—Verónica Undurraga Valdés, Professor at the Faculty of Law, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez.[1]
The first constitution-making body with gender parity in the history of constitutionalism was Chile’s 2021 Constitutional Convention. Not only was half of its membership composed of women, but many delegates explicitly set out to draft a feminist constitution. This column is an invitation to engage with, and reflect on, what is an ambitious goal.[2]
Since the early days of modern constitutionalism, women have demanded a place in constitutional debates and insisted that their perspectives and claims be reflected in new constitutions. Looking at Latin American experience over the past decades, it is striking how women have managed to shape constitutional outcomes, even when they were largely absent from constitution-making bodies. Operating from the margins, they developed strategies from the outside to influence those in control. Two well-known and successful examples are the “lipstick lobby” (Lobby do Batom) during Brazil’s constituent process leading to the 1988 Constitution (Cesario Alvin Gomes and Rodríguez de Assis Machado, 2024, p. 146), and the mobilization of women in Colombia’s 1991 constitutional process (Jaramillo Sierra, 2024, p. 72-73). In subsequent constitution-making efforts across the region, these experiences became reference points.
The growing legitimacy of quota policies and, later, parity measures in the region crystalized in another hard-won achievement of the Latin American feminist movement – the constituent assemblies that produced Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution and Bolivia’s 2009 Constitution included 34.62% and 34.5% women delegates, respectively. In Chile, support for parity in the Convention has its own trajectory. Among other milestones, it includes former President Michelle Bachelet’s promotion of parity during her administration, and the feminist mobilization in the years leading up to and during the social uprising, that opened the door to the constitutional process. The “Agreement for Peace and a New Constitution” negotiated in Congress and supported by President Piñera’s government did not initially include a commitment to gender parity. It was a coalition of feminist organizations, women members of Congress, and academics that developed a successful strategy to incorporate it into the constitutional reform that enabled the process (Zúñiga Añazco, 2021, p.65; Arce-Riffo y Suárez-Cao, p. 129).
This reform—along with the introduction of independent candidate lists and proportional representation for Indigenous peoples (also with gender parity)—encouraged many young feminist activists and Indigenous women to run for seats in the Convention. Many feminist groups were initially reluctant to participate, fearing co-optation and the neutralization of the movement. Ultimately, they chose to engage seeing in the Convention an opportunity to bring feminist, Indigenous, environmental, and other demands into public debate (Guzmán Barcos, Infante Erazo and Ramírez Palominos, 2024). Although the Convention included older feminists, party-affiliated feminists, and liberal feminists, its tone and practices were largely shaped by a younger, more radical strand of feminism that had taken form during the massive #NiUnaMenos mobilizations of 2016 and the feminist university strikes of May 2018.
Chilean feminists succeeded in incorporating virtually all their demands into the draft of the constitution, which is an exceptional accomplishment considering that provisions required a two-thirds quorum for approval, and the feminist activists alone were far from reaching that threshold. Delegates across the political spectrum often described them as the most cohesive and powerful bloc within the Convention. This external perception is itself an achievement, as it translated into agenda-setting and negotiating power within the Convention. It reflects the feminists’ commitment to abide by collective decisions, even though there were significant internal tensions over both substance and strategy. It is also noteworthy that outside the Convention an alliance of feminist and LGBTIQ+ groups supported the delegates, and helped them manage internal disagreements.
