The victory of the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in this week's elections in Nicaragua, just days after a referendum banning all abortion in the country, got me thinking about the relationship between the Latin American left (or, at least, its demagogues) and the struggle against women's oppression.

Of course, part of the reason for Ortega's unequivocal opposition to all abortion has been his shift from a "communist" ideology towards the Catholic centre of Nicaraguan politics. Bible in hand, his vision of "social justice" has brought him deep into the fold of the Church - alleviating poverty and suffering, within the boundaries of medieval social dogma, is the new agenda.

The Church has since the 1960s played such a role in the continent, with tentative steps at the Lateran II council (1962-5) "a preferential option for the poor" and the 1968 council in Medellin, Colombia, symbolic of major progress for the "liberation theology" movement. This represented a bid by the Church to buttress its support by positioning itself as "on the left". In countries like Ecuador, El Salvador and Nicaragua were created grassroots "Christian base communities" where the laity was given a greater role in pastoral work. These were the only means by which peasants were allowed to congregate under the Somoza regime, and the Sandinistas used them to mobilise support.

John Paul II, visiting Nicaragua in 1983, attacked the divisions between the "popular" and "institutional" arms of the Church in the country. Priests like Gaspar García Laviana had fought in the - "communist" - Sandinista Front for National Liberation, which made conservatives uneasy - the role of the Church was not to back the cause of "godless communism". Of course, many of the clergy who declared their desire for social justice were sincere and brave people, suffering massive repression from tin-pot tyrants fighting to save their régimes.

I think that the continuing centrality of Catholic culture to not only Nicaragua, but all of South America, is important when we consider the "women's liberation" carried out under governments like the Sandinistas and Chávez, which essentially means reinforcing the traditional role of women while glorifying their part in the movement for "socialism" in the abstract.

At the Global Women's Strike meeting a couple of weekends ago, progress for women's rights in Venezuela was explained in relation to two issues; wages for housework, and "micro-credits" which help women set up food distribution and health co-operatives. Women are assisted to do domestic work and run small businesses (that is, for "women's work", like nursing and cooking) - why is it better that they're paid to do this rather than getting unemployment benefit? The programme starts from the perspective of reinforcing traditional social values - the fact that many women are active in the Bolivarian movement, often as "women's supporter groups" does not mean that there is a revolution in the home.

Women are, sadly, not allowed to control their own bodies - what women's self-determination can exist without that? Sex workers' unions are banned. There are no abortion rights - Chávez has twice in the last three years rebuked moves towards its legalization, under pressure from the Church hierarchy. Presumably it is not central to his plan to build "the Kingdom of God on Earth". And this in a continent where countless thousands of women die each year because of clandestine abortions.

Under the Sandinistas it was not so different. A big deal was made of the role of women in fighting for the 'socialist' revolution (baby in one arm, rifle in the other), sometimes organized as women separately from men. 30% of the Sandinista army were women. But what does that really mean? Saying that "socialism will liberate women" is to ignore that the struggle against patriarchal norms is itself part of the struggle for socialism.

The AMNLAE feminist group (85,000 strong) used the slogan "no revolution without women's emancipation: no emancipation without revolution." But in reality it submitted itself entirely to the Sandinista leadership, winning a few crumbs from the table such as subsidies for staple foods, promotion of breaks at work so that women could breastfeed, and increased women's employment. Many women left the organization when it became clear that women's emancipation was in fact "on hold", and some of them even supported the conservative Violeta Chamorro, who won the 1990 elections and unleashed new attacks on women workers' rights.

What AMNLAE ignored was that participation in the 'socialist' cause did not equal liberation for women - just as the role of women in the Paris Commune did not even win them the right to vote.

The emancipation offered up by the Sandinistas was socially conservative in many aspects - prostitution was suppressed harshly, the right to "therapeutic abortion" for raped women was not extended to others, and the traditional family unit was reinforced. Of course, in 2006, closer than ever to the Church, Ortega has clamped down on even that limited abortion right, which had been in place since 1893!

In the social movements of Latin America, women's self-organization is largely quite poor, despite the important part they play in the fight against neo-liberalism. At least 75% of the workers at the worker-occupied Brukman clothes factory in Buenos Aires are women, and the women who work in Bolivia's informal economy, such as selling food in the streets, are central to community organizations such as FEJUVE in El Alto - but socialist feminism is not really on the agenda. In La Paz we stayed with a group of anarcha-feminists, and the Pan y Rosas group in Argentina calls for abortion rights - but their movement is not taken seriously enough by the rest of the left and labour movement.

In Bolivia, we were constantly explained the view that "she who holds the purse strings rules the world" - ultra-traditional indigenous social codes apparently empower women. If an adult man goes to a market in La Paz and tries to buy something, he'll be turned away. The market, you see, is only for women. Does this fact represent women's authority over men, or the domestic role which they are expected to play?

Luis Gomez, a NarcoNews journalist from Mexico, went on and on about how women in Bolivian society control the family finances, stop their husbands from going out drinking - apparently there are even support groups for men beating their wives. This kind of outlook is a rather transparent effort to avoid discussion of women's emancipation (and, indeed, the widespread violence against women). Why? Because traditional religious practice - in fact "paganism" blended with a touch of Catholicism - is above criticism, and in the face of globalization many on the left do nothing but glorify pre-capitalist social norms.

It is clear that women's organizations in Latin America need to organize not simply as women, but instead for women. Women revolutionaries need to fight for their own demands, for their own status in society, not just build support for social-justice Catholics like Chávez and Ortega.

Just to prove my point about these leaders' social conservatism, look at Venezuela's 2005 Penal Code on Adultery (a reform of the 2000 Code, also brought in under Chávez)

"Article 394: The adulteress will be punished with imprisonment of between three months and three years. The same punishment will apply to the accomplice in the adultery.

"Article 395: A husband who has a partner in the family house or outside it, if the deed is well-known [!] will be punished with imprisonment of between three and eighteen months. The punishment will revoke legal marital rights. The partner will be punished with imprisonment of between three months and one year.

"Article 396: If the spouses are legally separated, or if the guilty spouse had been abandoned by the onther, the punishment of the crimes detailed in the above articles will be, for each guilty party, imprisonment for between fifteen days and three months."