The emergence and promises of the pink tide

The emergence of the ‘pink tide’ has been located in the failures of neoliberalism and ‘democratic disillusion’ towards the political system which promoted it (^{Barrett, Chavez, and Rodríguez -Garavito, 2008}; ^{Ruckert et al., 2017}). The economic crisis that started in the late 1990s eroded the popular support for neoliberal policies (^{Panizza and Yanez, 2006}). This rejection of neoliberalism was led by new political and social movements which emerged during the neoliberal era. New left-wing governments that came to power as a result of this crisis sought to break with the neoliberal macroeconomic policies that tended to reduce the role of the state and deregulate financial and labor markets that dominated the region after the Washington consensus.

The pathways to power of these new left governments varied through-out the region (^{Levitsky and Roberts, 2011}). In the Andean region, new left mobilizations emerged outside of the political establishment as part of a popular backlash against ruling political elites. In contrast, the left in the Southern Cone followed an institutional pathway to power. Unlike the Andean region, democratic institutions were not in crisis and the party system remained stable. These different pathways to power and the historical legacies of the left across the region influenced the policy options and approaches of the new left regimes. Left governments varied both in their socioeconomic policies, their vision of the role of the state, and approaches to democratic governance.

While approaches differed, the agendas of the new left governments shared several commitments. First of all, left governments sought to counteract the perceived increase in inequality and poverty from the neoliberal era. They shared the central aim to combat social and economic inequalities through the redistribution of wealth and income to lower-income groups, erode social hierarchies, and improve the position of marginalized groups in society and in the political process. Moreover, they sought to enhance opportunities for disadvantaged groups and provide social protection against market insecurities (^{Levitsky and Roberts, 2011}; ^{Ruckert et al., 2017}). Several studies indicate that governments of the left in the region indeed were more successful in their attempts to reduce inequalities compared to non-left governments (^{Cornia, 2014}; ^{Filgueira and Martínez Franzoni, 2017}).

Second, in the political realm, the left sought to enhance the inclusion of marginalized groups through democratic reform and increased participation of civil society actors/social movements in policy processes (^{Lievesley and Ludlam, 2009}; ^{Panizza, 2009}; Álvarez et al., 2017). This search for deepening democracy resulted in attempts of new left governments, to greater or lesser degrees, on a local and/or national level, to reorient state-civil society relations by facilitating greater civil society influence over policy-making processes, resulting in more emphasis on social policies to lessen poverty and inequality (Álvarez et al., 2017. In these attempts, governments often struggled to find a balanced relation with certain social movement sectors and avoid polarization (^{Beasley-Murray et al. 2010}; Panizza, 2009). Also, they tried to incorporate social movement activists in state institutions, which resulted in demobilization and a decrease in critical distance.

Third, left-wing governments aimed to expand the role of the state in regulating state-market and state-society relations, labeled as a “return of the state” by some authors (^{Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2012}; 2018). New left governments expressed their political aspirations to rebuild and reclaim the state, which was intended to be more than just a return of the state to the market/economy, but aimed to establish a new pact between society and state (Ibid.). Nowhere these aspirations resulted in a radical statist project (^{Beasley-Murray et al., 2010}), yet important attempts were made to recentralize authority by reversing decentralizations of the 1980s and 1990s. The expansion of the historically weak states in the region was viewed as an important precondition for improving democratic governance, ensuring necessary means to guarantee the rule of law, to protect the rights of citizens, and to regulate economic transactions (^{Linz and Stepan, 1996}; ^{O’Donnell, 2001}, 2004; ^{Przeworski, 2010}). Yet, the dual agenda of articulating participatory democracy and expanding the role of the state also created some potential tensions and contradictions. Tilly in his book Democracy argues that deep democracy requires state capacity “to supervise democratic decision-making and put its results into practice” (2007: 15). Rather than a static characteristic of states, Tilly views democracy as a continuous and dynamic process of changing political relations between state and citizens (2007, pp. 13-15). More democracy, for Tilly (2007:14) means a net movement toward broader, more equal, more protected, and more binding consultation. On one hand, democratization is reinforced by an increase in state capacity, as state expansion generates resistance, bargaining, and provisional settlements. While on the other hand, democratization encourages demands for expansion of state intervention, which promotes a stronger state capacity. Yet, when state capacity develops farther and faster than democratization, the path to democracy bifurcates to authoritarianism instead. Also, if democratization develops farther and faster than capacity and the regime survives, the path then passes through a risky zone of capacity building. These tensions are evident throughout the region. The state has become the “strategic terrain” of social and political struggle, blurring the traditional liberal divide between state and civil society (^{Cannon and Hume 2012}: 34). Social movements potentially can transcend the narrow role assigned to civil society in liberal theory pushing the state to ‘alter the balance of social forces’ and making policy processes more accessible and participatory (Cannon and Hume 2012: 11). Yet, as it appears, this promise of a renewed contract between civil society and the state was not realized in most countries.

