Mobilized Yet Contained: Popular Women, Feminisms, and Organizing around Venezuela’s 2012 Organic Labor Law

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211013023
• Author: Rachel Elfenbein
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211013023

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 240, Vol. 48 No. 5, September 2021, 75–95

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211013023

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

75

Mobilized Yet Contained

Popular Women, Feminisms, and Organizing around

Venezuela’s 2012 Organic Labor Law

by

Rachel Elfenbein

Venezuela’s state-led national-popular Bolivarian process opened up a new political

field for feminism—an approach that was both institutional and popular, aiming to com-

bine forces from above and from below and use state gender institutions to foment popular

women’s organization. Yet this field was conflictual, containing contesting popular femi-

nist projects with different implications for the gendered division of labor. Analysis of

popular women’s organizing around Venezuela’s 2012 organic labor law shows that state

adoption of feminism marked a gendered political opening for popularizing feminism

while also presenting risks of state co-optation of popular women’s organizing. The state

understood popular women’s organization and mobilization as central to the revolution,

yet it generally attempted to limit their autonomy and organizing to challenge the gen-

dered division of labor.

El bolivarianismo nacional-popular liderado por el estado venezolano abrió un nuevo

campo político para el feminismo: un enfoque que era tanto institucional como popular y

cuyo objetivo era combinar fuerzas tanto de arriba como de abajo, así como utilizar las

instituciones estatales de género para fomentar las organizaciones populares de mujeres.

Sin embargo, este campo resultó conflictivo, y parte de su contenido impugnaba proyectos

feministas populares con diferentes implicaciones para las divisiones de género en el tra-

bajo. El análisis de la organización popular de las mujeres en torno a la ley orgánica del

trabajo de Venezuela de 2012 muestra que la adopción estatal del feminismo marcó una

apertura política de género con intenciones de popularizar el feminismo a la vez que pre-

sentaba el riesgo de que la organización popular de las mujeres fuera cooptada por el

estado. El estado consideraba la organización y movilización popular de las mujeres como

esenciales a la revolución. Sin embargo y hablando generalmente, se abocó a limitar su

autonomía y organización cuando se trataba de desafiar las divisiones de género en el

trabajo.

Keywords: Popular feminism, Popular power, Gender justice, Unpaid labor, Bolivarian

Revolution

In the late twentieth century, poor and working-class women across Latin

America appropriated and fashioned popular feminisms in their struggles

against state abuses and for state recognition and redistribution. Popular

Rachel Elfenbein has a Ph.D. in sociology from Simon Fraser University and was a Fulbright

scholar in Venezuela, where she conducted the dissertation fieldwork that led to her book,

Engendering Revolution: Women, Unpaid Labor, and Maternalism in Bolivarian Venezuela (2019).

1013023LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211013023LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESElfenbein / POPULAR WOMEN AND VENEZUELA’S LABOR LAW

research-article2021

76 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

feminisms “named the gendered character of these struggles” (Conway,

2016: 1) and developed “gender-class perspective[s]” on “low-income wom-

en’s needs, interests, and demands” (Maier, 2010: 41). What happens to poor

and working-class women’s struggles and organization when the state adopts

popular feminism? What does the state do in the name of popular feminism?

What does state adoption of popular feminism mean for gender justice?

To answer these questions, I examine Venezuela’s Bolivarian state’s adoption

of popular feminism and its implications for the gendered division of labor.

Conceptualizing feminisms as struggles to overcome gender subordination, I

focus on the gendered division of labor because, under capitalism, this is a cru-

cial point where “three interpenetrating orders of gender subordination” of

women intersect: “(mal)distribution,” (non) or “(mis)recognition,” and (non) or

“(mis)representation” (Fraser, 2009: 104). I draw from Fraser’s (2009) theoriza-

tion of gender justice as occurring in three interconnected spheres: recognition

(cultural), redistribution (economic), and representation (political). The gen-

dered division of labor under capitalism relegates the bulk of the responsibility

for unpaid care work to poor and working-class women, devalues unpaid and

paid work performed largely by women, renders women inferior to men in

private life, marginalizes women in political life and enables men to dominate

the political system, and bases welfare and labor market regimes on a (gender-

normative and heteronormative) male-breadwinner model (104). The ways a

state intervenes in the gendered division of labor, recognizes the women per-

forming unpaid labor, distributes resources to them, and enables their participa-

tion and representation in political processes demonstrate its commitment to

overcoming gender subordination and achieving gender justice. By analyzing

how the Bolivarian state both opened up and closed down opportunities for

popular women’s organizing for wealth redistribution to poor homemakers, I

show that it promoted popular feminisms while simultaneously delimiting

them for its own political ends. The Bolivarian state’s containment of popular

feminisms calls into question its commitment to gender justice.

PoPular feminisms’ transformations

Latin American popular feminisms tended to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s

among women from popular sectors in reaction to dictatorships, state abuses,

and neoliberal austerity programs (González, 2018). As oppositional politics,

popular feminisms addressed gender and class intersections (Maier, 2010),

often protesting states and “combin[ing] a commitment to basic material sur-

vival for women and their families with . . . challenges to women’s subordina-

tion to men” (Stephen, 1997: 267). Forged out of contestations with historical

Latin American feminisms about feminism’s essence and bounds (Conway,

2016: 4–5), popular feminisms were “created amidst tensions, interactions, and

negotiations with other women’s groups” (Drogus and Stewart-Gambino,

quoted in González, 2018). Middle-class and leftist feminists often worked with

women in popular organizations to develop popular feminist agendas that

articulated poor and working-class women’s interests and demands to build

mass feminist movements (Chinchilla and Haas, 2006; Conway, 2016; Maier,