Professional Documents
Culture Documents
HOLLY WORTHEN
Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, Mexico
In Latin America, rights to local political participation in many indigenous communities are not
simply granted, but rather “earned” through acts of labor for the community. This is the case in
the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where almost three fourths of municipalities elect municipal
authorities through custom and tradition rather than secret ballot and universal suffrage. The
alarmingly low rate of women’s formal participation in these municipalities has garnered
women’s roles in local politics. However, these initiatives often miss their mark. Focused on a
liberal model of women as individual rights-bearers, they fail to understand the complex ways in
which gendered labor influences political participation in non-liberal contexts. This article
examines a case in which indigenous women reject such an initiative because it would exacerbate
their exploitation within the local terms of gendered collective labor instead of promoting
equality. It thus explains potential barriers to indigenous women’s political leadership at the
local level, and suggests ways in which gender equality can be promoted in non-liberal contexts.
*
AUTHOR´S NOTE:
*
This is the copyedit version of the article published in GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 29 No. 6, December
2015 914–936 DOI: 10.1177/0891243215602103
Foundation, and the Association of American University Women. Instructive comments
were provided by Alice Brooke Wilson, Joe Wiltberger, Elizabeth Hennessey, Abigail
Andrews, Shane Dillingham, and Jorge Hernández Díaz. Many thanks to Joy Misra,
Mary Bernstein, and several anonymous reviewers for their detailed reading and helpful
comments.
In February 2009 the government of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico sent a legal
Zapotec inhabitants nestled high in the northern mountains. The mandate, from the
Oaxacan electoral institute, stated that women must vote in local elections and be
considered for the municipal council. Women were allowed the municipal vote in
Mexico in 1947. However, local suffrage has never become a reality for many
indigenous Oaxacan women, especially those who live in towns like Yatzachi that elect
local officials through custom and tradition rather than secret ballot and universal
more common worldwide, as countries come to question the once progressive status of
multicultural initiatives that legalized them (Nicholls and Uitermark 2013; Vertovec
2010). However, in Oaxaca, Mexico’s most indigenously populated state with the most
case in Yatzachi. Instead of embracing the legislative mandate, the village assembly,
composed of around 65 men and women who are heads of households, responded to the
Oaxacan electoral institute with its own official letter. It stated that women willingly
This response is not unusual: Latin American indigenous women are often wary
forms of governance (Blackwell 2012; Speed, Hernández Castillo, and Stephen 2006).
The women of Yatzachi are no different. However, I argue that the community
assembly´s letter signed by the women is more than a defense of the community: More
importantly, it represents an internal struggle over the gendered labor practices that
define and construct the alternative political and economic system on which the
community is built.
2004) in which local affairs of justice, political organization, and land use are all resolved
internally according to “tradition” and “custom.” These systems, found throughout Latin
America, differ from liberal systems of political governance: Rights are not simply
granted as they are in liberal democracies, but rather earned via the enactment of certain
types of labor. The right to participate—opine and vote—in the assembly, the maximum
expression of local power and decision-making, is earned through cargos (town service
positions) and tequios (collective work parties for public works). In a type of
cargo and tequio, thus earning the right to usufruct of collective property (Martínez Luna
2010).
In Yatzachi’s communal system, men typically perform the official labor that
counts toward the recognition of political rights. Although women do important work in
their households and the community, it does not count as “official labor.” Therefore,
women are prohibited from assembly participation because they have not “worked” for
the good of the community. When women do perform cargos and tequios, as in the case
of single women household heads, participation implies extra official work in addition to
the unofficial labor of social reproduction. Therefore, although most women are
system deter their participation in the assembly and in formal leadership roles.