Gendering the pink tide?

The ambitions of new left governments potentially created the necessary conditions to advance gender equality and justice. Gender equality requires an effective state, capable of intervening in society, in the workplace, and in the domestic realm to strengthen the position of women and prevent sex discrimination (^{Htun and Weldon, 2018}). In countries with weak political institutions, governments are unable to coordinate policy responses across levels of government (vertically) and departments and ministries (horizontally) and effectively implement and enforce policies. Implementation of policies to combat violence against women in Latin America, for example, has often been poor because of weak state capacity (^{Franceschet, 2011}). Also, women’s interests and feminist issues must be effectively brought into state institutions and policy processes. It is, therefore, necessary to create effective mechanisms that facilitate access of social movements to policy-making processes and to channel their demands and ideas to state and policy agendas. In this sense, the political agenda of the new left had the potential for a new praxis -new gender equality agendas, policies, and institutions- and new relations between feminist actors and states. Yet, at the same time, feminists historically had little reason for such optimism. The relationship between the women’s organizations and the left in Latin America has been riddled with tensions and struggle (^{Friedman, 2009}; ^{Heumann, 2014}). While feminists and the left can be seen to share a commitment to challenging the important historical inequalities in the region (^{Giron and Correa,2017}), left-wing parties and governments only incorporated some feminist demands and have subordinated feminist issues to ‘larger’ goals (Friedman and Tabbush, 2019). The feminist agenda for social change proceeded without much overt support from the left (Friedman, 2009; Blofield, Ewig and Piscopo, 2017). Available feminist studies on the gender policies of the new left-wing governments in the region pointed to their contradictory and uneven responses to feminist demands (^{Biroli and Caminotti, 2020}; Blofield, Ewig, and Piscopo, 2017; Friedman and Tabbush, 2019. These studies showed mixed results: some progress is made in terms of women’s welfare and representation, but far less with sexual and reproductive rights. More importantly, feminist scholarship makes clear that relations of new left governments and feminism throughout the region are multiple and levels of responsiveness towards feminist demands vary greatly. Blofield, Ewig and Piscopo (2017: 362) argue that pink tide governments can be best labeled as reactive left, not having any clearly articulated gender equality agendas, but mostly reacting to domestic gender equality activism. Patterns of policy progress are, however, not only explained by differences in the strength and autonomy of feminist mobilization, but party ideology, left party type, and policy domains also are important to explain variation in gender equality progress during the pink tide.

This complexity and multiplicity of state responses to feminism and state-movement relations thus require a careful and multidimensional analysis of the performance of new left governments in the transformation of gender and sexuality relations. Moreover, we are dealing with a “moving target” as relations between women’s organizations and governments are far from stable and opposition to gender equality and sexuality rights is also becoming more organized and mobilized throughout the region (^{Friedman, 2019}; ^{Biroli and Caminotti, 2020}).

