[APWW-Meet] Feminisms, challenges and changes in Latin america

[Roberto Savio <soros@other-net.info>]

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Dear Friends:
This article is not on or about our region but it contains elements that
feminist in this region can also relate too.

Thank you,
Luz


//Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited,
article sent for information purposes.//
Feminisms, challenges and changes in Latinamerica


Irene Le

Feminism is plural, it has never responded to some single political
line; it grew out of different situations, with variations inherent to
each context. It has multiple political points of reference that
converge on one common end: the struggle against patriarchy, a system
which is not only ideological or cultural, but being based on
maintaining power relationships, pervades all economic, political and
social relations.

With this political point of reference and an absolutely de-centralised
structure, the feminist movement achieved, at the end of the 20th
century, recognition of the universal character of women's rights, a
historic step that symbolically redeemed women as a collective and
individual protagonist.  However, reparations to material inequalities
which resulted from age-old relations of subjugation did not follow at
the same pace, as most of these depend on structural situations arising
from the overlap between patriarchy and capitalism, and which thus imply
profound revolutions in both at the same time.


This is the most recent challenge that comes out of the processes of
change that Latin America has been undergoing over the past decade (1)
where nearly all these countries have begun different initiatives of
change that imply, in some of them, the conception of a new model,
arising from innovation and from people's own experiences. This is a
unique moment, marked by a call to the different Latin American
societies to look at themselves and to define their present and future
within new parameters.


For Latin American women, who entered the 21st century in the midst of a
massification in the fall in social and economic conditions caused by
neo-liberalism - but also conferred from the previously-mentioned rights
- this context poses a big challenge, which is no other than the
opportunity to include feminist proposals in the new model. Yet without
abandoning their scope for action, nor their critical role and autonomy
as a social movement.


The terrain that best meets this challenge is one of process, which
women's struggle initiated: recognition of the obvious structural
inequalities between genders and the need to face up them, an issue that
is now being tackled with different nuances as part of these countries'
agenda of change. Especially among those who initiated or finished new
versions of constitutions (2), and in new plans that stress the need to
take measures regarding structural questions; and designing policies on
inclusion and equality, which interrelate the different factors that can
generate them. (3)

This is a moment in which the clear inter-dependence between the
viability of rights, the need for structural change and designing a new
model is being discussed. It's quite evident that the spread of
exclusionary, neo-liberal policies made the universality of
previously-won human rights virtually inapplicable. Although recognition
of rights in recent years engendered public policy, this was
characterised by 'assistencialism' and by an omnipresent mercantile
focus, that gave rise to oppressive and discriminatory features.

It is in the context of the Latin American process of change that the
turnaround is also expressed by new forms of women's inclusion in
politics and the social sphere, which results from both their
participatory identity and from the emergence or strengthening of the
dynamics of social and economic construction from the grassroots and
popular movements.

All the new Latin American constitutions in the 21st century include new
approaches to gender (in some as a cross-cutting issue) and all cite
equality as a priority. Equality is also mentioned in proposals for
regional integration, a key to securing these changes.

The 1999 Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the first
of the run, includes non-sexist language through to a call to include a
gender focus in macro-economic policies and development plans;
recognises the economic value of domestic labour and the right of
housewives to social security; includes equality in every sphere; and
defines in its preamble that human beings - not capital - are the
instigators of development.

It is this last point that exemplifies the most significant measures
adopted in that country. The Women's Development Bank, established by
the Bolivarian revolution, is the only publicly-owned bank that is
managed by women and geared to their needs.  It aims to eradicate the
poverty and exclusion they suffer and sees women's empowerment as an
integral process that doesn't depend only on access to resources but
also on real changes in power relations. Mutual, solidarity and
cooperative credits open up possibilities to sketch out an extra- or
non-domestic economic perspective from a collective standpoint.

Women's presence in grassroots, popular-power initiatives (the Misiones)
is growing, as well as in the managerial spheres of the revolutionary
process: the National Assembly's president is a woman, as is the
president of National Electoral Council and a number of ministers.

In Bolivia, whose population is 62% indigenous, as well as including an
important section on gender equality in its 2008 constitution, emphasis
is given to identifying the country as 'pluri-national', a principle
that was preceded by one of the most significant symbolic (and material)
advances: the influx of indigenous women in key spaces of
decision-making and power. A historic occurence, particularly
considering that this social group has suffered the most from a long
history of discrimination: until 1952, indigenous women didn't even have
political rights.

