In July of last year, several mem-
bers of the Argentine planning
committee that had drawn up the
guidelines for a national curriculum
resigned when they discovered that
changes to their proposal had been
made, apparently by the Minister of
Education under pressure from the
Catholic Church. Mention of
Darwin and Lamarck had been
eliminated, references to sex educa-
tion had been erased, and the word
“gender” had been replaced by
“sex.”
The Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos
Aires, Hector Aguer, defended the
removal of the word “gender,”
arguing that its use “intended to
provoke an ideological shift and to
generate a new conception of the
human person, of subjectivity, mar-
riage, the family and society. In
short, what is proposed is a cultural
revolution.” Using the word gender
“as a purely cultural construct,
detached from the biological,” he
warned, “makes us into fellow trav-
elers of radical feminism.” Bishop
Aguer went on to quote well-known
U.S. feminist Shulamit Firestone’s
Jean Franco is the author of Plotting
Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (Columbia University Press, 1990) and a member of NACLA’s editorial board.
She wishes to thank Marta Lamas, Tunana Mercado, Rosa Maria Fort and Kemy
Oyarzcn for providing material for this
article.
The Dialectic of Sex to highlight the
“dangers” of feminism. Firestone
applied Marxist dialectics to the
male/female relationship, said
Aguer, “in order to reach the con-
clusion that Marx had not dared to
make: namely to modify the sexual
condition of woman to liberate her
from maternity and her dependence
on the family.”
While it may be amusing to think
of the Catholic Church hierarchy
wading through feminist theory, its
attempts to demonize feminism by
associating it with communism
should not be taken lightly. The fact
that the debate over gender has sur-
faced simultaneously in recent
months in many different Latin Am-
erican countries suggests that this
concern for semantics masks a sur-
reptitious campaign against wo-
men’s and gay rights.
For post-1960s feminism, gender
refers to socially constituted differ-
ences between masculine and femi-
nine. This definition of gender is
considered a dangerously destabi-
lizing concept in Latin American
circles close to the Catholic Church,
one that undermines the natural
relations of marriage and reproduc-
tion. According to critics of “gen-
der,” once people accept that differ-
ences between men and women are
socially constructed and hence
modifiable, then the road is open
for legalized abortion, the accep-
tance of homosexuality, the recog-
nition of “irregular” families, and
the collapse of family values.
The touchiness of the Church on
this matter can be read as a reaction
to the growing number and influ-
ence of feminist and women’s
groups. While only a handful of
feminist organizations existed in
Latin America two decades ago,
now hundreds of women’s organi-
zations throughout the region define
themselves as “feminist.” Women
have also become prominent actors
in grassroots social movements.
While these two sectors of the Latin
American women’s movement have
their differences, there is an ongo-
ing effort by many groups to bridge
the divide. In fact, some sectors
within the grassroots women’s
movement have become increasing-
ly receptive to feminist political
goals, including the championing of
reproductive rights. The Church
views this trend with alarm. By
challenging the word “gender” and
alternative definitions of family, the
Church hopes to strike a blow at the
very foundations of feminism.
The Catholic Church’s position
appears to be out of touch with pub-
lic opinion. For example, it contin-
ues to oppose birth control, even
though most Latin American
women favor the use of some form
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 6UPDATE / FEMINISM
While it may be amusing
to think of the Catholic
Church hierarchy wading
through feminist theory,
its attempts to demonize
feminism by associating it
with communism should
not be taken lightly. Hundreds of Latin American delegates participated in the Fourth
World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in September 1995.
of artificial contraception. A poll
taken in Lima after President
Alberto Fujimori’s recent decision
to make contraception available to
poor families is a case in point. The
poll showed that 95% of the popula-
tion believed in God, yet 80% also
said that Peruvians agreed with
using contraceptives. Likewise, the
Church considers abortion a “grave
sin,” yet it is widely practiced in the
region. Given the difficulties of
access to contraceptive methods,
abortion has become a major form
of birth control in Latin America. In
Chile, there are an estimated
170,000 abortions a year. One out of
every two pregnancies in Mexico
and one out of every three in Peru
ends in abortion. Since abortions are
performed clandestinely and often in
less than optimal conditions, this is
also a pressing health issue for Latin
American women. Abortion is the
fourth most common cause of
maternity deaths and the third most
common cause of hospitalization in
Mexico. In Colombia, 74.5% of
maternal deaths are the result of
botched abortions.
“Family” is the other sensitive
issue, not only because of gay and
lesbian households but also because
the Church’s ideal of a married cou-
ple as the pillar of society is unreal-
istic for many Latin American
women. In the poorest sectors of so-
ciety, women often bring up chil-
dren on their own. In Chile, for
example, 40% of all families are not
headed by a married couple. Of
every seven babies born in that
country, one is the child of an ado-
lescent, and in 61% of those cases,
the baby is the offspring of an
unmarried mother.
nstead of recognizing these real-
ities, the Vatican is trying to dis-
credit feminism. In order to do
this, the Church uses trendy-sound-
ing rhetoric which equates feminist
platforms with imperialism. The
bishopric of Argentina recently
argued that abortion is a form of
“modern biological colonialism
inspired by powerful nations that
impose their decisions on those of
weaker peoples who cannot make
themselves heard.” He urged the
faithful to stand up against this “col-
onialism.” The Catholic Church’s
defense of the poor–especially in
these neoliberal times-is a praise-
worthy goal, and the argument that
the North is imposing population
policies on the South is not without
some validity. But for many women
in the hemisphere, abortion is not an
absolute good-it is, rather, a des-
perate remedy.