The institutionalization of relations between states and feminist movements

Feminist scholars see the state as gendered, and an important vehicle to reproduce gender relations in society. Gender relations imbricate in state policies and institutions. States perpetuate and enforce existing gender inequalities of status and resources. Yet, increasingly feminists have also come to view the state´s potential to challenge gender regimes and power relations, and feminist activists started to work to instate practices and rules that recast the gendered nature of the political (^{Beckwith, 2013}:132-133). In the 1980s and 1990s, women’s movements across the globe managed to push states to develop policies and laws to promote gender equality. Governments in many countries responded, in different ways and to different degrees, by developing a set of agencies and mechanisms to take responsibility for such demands, the so-called women’s policy or gender equality agencies (^{McBride and Mazur, 2010}).

These gender equality agencies (GEAs) vary in scope, size, resources, stability, and location. According to ^{Lovenduski (2008}), these GEAs can be seen at least in symbolic terms, as an acknowledgment of women’s demands for representation. The actions of these agencies and mechanisms are an important instrument to include women’s movement demands and actors into the state and so produce feminist policy outcomes (^{McBride and Mazur, 2010}).

Mechanisms for the advancement of gender equality were developed relatively late in Latin American and Caribbean countries due to the presence of antidemocratic and authoritarian governments or violent political struggles (^{Guzmán, 2001}). The first mechanisms were established in the 1970s (Belize, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Puerto Rico) and 1980s (Brazil, establishing a separate entity, and the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama, and Uruguay as part of a ministry) after transitions to democracy and in response to the demands of active women’s movements. Throughout the 1990s, the preparations for Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing provided an additional crucial impetus for other countries in the region to establish national mechanisms (Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, and Peru). These mechanisms varied strongly across the region, not only in the location and rank within the governmental structure but also in terms of their acceptance as a legitimate governmental entity and the roles, mandates, and responsibilities entrusted to them (Guzmán 2001; Fernós, 2010; Guzmán and Montaño, 2012; ^{Rodriguez Gustá et al., 2017}). Also, these mechanisms were developed within difficult social and economic contexts. In particular, the policies of structural adjustments that the countries of the region faced, implied a decrease of resources or mergers with other ministries and political subdivisions and negatively affected their position, mandate, and resources. As a result, national mechanisms often exist as precariously, threatened political spaces, yet in some countries where the mandate of national mechanisms is established by organic law (Chile, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Paraguay, and Puerto Rico), these mechanisms enjoy a greater degree of stability and independence to the political pressures and changes in government (Fernós 2010: 29). Existing scholar-ship makes clear that relationships between left-wing governments and GEAs are not clear cut. Rodriguez Gustá, Madera, and Caminotti compare the machineries of Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, and Uruguay which during the pink tide indeed experienced some improvements in terms of formal hierarchy, promoting gender equality plans and establishing coordinating mechanisms and councils. Yet, they also argue that “governments did not uniformly decide that strengthening gender policy machineries was a priority” (2017: 472). Hence, their results remain inconclusive. My study complements their results but particularly focuses on the questions if and how pink tide dual agenda of strengthening state capacity and deepening democracy affected gender equality institutions and governance structures. Returning to Tilly’s insights about deep democracy and democratization as a constant process, these two dimensions should operate in tandem, but there are also potential tensions between them.

To measure both the capacity and the democratic quality of the different institutional mechanisms, I take several indicators for each dimension, based on the insights of feminist scholarship on the relations between gender, and state relations and, policy-making. To move from qualitative descriptions to comparison and to visualize patterns of change both within and between countries I operationalize the two dimensions each consisting of several indicators into numerical scales. For each indicator I assign a numerical scale ranging from 0 to the lowest value ever observed and 1 to the highest value, then I accumulate the four ratings into a single score. For each country, I compare the moment before a pink tide government took office, a second moment after five years of governing and a third moment 10 year later. The numbers assigned to each indicator for the four countries over time can be found in the annex.

