2011-2013
New Challenges for Young Rural Women in Latin America
www.nuevastrenzas.org
Six ideas for thinking differently
The situation of young Latin American rural women has swiftly changed over the last decades due to modernization processes, further access to educational and health systems, as well as to the labor market and the increase of opportunities for political participation. These fast changes however are not simple: some achievements are weak, others face resistance, and in almost all cases, results show contradictions. Latin America is before the biggest and most prepared generation of young rural women. Therefore, it is the time for thinking about development projects and innovative public policies that will allow taking advantage of this potential for achieving a qualitative leap in the livelihoods of the population of continent’s rural areas. For promoting this debate, the research carried out by Nuevas Trenzas proposes six fields in development policy to work on in the next the upcoming years. In some cases, they are classic topics being now rethought and take into consideration new rural realities. Other topics are new, recently starting to make their way into the development and gender agendas of the region.
Education: The Vector of Change that Could Attain Greater Heights
Today, young Latin American rural women and girls study as much or more than their male peers. This growing inclusion in the educational system implies transcending change for their life strategies and projects. These are new perspectives that question traditional positions of gender, in the search for greater autonomy and economic independence and less control of their lives from men. These changes are deep and constitute one of the best news in last years. However, there are still many pending issues that public policies and development projects need to face: • Quality. Low quality of public schooling, particularly of rural schools may make access to higher education difficult or limit young rural women’s capacity for finishing university, without the proper support or mentoring. It is necessary to continue reforms that will allow overcoming these obstacles and improve both rural schools and the quality of education imparted in them. • Higher education. In rural areas, while coverage in primary and secondary education becomes universal, the offer for higher education is almost nonexistent. This is especially serious in a context where, as many studies show, secondary education is enough for successfully entering the job market. It is necessary, therefore, to design and implement creative strategies for improving the offer of specialized education and making it attractive and attainable for rural women. • New gender gaps. Even if in education the access gap has closed, this does not imply a total gender equality scenario. Today, the gender gap
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in education manifests in different ways. In some countries we find that while women study more years than men, the level of their academic achievement is lower. Understanding these new manifestations of the gender gap, more complex and deeper than just plain access, is still a pending challenge.
For further information: ¿Construyendo nuevas identidades? Género y educación en los proyectos de vida de las jóvenes rurales de Perú. http://issuu.com/nuevastrenzas/docs/16-construyendo-web
Politics of the Body and Sexual Rights: Improvements and Set-backs in a Key Issue
Nuevas Trenza’s research shows that deep change has taken place in Latin American young rural women’s life projects. In almost all countries, over the last decade, the average number of children young rural women bear has decreased swiftly. The coverage of rural health services has also increased. The percentage of births in medical facilities largely exceeds 50 percent of births in the whole region. Furthermore, in many cases intercultural experiences in health are being carried out, looking to bring these services closer to young rural women’s habits and particularities. These improvements result from the states’ efforts, the support of the international cooperation, and the participation of a great number of community-based organizations and NGOs. But above all they are the result of the change that has taken place within the paradigms of rural women themselves, who are ever more conscious of their rights and demand a greater decision making capacity, especially concerning their bodies. In spite of these improvements, sexual and reproductive health is still a highly controversial issue. Along with improvements, significant set-backs are experienced, due the renewed influence of conservative and religious institutions. Among the challenges that public policies and development projects must face over the upcoming years are the following: • New topics. The greater efforts carried over the last two decades, have focused in mother-child health. Without abandoning these politics, it is necessary to expand the efforts to other fields of rural women’s sexual rights. • New strategies. It is necessary to develop public policies that not only aim at increasing young rural women’s awareness of their rights, but also their real capacity to make decisions regarding their sexuality and their body, challenging taboos and negative imaginaries that still exist in Latin American societies, especially in rural areas. • Differentiated agendas. It is necessary to know better the particular agendas of rural women and their sexual rights. These agendas are not
