Women's Coalitions as a Strategy at the Intersection of Economic and Political Change in Venezuela

This essay presents an overview of women's coalitions during economic and political crises. Evidence suggests that success can be explained by opportunities opened by crises, international funding and agendas, and threats to previously won rights. The paper considers the decline of women's organizing in the late 1980s and early 1990s; the shift from civil society initiatives to greater involvement by politicians and femocrats; the emergence of short-term, more focused coalitions; and a rhetoric that became more clearly feminist throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium.