Gender is central to the political disputes in Latin America today. Although conflicts concerning women and LGBTQ rights are not new, only recently have they become a dividing line in the public identities of parties, politicians, and candidates. The second decade of the 2000s brought the opposition to gender forward in the platforms of far-right movements and leaders, raising popular support as they mobilized conservative frameworks and antagonized feminist and LGBTQ activism. Their promises to protect the family from a supposed moral disorder made gender a popular category, strategically presented as an “ideology” threatening children, marriage, the natural order, and national values. Elections such as those in Brazil and Costa Rica in 2018 indicate that conflicts concerning gender and sexuality can also produce new electoral cleavages.

The backlash against gender originated in Catholic intellectual circles and documents in the 1990s as an antidote to the dismantling of complementary roles in the family for men and women and the hierarchical order in which they are central (Garbagnoli Reference Garbagnoli, Bracke and Paternotte2018). In the 2000s, the backlash was aimed at laws, judicial decisions, and public policy guaranteeing equal marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, and comprehensive sexual education guided by the principles of equality and diversity.

In Latin America, the third wave of democratization coincided with an international context in which gender and sexual rights were central to the human rights framework. As the previous fight against authoritarian regimes became a struggle to establish and consolidate democracies, feminist and LGBTQ movements pursued rights and gender mainstreaming in public policies. The opportunities expanded as center-left governments were elected in the 2000s, configuring the “pink tide” in the region. These governments had ambivalent relations with feminist demands for gender justice (Blofield, Ewig, and Piscopo Reference Blofield, Ewig and Piscopo2017; Friedman and Tabbush Reference Friedman, Tabbush and Friedman.2019). Nonetheless, quota and parity laws were strengthened or regulated as feminists had more space in women's policy machineries, as well as in other areas in which policy making incorporated gendered perspectives. Laws liberalizing abortion, legalizing same-sex marriage and recognizing the right to gender identity were rare (Pérez Betancur Reference Pérez Betancur2019), but countries such as Uruguay and Argentina managed to achieve legislative changes, while others, such as Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, achieved change through judicial decisions (Biroli Reference Biroli2018; Caminotti and Tabbush Reference Caminotti and Tabbush2019).

This is the context in which a “reactive politicization” of gender takes place (Vaggione Reference Vaggione, Sáez and Morán Faúndes2016), opposing advancements led by feminist and LGBTQ movements and their allies in recent decades. As Stéphanie Rousseau asserts in her essay in this volume, gender is currently “a nodal point of articulation of conservative sectors dominated by religious actors, struggling against an increasingly diverse set of social movements defending women's rights and sexual diversity.” The cycle of protests starting in 2016 in Colombia, Mexico, and Peru clearly indicates this reactionary dynamic, as conservative organizations mobilized thousands and took to the streets against equal marriage and comprehensive sex education.

This phenomenon is a multifaceted reaction, invoking “gender ideology” as a political strategy around which different actors have converged, as discussed in the essays in this symposium. The campaign against gender goes beyond the most conflictual issues, giving conservative groups a common language for political struggles that are not necessarily connected to sexuality. Examples include President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment in Brazil in 2016 (Biroli Reference Biroli2016), the opposition to the peace agreement between Colombia's government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas that same year (Amaya Reference Amaya2017; Vélez and Castro Reference Vélez, Castro and Vélez2018), and conservative reactions to gender parity in Paraguay in 2018 (Caminotti and Tabbush Reference Caminotti and Tabbush2019).

That these conservative movements have a reactive character does not prevent them from mobilizing their own agendas. One defining feature of the gender backlash in Latin America is that it promotes alternative framings for rights and gender relations. In fact, the challenges raised by these groups have open-ended political consequences, since they seek to delegitimize a basic foundation of national and international policies since the 1990s: that gender is a social constructed constellation of structures and meanings that create hierarchies and power inequalities.

As we know, feminism has struggled to expose power relations in the private sphere, revealing its connections to hierarchies and inequalities in the public sphere. Hence, the politicization of gender and sexuality required critical approaches to the boundaries between the public and the private. The gender backlash departs from this criticism to promote an alternative framework in which family rights are defined as more significant than individual rights, and collective alternatives promoting gender justice are presented as harmful because they question parental authority. Familism is thus renewed as key to the conservative claim that human rights, feminism, and LGBTQ activists are “neocolonial” actors, advocating ideas that the majority of citizens do not share (Biroli Reference Biroli2019).

