Professor Karen Beckwith served as a commentator and discussant at the Research Conference on Gender, Politics, and Institutional Change in Bachelet’s Chile: 2006-2010, at the University of Manchester, in Manchester, UK, on April 29, 2014.  The conference was one of several organized by Professor Georgina Waylen, for her project Understanding Institutional Change:  A Gender Perspective.  The conference included scholars from Canada, Chile, Germany, the UK, and the US.

Professor Waylen’s five-year research program (2012-17), funded by the European Research Council, aims to improve our understanding of the gender dynamics of institutional change and reform.

“The workshop focused on the efforts of Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s first female president, to introduce progressive measures and the institutional constraints that she faced in a context where both formal and informal political institutions could act as barriers to change. It [examined] Bachelet’s attempts to negotiate them in the political arena such as her efforts to create parity cabinet; the policymaking process; the role of SERNAM, the women’s policy agency; [and] attempts at policy change in a number of policy areas such as reproductive rights, pensions and health care.”

Details of the project can be found here.