Upon entering office in 2007, socialist Rafael Correa launched his Citizen Revolution in Ecuador, with the aim of establishing a postneoliberal order. His antineoliberal political discourse called for a “living well” (i.e., buen vivir in spanish; sumaq kawsay in Quichua) development model that favored solidarity over competition and sustainability over economic growth. It also called for increased political inclusivity and a form of redistribution that reaches a broader range of citizens. In line with other Latin American populist-socialist leaders, such as Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, Correa claimed that his revolution “has a woman's face.” Yet personally, Correa is a devout Catholic and trained economist who opposes abortion and homosexuality and favors a traditional familial model—one that reinforces a notion of “modern economic man” that is both Eurocentric and heteronormative.Footnote ¹

In this essay, I focus on the contradictions of Correa's Citizen Revolution during the 2007–11 period. In particular, I analyze social reproduction in legislative and policy arenas to understand how women who do not fit within socially prescribed gender norms and traditional households (e.g., transnational migrant, same sex), benefit (or not) from the proposed redistributive mechanisms. I do this with an understanding that “the family” matters: As feminist scholars have long noted, how the family is conceptualized in political discourse greatly affects how nations distribute their resources, define their borders, and provide for and protect members of their national communities (Luibhéid Reference Luibheíd2002; Yuval-Davis Reference Yuval-Davis1997). Yet even feminist scholars have left unexamined the coloniality of gender, or the ways in which gender itself is constituted through categories of sexual, racial, and economic modernization and in turn shapes family policy and law (Lind Reference Lind, Marchand and Sisson Runyan2010; Lugones Reference Lugones2008).

In this essay, I focus primarily on the framing of family norms in the 2008 Constitution, which is seen as progressive by many accounts and which, in many ways, institutionalized Correa's Citizen Revolution. Constitutional reform has been used by leftist leaders as a strategy to expand the scope of citizen rights (Mendoza Reference Mendoza2011). Yet in contrast to the constitution itself and to the overall buen vivir agenda, the Correa administration continues to support a capitalist agenda that privileges resource extraction over indigenous rights and heteronationalism over alternative family logics. When President Correa stated on the campaign trail that his revolution “has a woman's face,” he implied that women as mothers and caretakers would be the political and reproductive foundation of the new socialist nation. Yet precisely by placing social reproduction at the center of my analysis of the Correa government, I reveal the gendered contradictions of both neoliberal and postneoliberal forms of governance. Despite Correa's rhetoric, there are enduring continuities of traditional, heteronormative notions of family in Ecuador's shift to the left that continue to rely on caring labor as part of the buen vivir development model.

In my previous work (Lind Reference Lind2005), I questioned how legislative and policy successes related to women's rights were possible during Ecuador's neoliberal period. Beginning in the early 1980s, grassroots women's organizations of various kinds, including urban poor, peasant, and indigenous, emerged throughout the country, partly as a response to Ecuador's extremely high foreign debt burden (at one point the highest in the region) and to the gendered ways in which these groups perceived the crisis through their roles in social reproduction as well as in the market economy. In many ways, these grassroots efforts to plan and provide social services for their communities were an important example of the so-called privatization of everyday life (Benería Reference Benería, Benería and Feldman1992) and the institutionalization of women's struggles for survival. While perhaps politically empowering for many women participants, the efforts nonetheless contributed to their ongoing economic marginalization, given the neoliberal move to shift the burden of social reproduction to the private realm. Importantly, their caring labor continues to sustain the national economy, and is itself imbued in a stratified logic of “deserving” and “undeserving” mothers of the crisis and nation (Lind Reference Lind2005, chap. 4).

At the same time, there was a flurry of legislative and policy reforms related to women's rights during the 1990s; more reforms occurred in the country during this decade than any other in the twentieth century, including the 1995 Violence Against Women Act, the establishment of Women's Police Commissaries, the 1997 adoption of a female political quota, the ongoing institutionalization of the National Women's Commission (CONAMU), the introduction of CONAMU's first equal opportunity plan, and the revision of several family-related penal and civil codes. Yet the schism between eroding economic rights and the heightened institutionalization of women's political rights remained—a common scenario under neoliberalism.

So, as Ecuador shifts away from neoliberalism, what has Correa's socialist agenda brought for women, and for marginalized groups more generally? How has his agenda addressed and framed “the family,” and to what extent has the previous recognition of women (and sexual minorities) contributed to their increased access to resources that, in theory, result from the 2008 Constitution?

To begin, the 2008 Constitution defines the state as “constitutional, rights and justice-based, social, democratic, sovereign, independent, unitary, intercultural, plurinational and secular.” Following the principle of sumac kawsay or buen vivir, it is based on respect for sovereignty and self-determination in terms of “economy, political life, finances, food, culture and environment” (Marcos and Cordero Reference Marcos and Cordero2009, 3). For the first time ever, the constitution granted inalienable rights to nature (Asamblea Constituyente 2008). It also asserts the right to water and the right to protest. Of the demands made by organized women's movements, 34 out of 36 were included in the approved constitution—a clear victory for the mainstream women's movement. These demands included, among others, the rights to personal integrity and to a life free from violence; to equality before the law and to nondiscrimination; to equitable political and economic participation; to make free and responsible decisions in one's sexual and reproductive life; and to equality in education, social welfare, and public policies. The constitution includes an antidiscrimination clause on the basis of gender identity as well as sexual orientation. Hate crime language was included for the first time.

