An Open Secret traces the history of women's experiences with unwanted pregnancy and abortion in La Paz and El Alto, Bolivia between the early 1950s and 2010. It finds that women's personal reproductive experiences contributed to shaping policies and services in reproductive health care.

The 21st century Latin American developmental welfare state model is based on a new public-private alliance, where state-led developmental social policy relies for its implementation mainly on proactive, emerging regional entrepreneurs and a growing middle class. This volume illustrates where innovative development strategy may be in the making.

This book is a critical resource for understanding the relationship between gender, social policy and women’s activism in Latin America, with specific reference to Chile. Latin America’s mother-centered kinship system makes it an ideal field in which to study motherhood and maternalism—the ways in which motherhood becomes a public policy issue. As maternalism embraces and enhances gender differences, it has been criticized for deepening gender inequalities. Yet invoking motherhood continues to offer an effective strategy for advancing women’s living conditions and rights, and for women themselves to be present in the public sphere. In analyzing these important relationships, the contributors to this volume discuss maternal health, sexual and reproductive rights, labor programs, paid employment, women miners’ unionization, housing policies, environmental suffering, and LGBTQ intimate partner violence.

El embarazo en la adolescencia es considerado como un riesgo para la salud materna e infantil, así como un factor que contribuye al desmesurado crecimiento de la población, a la deserción escolar, y a la perpetuación de la pobreza, al coartar las posibilidades de desarrollo familiar. Sus causas se atribuyen principalmente a la sexualidad precoz y a la falta de información y de acceso a los métodos anticonceptivos. Esta publicación pone en cuestión los supuestos antes mencionados, destacando dos factores realmente subyacentes a esta problemática: la pobreza y la desigualdad, que dejan pocas oportunidades alternativas de desarrollo a una gran cantidad de nuestros jóvenes, y la falta de una verdadera educación para el ejercicio de la sexualidad que les permita enfrentarse con responsabilidad a este aspecto tan central para su vida.