Martina Yopo Díaz

Late fertility is a growing global phenomenon as more women delay childbearing and become mothers later in life. While women have always experienced childbearing at advanced ages, what is unique to...

The rise of voluntary childlessness among men represents an important shift in family formation, yet research in this area continues to focus primarily on women. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews with childless men from Santiago de Chile, this article explores the experiences of men who opted for permanent sterilization as a strategy to forgo fatherhood. The findings show that orientation towards autonomy, individualism, and hedonism, alongside the pursuit of personal passions and projects, are key factors in men’s decision to forgo fatherhood. At the same time, concerns about time poverty, prohibitive living costs, fears of failing as a parent, and an uncertain future also emerge as decisive issues in their decision. These insights advance current scholarship on voluntary male childlessness by highlighting that reasons for forgoing fatherhood span from personal motivations to social and structural pressures, reflecting emerging societal changes and challenges around family formation.

Resumen: En América Latina, la libertad para decidir sobre el propio cuerpo a través de la anticoncepción y el aborto han estado en el centro de las disputas feministas por la autonomía y la equidad de género. Si bien este énfasis en el derecho a no tener hijos ha posibilitado importantes transformaciones sociales e institucionales, su foco en la elección individual y la limitación de la fecundidad no ha sido suficiente para comprender la complejidad de las opresiones y violencias que caracterizan las experiencias reproductivas en la región. Este artículo adopta el lente de la justicia reproductiva como herramienta epistémica para abordar la relación entre reproducción y justicia social en América Latina. A partir de investigaciones en Chile, Colombia y Perú, este artículo muestra cómo el derecho a tener y criar hijos en condiciones dignas, seguras y sostenibles es vulnerado por configuraciones estructurales asociadas a políticas eugenésicas de planificación familiar, la precarización neoliberal de la seguridad social y la degradación medioambiental. Resaltando las convergencias entre el marco de justicia reproductiva y el conocimiento construido por los feminismos latinoamericanos, este artículo contribuye a ampliar los marcos epistémicos y políticos para abordar los desafíos de la reproducción en América Latina.

This study examines the standard employment life course among the post‐war generation in five countries traditionally classified as liberal and investigates variations in the pluralisation and differentiation of life course employment patterns within liberal welfare states. Using retrospective data from five liberal‐leaning countries (England, Ireland, Switzerland, the United States, and Chile) we reconstruct men's and women's working trajectories from ages 15 to 65. Our sequence analysis reveals inconsistent levels of pluralisation across these countries but a consistent trend towards greater differentiation. We also find that gender and educational differences do not uniformly account for these patterns. The findings challenge the notion of all‐pervasive standard employment within this generation and demonstrate that even nations sharing similar welfare typologies can produce divergent life course outcomes. We conclude that historical legacies, cultural norms, and market deregulations shape diverse employment pathways, underlining the need for comparative, longitudinal approaches. Implications for comparative research and potential policy levers are discussed cautiously.

Research on work–life balance and extended working lives largely assumes institutional supports that make reconciliation feasible. Drawing on 46 retrospective life‐story interviews with economically active older women in Chile, we challenge this assumption by showing that conciliation under institutional scarcity is not a stable “balance,” but a cumulative, reserve‐dependent configuration process shaped by thresholds of depletion and replenishment across the life course. We theorize three mechanisms through which women sustain employment beyond statutory retirement age: sequencing (temporally ordering exits, reductions, and reentry), layering (stacking paid work with caregiving, health management, and learning), and resource conversion (transforming one resource into another, e.g., income into care time or microtimes into skills). These mechanisms operate across institutional arrangements, relational configurations, and individual/embodied practices, producing patterned cycles of withdrawal and reentry, kin‐based redistribution of care, and bodily regulation that converts constraints into functional capacity. By specifying how conciliation is assembled under scarcity and when it fails as reserves cross thresholds, this study advances a mechanism‐based framework for analyzing gendered extended working lives in Global South contexts.

Resumen: La autonomía económica de las mujeres es clave para superar la pobreza, avanzar en igualdad de género y lograr un desarrollo sostenible. Sin embargo, en América Latina hay pocos estudios empíricos que aborden la capacidad de las mujeres para producir, administrar y controlar ingresos propios. A partir de una revisión sistemática de la literatura integrando el metaanálisis y la meta-etnografía, este artículo sistematiza el conocimiento sobre la autonomía económica de las mujeres en América Latina, reflexiona sobre los desafíos conceptuales y empíricos de este campo de investigación, y aporta antecedentes para las políticas públicas de igualdad de género en la región.