Although the gender backlash is a global phenomenon, it is important to understand its regional patterns. In Latin America, transnational networks promote the idea that the family is at risk if “gender ideology” is not stopped, bringing together religious and secular actors, Catholics and Evangelicals. Such groups were fundamental to the launching of the Frente Nacional por la Familia (National Front for the Family) in Mexico and the movement #ConMisHijosNoTeMetas (Don't Mess with My Children) in Peru, with significant resonance in different countries. In Brazil, the movement called Schools without Parties, created in 2004 to fight what was seen as leftist and Marxist indoctrination in schools, incorporated “gender ideology” after 2014, as it encountered new allies in religious groups promoting censorship and laws to ban sex education throughout the country. Lawyers and political scientists aligned to the campaign against gender argue that “cultural Marxism” and “radical feminism” act together to eliminate the family—that is, heterosexual family and patriarchal authority—supported by “global elites” and organizations such as the United Nations.Footnote ¹

One of the challenges faced by those analyzing this phenomenon is revealing what is new and which conceptual categories can offer a better lens to understand its complexity. The first essays in this symposium deal with such challenges, proposing conceptual tools and analytical models. Juan Marco Vaggione and Maria Das Dores Campos Machado propose the concept of neoconservatism to identify the mutations and the current patterns of conservatism in Latin America. They highlight the temporality of the gender backlash, the alliances and affinities between Catholic and Evangelical sectors, and the judicialization of moral claims in a context in which conservative actors maximize democratic channels to advance their agenda. The transnational character of neoconservatism allows the relative homogeneity of the backlash in the region.

Verónica Pérez Betancur and Cecilia Rocha Carpiuc address a relatively underanalyzed aspect of the Latin American gender backlash, but one of great relevance for research and political agendas. Moving beyond the adoption of legislative reforms to policy implementation, they develop a fresh typology of the different kinds of backlashes against reforms concerning sexual behavior, with a focus on induced abortion and same-sex marriage. The authors argue that the backlash against these policies can be better understood by disaggregating two dimensions: the level at which the reaction occurs (macro or micro) and the actors’ strategies (institutional or noninstitutional). Through this lens, the essay develops a valuable analytical device for studying “the day after” highly contentious reforms, as well as unpacking the complexity of countermovement actions to prevent women and LBGTQ people from accessing their rights.

Focusing on recent political processes in Peru, Mexico, and Brazil, the other essays provide an interpretation of the counter-movements and their effects, discussing their efforts to delegitimize the fundamental elements of the gender agenda, their strategies, and the political contexts in which they had the opportunity to increase their action and to have social resonance.

Stéphanie Rousseau explores the emergence of conservative campaigns organized under the slogan Con Mis Hijos No Te Metas (Don't Mess with My Children) in Peru, considering the strategies as well as the links between conservative countermovements led by Christian actors and party politics. Shedding light into key features of the Latin American gender backlash, Rousseau suggests that the contemporary conservative agenda has gone beyond opposition to sex education policies to question the meaning of “gender” and its incorporation into state policies more broadly. For the Peruvian case, the author postulates a link between the advancement of the antigender agenda, the weakness of democratic institutions, and citizen distrust of traditional politicians.

Gisela Zaremberg analyzes contemporary feminist activism vis-à-vis the emergence of conservative religious groups in Mexico, where the transition to democracy was accompanied by the emergence of feminist networks and organizations that pressured to influence state policies. These activists raised demands for women's rights that resulted in innovative institutions and cutting-edge legislation, such as gender parity. In light of this trajectory, the author presents a more nuanced image of activism in present-day Mexico and emphasizes the political incursion of conservative countermovements with a growing presence of neo-Pentecostal actors developing diverse and effective strategies and political networks in alliance with Catholic sectors.

Lastly, Leigh Payne and Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos analyze recent Brazilian political events in their connection to the electoral triumph of the far-right in 2018. Their focus is on political opportunities shaping the framing processes and opening a compelling space for right-wing mobilization. Their essay offers a conceptual framework to define the right-wing mobilization in Latin America, aiming at the strengthening of comparative categories and methodological tools.

In sum, this set of essays addresses the challenge of conceptualizing and characterizing the contemporary gender backlash, generating fresh reflections about its contours, scope and potential political consequences for democracy and citizenship rights in Latin America.