Uncovering the political opportunities for women’s rights organizations’ in Argentina : A study addressing the subject of working from inside or outside the state

For the last fifty years the liberal feminist approach has been gaining grounds on the national state level, instituting women’s agencies, gender quotas and gender mainstreaming within nation states. Encouraged by larger international institutions, such as the United Nations, liberal feminism has come to be adopted broadly world-wise advocating for a close relationship between the state and the civil society (Squires, 2007 and McBride & Mazur, 2013). In the advancement of liberal feminism, questions of genuine political parity between these two actors - the state and civil society organizations - has been raised, as well as the state’s capability to promote equal change in accordance with the organizations’ many agendas and beliefs. The aim of this study is to describe and gain understanding of the political environment of the women’s rights organizations in Argentina and the possibilities and challenges that they experience in relation to this development. By using an interpretive research design and theoretical perspectives of social movement theory, this study addresses the ways in which women’s rights organizations in Argentina experience their political opportunities to participate in decision-making processes. Particularly women’s rights organizations that have experience of the state on a national, provincial and local level in Argentina and across political parties in power are addressed in this study. This study presents a novel contribution to the discussion of State Feminism concerning the subject of working from the inside or outside the state, to social movement theory with the conceptualization on political opportunity and by instantiating the discussion with a case study in which it is contextualized and tested.