1. The capacity of gender equality mechanisms to influence public policies.

The first dimension consists of four indicators to measure the capacity of state/institutional mechanisms to advance GEAs to influence political processes, in particular, to propose, elaborate, implement and evaluate public policies. These variables are strongly interrelated and are not exhaustive. In addition, it must be noted that these are determined by contextual and temporal differences.

a) Resources. This first variable is closely connected to but not similar to the second variable of role and functions. While the quantity of resources is not a determining factor in agency success in influencing policy or opening up politics to gender issues, more staff and higher budgets may mean an agency is better able to attain its goals and can do more to support women’s movement organizations, conduct research, and provide services. Three aspects should be considered: administrative capacity (budget and human resources), internal inversion (capacity/expertise building within the organization, data-gathering, and research), and external inversion (providing funding and support to civil society organizations). I assign 0 to a decrease in resources, 0,5 to stability or incremental increase and 1 to substantial increase.

b) Mandate and policy powers of the agency. Here machinery success occurs when agencies have clearly defined mandates and missions that are unambiguous. I distinguish between three central roles that agencies may play: 1) the capacity to monitor the progress of gender equality policies and or evaluate policies; 2) the capacity to propose and articulate policies; and 3) the power to execute policies that can be considered the most comprehensive role. I assign 0 to agencies that mainly supervise or monitor policy, 0,5 to agencies that can propose policies, and 1 to agencies that also execute policies.

c) Organizational stability/duration: this factor is both important for the legitimacy and access of the agency/mechanism within the administration. A policy agency that often changes in place, mandate, and personnel is less likely to play an influential role in the policy process. Here I also consider whether an agency has been created by presidential decree or law. An agency that has been created by law is more guaranteed to survive with changing governments. I assign 0 to agencies that exist less than five years and 1 to five years or more.

d) Location of the agency and placement of agency in relation to policy subsystem where a decision is made. Machineries that are located in the highest level of government, close to where important decisions are made will be more likely to be successful. Many studies on the developing world identify this as an important ingredient to more success. Also, policy subsystems that include elected leaders may privilege quasi agencies or cabinet offices; administrative offices may be important if the policy subsystem is in bureaucracy. I assign 0 to agencies that are situated outside ministries, 0,5 when located at the ministerial level, and 1 when located at the office of the executive/president.

2. The capacity of the agency/mechanism to channel feminist demands

To measure the democratic quality and capacity of women’s policies agencies/gender equality mechanisms, I look at both the dynamics and mechanisms initiated and used by the agencies to identify and capture democratic demands and the mechanisms to channel these demands and include perspectives and interests into policy processes. According to Tilly, a regime is democratic “to the degree that political relations between the state and its citizens feature broad, equal, protected and mutually binding consultation” (2007:13-14). Based on this definition I identify four indicators:

i Qualities of agency directors/ministers. Important factors include the leader’s commitment to gender equality goals, priorities set for the agency, and their political relationship with decision-makers and potential allies. Here I assign 0 to directors with no previous gender expertise or feminist profile and 1 to directors with wide experience and expertise, including a broad intersectional perspective on gender equality issues.

ii Meaningful/strong links with civil society groups: Collaborative “strategic partnerships” between agencies and women’s rights groups are identified as being conducive to success in Latin America and the Caribbean (^{Franceschet, 2007}). This scale ranges from no links to women’s rights organizations (0) to some regular meeting and consultation of civil society organizations (0,5), to strategic partner-ships between a broad (intersectional) range of women’s rights organizations (1).

iii Mechanisms of citizen’s access and or consultation: here Tilly’s idea of a broad, equal, protected and mutually binding consultation of the citizenry is central. I distinguish between different degrees of accountability mechanisms indicating that women’s policy machineries can speak for and/or represent them access: information centers, ombudsman, or other places to make demands to the state, consultation, or deliberative mechanisms. (^{Htun and Weldon, 2018}). Here the range is from no accountability mechanisms (0) via one-way accountability (0,5) to accountability and protected consultation (1).

iiii Relations between the agency and women in the legislative: Here I take into account descriptive representation of women, but also to some extent substantive representation by looking if and how women’s interests are channel and articulated through women’s parliamentary caucuses. I assign (0) when the percentage of female representatives is below 30%, to a representation over 30% (0,5), and a high representation combined with a women’s caucus (1).

