From “Armies of Love” to Demanding Legal Abortion

Abstract

This article argues that Argentina’s recent feminist “green wave” emerged from the political militancy of working-class women responding to the economic violence of the 1990s neoliberal reforms and the nation’s financial collapse in 2001. The first section details the gendered experience of the 1990s neoliberal crisis from the “feminization” of the workforce, the rise in child mortality due to malnutrition, and, as a result, the increase in deaths from clandestine abortions. The second section details the development of gendered consciousness among working-class women through the formation of espacios de mujeres (women’s spaces) after 2001. The espacios allowed piqueteras (unemployed women) to organize against patriarchal violence and gendered marginalization in their homes and organizations. The third section examines how working-class women’s participation in the yearly National Women’s Encounter transformed it from a small women’s gathering to a conference that brought together social movements under a shared feminist abortion rights banner.