Gender and feminism in Latin American comparative politics: The relationship of the state, international organizations, social movements and experts in the struggle for gender global justice

The main actors in the field of international relations and in gender justice have been articulated in a wide range of manners latterly as it has been observed, particularly in countries of the global South. Over the last decade, it has been reported that an approximation of feminist movements with the state itself and a reformulation of the bureaucratic apparatus of international cooperation agencies has been occurring. Therefore, the year of 2010 deserves to be highlighted because of an important innovation in the United Nations (UN) system: the so-called “joint action strategies”, which can be exemplified by the case of “UN Women”, now operating within a single agency, emerging as a much more unified and effective body of the UN bureaucracy, granting thus the possibility of a more coordinated international cooperation process to be developed. This article will discuss the example and the model of the main discussions on gender consensus-building on the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), focusing on its Tenth and Eleventh Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean; both events reflect the increasingly indicators of gender inequalities in the region, which is of paramount importance for this research. Wherefore, this article reflects both the deliberative moment, as well as the movement in democratizing feminist demands for more social justice in Latin America. The article has two main proposals: the first is to address the theories of social justice and of international relations to the deliberative issues. The second part will examine the relationship of the state, international organizations, social movements and experts in the process of consensus-building and the relation they intend to establish in their effort to achieve a perspective of global gender justice from a Latin American experience.