This article addresses the ways in which Sandinismo has affected the Nicaraguan women's movement from ‘within’, analysing how its legacy is reflected in personal discourses on gender and sexuality within the women's movement. In‐depth interviews show that the women's movement inherited from the Sandinistas specific ideas about social justice and social change based on a primary identity, a corresponding hierarchy of rights and a notion of the state as the privileged site of power and social change. I argue that this legacy has hindered the development of feminism in Nicaragua and especially the mobilisation around sexual and reproductive rights.