Based on qualitative research and analysis of the letter in which women deny the
state mandate to participate in the town council, this article argues that struggles over
gendered labor often importantly determine the forms of indigenous women’s political
liberal democracy (Mahmood 2005; Pathak and Sunder Rajan 1989). While much of this
literature focuses on Muslim women in the Middle East, this article demonstrates the
individual versus collective rights, they often focus on social movement or civil society
discourses and practices. This article fills gaps in existing literature by providing a
detailed study of how alternative rights paradigms play out in the daily lives of
development (Escobar 2008; Reyes 2012; Walsh 2010). However, indigenous women
have argued that these alternative systems still produce gender inequalities, raising
Around 1.7 million Oaxacans (44 percent of the state’s population) belong to
Pueblos Indígenas 2010). The communal systems found in most indigenous communities
systems were tolerated via a type of “indirect rule,” whereby forms of indigenous self-
determination were respected as long as villages provided votes for the ruling party
(Recondo 2007). However, in the 1990s the conjunctural forces of a growing indigenous
reconfiguration of the relationship between the State and indigenous peoples. The
legalize aspects of indigenous people’s collective rights (Postero 2007; Van Cott 2010).1
A key reform was the legalization of the long-held practice of municipal election by
“tradition” (Anaya Muñoz 2005). Currently, 417 of Oaxaca’s 570 municipalities choose
municipal officials via what is now formally termed “internal normative systems.”
resulted in a growing debate over the role of indigenous women in local politics. While
indigenous advocates argue for election via customary practices, others insist that
1999; Song 2005). They posit that political liberalism and individual rights paradigms
are the best ways to ensure women’s political participation, and insist that multicultural
recognition should be either revoked (Okin 1999) or tweaked to ensure respect for
Initial data from Oaxaca seem to support these assertions: Only 3.1 percent of
municipal presidents are women (ONU Mujeres 2013). Furthermore, women who live in
municipalities ruled via internal normative systems find their participation levels further
councils versus 51 percent in municipalities ruled via political parties (Barrera Bassols
2006). In almost a quarter of municipalities ruled via internal normative systems, women
against equating the number of women in leadership positions with the extent and
exercise of indigenous women’s local political rights. Velásquez (2004) argues that
measures for evaluating political activity are different in these non-liberal systems. She
demonstrates that indigenous women in Oaxaca realize other forms of participation, often
via informal cargos that are not necessarily part of the official sphere of the town council.
which feminine and masculine powers balance each other in a type of equilibrium that
translates into separate but equally important gendered roles (Harris 1978; Sieder and
Macleod 2009; Stern 1999). In some cases, complementarity allows for the rearticulation
discrimination and oppression according to tradition and indigenous world views (de la
However, over the last several years, the nuances of gender complementarity and
indigenous woman denied the right to run for municipal president (Sierra 2009)2 have
promoted the creation of new legislation and court rulings based on liberal
normative systems. Likewise, court rulings increasingly annul elections if women have
not fully participated. Indeed, the mandate that arrived in Yatzachi from the electoral
grounds of gender exclusion in electoral tribunals, not all indigenous women necessarily
2012; Newdick 2005). However, indigenous women have increasingly come to contest
state intervention and the “liberal solution” it promotes, instead positioning themselves as
key actors in the promotion of forms of gender equality within their communities, often
merging their own notions of liberal women’s rights with collective rights to promote
equality (Speed, Hernández Castillo, and Stephen 2006). In turn, indigenous women
have questioned the very foundations of state-based rights discourses and articulated
different conceptions of communal rights structures lived in action, not granted from
above (Speed 2005; Speed and Reyes 2002). Women in Yatzachi also reject a liberal
solution, and their case evokes questions regarding how alternative rights systems—
individualism, equality before the law, and conceptions of freedom (Benhabib et al. 1994;
Butler and Scott 1992; MacKinnon 1991; Pateman 1988). Arguing that the liberal state
apparatus has been formed through the very exclusions it purportedly attempts to rectify,
feminist scholarship has also sought to demonstrate how the notion of the liberal
2005; Pratt 2004). However, the notion of rights has proved problematic in these
critiques.
