The Divergence in Women’s Economic Empowerment: Class and Gender under the Pink Tide

Abstract

Since 1990, men’s monopoly over economic resources, a key feature of gender inequality, has been irreversibly eroded across Latin America. Women’s access to income of their own has improved in dramatic ways. The most significant change preceded the Pink Tide years, fueled by structural conditions such as fertility drops and neoliberal policies’ downward pressure on male wages and employment. However, women’s access to resources remained conditioned by their socioeconomic status and the sexual division of labor at home. Against this backdrop, the Pink Tide expanded social income and made some progress regarding gender and class inequalities separately, yet not their perverse interactions.