Mala Htun, Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Tables, bibliography, index, 219 pp.; hardcover $60, paperback $22.

It is a pleasure for someone like me, doing research in the intersections of gender and religion in Latin America, to read this book, Written by a political scientist, it takes a fresh look at some of the most controversial and largely unresolved issues of gender in Latin America, a field usually dominated by anthropologists and scholars of religion, if covered at all. Htun analyzes the cases of three Cono Sur countries, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, from the late 1960s to the present, looking at how these three countries have or have not introduced reforms to laws on gender and the family and what factors have been operative in these processes.

The differences between the three countries make the study especially interesting. Even when all the countries have experienced military regimes and a later transition to democracy, the changes in legislation have not easily followed from certain types of government. One of the most surprising results of Htun's research is that it was conservative military governments, not democratically elected ones, that introduced some important legal changes especially affecting women's roles, mainly in Brazil and Argentina.

Most of the chapters follow the same order. After introducing and analyzing the issues more generally and theoretically, the analysis is applied to the three countries respectively. This helps to highlight the similarities but especially the differences between the countries. Htun concentrates on three areas central to women's rights and roles as citizens: legislation concerning divorce, family equality, and abortion. By and large, women's rights were expanded under military governments. Divorce has not been legalized in democratic Chile, making it one of the two countries in the world where divorce is not legal; and none of the three countries liberalized its laws on abortion. In contrast, the 1989 law in Chile withdrew permission for therapeutic abortion, making abortion illegal under all circumstances.