Nora Nagels
I am professor in development and international cooperation in the political science department of the Université du Québec à Montréal.
I am working on gender and diffusion processes of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs in Latin America. I analyze the diffusion of gender cognitive structures, through CCT programs, as a means of diffusion of a new post-neoliberal paradigm for development in Latin America.
I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Canada Research Chair in Citizenship and Governance at the political science department of the Université de Montréal. I obtained my PhD at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, that was financed by the NCCR North-South and administrated by Swisspeace, Bern.
My PhD dissertation, sustained in September 2012, proposed to analyze the social representations of gender and poverty conveyed by anti-poverty policies in Peru and Bolivia in order to bring out the regime of citizenship to which they refer. The analysis of about one hundred interviews with policymakers and the “beneficiaries” of such policies have revealed their social representations. Discourse confrontation exposed the power relationship at stake in the construction of the representations of poverty and poor women as well as the relationship between state and women and between the latter. Social representations of poverty were consensual within each country but they pointed out antagonistic public policies referential. While the representations of poverty fundamentally differed between each country, maternalism was a common reference. Moreover, policymakers and “beneficiaries” expressed conflicting positions about women’s volunteer work and their maternal roles. Furthermore, the relations between state and women were characterized by ambivalence between internalization and the creation of neo-populist features. Likewise, the relations between women were structured more vertically than horizontally and tended to reproduce the relationship established by the state with them. Finally, despite the vicissitudes underlying women’s participation in the antipoverty programs, this participation leads to changes in their daily life.
In addition, I hold an MA and a DEA in Political Science from the University of Brussels, Belgium (2004, 2005), with a specialization in Latin American Studies at Complutense University of Madrid, Spain (2005), where my main focus was on international relations, citizenship and social policies in Latin America (Cuba, where I carried out field research, and Mexico).
Supervisors: Jane Jenson
I am working on gender and diffusion processes of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs in Latin America. I analyze the diffusion of gender cognitive structures, through CCT programs, as a means of diffusion of a new post-neoliberal paradigm for development in Latin America.
I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Canada Research Chair in Citizenship and Governance at the political science department of the Université de Montréal. I obtained my PhD at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, that was financed by the NCCR North-South and administrated by Swisspeace, Bern.
My PhD dissertation, sustained in September 2012, proposed to analyze the social representations of gender and poverty conveyed by anti-poverty policies in Peru and Bolivia in order to bring out the regime of citizenship to which they refer. The analysis of about one hundred interviews with policymakers and the “beneficiaries” of such policies have revealed their social representations. Discourse confrontation exposed the power relationship at stake in the construction of the representations of poverty and poor women as well as the relationship between state and women and between the latter. Social representations of poverty were consensual within each country but they pointed out antagonistic public policies referential. While the representations of poverty fundamentally differed between each country, maternalism was a common reference. Moreover, policymakers and “beneficiaries” expressed conflicting positions about women’s volunteer work and their maternal roles. Furthermore, the relations between state and women were characterized by ambivalence between internalization and the creation of neo-populist features. Likewise, the relations between women were structured more vertically than horizontally and tended to reproduce the relationship established by the state with them. Finally, despite the vicissitudes underlying women’s participation in the antipoverty programs, this participation leads to changes in their daily life.
In addition, I hold an MA and a DEA in Political Science from the University of Brussels, Belgium (2004, 2005), with a specialization in Latin American Studies at Complutense University of Madrid, Spain (2005), where my main focus was on international relations, citizenship and social policies in Latin America (Cuba, where I carried out field research, and Mexico).
Supervisors: Jane Jenson
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Social policy prescriptions for Latin America have shifted significantly over recent decades. This article tracks a process by which a conditional cash transfer (CCT) to mothers, begun in a Mexican programme with some pretensions to promoting gender equality, was standardized by international organizations, becoming a policy instrument characterized by gender sensitivity, but having little attention to equality. In addition to involving certification by international organizations, this standardization process framed the CCT as an instrument of social investment and was a decontextualization of the Mexican version that had been influenced by Beijing-style international feminism. The third phase of this trajectory was take-up of the standard model by Peruvian policymakers and employees of the Juntos programme who overlaid their long-standing representations of their indigenous clientele onto a supposedly ‘modern’ social policy instrument, thereby rendering it both maternalist and neo-colonial.