquisitorial and adversarial courts, administrative managers of the new courts, and actors who designed the administrative reorganization of lower criminal courts. The study involved a three-month, weekly observation in an inquisitorial court in Santiago de Chile. The article emphasizes the specificity of the Chilean judiciary, where both inquisitorial and adversarial criminal courts still coexist.
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2015
Rights gains for members of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) populations in Chile have been highly contentious since democratisation, indicative of the stigmatisation directed towards non-normative gender and sexual identities. This article addresses the role of activist lawyers pursuing LGBTI rights cases through the courts, and draws on McAdam and colleagues' (2001) concept of a 'broker' to examine the lawyers' roles in linking previously unconnected sites within the judiciary and further afield. The analysis draws these processes together through interactionist perspectives of meaning-making and how they relate to stigma, deviancy and identity.
Substantive Representation of Women’s Interests: Chile, 1990–2020
Representation, 2022
This research note presents an empirical test aimed at untangling the factors that explain the substantive representation of women’s interests in the legislative arena. We hand-coded over 7000 parliamentarians’ bills introduced in the Chilean Chamber of Deputies between 1990 and 2020. Our results show, first, that female legislators are more active than men in sponsoring bills that favour women’s interests, especially regarding feminist claims. Secondly, we find that female parliamentarians from leftist parties are more likely to embrace feminist claims in their bills than female legislators from right-wing parties. By contrast, women from the right initiate more often bills associated with women’s traditional role.
Gender differences in the family law courts of the city of Buenos Aires : a view from within
2004
International Public Law Criminal Law 14 Criminal law and procedure Private Law 7 Civil law (chairs), 24 See section 111-2 a and table 12 for a description of the organisation of the departments. 25 See Table 12 above 26 The two departments of Public Law offer the following courses: Theory of the State {6 chairs) Constitutional Law (8chairs) Human Rights (4 chairs) Administrative Law (6 chairs), International Public Law (4 chairs) 27 The department of Criminal Law offers the following course: Criminal law and procedure {14 Chairs) 28 The department of Private Law offers the following courses: Civil Law (7chairs), Civil and Commercial duties (6 chairs), Civil and Commercial Contracts {8 chairs), Property Jaw (5 chairs), Family Law and Inheritances (8chairs), International Private Law (4chairs) 29 The department of Philosophy of Law offers the following course: General Theory of Law (8 Chairs) 30 The department of Labour Law offers the following course: Labour Law and Social Security (7 chairs) 31 The Socio-legal Department offers the following course: Economic and Financial Analysis (5Chairs) 32 The Department of Corporate Law offers the following course: Commercial Law (12 Chairs)
The politics of national reconciliation during the transitional period of the 1990s in Chile constructed a hegemonic framework that affected discourses in other domains in multilayered ways. In order to achieve consensus among its various factions, the Concertación used “reconciliation” discourse to portray the nation as a family, and potentially divisive issues were framed in the most apolitical, ahistorical, and technical way. In this context, gender violence was construed as a matter of family and individual liberties, and the objective of the first family violence law was maintaining the family intact. The framework of reconciliation and its association with Christian forgiveness and family unity promoted the use of conciliation rather than sentencing as the primary means of settling domestic violence disputes and made it difficult for those affected by gender violence to achieve justice. However, the foundational discourses of the 1990s served an important purpose in opening up discursive spaces on gender violence that could be further refined.
Revista de Estudios Políticos, 2019
This article explores the representation of women in the high courts of eighteen Latin American countries. Using an unpublished database, we find that, as in the legislatures and ministerial cabinets, the number of women in high courts is small. The article also demonstrates that although there is little difference in judges' ages or postgraduate studies, men reach the high court levels more easily. Additionally, empirical evidence shows that, at the time of their appointment, the percentage of women with prior judicial experience is usually greater than for men. These results show that the greater presence of male judges is related not to academic merit or previous judicial experience but rather to a structural process of exclusion of women from political decision-making fields. In this regard, the article also finds that the few positions assigned to female judges are not in areas of great political significance, much less in the presidency of the high courts.
Tackling Bias Against Women Victims of Sexual Assault in the Chilean Judiciary: A Case Study
DERECHO PUCP, 2023
Women victims of sexual assault encounter several hurdles when seeking justice in Chilean legal institutions. However, recent efforts by the Chilean Supreme Court to fight bias against underrepresented groups have foregrounded the importance of applying a gender perspective in court trials. In light of the publication by the Chilean Supreme Court in 2019 of a handbook on how to judge with a gender perspective, I analyze the court ruling of a 2004 rape case that led Corporación Humanas—a feminist NGO— to file a petition before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Given the ruling’s egregious biases, the NGO holds Chile responsible for the violation of several victims’ rights specified in international human rights treaties. Based on the written court ruling, I examine how the judges and other legal actors failed to deliver justice with a gender perspective. I analyze how the judges, the prosecutors, and the defense attorneys resorted to the following types of gender bias: 1) gender stereotypes and rape myths; 2) credibility discounting (Tuerkheimer, 2017); 3) assessment of the evidence without a gender perspective; 4) requirement of bodily injury to give credence to the hypothesis of rape by force; and 5) discussion of the victim’s sexual history. In light of the different categories of gender bias detected in the case, I assess whether the Chilean handbook would have been an effective tool to prevent them. Finally, based on this case, I determine the handbook’s limitations and suggest potential improvements.
Ph.D. Dissertation, 2018
This dissertation is a social, political, and cultural history of the organized Chilean legal profession in the first half of the twentieth century. It explores the causes for the creation of the Chilean Bar Association and its Legal Aid Service in the mid-1920s and follows their evolution until the mid-1960s. The relative success of the Bar Association in imposing its model of lawyering in the first half of the twentieth century allows us to understand why the legalistic framework that Chilean lawyers had inherited from the nineteenth century did not change over the course of the twentieth despite the momentous social and political evolution that both profession and country experienced in this period. The history of the Chilean Bar Association thus provides an institutional explanation for the continuity of ideas about the law in the face of accelerated social transformations. At the same time, by revealing the tensions and the resistance that this project faced, the history of the Bar also reveals the gears that would eventually lead to the legal profession’s historical change.