During the past decade Latin American social policies underwent considerable change, expanding and becoming overall more progressive, in the context of favorable economic conditions. The massive incorporation of women into the labor force in the region has also brought more attention to the work-family nexus.
Policy efforts to address this nexus have not, however, been homogenous. Drawing on a database constructed with Juliana Martínez Franzoni, I examine two central policies -early education and care services for 0 to 3 year olds and parental leaves -over the past decade in four South American social policy forerunners: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. While virtually all policy reforms over the past decade in these countries have sought to include lower income families, some measures revolve around women´s sole capacity to accommodate work and family –maternalism- while others pursue co-responsibility by increasing the role of men and public services in care (Blofield and Martínez Franzoni, Revista CEPAL 2014). Also, the political salience of work-family policies varies across countries: from marginal (Argentina) to electorally more prominent (Chile, Brazil) and subjected to intense debates regardless of the electoral process (Uruguay).
In this paper I construct a theoretical framework to explain variation in policy effort across the four countries and the two policies. Preliminary empirical findings, based on field research in all fours countries, point to the role of policy legacies, electoral competition, and the interaction between party systems and organized pressures from civil society. The paper draws on the extensive literature on work-family policies in advanced industrialized countries, and the literature on social policies in Latin America.