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www.nuevastrenzas.org always the same as those of their urban contemporaries. Understanding these differences and knowing how they impact their life strategies is key for designing public policies that will be truly pertinent and efficient for young rural women. • Linking gender and health. Interventions’ assessments carried out in the last years show the need for working in coordination with and parallel to many fronts, including access to appropriate health care, prevention and confrontation of gender violence and other forms of structural violence that affects rural and indigenous women. For further information: Salud y derechos sexuales y reproductivos de mujeres rurales jóvenes: Políticas públicas y programas de desarrollo en América Latina. http://issuu.com/nuevastrenzas/docs/13-politicas-web La transformación de las mujeres rurales jóvenes en el Perú. Análisis comparativo a partir de los censos nacionales (1961-2007) http://issuu.com/nuevastrenzas/docs/10-interiores-web
Economy of Care: The Big Pending Challenge
Economy of care comprises work carried out at the home and taking care of dependents people. Women offer these services offered at their own home, at someone else’s home, or in the community in general, without receiving any pay. In Latin America these fields still don’t have any type of acknowledgement from rural society or public institutions. There is still much prejudice regarding what working at home and carrying out care work means. Chores are not valued and they are exclusively attributed to women by prevailing gender systems. For public policies, economy of care is a field where most things still need be done and where still enormous challenges exist: • Making it visible. Acknowledging rural women’s non-remunerated work is extremely difficult, in the measure that methodological tools used to measure their impact are designed from the perspective of urban paradigms and do not consider the rural world’s social and economic particularities. It is necessary, therefore, a consistent and systematic effort for developing public policies for raising awareness about their importance among society. • Mitigating. The same happens with most of the limited experiences aiming at mitigating the impact of care economy over rural women’s life strategies. These experiences are basically urban and have been conceived for areas with conditions that do not exist in most of the continent’s rural areas. Therefore, it is necessary to think thoroughly about the way in which these experiences may be translated in rural areas and still be efficient and sustainable.
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• Acknowledgment. A debate that has not yet been addressed in our continent refers to the Stated acknowledging the value of care activities, by means of direct cash transfers or social security contributions. In this sense there are many experiences being carried out in the developing world from which Latin America could learn for triggering a debate, under a mid and long term perspective. For further information: Economía del cuidado: Valoración y visibilización del trabajo no remunerado. http://issuu.com/nuevastrenzas/docs/15-economia-20-mayo-web Mujeres rurales jóvenes y migración en Colombia http://issuu.com/nuevastrenzas/docs/nuevastrenzas-ddt8informemigracioncolombia
Cultural Assets: Thinking Differently for Making the Most of Opportunity
In almost all areas of Latin America in spite of the legal equality achieved over the last decades, women experience different forms of discrimination in the access and benefit of productive assets and natural resources. This discrimination rests in deeply rooted standards and imaginaries, which only change progressively. The result is that young rural women have to develop innovative and creative strategies for improving their livelihoods. A field especially relevant in this area is the so-called cultural assets, linked to our countries’ biocultural diversity. Cultural assets have only recently started to become an object worthy of attention in the field of development. Even if there are positive experiences from which we need to learn, there is still a great number of challenges that condition the development of effective and efficient public policies in this field: • Articulation of agendas. In the field of culture, institutions, especially public institutions, still show a prevailing nominal incorporation of the gender perspective. In this sense, culture as a field does not make equality of opportunities for men and women easier to foster, and even less so for young rural women. It is necessary to come up with new articulating paths that will allow reciprocally linking and strengthening the agendas of rural development as well as protection and promotion of bio-cultural and gender diversity. • Institutional articulation. In public institutions initiatives are heavily disarticulated, even more so than in other fields of development policies. It is necessary to think about innovative strategies for articulation that will transversally include both territories and the different areas of public administration. These articulation initiatives shouldn’t necessarily be led by central State instances. They may also have a leading role in other areas of the State or even in civil society.
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www.nuevastrenzas.org • Overcoming recurrent topics. It is necessary to design policies that overcome the stereotypical vision of rural women as “guardians of culture”, which frequently leads proposing projects “for them to stay”, “for them to value their culture”, “for returning to tradition, which is fading away”. Young rural women’s life experiences themselves offer opportunities for supporting ways of enhancing cultural assets that show no fear of innovation, re-appropriation, and creative reinvention of cultural legacies.
