Fifteen years ago, Jane Jaquette edited a landmark volume called The Women's Movement in Latin America: Participation and Democracy (1994). It introduced many scholars to gender politics and feminism in this region of the world, and has remained a key reference in a growing body of literature on women's mobilization. For that reason, the new volume under review generates high expectations, especially as it claims to “examine how Latin American women's movements have responded to the dramatic political, economic, and social changes of the last twenty years” (back cover). In several respects, Jaquette has delivered another major contribution to the field, with nine high-quality case studies grouped under three sections: “Feminism and the State”; “Legal Strategies and Democratic Institutions”; and “International and Cross-Border Activism.” However, in her introduction and in her own chapter, Jaquette praises feminism's institutionalization and privileges state-centered strategies in ways that warrant more critical scrutiny.

The book has a regional scope although the case studies cover Southern Cone countries, Peru, Venezuela, and Mexico (particularly the Mexico-U.S. border zone). Its last section provides crucial insights about transnational and regional activism, a component of women's mobilization that has grown in strength since the 1990s. In this section, Kathleen Staudt and Gabriela Montoya analyze the multiple sources of women's rights violations related to sexual exploitation, drug trafficking, and migration across the Mexico-U.S. border, as well as forms of joint activism between women from both sides. Virginia Vargas's important chapter on feminist activism at the World Social Forum (WSF) highlights the struggles sustained by feminists inside one of the most progressive mobilization spaces, to establish the legitimacy of feminism in the construction of “Another World.” Teresa Valdés and Alina Donoso's piece analyzes the project Indice de Compromiso Cumplido (Index of Commitments Fulfilled) whereby women's organizations in eighteen countries of Latin America developed and used a methodology to report on states' compliance with their international commitments regarding women's rights. Taken together, these three chapters illustrate a diversity of strategies and organizational forms adopted by feminist activists in the region.

The national case studies presented in the first two sections of the book will be useful to scholars specializing on the politics of these countries. They address the role of Michelle Bachelet in feminist politics in Chile, the impact of electoral gender quotas in Argentina and Brazil, the relationship between feminist activism and the Bolivarian project of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, the effectiveness of legal strategies to uphold women's rights in Argentina, international litigation based on local cases of violence against women in Brazil, and the work to engender the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Peru. The last chapter, authored by Jaquette, titled “Feminist Activism and the Challenges of Democracy,” does not pretend to sum up the book, but neither does it advance a clear argument beyond attempting to develop a historical perspective on how key feminist themes such as “difference versus equality” or “autonomy” have evolved. Unfortunately, this chapter moves much too quickly and lacks a clear connection to the rest of the book.

In general, though, the chapters are excellent, all written by top feminist experts and academics, and providing up-to-date data and perspectives on feminist strategies and work in the region. Most are well balanced and highlight successes as well as limits. As noted above, aside from the chapter by Vargas, the book is centered on feminist strategies vis-à-vis the state or international institutions, with a strong focus on political institutions, the judiciary, and legal norms. The book demonstrates the success of feminist institutionalization since the third wave of democratization, although with important limits due to states' lack of accountability and political parties' continuing marginalization of women. While the book nicely represents how most feminist activism has evolved in the last twenty years, it pushes aside a number of serious questions that feminist theory and practices have begun to tackle and that warrant further attention.

For example, in her chapter, Jaquette mentions in passing that domestic work has been off the hook of Latin American feminist agendas and that this precludes cross-class alliances (p. 212). While this is true, Jaquette does not talk about the very courageous work done by domestic workers themselves to organize and struggle for their rights at the national and regional levels. Could their demands be considered part of an alternative feminist agenda? How have “official” feminist organizations collaborated or reacted to domestic workers' campaigns? Addressing such questions would have broadened our vision of feminist change in the region. In the same vein, the critiques that have emerged among women's movements about dominant feminist organizations' weakness regarding their capacity to address class and ethnic oppression are not systematically discussed, except, for example, in footnote 4 of Jaquette's chapter, where indigenous movements are mentioned. Again, it would have been original and illuminating to include a piece on the agendas of indigenous women, even if they are not self-identified as feminists. Overall, the volume defines feminism narrowly, as a (largely) liberal and middle-class movement, whereas it could have entered the field of contestation within feminism and beyond feminism to identify new emerging trends.

Radical (autonomous) feminism, popular feminism, and indigenous women's activism are evoked in some chapters, such as Vargas's discussion of feminist dialogues within the WSF, but they are certainly worthy of much more in-depth analysis to reveal the contrasts and tensions faced by feminists who interact at the local, national, and regional levels with other women's movements or other civil society actors. From that point of view, the volume stops short of illustrating the diversity of subjects who claim to represent women and women's interests, and who pose serious challenges—practical, political, and theoretical—to dominant forms of feminist discourse and practice. Since the definition of what counts as women's interests and how to define gender equality/equity should be treated as open-ended questions only answerable through empirical research, Jaquette missed an opportunity to include studies of a much larger spectrum of social actors.

This critique also relates to the centrality given to feminist strategies targeting the state, political institutions, and the law. Is democracy relevant to feminist agendas only through its official, central institutions? Certainly, decentralization and social policy reforms that have been extensive in Latin America in the last fifteen years have led to very different political participation dynamics by women. How has that affected feminist agendas and practices? Gioconda Espina, in her chapter on Bolivarian Venezuela, touches on these issues in a very interesting fashion. But aside from her chapter, it goes largely unaddressed. Another crucial aspect related to democracy under neoliberalism is the repression of protest activities, mostly those of the poorest sectors in rural areas or urban shantytowns. Women are very involved in street protests in several countries. Many women leaders have emerged at the municipal or sectoral levels, often as part of protest activities and not only as a result of electoral gender quotas. How have feminists responded to these developments; how does that change the way feminists strategize to lobby the state? Feminist Agendas and Democracy in Latin America, unfortunately, fails sufficiently to address these questions. All the same, it is a very useful collection of works, and it nicely reveals the vitality of feminist movements and networks in Latin America.