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It would perhaps go without saying that, given the culture of ‘machismo’, still strong throughout Latin America, feminist and women’s movements have been forced to negotiate culture on a number different of issues pertaining to gender justice. Making domestic violence against women visible and defining it as a serious social problem in need of society- wide solutions, have been major struggles in that direction. It took more than 30 years for In this paper I have argued that culture interacts with development, focusing, in particular, on how culture has been negotiated by women’s movements in Latin America in the promotion of gender justice and women’s empowerment. This argument has been based on a dynamic notion of culture that views it not as a crystallised entity, but rather as an ‘active process of meaning making and contestations over definitions’ Culture interacts with development in multiple ways. However the importance of culture within development should not be seen as translating to crystallising and solidifying its meaning or providing definitive ideas of what works. In this paper, I look at the relevance of culture to the promotion of gender equality and women's empowerment, and examine how some women's movements in Latin America have negotiated and contested meanings around culture and as a result have resignified gender values, attitudes and behaviours.

The example of Las madres de la Plaza de Mayo questions the cultural construct of motherhood and the traditional role of the mother caring for the family within the home, and the women's neighbourhood action based in Bahia, Brazil which I look at contests and extends the notion of that domestic space. The importance of deconstructing and fighting against stereotypical images and patriarchal views of women in order to uphold gender rights is clear from the examples I look at on domestic violence, sex worker violence and the Black Women's Movement's struggle against sexist and racist images.feminists in Brazil to see the passage of the Maria da Penha Law, a comprehensive legislation package to criminalise and curtail domestic violence against women, and still much to come before they win over the patriarchal reluctance of judges – women and men alike – in applying the law comprehensively. 

In conclusion I argue that in employing 'transformatory thinking' the women's groups that I look at in this paper have worked together as women to contest and confront accepted cultural meanings and by doing so have begun to restructure the gender order and promote gender equality.

Over the past 15 years, Latin America saw an emerging and increasing number of Gender-Responsive Budget Initiatives (GRBIs). In this period, it is possible to identify a learning process that spanned initial gender budget analysis carried out since the late 1990s to effective and real changes in budget processes pursuing GRB institutionalization. In order to gain some insights about such learning processes, this study analyzes a selected group of 21 GRBIs. It was grounded on the hypothesis that, despite the great diversity that characterizes them, it is possible to identify certain patterns followed in the process of institutionalization that finally lead to improvements in financing for gender equality. Thus, the study sought to respond to two questions: What were the key common elements that allowed to move a GRBI from an “experimental” experience to an institutional regular practice? How has such progress in terms of institutionalization finally led to improvements in financing for gender equality? After presenting the methodology and scope, the chapter introduces some of the main elements of the regional context that surround the implementation of the GRBIs, briefly reviews the common strategies used, presents a synthesis of their main achievements, and finalizes with the conclusions.

To describe the dynamic versus static stereotype for men or women within a particular country, we report the simple linear trends for each dimension of the stereotypes within the target sex and country. To determine whether these trends differed between specific coun- tries, each between-country contrast took the form of a Country × Year linear interaction for a dimension within a target sex. The overall Country × Year interaction that took all three countries into account simultaneously was also calculated but is not reported. To test the hypothesis that a group undergoing social change is believed to adopt traits associated with its new roles, this study examined perceptions of women and men of the past, present, and future in Brazil, Chile, and the United States. These dynamic stereotypes, which are present-day beliefs about a group as changing its characteristics, followed the specific profile of role change in each nation. The perception of men as increasing in masculine characteristics, which was found only in Chile and Brazil, cohered with changes in their roles following industrialization and democratization. The perception of women as increasing in masculine characteristics, which was found in all three nations, cohered with their increasing participation in public roles.

Consistent with our findings and the effect sizes, citizens of each country perceived increases in women’s masculine characteristics and decreases in women’s positive feminine personality characteristics. The largest perceived changes occurred on women’s positive masculine personality characteristics. However, the countries differed in their perceptions of how men’s characteristics have changed over time. The U.S. participants perceived stability in men’s positive masculine personality, masculine cognitive, and masculine physical characteristics, whereas the Latin American participants per- ceived increases in these characteristics. Furthermore, the Latin American participants were less likely than the U.S. participants to perceive increases in men’s feminine cognitive and feminine physical traits. Participants from the three countries perceived women as adopting masculine personality, cognitive, and physical characteristics at a rapid rate from the past to the future. In the recent past of all these societies, women have greatly increased their participation in public roles, such as the paid work force and the government. Although this change has occurred through a somewhat different route in Brazil and Chile from the United States, women’s entry into traditionally male-dominated spheres leads to beliefs that women are gaining masculine characteristics.

The perception of more extreme dynamism of women in the Latin American countries, especially Brazil, corresponds to more extreme change in the roles within these countries than the United States. Urban population, fertility, and women’s labor force participation have all changed more dramatically in the Latin American nations, especially Brazil, than in the United States (see Table 1). These differing degrees of role change parallel the estimates of role nontraditionalism: Latin American participants, especially those from Brazil, estimated more traditional roles in the past and more nontraditional roles in the future than U.S. participants. As indicated by the path analyses, these beliefs about the gendered division of labor formed the basis of beliefs about the adoption of counterstereotypic characteristics. Observers thus appear to be sensitive to even subtle differences in the extremity of role change that has occurred in their nations.

The largest cultural divergence appeared in beliefs about the dynamism of men. In the United States, participants generally perceived men as remaining stable in their attributes, without much increase or decrease in masculine or feminine characteristics. In contrast, par- ticipants in Chile and Brazil perceived men to be gaining masculine characteristics from the past to the future: Men were perceived as increasing in their stereotypically masculine characteristics, such as independence, assertiveness, quantitative skills, and muscular strength. One possible interpretation of the Latin American projection of increased masculinity in men is that the machismo ideology leads to the optimistic projection that men of the future will have increasingly high levels of these highly favored masculine qualities. However, projections resting solely on machismo/marianismo ideologies should also include predictions that women will become more feminine and less masculine—patterns not reflected in these data. 

Letters of recommendation are central to the hiring process. However, gender stereotypes could bias how recommenders describe female compared to male applicants. In the current study, text analysis software was used to examine 886 letters of recommendation written on behalf of 235 male and 42 female applicants for either a chemistry or biochemistry faculty position at a large U.S. research university.Overall, the results of the current study revealed more similarity in the letters written for male and female job candidates than differences. Male and female candidates had similar levels of qualifications and this was reflected in their letters of recommendation. Letters written for women included language that was just as positive and placed equivalent emphasis on ability, achievement, and research. letters for female candidates to jobs in chemistry and biochemistry did not contain significantly more tentative language and did not overemphasize teaching and hard work over research and ability. However, it is notable that recommenders used significantly more standout adjectives to describe male candidates as compared to female candidates, even though objective criteria showed no gender differences in qualifications. It is likely that evaluators place higher weight on letters that describe a candidate as the most gifted, best qualified, or a rising star. This could mean that even a small difference in the proportion of standout adjectives used in describing female candidates could translate into much larger evaluative effects. Interestingly, the data also revealed that letters that contained more standout words also included more ability related terms and fewer grindstone words. Even though no sex differences were found in these latter categories, the use of standout adjectives in combination with ability language could also have the effect of amplifying the weight that search committees place on ability when evaluating a given application. More research is needed to understand how these seemingly small differences in language use affect the overall evaluations made by social perceivers.