This article asks if the incorporation of Sumak Kawsay, a concept from Andean philosophy, into the Constitution of Ecuador, has impacted the legal regulation of violence against women. It examines the trajectory of penal reform in the field of domestic violence and suggests that the decolonial shift in the Constitution has failed to significantly disrupt the dominant framework of penality in which gender violence regulation is inscribed. At the same time, feminist demands have been reframed through the formations of criminal law and the dominant political discourse, resulting in provisions that reproduce a positivistic logic and a family protection rationality, with problematic consequences for women’s access to justice on the ground. If securing success in legal reform entails translating emancipatory demands into established and unchallenged penal paradigms, the potential of decolonial notions is overshadowed by the language, formalities and underlying assumptions of criminal law.