How did the pink tide influence GEA configurations?Comparing Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Ecuador

Argentina

The Argentinean Consejo Nacional de Mujeres (CNM), since its inception in 1992, had a weak structure, few resources, very little influence within the state, and no legislative role at all, leaving advocacy groups without influential insider allies (^{Rodríguez Gustá and Caminotti, 2010}; ^{Lopreite, 2015}; Rodriguez Gustá, 2018). Radical change took place after the period under study in this article. Between 2017 and 2019, the institute has undergone a number of transformations leading to the establishment of the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity (Ministerio de las Mujeres, Géneros y Diversidad), meaning an upgrade in capacity, resources and protagonism and with a feminist leadership (^{Canelo, 2021}). Yet, during the period studied in this paper, CNM remained a weak institute and its capacity not improve with the left-wing administrations of Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Instead, Nestor Kirchner downgraded the CNM by giving it a new role and mission within the Consejo Nacional de Coordinación de Políticas Sociales (National Council for Social Policy Coordination), which was originally headed by his sister, Alicia Kirchner. This repositioning not only lowered CNM’s status and budget but also affected its capacity to channel feminist demands. Nestor Kirchner appointed Maria Lucila Colombo as the new president of the CNM. Colombo had been an activist in the Sindicato de Amas de Casa (Housewives’ Union) and had adopted an antiabortion position in the legislative debate on reproductive health when she was in the Buenos Aires city legislature in 2000 (Rodriguez Gustá, 2018). Under the administration of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner CNM’s resources slightly increased as a result of the agency’s role in distributing conditional cash transfer programs, yet, she zeroed out the National Women’s Council’s operating budget and leaving it ineffective (^{Franceschet, 2010}). She had no interest in gender issues and followed a largely conservative agenda (Piscopo, 2014).

The democratic quality of the CNM had always been low and remained low under Kirchner governments. Under the Kirchner administration it had little power to affect the formulation, design, and implementation of public policies. ^{Rodriguez Gustá, Madera and Caminotti (2017}) therefore labeled CNM as a ceremonial machinery, lacking bureaucratic capacities and instruments to implement policies or promote women’s rights in practice. In terms of capacity to channel feminist demands, CNM fared very poorly. It had no formal or informal consultation spaces and did not actively involve women’s rights organizations in its planning and decision making (Rodriguez Gustá et al., 2017). ^{Lopreite (2015}) noted some short-lived efforts to reach out to grass-roots organizations in the context of an anti-poverty program when CNM offered some training workshops to these organizations.

The existence of these weaknesses at the national level facilitated their reproduction in provinces and municipalities, repeating the same structures, with little or no budget at all and very tight into their scope. If we consider the different indicators of the institute’s capacity and power to channel civil society demands in the policy process, we see that during the new left governments of Kirchner and Fernandez state feminism did not increase. CNM’s capacity to push for gender equality policies remained very low. The graph below captures the institutional changes of CNM between 2002 and 2015 both in the dimensions of democratization (channeling feminist demands) and institutional capacity. While institutional capacity remained very low in this period, a slight increase in democratic quality can be noted which was only a result of the increased political representation of women in the legislative and the creation of a women’s caucus (bancada feminina) but was not the result of more deliberative or participative mechanisms in processes of public policy-making.

GRAPH 1 Institutional and democratic capacity GEA Argentina (2005-2015) 

Source: Own elaboration based on the data obtained in the study.

Bolivia

Bolivia created a women’s policy agency in 1993 with few resources, very little influence within the state, and no legislative role at all. Over time this machinery remained notoriously fragile and suffered from institutional instability. The MAS administration of Evo Morales engaged in limited efforts to improve the institutional mechanisms to promote gender equality, despite its ambitious redistribution agenda. The Morales government dismantled the existing state machinery, the Vice-Ministry on Gender and Generational Affairs within the Ministry of Sustainable Development, and created a new Office on Gender and Generational Violence in the new Vice-Ministry on Equal Opportunities. The new office had limited decision-making authority, lacked human, technical and financial resources, and operated at the lowest level of the organizational and structural hierarchy of the Ministry of Justice (^{Rousseau and Ewig 2017}). Due to this, it was unable to intervene in national processes nor to coordinate with gender mechanisms and bodies operating at the subnational level in the context of the process to increase the autonomy of local communities.

