Toward a Non-Androcentric Historical Analysis of Women’s Prisons: The Cases of Santa Fe and Buenos Aires (Argentina, 1924–1936)

Abstract

This article analyzes the administration of women’s prisons in Argentina during the process of state consolidation, using two prison cases: the Correctional Institution for Women (Santa Fe) and the Olmos Prison for Women (Buenos Aires). In both cases, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd’s administration faced resistance from several state and non-state agents. We revisit an old issue using a new gender approach to investigate the relationship between female punishment, civil society, the state, its agents. The aim is to contribute toward a historical, non-androcentric analysis of women’s prisons using archival research.

Resocialization, gender and the Global South: A critical analysis of the concept through women's experiences in prisons in Peru

“…In so doing, I contribute to an enduring body of scholarship on women's imprisonment, which has found it to reproduce traditional gender norms (see Bosworth, 1999; Bosworth and Kaufman, 2013; Carlen, 1983; Carlen and Worrall, 2004; Howe, 1994; Moran et al, 2009). In Latin America, specifically, critical scholars have argued that Catholic mandates have sought to transform female prisoners to reproducers of care (Aguirre, 2003; Calandria and González, 2021; Guala, 2016). Prisons here seek to dominate and domesticate women through moralizing punitive and paternalistic mandates in order to transform them into docile and submissive subjects (Ballester, 2021; Bracco, 2022a; Cacopardo and Malacalza, 2019; Carranza, 2016; Guala, 2016; Romero-García, 2017).…”