Feminist constitutionalism operates on several levels: epistemological, doctrinal, and sometimes political – as in this case. It critically examines the foundations of inherited constitutionalism, questions the narratives and metaphors on which it is built, and gives voice to those who have been suppressed. This reconstruction opens new genealogies that not only reveal the patriarchal and colonial biases embedded in constitutionalism as we know it, but also allow us to imagine alternative paths. Feminist constitutionalism also engages critically with liberal constitutional theory. For example, it exposes how the abstract and supposedly neutral liberal subject rests on a flawed empirical notion of autonomy—one that fails to account for human interdependence, and for dimensions of experience that characterize the lives of women and others who do not fit the Enlightenment model of the autonomous individual. While feminist constitutionalism does not abandon the ideal of legal neutrality—essential for the rule of law and as a safeguard against arbitrariness—it seeks to reconstruct it by recognizing plural subjects free from androcentric bias. By working with a more integrated understanding of the subject, it also challenges the liberal distinction between public and private spheres, exposing how this divide maps onto a gendered split within the subject itself. This division has meant that experiences which women have outside the public sphere—such as violence or lack of reproductive autonomy—have not been evaluated as matters of justice, and that the interests affected by them—central as they are to human dignity—have not been given priority as constitutional rights. The confinement of care—historically performed by women—to the private sphere has enabled men to thrive in public life by relying on that care, while at the same time burdening women with responsibilities that have limited their ability to participate in it. As a result, women have remained significantly underrepresented in the exercise of power. Feminist constitutionalism is therefore committed to a substantive conception of equality, grounded in the recognition that some people live under conditions of structural inequality, and that it is the duty of law to confront and overcome those asymmetries.
The feminist delegates to the Chilean Constitutional Convention managed to incorporate many of these elements into the draft constitution. The process included dozens of testimonies from individuals belonging to marginalized groups, among them voices from Indigenous peoples who until then had been entirely absent from Chile’s constitutional history. The plural reality of the constitutional subject was made visible—not only through non-sexist language, but also by explicitly naming groups historically invisible to constitutional law. A commitment to substantive equality prevailed, with a clear intention to address structural inequalities. Parity was established as a rule across all spaces of power, both public and private. Issues traditionally seen as outside the public sphere—such as care, gender-based violence, sexuality, and reproduction—were constitutionalized. A gender perspective was also incorporated into the treatment of more traditional constitutional issues (Undurraga Valdés y Zúñiga Añazco, 2024).
The Convention’s work also revealed some tensions that continue to be debated in feminist theory—for example, the challenges parity poses in accommodating intersex, non-binary, and trans individuals. There were also criticisms and self-criticisms regarding the work carried out by feminist members of the Convention, particularly around the defense of maximalist provisions, strategic missteps, and exclusionary practices toward those outside the feminist core or toward more liberal feminist delegates.
The broader problem that affected the 2022 draft also shaped feminist work within the Convention. Left-leaning factions—where most feminists were located—negotiated primarily among themselves, as they had the votes needed to pass provisions without engaging the right. As a result, the draft lacked a key source of legitimacy: the ability to represent the entire political community.
We are living through a time in which democracies—and the constitutional frameworks that regulate and limit power—are under strain. Meeting this challenge will require creativity from political and legal communities to preserve and strengthen the values of constitutional democracy. In that context, feminist constitutionalism has an important role to play, not only in identifying and dismantling the biases embedded in our current constitutional structures, but also in contributing to the construction of the new political and institutional conditions required for the survival of democracy. The Chilean attempt at feminist constitutionalism—with both its achievements and its shortcomings—offers a valuable source of lessons for this urgent task, particularly regarding the importance of combining transformative agendas with broad-based political inclusion.
Suggested citation: Verónica Undurraga Valdés, Chile’s Constitutional Process: An Experiment in Feminist Constitutionalism, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Apr. 29, 2026 at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/chiles-constitutional-process-an-experiment-in-feminist-constitutionalism/
[1] I am grateful for the invitation to participate in the meeting of feminist scholars held in May 2025 at Universidad Torcuato di Tella, as part of the project “Constitucionalismo Feminista,” led by Professor Mariela Puga and funded by the RED ALAS, which inspired this column. I also acknowledge the support of ANID, Fondecyt Regular Program 2022, Project No. 2111474, which provided funding for research on the topics addressed in this column.
[2] Chile underwent two consecutive constitution-making processes that produced ideologically opposed constitutional drafts in 2022 and 2023, both of which were rejected in ratification referendums.