Precisely because its position is
so rigid (neither abortion nor con-
traception) and has such little rela-
tion to reality, the Vatican must woo
women by other means. In a clear
fence-mending move prior to the
Fourth World Conference on
Women in Beijing, Pope John Paul
II addressed a Letter to Women in
which he thanks them for their
devotion, and praises their mission
as mothers, wives, daughters, work-
ers and nuns.
In his letter, the Pope recognizes
that women have frequently been
marginalized and even reduced to
slavery, and he expresses regret that
certain “sons of the Church” might
have contributed to women’s
oppression. He refrains, however,
from exploring the reasons for this
situation on the grounds that “it
would not be easy to attribute pre-
cise responsibility considering the
strength of cultural sedimentations
that, through the centuries, have
formed people’s mentalities.” What
the Pope does not seem to realize is
that, when he refers to the obstacles
that impede women’s full incorpo-
ration into social, political and eco-
nomic life, he needs the word “gen-
der” in order to explain the “cultur-
al sedimentations” that account for
inequalities.
It is in the world conferences
organized by the United Nations
that the Vatican is most active in its
campaign against feminism and
reproductive rights. The Vatican’s
Vol XXIX, No 4 JAN/FEB 1996 7UPDATE / FEMINISM
In Ciudad Segundo Montes, El Salvadoc residents meet to organize
observer status at the United
Nations gives it the right to partic-
ipate in these UN conferences–a
right not accorded to any other reli-
gious group. As Cecilia Olivares of
the Free Choice Information Group
(GIRE) in Mexico points out,
“Despite its status as observer, the
Vatican-a state that includes nei-
ther women nor children in its terri-
tory and whose members don’t have
sex and do not reproduce since they
have made a vow of chastity–
places obstacles in the way of deci-
sions on the sexual and reproductive
lives of millions of people on the
planet.”
In the planning stages of the Rio
de Janeiro Conference on Envi-
ronment and Development (1992),
the Cairo Conference on Population
and Development (1994), and the
Fourth World Conference on
Women in Beijing (1995), the
Vatican was vocal on questions of
family, marriage, divorce and
reproductive health. For example,
the Church put pressure on Latin
American governments to send
anti-abortion delegates to the Cairo
conference. Argentine President
Carlos Menem was recruited to the
cause, and tried to get a declaration
affirming the sacredness of life
from the moment of conception
included in the Presidential Summit
Meeting of Latin American leaders
held in Cartagena just before the
Cairo confer-
ence. Once that
conference got
underway, the
Vatican allied
itself with
Islamic funda-
mentalists in an
attempt to scut-
tle documents
favoring repro-
ductive rights.
When it was
unsuccessful in
its bid to erase
certain clauses
from the final
documents, the Vatican resorted to
insisting on bracketing phrases it
considered controversial, including
“family group” and “gender.”
Harshly criticized for its
heavy-handed approach in
Cairo, the Church shifted
gears in the preparations for the
Beijing conference, initiating an all-
out ideological war against the con-
cept of gender. A key battlesite was
the “Draft Platform for Action,” a
preparatory document for the
Beijing conference. The platform is
a complex document that deals with
a vast number of women’s issues–
from population to the feminization
of poverty to violence against wo-
men. One objection raised by Vat-
ican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-
Vals was that the word “gender” was
used more frequently than the word
“mother.”Archbishop of Tegucigalpa
and president of the Latin American
Episcopal Conference, Oscar
Rodriguez, asserted that the aim of
the Beijing conference was “to force
society to accept five types of gen-
der: masculine, feminine, lesbian,
homosexual and transsexual.” The
preparatory document gives no evi-
dence to support such a claim. “The
differences between women’s and
men’s achievements and activities,”
the draft platform states, “are still
not recognized as the consequences
of socially constructed gender roles
rather than immutable biological
differences.” But, of course, this was
precisely the definition of gender
that the Vatican found perturbing.
The news that the word “gender”
was unacceptable quickly surfaced
in Latin American discussions prior
to Beijing. In Chile, it began even
before Josefina Bilbao, minister of
the National Women’s Service
(SERNAM), had published the gov-
ernment position paper on Beijing.
In an interview with Politica y
Sociedad, she tried to wiggle out of
the controversy by defining gender
according to the Dictionary of the
Royal Academy as “a group of
beings who have one or various
characteristics in common.”
