Feminism

And the Winner is … The Unpredictability of Electability

Image: The Conversationalist

By Linda E. Moran, Ph.D.

Alex Seitz-Wald (2019) maintains that the most unknowable factor of presidential elections is electability and, more specifically, perceptions of electability. Their role in the surprising outcomes of two Chilean elections — Michelle Bachelet’s in 2005 and Gabriel Boric’s in 2021 — provides the scaffolding for analysis. The combination of failed strategies on the part of the predicted winners and unprecedented breakthroughs on the part of the actual winners created a conundrum for those with expertise on the topic of Chilean sociopolitical behavior. Why were predictions so wide of the mark? In search of an explanation, this essay shifts the focus from standard conversations about anomalies and contradictions to premises at the core of notions of electability. It suggests that the unexpected outcomes of the two elections under scrutiny can be attributed to flaws in five of the premises commonly used to assess electability.

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Feminist Economics for All

Image: Project Syndicate

By Mercedes D’Alessandro

It may seem obvious to a layperson that failing to support an economy’s labor force must come at a cost. Yet conventional economic models render nearly invisible – or simply wave aside – a dimension of inequality that pervades economic policymaking and macroeconomic outcomes.

Not everyone has lost out from the “polycrisis” that we are now enduring. Perversely, both extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years. Worse, a host of other problems also now demand our immediate attention – from high and rising debt and increasing job precarity to inflation, climate change, and food insecurity.

To reconfigure our economies for growth and sustainable development, we must go back to the intellectual drawing board to identify elements of economic theory and practice that have been overlooked. For example, even though the pandemic exposed deep flaws in how we think about care, many governments and businesses continue to neglect this dimension of the economy.

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The Perils of Quédate en Casa: COVID-19 and Gender Violence in Latin America

By Brenda Werth

This piece was originally published at AULABLOG.

Stay-at-home orders during the COVID‑19 pandemic have had a devastating impact on women in Latin America and brought mass protests against gender violence to a screeching, and troubling, halt. Since the foundational march of NiUnaMenos in June 2015 in Buenos Aires, Latin American activists have revolutionized protest against gender violence in a spectacularly public way, bringing together hundreds of thousands of women and allies on the streets of major cities to denounce gender violence and demand protection of gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights. Since its debut last November, the flashmob Un violador en tu camino (A Rapist in Your Path), created by the Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis, has been performed in more than 200 cities around the world, decrying the role of the state and police in perpetuating gender violence.

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El reggaetón: ¿Enemigo del feminismo?

Por Laura Schroeder

Traducido por Pilar Espitia

Mi gran confesión

Soy fan del reggaetón. Ya éstá, lo dije.

Nada me hace bailar tanto como el bajo palpitante y el seductor ritmo del popular reggaetón, y no hay nada como una canción clásica de Daddy Yankee o de Don Omar para llenar la pista de baile de caderas danzantes y pies que se mueven. A lo mejor tiene que ver con los gratos recuerdos de mis viajes a República Dominicana y Perú, y mi año como becaria Fulbright en Colombia, lo que alimentó mi afinidad con el dembow de este género musical y sus letras dichas con frenetismo. A lo mejor, simplemente, el reggaetón es propicio para el baile.

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Human Rights in Right-wing Politics

EleNaoBy Madeline Asta

Two years ago, I sat in a classroom in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and listened as Brazilian university students analyzed the election of US President Donald Trump on an international scale. It was the day after Trump was elected and I was still trying to wrap my brain around the outcome. I felt isolated from my country both physically and emotionally. The students spoke about a right-wing shift the world was undergoing, basing their arguments on their own political atmosphere – which had just seen their leftist president impeached – and the trends they were studying in England, France, and their own region. They predicted that their own country would again shift to the right in their next election, foreshadowing the results of Brazil’s presidential election on October 28.

Jair Bolsonaro won Brazil’s presidential election last weekend with 55.1% of votes against the leftist Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad’s 44.8%. Bolsonaro garnered attention during his campaign for his firm stance on combating the nation’s violence and ridding the government of corruption, which has indicted many high-level politicians since 2014. However, Bolsonaro is also known for his blunt, homophobic, racist, and sexist statements and is referred to as the “Trump of the Tropics” for the similarities in the two politicians’ rhetoric and campaign tactics. Bolsonaro’s election represents the most dramatic political shift in Brazil since it restored democracy in 1988, but the nation is not alone in its turn away from the left. Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and the United States have all recently elected conservative leaders, and this trend sparks questions as to why this shift is occurring and what it could mean for the Western Hemisphere.

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Reggaetón: The Enemy of Feminism?

By Laura Schroeder

My Big Confession

I am a reggaetón fan. There, I’ve said it. 

Nothing gets me dancing quite like the pulsing bass and seductive hooks of popular reggaetón, and there is nothing like a classic Daddy Yankee or Don Omar track to ignite the dance floor with swinging hips and shuffling feet. Perhaps it’s my fond memories of travels in the Dominican Republic and Peru and my Fulbright year in Colombia that feed my affinity to the genre’s dembow beat and frenetically delivered lyrics. Perhaps it’s simply conducive to dancing. 

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