Blocking the Law from Within: Familyism Ideologies as Obstacles to Legal Protections for Women in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua

Abstract

The scholarship seeking to explain the ineffectiveness of violence against women (VAW) laws has focused on the lack of resources or will to implement these laws. Less attention has been given to how these laws are crafted and positioned in the legal hierarchy, which may undermine them from the start. This article focuses on four cases from Central America, a region where fifty-five laws to protect women from violence were passed between 1960 and 2018, yet VAW continues. It finds that the legal positioning and language of these laws prioritize family unity while undermining women’s rights to protection; thus, these laws fail by design. The article identifies four legal placements that delay (El Salvador), undermine (Honduras), diminish (Nicaragua), or render abstract (Guatemala) the effectiveness of VAW laws in the context of penal and judicial codes. This work has direct policy implications and broader relevance beyond the cases examined here.

State Categories, Bureaucracies of Displacement, and Possibilities from the Margins

“…Vogler and Rosales (2022) show that despite changes in formal classification, immigrant trans women continue to experience gendered forms of punishment in immigration detention. Similarly, in examining the flawed implementation of over three dozen laws addressing violence against women enacted since the 1960s in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, we find that in contexts where entrenched gender ideologies stereotype women, devalue their lives, and prioritize family unity, such laws are largely symbolic (Menjívar and Diossa-Jiménez 2023;Menjívar and Walsh 2017;Walsh and Menjívar 2016). The faulty implementation of legal protections for women thus has as much to do with unchanged practices, stereotypes, and attitudes toward women as with the legal categories that states deploy to protect women from violence.…”

“… 12. Numerous instances reveal the powerful interests and ideologies that emerge in state categories. In work examining violence against women laws in Central America, we find that familyism ideologies influence how these laws are designed and placed within the legal hierarchy to disfavor women (Menjívar and Diossa-Jiménez 2023; see also Chernova 2012). …”