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BOLIVIA: Women in Local Politics Face Special Challenges

Bernarda Claure

LA PAZ, Feb 6 2007 (IPS) - Bertha Acarapi, who wears the traditional dress of an Aymara Indian woman, is a town councillor in El Alto, the sprawling slum city of one million people next to the Bolivian capital.

Acarapi and 336 other women hold seats on 329 town councils in Bolivia. But many of them never made it to secondary school, which puts them at a significant disadvantage when it comes to having an influence in representing their communities.

This observation is not meant to be offensive, the head of the Association of Women Town Councillors of Bolivia (ACOBOL), María Eugenia Pinto, told IPS.

“Only 60 percent of these women went to high school, and many don’t even know how to read or write. Of course they have a social vision and the determination that characterises them as leaders; I mean, there’s a reason they got to where they are. But they need support in developing their capacities, to have an impact on administration at the public policy level,” she said.

That support should include training in legal matters, negotiating techniques and communication strategies, she added.

Acarapi, 33, who has four years of experience as a town councillor, and until recently as the president of a city council in El Alto, admits that in the terrain of local politics, lack of experience and ignorance – which, “by the way, is not only a problem among women” – helps fuel the sexist and machista bias against women in politics.


“I have a university education (as a social worker), but even that wasn’t enough. I have had to learn and gain experience while turning a deaf ear to the discrimination and the lack of credit that my own colleagues have given me just because I’m a woman,” she told IPS.

Around 100 women – town councillors, a mayor, and representatives of social organisations – identified with this view during a seminar on “Gender, governance and women’s political participation at the local level”, held in La Paz on Jan. 29 and Feb. 1.

Organised by Acobol, the Deputy Ministry for Gender and Generational Affairs, and the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-Instraw), the seminar enabled the participants to take a critical look at themselves and their performance in local politics. Similar meetings will be held this month in Ecuador, Colombia and Peru.

According to UN-Instraw representative Altagracia Balcacer, the seminars are presenting to the participants the results of studies carried out on the role of women in politics in Latin America, as part of a project that also encompasses Mexico and Central America.

The studies highlight the gender inequality found in Latin America and the chronic under-representation of women in local elected positions. It also shows that women’s participation has increased in the executive and legislative branches and at the level of local politics, but that much more must still be done.

The share of executive branch positions held by women in Latin America has grown from nine to 14 percent on average over the last decade, while women hold an average of 17 percent of mayoral posts and seats on town councils – “percentages that are not significant at any of these levels,” said Balcacer.

In the highlands city of El Alto, which is home to an estimated 500,000 women, only two have been elected to the 11 town councils.

The problem, however, is not only quantitative. More than 10 years after a “law on popular participation” went into effect in Bolivia, giving municipal governments complete administrative power to drive their own development through citizen action, the results are not impressive on this front, especially since a majority of the female town councillors are in rural areas and villages, said Elsa Suárez.

The view of this sociologist who is conducting research into the issue is that many of these women have a background of labour activism, and their way of doing things and expressing themselves does not fit in well with how things are done at the local government level.

Once they find themselves on the town council, they often end up keeping silent, and rarely run for reelection, she said. “Few women are reelected; most of them don’t want to participate again,” said Pinto. That has to do with Suárez’s argument, but also with other factors like “the family, political violence, and the machismo that is seen in the municipal governments, which forces women to resign.”

But it cannot be said that women have no achievements to boast about. “We have given an important boost to issues like respect for human rights, sexual and reproductive rights, health, education, or treatment of the elderly – questions that are essential to any society,” Balcacer told IPS.

“And it is clear that we women have developed our leadership styles and roles in the social sphere, rather than in the political sphere,” she said.

It is in the area of politics, where the struggle for power takes place, that the disadvantages are seen, and that has a lot to do with cultural questions, says sociologist Jesús Flores, who studied citizen participation in El Alto during the month-long demonstrations against energy policy and privatisations that toppled president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in October 2003.

In the combative city of El Alto, women organised, took to the streets, and became community leaders during those tumultuous days in 2003. But after the massive protests petered out, the women generally just returned to their homes.

“One of the reasons is the sexist political institutional apparatus and a lack of democratisation in social organisations,” said Flores. “In a context in which the conflicts have calmed down, women’s activities in collective actions as well as in daily life are limited by the domestic life of their families.”

According to his study, female leaders and politically active women are a minority today in El Alto and can mainly be found in the street markets, the only public spaces dominated by women.

However, the situation varies from region to region. In the relatively prosperous eastern Bolivia (in provinces like Santa Cruz, Pando and Beni), “women are more empowered,” Pinto said. “But,” she sighed, “we still have a long way to go.”

 
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