Compliance without commitment: The erasure of LGBTIQA+ childhoods in Chile's protection system
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5027/psicoperspectivas-Vol25-Issue2-fulltext-3568Keywords:
gender perspective, institutional masculinity, LGBTIQA childhoods, care labor precarization, child protectionAbstract
Drawing on testimonies from 43 practitioners in Chile’s child protection system, this study exposes a structural rift between international mandates to mainstream gender and their bureaucratized implementation. Participants describe a top-down “paper” compliance that delivers checklists without training, reflection, or contextual adaptation, producing institutionalized epistemic violence. The result is dual harm: the precarization of feminized care labor, excluded from decisions, overworked, underpaid, and the systematic invisibilization of LGBTIQA+ children, whose identities are addressed only when they become a “problem.” Institutional masculinity sets priorities of efficiency and standardization over ethical care, while religious and conservative norms, literacy barriers, and classed hierarchies obstruct inclusive practice. Yet micropolitical acts, asking for a social name, creating safe spaces, adopting critical pedagogy, signal avenues of resistance. The findings argue for situated, intersectional, dialogic training and leadership that centers care as an ethical-political practice, moving from symbolic compliance to materially supported transformation, with resources, time, and shared accountability systemwide.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Wilson Orlando Albornoz Fuentes, Carla Daniela Mendez Moraga, María Angelica Montecinos Rojas (Autor)
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