Left-Wing Populism and Feminist Politics

“This engaging and timely book is unique in addressing the relation between left-wing populism and the gender equality agenda. It contributes to advance the academic knowledge of populism by tackling the so-far unexplored connection of feminism, gender equality policies and left-wing populism.”

– MariaCaterina La Barbera, Institute of Philosophy, Spanish National Research Council, Madrid, Spain

This book investigates the relation between left-wing populism and feminist politics by analysing three specific aspects. First, whether left-wing populist parties promote gender equality policies, against charges of a general inconsistency between both political projects; Second, how do these parties form their policy-making coalitions in the field of gender equality; Third, how much impact on policy do women’s movements have when left-wing populists are in power. The book is focused on the case of Bolivia during the first twelve years of Evo Morales's presidency. Theempirical analysis is based on the qualitative content analysis of documents and semi-structured interviews with women’s movements’ activists, policy-makers and experts in women’s movements. The central issue of the book is present throughout the volume, but each empirical chapter can be also read as a semi-autonomous analysis of a specific aspect of the relation between left-wing populism and feminist politics, which increases the interest of the book for different audiences including experts in gender and politics and feminist activists, specialists in Latin American politics, indigenous politics and social movements.

Pablo Castaño is Researcher in Politics and currently works at Barcelona's City Council.