For further information: La valorización de los activos culturales: ¿Estrategias innovadoras para el empoderamiento de las mujeres rurales jóvenes? http://issuu.com/nuevastrenzas/docs/14-web-fn Políticas y experiencias relevantes para el empoderamiento de las mujeres rurales en Perú. Un análisis desde el enfoque territorial. http://issuu.com/nuevastrenzas/docs/peru-enfoque-territorial-empoderami
Financial Inclusion: Beyond Conditional Cash Transfers
Rural economies have become more dynamic, but also more complex. Monetization of activities implies both possibilities and challenges. In this context, financial inclusion appears as one of the key tools for taking advantage of these opportunities and reducing Latin American young rural women’s levels of poverty and vulnerability. Until now, financial inclusion initiatives have mostly been linked to the height of conditional cash transfer programs (CCT). This connection implies both advantages and disadvantages. It allows accessing a greater number of potential beneficiaries, but at the same time takes away specificity and conditions financial inclusion initiatives. From the point of view of public policies, overcoming this situation poses important challenges for the years to come: • Promoting new integral work outlines. Most CCT programs pay their cash transfers through a deposit in a bank account. This has no doubt brought families closer to the financial system, specially the mothers who receive the families’ transfers. It is necessary, however, to further articulate these products with other financial products (micro-insurance, ad hoc social security plans, etc.) that will allow a greater impact in reducing vulnerability, especially in the case of rural women, deeply affected by problems such as domestic dependence and fewer possibilities for accessing the labor market. • Adapting interventions to rural women’s new paradigms. Most CCT programs focus in the figure of the mother. However, NuevasTrenzas’ research shows that young rural women’s life projects no longer exclusi-
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www.nuevastrenzas.org vely point toward starting a family. It is necessary to design a financial inclusion strategy wide enough to include those who distance themselves from women’s traditional roles as “guardians of the home”, assuming women as individuals, with their own expectations and life projects.
For further information: Inclusión financiera de las mujeres rurales jóvenes. Balance de políticas públicas y programas de desarrollo. http://issuu.com/nuevastrenzas/docs/11-inclusion-web
ICTs: A Promise to Fulfill
Among the most important change that affect young rural women’s everyday dynamics is the progressive expansion of the new information and communication technologies. Today, more than half of rural homes where young rural women live have at least one mobile phone. In some countries, the percentage is even higher. Even if in a lesser measure, Internet access has also increased, thanks to the expansion of coverage and cabinas of public access –privately owned venues where one pays for computer and Internet access. Digital alphabetization is not only an economic opportunity, it is also a favorable space to overcome fear, re-negotiate young rural women’s traditional roles, and increase the possibilities of them accomplishing their life expectations. NuevasTrenzas research shows, however, that the access and use of ICTs by young rural women still faces significant challenges. • In the case of the Internet, access is produced mainly through cabinas of public access, which implies a series of problems, in the measure that these spaces are perceived as masculine spaces, potentially hostile to young women. • In the case of mobile telephony, the advantages associated to its use are also accompanied by risks related to a narrower social control from their fathers, mothers, and partners. This poses a number of challenges for public policies on development, among which the following standout: • Incorporating specific approaches. It is necessary to design less homogenous public policies that will take into account factors that condition not only the rural world, but also gender and generation, making it more difficult for the rural worlds less favored collectives to appropriate ICTs. • Taking advantage of lessons learnt. It is necessary to carry out joint learning initiatives that will allow getting to know and scaling up successful initiatives that already exist in many of the region’s countries, and that aim at the appropriation and empowerment of technology by young rural women, for fostering significant change in their everyday lives.
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• Strengthening multi-sectorial work. It is important to strengthen the work carried out with other networks, and academic and civil society organizations that have focused their work in ICT related topics, and specially under a perspective of human development, gender, and rural development.
For further information on these topics: Mujeres rurales jóvenes en América Latina: Tan lejos y tan cerca de las TIC. Políticas públicas y programas sobre manejo de nuevas tecnologías, inserción y brecha tecnológica. http://issuu.com/nuevastrenzas/docs/12-mujeres-rurales-web Control y trasgresión. El uso, apropiación e impacto de las TIC por las mujeres rurales jóvenes en el Perú http://issuu.com/nuevastrenzas/docs/07-control-web
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