Once the position paper was pub-
lished and being debated in the
Senate, Bilbao attempted to sidestep
the issue of gender altogether,
focusing instead on the conference
themes of poverty, education and
political participation, as she would
do in the paper she later presented at
the Beijing conference. A group of
conservative senators, however,
challenged the position paper, cen-
tering their attack on the use of the
word “gender.” The senators com-
plained that “many people use the
word without further clarification,
claiming that masculine and femi-
nine respond merely to cultural and
sociological constructions and not
to biological conditions that consti-
tute the psychology of woman and
man. According to this conception,
the difference between the sexes
does not have a natural origin, a
view that has consequences for the
individual, for the family, and for
society.” These “ambiguous ideas”
were declared unacceptable.
The alternative position paper
that the senators came up with,
although eventually defeated, is
illustrative of what lies behind the
struggle over the meaning of gen-
der. Every Chilean, said the dissi-
dent senators, had the constitutional
duty to preserve “the essential val-
ues of Chilean tradition.” They
claimed to be defending that tradi-
tion against “value-oriented total-
itarianism” (code for feminism),
which they argued would allow all
kinds of unnatural practices. These
senators defined the family as the
stable union of men and women
within marriage, and they deemed
inadmissable any term or action that
threatened the family or “admitted
that persons of the same sex might
constitute a family.” Senator
Herndn Larrain Fernmndez remind-
ed Bilbao that she herself had
declared that homosexual families
were not “part of Chilean reality.”
Larrain also argued that reproduc-
tive rights implied a view of repro-
duction in a “purely animal context, dehumanized the concept of sex,
and opened the door to the argu-
ment in favor of abortion.” These
rights were described as “highly
inconvenient and dangerous.”
Clearly, the senators’ position is an
argument for the exclusion of gay
men and women from citizenship
and the criminalization of abortion.
The Catholic Church has also
found itself pitted against
multilateral lending institu-
tions over population-control poli-
cies. The World Bank and the Inter-
American Development Bank see
these policies as a way to reduce
poverty and facilitate women’s par-
ticipation in the wage-labor force.
Latin American governments are
caught in a bind between this imper-
ative to “modernize” and opposition
to birth control and abortion coming
from the Church and other conserv-
ative groups. Peru illustrates the
hard choices that neoliberal govern-
ments face on this issue. In his inau-
gural address to the nation on July
28 of last year, President Fujimori
unexpectedly broke ranks with other
Latin American countries on the
issue of birth control, announcing
that the state would facilitate access
to family planning for poor families.
“We have been and shall continue to
be a pragmatic government, without
taboos or ‘sacred cows,”‘ he said, in
a pointed reference to the Church.
“Peruvian women must be in con-
trol of their own destinies.”
Fujimori was playing the mod-
ernization card, appealing to multi-
lateral lending instituions by
promising that by the year 2000
poverty would be reduced by 50%
and that 50% of social spending
would be targeted for women. A
government document drawn up in
1993 and obtained by the Peruvian
journal Oiga revealed exactly how
large the population problem
loomed in the government’s
scheme of things. The document
forecasted that, at its current
growth rate, within four decades
Peru would have to support “a pop-
ulation of eight million hungry une-
ducated and unemployed people in
a climate of absolute poverty and
deeply inured delinquency.” For
those belonging to this “social sur-
plus,” the document recommended
vasectomies for men and tubal liga-
tion for women. Not surprisingly,
this language led to comparisons
between Fujimori’s population con-
trol and the Nazi’s “final solution.”
Church leaders denounced it as a
proposal “for the ‘mutilation’ of
men and women by the power of
darkness.”
Fujimori answered his critics in a
speech at Beijing, where he charac-
terized himself as “a blue-jeans
President” in touch with contempo-
rary problems. He announced that a
“social miracle,” which would
boost women from mere survival
into productive development, would
follow his “economic miracle.”
However, this claim to be protecting
women rings hollow given that
Fujimori has demolished workers’
rights, including health and safety
regulations for women in the work-
place.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church
continues its virulent opposition to
reproductive rights. The gender
debate that it has prompted in Latin
America is clearly a smoke screen
The Catholic Church’s
virulent opposition
to the word
“gender”
is clearly a
smokescreen for
a vicious attack
on women’s rights.
for a vicious attack on women’s
rights. Not only is the Church fight-
ing a losing battle, but more seri-
ously, its campaign has obscured
the real issues. The Beijing confer-
ence, if it achieved nothing else,
registered the fact that “women’s
issues”-including their human
rights-have moved to the fore of
the world’s political agendas. Both
multilateral lending institutions and
feminist groups are in favor of pro-
moting sex education, making con-
traception widely available to
women, and decriminalizing abor-
tion. It seems clear, however, that
these common stances rest on fun-
damentally different assumptions.
While Latin American feminists see
these issues as essentially about the
rights of women to control their
own lives, the World Bank and the
Inter-American Development Bank
are primarily interested in popula-
tion control. Illegal abortion, per-
haps the most inflammatory issue, is a significant threat to women’s
health in Latin America, and crimi-
nalization only serves to perpetuate
the problem. On the other hand, emphasis on birth control and abor-
tion rights to the exclusion of
women’s education, development,
and changing role in society is just
as questionable. It is these debates
that should have been foregrounded
and not the struggle over the use of
the word gender.
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