Ironically, although the political Right managed to include language defining marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman, the legal definition of “the family” was changed, opening new possibilities for same-sex partner recognition. Specifically, whereas previously “the family” was defined solely in terms of blood relations and/or kinship, it is now defined as one based on “alternative logics,” including other social factors, such as household composition or living arrangement (Asamblea Constituyente 2008). This opens up multiple possibilities for the extension of state benefits and legal protections (including domestic partnerships) to non-normative families, including same-sex, transnational migrant, and communal households, as well as other non-normative forms of kinship. On paper, the new constitutional language challenges the state's historical role in regulating intimate and familial arrangements through biological reproduction and/or marriage.Footnote ²

In practice, however, the story has been quite different. In 2008, after the nation voted to approve the new constitution, Correa dismantled CONAMU and the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs. The dismantling was necessary, he argued, to “transition” these agencies into a state-based Equity Council that would address all kinds of inequality.Footnote ³ Yet to date, this council has not been established, leaving a wide institutional gap with regard to gender and racial/ethnic equity policies, laws, and education, and an absence of mechanisms to address issues concerning sexual orientation and gender identity.

Similarly, mechanisms were proposed in 2008 to implement the constitutional reforms in the judicial and criminal justice branches of the government, yet in actuality, little has been done. Even the easiest measures to pass—antidiscrimination measures—have been very difficult to operationalize, given the lack of training and political will among state employees. Contradictions of inclusion endure, and the state has thus far failed at addressing inequality except through a narrow focus on class via its economic redistributive scheme, which emphasizes poverty reduction.

The contradictions do not end with lack of implementation of specific constitutional clauses, however; they also arise with the implementation of the buen vivir agenda more broadly. Capitalist economic growth, especially in oil development, fuels Correa's Citizen Revolution, yet also conflicts with his purportedly more inclusive buen vivir agenda. While his agenda is antineoliberal, it certainly is not anticapitalist. Correa has spent $6.6 billion on social spending (much higher than have previous right-wing governments), mostly in poverty reduction, a genuine popular interest that has garnered him among the highest approval ratings in recent presidential history. In addition, he has resisted World Bank policy prescriptions and created new relationships with the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, or ALBA), China, and other trade partners. Yet political opposition is growing, among economic elites, teachers, indigenous communities, and organized labor. For example, his administration's continued support for oil development and surplus extraction from indigenous lands, despite ongoing resistance and despite the constitutional recognition of the “rights of nature,” has led to the worst conflict between the indigenous movement, especially its leading organization, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, or the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE) and the state in recent history (Becker Reference Becker2011; de la Torre Reference de la Torre2009).

Correa's revolution with a woman's face also continues to rely on a colonialist gendered logic that privileges a Western notion of the individual and (heterosexual) family over all others. Like neoliberalism, this logic is neither equitable nor sustainable. As before, women-as-mothers are the primary targets of Citizen Revolution policies and legal reforms. Although Correa has increased social spending, his overall focus is on class redistribution. State poverty assistance does not necessarily lead to increased economic empowerment for poor women, let alone for individuals who do not fit within this normative familial model. As widely observed in neoliberal contexts, a notion of development that relies on women's traditional roles as mothers in social reproduction will create economic inequality for women. To the extent that Correa's redistribution scheme relies upon a colonialist gendered logic, socialist or postneoliberal development is no different from the neoliberal model. And the notion of revolutionary citizenship that accompanies this economic logic reinforces inequalities: For example, in the 2008 Constitution, indigenous women's rights are sometimes included under communal rights and sometimes under women's rights, making it unclear how indigenous women can seek justice or access state resources and in this way better their lives (Asamblea Constituyente 2008). And while some advances have been made with respect to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, and intersexual (LGBTTI) rights, including a new definition of the family in the constitution that potentially includes nonkinship-based households (e.g., same sex) and an antidiscrimination clause based on gender identity, it is not yet clear how institutional mechanisms and public policies will address these laws outside a heteronormative framework that privileges motherhood and reproduction over other experiences of poverty and inequality.

It is interesting to note that Correa's revolution with a woman's face is all too reminiscent of earlier socialist revolutions that viewed women's participation through a paternalistic, heteronormative lens, yet also of neoliberal approaches to development, such as UNICEF's “adjustment with a human face” approach, in which (presumably heterosexual) women are targeted primarily in their roles as mothers and caretakers and seen as the key “absorbers” of the economic crisis (Benería and Feldman 1992). Thus, neoliberal ideologies of caring labor and, more broadly, capitalism continue to be at the center of Correa's Citizen Revolution, and a liberal logic of rights (as opposed to a notion of decolonization or postliberalism put forth by some progressives—see Escobar Reference Escobar2010) is inherent to his approach to addressing “the family.” More than anything, a restructuring of power has taken place, one that, despite its political challenge to neoliberalism, continues to privilege economic modernization and prioritize class over gender, sexual, ethnic, and racial concerns.

Placing legislative and policy battles concerning family norms and social reproduction at the center of analyses thus causes us to rethink conventional typologies of left versue right and neoliberal versus postneoliberal, and to question further the relationship between governance and development, particularly for those of us concerned with linking earlier struggles for recognition to the new Left's redistributive agenda. Indeed, to the extent that redistribution relies upon a colonialist gendered logic, Correa's alternative modernization agenda may, in fact, be more similar to neoliberalism than many of us had hoped.