Bolivian women in politics and organizational life, - a minor field study

Abstract: This thesis investigates women’s political and organizational participation in the changing process and new political context in Bolivia. Different levels of women’s positioning are examined through interviews with actors in Cochabamba, complete with observations, literature and local text-documents. The discourse of women's participation versus the actual practice of women’s decision making is taken under account. The struggle of Bolivian feminists indicates challenges of dominant patriarchal ideologies and has been named ‘postcolonial feminism’. Struggles are directed against the postcolonial state as well as against the western interests that contributes to its postcolonial status. Women’s experienced participation is shown to be very diverse, depending on their identities of class and ethnicity as well as their different location in the rural areas and in the city of the department of Cochabamba. There have been important advances achieved by women’s movements and organizations in order to stress equality between men and women, but much of the advances are still rhetorical, yet not facing legitimate implementation. There is a lack of implementation of gender issues in the government and institutions. Social movements and critics from civil society are therefore crucial in its attempt to visualize and stress the plurality of social conditions. The challenge of different women's organizations is to create and build consensus from the recognition of this diversity. In the process towards welfare and harmony in Bolivia the women and their strength constitutes a fundamental part. They have introduced new human qualities in the public sphere, raising the values associated to ‘motherhood’ as central for shaping the wider order of political community.