Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Summer 2002
Keywords
Gender, Labor Policy, Social Politics, Welfare States, Labor Inducements, Authoritarianism, El Salvador
Abstract
Unlike much of the gender and welfare literature, this study examines why a regime that constrains pressure from below would adopt gendered social policies. The Salvadoran case (1944-1972) suggests that political instability rather than societal pressures may prompt semi-authoritarian regimes to adopt gendered labor reforms. We extend the motivations for adopting gendered labor reforms to include co-opting labor by examining gendered labor reforms in the context of El Salvador’s historically contingent labor strategy. This gendered analysis helps explain how a semi-authoritarian regime secured political stability and reveals the special appeal gendered labor reforms may have to semi-authoritarian regimes.
Publisher Attribution
This article has been published in Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society. Published by Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/9.2.248
Recommended Citation
Gates, Leslie C. and Griffith, Kati L., "A State’s Gendered Response to Political Instability: Gendering Labor Policy in Semi-Authoritarian El Salvador (1944-1972)" (2002). Sociology Faculty Scholarship. 7.
https://orb.binghamton.edu/sociology_fac/7