In this presentation I introduce findings from a research project that investigates the everyday communicative practices of Argentinian women for gender justice in the context of neoliberal capitalism, digital(ized) citizenship and the COVID-19 pandemic. Via a qualitative approach and a multi-method design, the project focuses on the micro(-techno?) politics of women’s everyday activism. Drawing on data from an online survey and semi-structured interviews conducted with women in Argentina in 2021-2022, I will show how they attempt to get the State's attention as they go about their everyday lives in the face of inequality, gender violence and other dysfunctional or broken elements of democracy that affect them disproportionally.
Based on this data-driven empirical characterization and engaging existing definitions of a politics of listening (Bickford, 1996; Bassel, 2007; Han, 2022), I will then analyze the perceived efficacy or inefficacy of Argentinian women’s communicative strategies aimed at the State. In which ways, and to which extent, do these strategies lead to the democratic justice being claimed by getting government agencies at various levels (national, provincial, municipal) to listen? From the perspective of gender justice (Goetz, 2007), I define listening for the purpose of my analysis not merely as the discursive acknowledgment of women's claims (or other symbolic actions with a similar aim) typical of government officers at various scales of governance, but as the concrete steps actually taken by government agencies to redress specific forms of injustice (Rodríguez, 2019; Kay, 2020; McRobbie, 2020).