| Issue/Objective |
Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) remain among the most contested policy terrains globally, with advances routinely blocked or reversed by conservative political and religious opposition. Yet even in hostile contexts, advocates sometimes succeed. Existing scholarship documents structural barriers extensively but says less about the agentic factors - who advocates are, how they strategize, and what works - that shape SRHR outcomes. This study asks: what are the political factors shaping SRHR policymaking in Chile? It treats the political dimensions of advocacy as an upstream determinant of health equity, which is heavily impacted by the SRHR policy environment. |
| Methodology/Approach |
This study utilises a replicated case study design across three contested SRHR issues in Chile - abortion, comprehensive sexuality education, and sexual violence against children - that share actors, opposition, and political context but vary in policy outcome. This facilitates comparison with respect to the role of advocacy strategies in light of potent structural forces. I conducted 63 semi-structured key informant interviews and analysed 278 documents to triangulate and respond to my research question. Analysis drew on SRHR politics, social movement theory, and political science scholarship. |
| Results |
Four factors advanced pro-SRHR policymaking across all three cases: (1) public health, political, or institutional crises generating political attention; (2) SRHR champions with political and epistemic power, particularly elite messengers; (3) narrow framing that "grafts" contested issues onto pre-existing norms or more-accepted SRHR agendas; and (4) regime transition from dictatorship to democracy. Key constraints included the absence of intersectoral coalitions linking pragmatic insiders with principled outsiders, and overly broad framing - proposing comprehensive reforms rather than incremental, targeted ones. |
| Discussion/Conclusion |
In fragmented political landscapes, equity does not advance automatically; it is constructed by advocates who read crises strategically, wield epistemic and political power, and frame carefully. Findings refine SRHR politics scholarship by showing that agency can negotiate - but not dissolve - structural conservatism, and offer transferable lessons for advocates across Latin America and beyond. The study speaks to the conference's call to move from rhetoric to concrete action by identifying the conditions under which pro-equity advocacy succeeds in conservative, fragmented contexts. |
| Presenters and Affiliations |
Miranda Bain Pandemic and Emergency Readiness Lab, Department of Global and Public Health, McGill University |
