“Revolution with a Woman's Face”? Family Norms, Constitutional Reform, and the Politics of Redistribution in Post-Neoliberal Ecuador

During his campaign, socialist-leaning Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa claimed that his administration's Citizen Revolution has a “woman's face.” As part of his buen vivir (“living well”) development model, which is his alternative to neoliberalism, Correa has sought to redirect national development and create more political inclusivity, which he institutionalized in part through his 2008 constitutional reforms. In this article I analyze discourses concerning gender, sexuality, and the neoliberal family in the 1998 and 2008 constitutional assemblies as a way to understand the centrality of heteronormativity, as well as possible counters to heterosexual social reproduction imaginaries, in Ecuador's post-neoliberal form of governance and development. I argue that despite some successes in the realm of women's and sexual rights, including the broadening of the definition of “the family” in the 2008 constitution, reprocentric discourse privileging heterosexual reproduction continues to be central to Correa's redistributive agenda, with important implications for scholarly and activist understandings of post-neoliberal redistribution and social reproduction.