Women

The theme of women has been firmly on the political agenda in the last decade with a noticeable increase in female presence in organisations, more consciousness of the issue of gender and more reflection on the role of women in societies. However the quality of life for the majority of women has not improved. In fact it has worsened in many cases.

One of the reasons for this is that for many years, the struggle for equality for women in society has put issues of the economy and structural issues aside in order to concentrate on social and political participation, struggle against violence, sexual and reproductive rights. Yet all these efforts have come up against a powerful structure of control and domination in the world that makes it impossible to deliver on declarations and agreements for advancing women’s human rights.

For this reason, the Solón Foundation has concentrated its efforts on attacking the structural causes for the marginalisation and discrimination against women. In Bolivia you can’t tackle the patriarchal system if you don’t also attack a colonial system that has created a culture of racial and socio-cultural discrimination. The existence of a “pigmentocracy” means, for example, that indigenous women will always be more marginalized and discriminated against, even by other women, due to the hierarchy of power, culture and identity established during the colonial period.

Moreover, economic globalisation and the “free market” neoliberal model, which has been applied for many years in countries like Bolivia, deepened divisions and have had an increased negative impact on women’s lives and their access to fundamental rights. A clear example was the privatization of water in Cochabamba in 1999 which had a particularly hard impact on women. The contract that the Bolivian Government signed with the US multinational Bechtel handed over community water sources that were managed in the large part by women. The price hike that resulted also affected women as traditionally they have been the ones in the family who collect, look after and use water.

However women have not been silent against the attack on their rights. Women in Bolivia, inspired by a large history of resistance by figures such as Bartolina Sisa who helped lead a rebellion against the Spanish in the 18th Century, continue to actively resist. In Cochabamba, it was the women who started to mobilize against water privatization. Women have been at the forefront of a process to put forward proposals for the Constituent Assembly, charged with producing a new constitution.

The Solon Foundation aims to recover and amplify women’s demands and proposals as well as to put the issue of gender at the heart of global struggles against Free Trade Agreements and water privatization.

Rights for household workers: Solón Foundation since the 1990s has participated in the struggle for rights of household workers and legislation that would protect them. It is an issue which goes to the very heart of a patriarchal and colonial society built on profound discrimination and social hierarchies. It also touches on domestic work that in today’s society is not just seen as the “natural place” for women but is also a work that is unvalued and invisible. The Solón Foundation has supported the struggle of household workers as member of the Organising Committee for a new law, as well as with materials and communications when the National Federation of Household workers (FENATRAHOB) decided to initiate a campaign to affirm their rights and to improve their conditions.

Water is life, not a commodity: According to various studies, indigenous people and women throughout the world but especially in the South, suffer the most from policies such as water privatisation because it affects their spaces of power, their daily life and their human rights. Women do not only play a crucial rule in daily management of water, but also possess a vision of caring for water because of their close link with managing it. The Solón Foundation works with women in social movements in order to enable the sharing of experiences and to put forward proposals for a distinct vision of managing this essential resource for life.

Women against" free trade": Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), as projects intended to annex economies for the US and Europe for the benefit of multinational companies, are a continuation and a deepening of a neoliberal “free market” model that has had a profound and negative impact on women’s lives and their access to fundamental human rights. The Solon Foundation has always put the issue of gender at the heart of these struggles as well as within the proposals by the Bolivian Movement for Sovereignty and Solidarity-based Integration of the Peoples. It also gives voice to the impact of free trade on women through its membership of the Women’s Committee of the Hemispheric Social Alliance and the Latin American Women’s Network for Transforming the Economy.

Women at the heart of a new Constitution: The long struggle by social movements for a Constituent Assembly in order to reinvent the country is a key opportunity to attack the patriarchal system and redress the grave injustices and inequality experienced by women in Bolivia. It is also a chance for women to put forward proposals on issues that affect their lives. The Solon Foundation is working with women’s networks in social movements in order to put forward proposals for the new constitution especially in the areas of water and free trade.

To conclude, when people ask why so many political initiatives, proposals, agreements, laws and conventions have failed to change either the situation of poverty and marginalization of women, or the reproduction of dominant relations between men and women, or the enormous gulfs between women of different classes in terms of access to citizen rights, the answer is this: it is due to the application of an inhuman model that has privileged profits and money before life and solidarity. It is a model the Solon Foundation is determined to confront.