Furthermore, the Bolivian government created an Office for Decolonization within the Ministry of Cultures, headed by a Deputy Minister. Within the Office, there was a Depatriarchalization Unit, whose mission was to “depatriarchalize the colonial and neoliberal State, family life, society and religion” (^{Diaz Carrasco and Agar Diaz, 2013}). The Unit’s objectives included “exposing and destabilizing patriarchal relationships and making them untenable, as well as transforming existing power relations in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, in order to construct a just and harmonious society”. Both the Gender Unit and the Depatriarchalization Unit had relatively low status in the State apparatus and lacked the resources to fulfill their mandates and create new intersectional public policies (^{Rousseau and Ewig, 2017}).

When it comes to their democratic quality the gender equality mechanisms fared better. A partnership was been formed between the Ministry of Justice through the Office of the Deputy Minister for Equal Opportunity, the Platform of Women Assembly Members (with 28 representatives), the Comité Impulsor de la Agenda Legislativa desde las Mujeres (Action Committee for a Women’s Legislative Agenda, which brings together 28 NGOs and women’s organizations) and the Alianza de Organizaciones de Mujeres por la Revolución Cultural y Unidad (Alliance of Women’s Organizations for Cultural Revolution and Unity, which represents 17 parent organizations of indigenous and campesino women) to collectively draft a legislative agenda that benefits women. Most notably, the political participation of indigenous women and their standing in political processes was much improved (^{Rousseau and Ewig, 2017}) and moved up to parity.

The graph below visualizes these changes in Bolivia, which are principally a steep increase in the capacity to channel the (intersectional) demands of women’s rights organizations. However, in terms of institutional capacity -despite some improvements in the strategic positioning of the new mechanisms- the Bolivian machinery remained weak.

GRAPH 2 Institutional and democratic capacity GEA Bolivia (2005-2015) 

Source: Own elaboration based on the data obtained in the study.

Chile

Chile’s National Women’s Service (Servicio Nacional de la Mujer, SERNAM) was created in 1991 as part of the executive branch and played an important role in policy research, coordination, monitoring, and evaluation since then. It is arguably one of the strongest GEAs in the region in terms of capacity, funding and trajectory (^{Ríos Tobar, 2009}; ^{Fernos, 2010}), so its position was already strong in comparison compared to the other cases. SERNAM was housed in the Ministry of Planning and Cooperation, but its director had ministerial status and therefore participated in cabinet meetings (Franceschet, 2005). Because of the ministerial status of the director, SERNAM could introduce legislative projects and was relatively successful in getting these approved (^{Haas 2011}). Yet, as several observers have noted, the Ministerial status also made the SERNAMs’ agenda highly dependent on the ideological orientation of the ruling party (^{Baldez, 2001}; Haas, 2011), and the personality and preferences of particular ministers (Haas, 2011). Its initial policy agenda in the 1990s largely reflected the agenda of the Christian Democrats and women’s movement organizations had limited influence on it (Baldez, 2001; Haas, 2011). Over time, the institution remained fairly stable, largely due to uninterrupted hold of the Concertación government which had been in power since the transition to democracy.

Between 1991 and 2000, SERNAMs’ budget doubled, and its staff and political influence increased (PNUD 2010, 161). After Michelle Bachelet came to power in 2006, SERNAMs’ power significantly expanded. The office received significant additional funding and was given access to interministerial negotiations for issues with important gender implications, such as pension and childcare reform. SERNAM coordinated a team of gender advisors, to monitor progress on the achievement of ministerial gender commitments within each ministry (^{Matamala, 2010}). Another significant additional mechanism was the increased status of pre-existing Council of Ministers for Equality of Opportunities. by personally attending meetings of the Council and expecting other members of the Cabinet to do the same Bachelet advanced the gender equality agenda of her cabinet (^{Thomas, 2016}; ^{Staab, 2017};). Finally, SERNAMs’ influence and prestige were given a boost by the establishment of a Ministry of Women and Gender Equality under Bachelet’s second term in 2016, which is immediately after the period of study here (Thomas, 2016). These factors increased the institutional capacity of gender equality mechanisms to intervene in the political process. As part of a broader electoral reform, Bachelet introduced gender quota for the legislative in 2015. In 2018, so after the period of study, Chilean legislators established a women’s issue caucus.

