Policy makers in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile faced tough choices on abortion, divorce, and gender equality in the family. The results were often surprising. Conservative military rulers adopted liberalizing reforms on family equality, sometimes more easily than democratic governments. In spite of their moral authority and strength in civil society, Roman Catholic bishops could be defeated, paving the way for the legalization of divorce. In an era when the majority of Western countries introduced elective abortion, Argentina and Brazil kept abortion a crime and Chile banned abortion under all circumstances. Chile modernized its economy and consolidated its democracy, but held on to the most conservative and restrictive laws on gender in Latin America.

Propositions

What propositions can be gleaned from these puzzling experiences? In the first place, transitions to democracy will not necessarily lead to the liberalization of laws on gender and may in fact lead to the opposite. The democracies of North America and Western Europe have developed some of the most liberal laws on gender in the world. Abortion and divorce are permitted, and women enjoy equal rights. Western laws have long served as models for legal reform in the rest of the world, particularly Latin America. It thus seemed safe to assume that when Latin American countries made the transition from authoritarian military regimes to democracy in the 1980s, they would seek to emulate the West's gender regime.