How Feminism is changing Justice in Chile Gender mainstreaming, Jurisprudence and Feminist Cause Space

Abstract

This article examines how feminist ideas, actors and practices have reshaped the Chilean judiciary over the last two decades. Drawing on documentary analysis and 36 emblematic rulings of the Constitutional Court (2004-2024), complemented by decisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, this analysis examines the recent process of gender mainstreaming in the justice system. The cases were systematised within a Gender and Jurisprudence Observatory that seeks both to produce socio-legal knowledge and to make information on key rulings publicly accessible. The article is grounded in Latin American feminist legal thought, especially the work of Alda Facio, Carolina Vergel and Marcela Lagarde, and in socio-legal approaches to public action. It adapts Laure Bereni’s concept of the “women’s cause space” to the Chilean context, proposing the notion of a “feminist cause space” to capture the interactions between institutional feminism and autonomous feminist movements. Findings show that gender equality has gained unprecedented institutional recognition in the judiciary through the creation of women judges’ associations, strategic plans, specialised secretariats and an institutional gender policy. Yet jurisprudence remains ambivalent: only around 25% of decisions in which gender is explicitly invoked are favourable to equality claims. Courts frequently mobilise a discourse of legal neutrality that obscures power asymmetries, even when interpreting international treaties such as CEDAW and the Belém do Pará Convention. Through the analysis of conflicts related to sexual and reproductive rights, gender-based violence, care and labour rights—including the morning-after pill litigation and the Antonia Barra “femicide-suicide” case-the article argues that feminism has widened the boundaries of what counts as legal reasoning, challenged the idea of neutral adjudication and exposed territorial and cultural inequalities in access to justice. The Chilean case illustrates how gender mainstreaming is not only a matter of protocols and training but also a broader cultural and organisational transformation driven by feminist struggles.