The climate crisis poses major challenges to reproductive justice. Climate-related events and natural disasters are severely impacting sexual and reproductive rights as well as the ability of individuals to become parents and care for their children. Through a systematic review conducted using the PRISMA method, this article addresses the impact of the climate crisis on the three core principles of reproductive justice: (1) the right not to have a child; (2) the right to have a child; and (3) the right to parent children in safe and healthy environments. While the review found no empirical studies addressing how the climate crisis impacts the right not to have children, the findings suggest that hurricanes, floods, heatwaves, droughts, and coastal erosion are associated with greater intentions of remaining childless and having fewer children, increasing fetal mortality and preterm births, decreasing newborn sex ratios and birth weight, rising birth risks, declining birth rates, and increasing challenges to parenting and childcare. We argue that the climate crisis fundamentally undermines reproductive justice by preventing individuals from fully and equitably exercising their reproductive rights to have children and to parent in safe and sustainable environments. In doing so, we stress that the climate crisis should be considered when addressing the challenges of reproductive justice and that addressing these challenges requires implementing policies that not only seek to mitigate the effects of climate disruptions, but also strengthen the capacity of individuals and communities to adapt to changing environmental conditions, ensuring more sustainable reproductive futures.

The feminization of contraception remains one of the most persistent gender inequalities, while the role of men in birth control and family planning continues to be largely overlooked both in policy and research. This article advances knowledge on the gender politics of contraception by exploring the vasectomy experiences of childless men in Santiago, Chile. Through 20 semi-structured qualitative interviews, we analyze how men refuse, reproduce, and reinforce gender privilege in opting for voluntary sterilization. Through vasectomy, men challenge precepts of hegemonic masculinity that conflate being a man with procreation and parenthood while they also take on more reproductive responsibility to ostensibly subvert gender inequalities underlying the female contraceptive culture. However, through vasectomy men also reinforce traditional features of masculinity such as their entitlement to sexual pleasure and control over conception while they also enjoy the benefits of their structurally advantaged gender position, such as less questioning over sterilization, praise for their reproductive responsibility, and increasing social capital as contraceptive pioneers. By revealing how men navigate gender privilege through vasectomy, we stress the ambivalent implications of voluntary male sterilization for gender equality in contraception and unveil the making of hybrid masculinities that retain privilege even in their attempts toward gender equality.

While there is consensus about the combined relevance of liberal regime policies and gendered employment and family trajectories in adulthood, for shaping employment in later life, so far there is no single cross-national study simultaneously addressing these dimensions. Drawing on exceptionally rich, harmonised life history data, we explore the association between employment and family patterns in adulthood, and the prevalence, duration and diversity of extended working lives beyond full pension age, among men and women in four predominantly liberal countries: two from Europe (England and Switzerland) and two from the Americas (the United States and Chile). Our findings indicate that employment trajectories – unlike partnership and fertility trajectories – play a significant role in shaping the prevalence, duration and diversity of later-life employment across the four countries examined. Furthermore, gender differences in later-life employment patterns are particularly notable in England and Chile. Our comparative perspective reveals that while liberal regimes share certain characteristics, they also exhibit significant diversity in how extended working lives manifest and are influenced by lifecourse trajectories.

Extended working life (EWL) in old age is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in aging populations. Gender inequalities constitute one of the most studied aspects of EWL. However, research on this issue has been predominantly quantitative, resulting in limited understanding of the situated meanings and experiences of work in old age for men and women. This article sheds light on the few studies that have explored gender inequalities in EWL qualitatively, systematically reviewing 47 articles. This study includes a meta-analysis of the papers reviewed, discusses the most frequent topics and content addressed by qualitative studies, and introduces a brief overview of the main findings on gender inequalities in the literature. These findings underscore that the literature has mainly been published in countries of the Global North, with data primarily focused on those nations. Additionally, there is an emphasis on research related to the meanings, decisions, policies, and narratives surrounding retirement, while only a limited number of articles have a defined theo­retical framework. Finally, the limited number of comparisons between countries suggests a need for further research from these perspectives. We conclude this systematic review by discussing the main findings, suggest­ing policy implications of our work and identifying gaps that should be addressed in future research.