President Javier Milei’s government has two faces when it comes to gender policies. It states publicly that the State assists those denouncing violence and says the #144 telephone emergency hotline is open 24 hours a day. Yet since taking office, on December 10 last year, it has provoked, eliminated and removed funds from most of the programmes dedicated to protecting the victims of violence.
In the middle of last year’s electoral campaign, then-candidate Milei said that he would end state gender policies. No sooner had he stepped inside the Casa Rosada, he moved forward speedily in that direction with unequivocal gestures. He signed the dissolution of the Women, Gender & Diversity Ministry on his very first day in office and decided to change the name of the “Hall of Women” (Salón de las Mujeres) at the Casa Rosada presidential palace, precisely on International Women’s Day, March 8. The decision was communicated by the head of state’s sister Karina Milei, the powerful presidential chief-of-staff.
Adding insult to injury, as the gender violence scandal involving former president Alberto Fernández and his former partner Fabiola Yáñez broke, Milei’s government placed the building once occupied by the Women, Gender & Diversity Ministry up for sale. Hours later, Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni boasted about the successful operation of #144 hotline, which in reality has been hit hard by Milei’s ‘chainsaw’ plan of government spending cuts, notably through dismissals and underfunding.
On June 7 this year, just days after the annual Ni Una Menos anti-gender violence march took place, Milei’s government announced it was closing a body dedicated to the care, prevention and assistance of reports, the Violence Undersecretariat. The area has been moved around the government’s diagrams since Milei took office – first to the Human Capital Ministry and then to the Justice Ministry, always facing obstacles.
The Violence Undersecretariat’s budget had already been cut. It had been assigned the same funds as it had been under the now-defunct Women, Gender & Diversity Ministry in 2023 and – as is the norm in sensitive state areas under La Libertad Avanza – cutbacks were introduced. According to official data, as of May, the area had spent 26.8 percent less compared to the same period the preceding year, in line with the underuse of the overall national budget. Total funds also experienced a strong adjustment in real terms, given year-to-year inflation, of 62 percent.
The spending cuts at the Secretariat affected various programmes, many of which were discontinued in 2024. One case is Registradas, a scheme dedicated to assisting workers in private homes, a highly informal sector of employment, a project which covered over 34,000 workers. The ENIA unplanned pregnancy plan was also affected, which had managed to help reduce unintentional pregnancy among teenagers by 50 percent in the past few years. Payments made via the Acompañar programme, focusing on LGBTI+ people in a gender-based violence situation across the country, were discontinued at the beginning of the year. Between 2020 and 2023, it assisted 320,000 people.
Which plans have been kept going? Reviewing the budget for prevention and assistance programmes for gender-based violence, there are two. One is the PPG (Políticas contra la Violencia por Razones de Género) unit, which has suffered a budget adjustment in real terms of negative 79.9 percent. It is now in the hands of the Human Capital Ministry, led by Sandra Pettovello. The other is Afianzamiento de la Justicia, a scheme aimed at “protecting violence victims.” It is operating with difficulties in the orbit of Mariano Cúneo Libarona’s Justice Ministry and has suffered a real term cut of 71.33 percent.
Milei, however, is not worried. In fact, he questions all gender-based policies, describing them as a “con” designed “to take advantage of a serious problem” in order to “make business.” He claims all that needs to be done is to “crack down on crime.”
With the Alberto Fernández case now making the headlines, Adorni posted this week about the operation of the #144 hotline, which assists and aids women denouncing gender-based violence at the home or at work. Milei’s spokesperson stated that the line remains staffed24 hours a day, but he omitted some key data.
Specifically, in the first four months of the La Libertad Avanza administration, the emergency line’s staffing pool went from 146 workers to 71, a near 50-percent reduction. According to Amnesty International Argentina, the hotline received between 2019 and 2023 over 1,200,000 calls, intervening 93,000 times.
What’s more, the NGO highlighted that – for the first time in 37 years – “policies for care and prevention of gender-based violence are not institutionalised in Argentina.” Amnesty, which underlined that there is “one femicide every 32 hours” in Argentina, has already requested that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) hold the Argentine State to account for its public policies.
Comments