|
|
|
The
economic ventures led by women from the popular sectors.
The learning and empowerment processes as opportunities to exercise their citizen rights.
Paulina
González Sánchez
The contest “THAT'S HOW TO DO
IT” organized by the Latin American Work Group (GTL) of the
Network for Popular Education among Women -REPEM LAC has
developed processes of visibilization and strengthening of
the economic ventures led by women in different countries of
Latin America and the Caribbean, as a learning strategy that
looks to help overcome poverty through learning processes,
the incidence and the investigation in the perspective of
the building of a new development paradigm with economic,
social and gender justice. GTL REPEM - Colombia Analyzing poverty from a gender perspective lets us propose that women are poor for reasons of gender discrimination. The subordinate participation of women in society does not allow them to access property or to control the economic, social and political resources. The women access to paid jobs is very unequal, because of the sexual division of work that makes women the only responsible for domestic work and the care of children. It should be added to this the discrimination in the women's access and stay in the job market. The lack of employment and worthy jobs opportunities make poor women develop economic alternatives as a way to survive for them and their families, although this initiative is done in disadvantaged conditions due to the lack of training and the scant opportunities to access capital, technical assistance and marketing. The economic ventures led by women are in fact a search for economic autonomy that become a daily exercise of their economic, social and cultural rights, based in principles of nondiscrimination and equity. The contest “THAT'S HOW TO DO IT” is a strategy of the Education, Gender and Economy Program of the REPEM LAC Institutional Plan, where training and training processes have a central importance. The contest becomes a meeting space for knowledge, experiences, visions, values and new learning, that lets participants to evaluate their ventures, their work, family and community relations and, most of all, to assume transforming decisions. It also represents an opportunity to learn about policies that are being developed to favor the economic ventures and the women population. In this meeting, enterprising women reflect with the help of methodological tools on their life stories and topics related with the strengthening of the self esteem, the redistribution of domestic chores, the position of women in society, the impact of gender violence on the economic activity, the citizen participation, the strengthening of their political participation in the local, regional and national levels, the building of democracy and citizenship. The GTL has been promoting in the countries where these contests are developed a strategy of political incidence with an approach based in the empowerment, the exercise of social citizenship and decision making. This way, the qualification of enterprising women and the rise of productive efficiency depend on the strengthening of the organizational processes, their articulation to networks, their capacity increase, the self esteem improvement, the access to material resources, and the strengthening of their social networks, that make them fully exercise their citizenship and take decisions in the individual, familiar and social levels. The contest becomes then a strategy to follow-up, analysis, visibilization, systematization and public recognition of the economic ventures led by women, with the purpose of influence public policies. At the same time that generates training opportunities for the productive exercise, the contest offers enterprising women opportunities to exercise their citizenship rights, promoting their awareness of their right to have rights to a life free of violence, housing, health, education, sexual and reproductive rights, political participation and, at last, the right to citizenship that has been denied to them. Through the incidence processes done by enterprising women to guarantee their rights they become qualified as social and political players, their capacities to relate with officials in their environment are strengthen, in an empowerment process that helps the social and economic development.
|