The arrival of indigenous women in positions of power not only restores
them as a political actor, it also illustrates a break with technocratic
views on managing the state, racism and androcentricism. A symbol of
this new tendency is the role played by the peasant leader Silvia
Lazarte, under whose presidency the new Bolivian constitution was
approved, despite stiff opposition from the right that refuses to
recognise the majority, a rule of the electoral game created by
bourgeois democracy itself.

In Ecuador, 'the citizen's revolution' initiated in 2007, only required
a year to draft its National Social and Productive Development Plan,
which includes a cross-cutting gender focus and, within that focus,
innovative issues such as sexual diversity, which for the first time is
considered to be a national concern that requires actions, policies, and
an institutionalism that forms part of proposals for reforming the
state. At the same time, the design of the new constitution, which is
currently being drafted and is propelled by citizens' participation,
discussions are addressing the economy of care, diversity and
solidarity, and the viability of equality and diversities. The new
constitutional text will present innovative initiatives in the context
of a country which, since 1998, has been declared pluri-cultural and
egalitarian, and includes non-discrimination based on g! ender or sexual
orientation, sexual and reproductive rights, and the right of people to
take decisions freely concerning their bodies and sexuality, as
constitutional issues. Thus, current challenges revolve around defining
the model and structural changes that lead to their application.

In this case, the political ascendancy of equality between genders is
such that the executive branch declared violence against women as a
national concern and declared health and education (which particularly
involve women) to be a national state of emergency. At the same time a
ban was placed on sexist events in public spaces, such as beauty
contests and other discriminatory activities.

In Brazil, a state policy is being drafted regarding the National Plan
for Women, which was preceded by an extensive process of consultations
in which national, state and social organizations participated. Its
implementation is aimed at improving gender policies in governmental
spheres and includes measures such as improving the situation of the 15
million women who are single parents. Its contents are geared to putting
into practice women's civil, political, sexual and reproductive rights,
and implementing policies on education, culture, communication and
knowledge production.

Uruguay also approved its 2007-2011 National Plan for Equal
Opportunities, Rights and Public Policies for Women, with the aim of
prioritizing womens' rights in the public agenda. The purpose of its
lines of action are to encourage an integral vision of equality,
confront discrimination based on sex, gender, age, ethnic origin,
religion, sexual orientation, social and economic status, place of
residence, and disability.

Cuba is the only county that has maintained a consistent state policy
for over half a century regarding social and economic equality, access
to knowledge and to power decision-making spheres, participation, and
other requirements for women's' equality. The country has seen advances
unprecedented in the region that are backed-up by an agenda of process
aimed at achieving full equality. The most recent of these advances in
terms of equality and elimination of all forms of discrimination is the
recognition of the right of people to legalize the gender identity of
their choice, unique in the hemisphere, proposed in the 2007 Assembly of
Popular Power.

But not everything is rosy. In Nicaragua, the  Sandinista government's
president Daniel Ortega assumed office amidst regression regarding
issues such as abortion and related rights, supported by his party, the
same one that in the revolution of the 1980's developed one of the most
advanced initiatives on women's' equality.

This incomplete summary of changes taking place in Latin America cannot
finish without mentioning the issue of regional integration, proposed as
one of solidarities, complementarities, co-operation, diversity,
establishing equality, sovereignty, and as a unequivocal road for
endorsing these changes. The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas
(ALBA), the Banco del Sur and the ALBA bank, energy integration
initiatives, among others, mark a great change not only in the
self-perception of the possibilities for regional sustainability, but
also establish the guiding framework for possibilities to carry out deep
changes in geopolitical power relations.

With these ingredients the new Latin American moment marks the path for
a thorough change in the list of feminist proposals, at the same as
these proposals sustain the challenge of thinking of these changes from
a position of eliminating patriarchal power relations. We are facing a
unique moment in which a good part of feminism is immersed, be it
through direct incursion in the processes of change, such as the Women
Transforming the Economy Network, which has drafted feminist economic
policies, designing integration alternatives, among others; or from
developing proposals for humanity, as the World March of Women has done;
or from future perspectives, such as that of food sovereignty, raised by
the Women of the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations and
of Via Campesina.

What is at issue in all these cases is the future of women in Latin
American societies, situated on a planet with an expiry date imposed on
it by the market's and patriarchy's greed, and which can only be saved
through profound changes at the macro-social level and in daily
practice.

--------------
1. Almost all South American countries are being governed by new,
heterogeneous groupings deriving from left and centre. 2. The Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. 3. For example, SENPLADES's
2007 National Social and Productive Development Plan, as well as
including gender as a cross-cutting guiding principle, encompasses a
number of different aspects concerning redressing the structural
differences between the genders, and includes new issues such as sexual
diversity.


(ALAI, Latin America in Movement)


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