As to its democratic quality, SERNAM and capacity to channel feminist demands, progress was less clear cut. According to ^{Franceschet (2010}), SERNAMs institutional design allowed it to act as a crucial “insider” ally to advocacy groups. Yet, relationships between SERNAM and Chilean women’s organizations were not very close and the level of cooperation was low. While Bachelet’s gender equality agenda was positively received by women’s rights organizations, no new institutional mechanisms for participation or inclusion were created. Also, the SERNAM so far has not developed a more intersectional perspective, paying attention to ethnic and sexual differences. While some agreements with indigenous organizations were made in 2018 - so after the period under study here- there was no structural representation of their interests (^{Gigena and De Cea, 2018}). On the positive side, in her second period as president, Bachelet, appointed a SERNAM minister with a clear feminist profile and activist background.

The graph visualizes the development of SERNAM’s institutional capacity and capacity to channel feminist demands between 2005 and 2015. In this period, there was an increase in both dimensions. Yet, compared to SERNAM’s institutional capacity, its capacity to channel feminist demands was much lower and did not significantly improve.

GRAPH 3 Institutional and democratic capacity GEA Chile 

Source: Own elaboration based on the data obtained in the study.

Ecuador

The National Council of Women (CONAMU) that was created in 1997 as part of the executive branch for many years served as an important and powerful link between the executive and the Ecuadorian women’s movement (^{Ugalde Vega, 2003}; ^{Lind, 2005}). CONAMUs leadership had clear links to the women’s movement and its board of directors included three representatives of national women’s organizations. Yet, although CONAMU had an office for indigenous affairs, it did not establish a truly collaborative relationship with indigenous women organizations (^{Radcliffe, 2013}). It established close ties to women in the legislative, but the representation of women in the National Assembly was low. In 2009 the Correa government abolished the Council with the promise to create a new National Council for Gender Equality (Lind, 2012). This promise was, however, not kept until July 2014, when the National Assembly finally passed authorizing legislation. Yet the new Councils only started to function after the end of Correa’s rule in May 2017, so beyond the period under study here, when the representatives from civil society organizations were finally elected to the different Councils, a condition necessary for the Councils to operate (^{Rousseau and Ewig, 2017}). In the period between (2009-2014) a so-called Transitional Committee (Comisión de Transición) was established with virtually no power and resources. It operated largely at the fringes of the state bureaucracy.

Also, the strong existing link with national women’s organizations was discontinued. The new National Council for Gender Equality created in May 2014 had a very weak institutional capacity. It lacked a clear mandate to lead and coordinate the design and implementation of gender equality policies at the national and local levels and made no specific mandate for over-seeing and monitoring gender mainstreaming attributed to any institution within the executive branch. The percentage of the official budget allocated for the implementation of gender equality policies was reduced even further. Compared to CONAMU the new Council lacked the ability to closely coordinate efforts with feminist actors. No accountability mechanisms were established to monitor and assess the implementation of policies to promote and protect women’s rights. In addition, no mechanisms were put in place to ensure systematic participation of women’s organizations in the processes of the National Council or any other decision-making processes at the national and local level.²

The developments in Ecuador show a tendency opposite to the pink tide agenda with both a strong decline in the capacity of the state to intervene in gender relations and create effective gender equality policies and a steep decline in the access of civil society organizations to the women’s policy agency.

GRAPH 4 Institutional and democratic capacity GEA Ecuador 

Source: Own elaboration based on the data obtained in the study.