Wolper 1995; Sa´ar 2005). It is because of their claims to universalism that relying upon
notions of liberal rights can simultaneously challenge them. For example, Butler (2000)
posits that when a person who is not an “authorized” liberal subject seeks recourse to
universal liberal discourses, she creates “perverse reiterations” that question the
foundations and limits of these discourses. Indeed, de Sousa Santos (2002) argues that by
discourse and practice can emerge based on non-Western notions of human dignity.
used these discourses to posit the importance of collective rights to land, language, and
governance (Postero 2007; Yashar 2005), and, in so doing, have challenged their very
argued that indigenous autonomy can never be realized if women are systematically
oppressed within indigenous groups. They have asserted, via what some call an
“indigenous feminism” (Espinosa Damián 2009; Hernández Castillo 2010), that the
collective rights, positing that one without the other limits their ability to be full human
of rights exists (Cardoso Jiménez and Robles Hernández 2007; Martínez Luna 2010).
For example, Speed and Reyes (2002) argue that in Zapatista communities practices of
communal organization are about creating a completely different relationship of
sovereignty. The sovereign is not the State; rather, it lies within the collective. Thus,
rights are not granted from some ontologically imagined sovereign space “above.”
Instead, rights are earned through practice—through acts of labor—in front of the
collective. This alternative expression of rights and sovereignty runs parallel to state
rule, the role of the law, and the ability of the “rational” State to ever fully comprehend
social forms (Reyes 2012), it is necessary to explore just how the dynamics of labor play
out on the ground in these indigenous collectives. Given that labor is a process
foundational to the construction and articulation of gender relations, how does the
Feminist scholars have long demonstrated that labor is one of the key aspects through
which gendered political rights are created and contested (Olcott 2005). The gendered
division of labor into a male productive sphere and a female reproductive sphere
promoted the devaluation of women’s affective labors and reproduced gender inequalities
(Hartmann 1981; Weeks 2007). Mapped onto political subjectivities, these separate
spheres of gendered labor also served as the foundation for the division between the
While this work was largely developed in urban, Western contexts, research on
peasant women in the Global South also emphasizes the role of labor in producing
women’s political subjectivities. Notably, Carney and Watts (1990) explore the
“production politics” (Burawoy 1985) of rice cultivation upon conjugal contracts and
women’s petitioning of government agencies; Hart (1991) examines the roles of women’s
Stephen (2005) explores the way in which Zapotec women in Oaxaca challenge village
hierarchies by forming weaving cooperatives. Their work supports the idea that
“struggles over resources and labour are simultaneously struggles over socially-
constructed meanings, definitions, and identities” (Hart 1991, 95). Work is also one of
the main practices through which we create notions of belonging (Chari and Gidwani
combination with feminist literature on how gendered labor informs the contentious
of a different notion of non-liberal rights and to examine the struggles over gender
METHODS
from the state capital. I selected this region because it is famous for the strength of its
autonomous communal systems (Aquino Moreschi 2010) in tandem with high levels of
women’s exclusion from local governance. Yatzachi was selected as an anomalous case
study: one of the few towns in the region in which women participate in cargos and
tequios. Anomalous cases aid in the development of theory by explaining that which does
not quite fit (Burawoy 1991). I use data from fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork
(from June 2009 to August 2010) in Yatzachi, followed by periodic visits to the town
over the last four years, as well as three visits to the migrant destination of Los Angeles,
California, to explore how this case can generate new understandings of gender,
participate in the town council, I spoke with past and current town authorities (mostly
men) about local governance, autonomy, and gender roles. I interviewed ten of the
fourteen single women who signed the letter to the Oaxacan electoral institute, as well as
ten married women, regarding their opinions about the letter and their understandings of
why and how it was created. Through interviews with five men who were involved in the
assembly in which the letter was created, as well as numerous informal conversations, I
observation in daily activities helped build trust. I was present at several important events
that gave greater insight into questions of alternative rights and gendered labor, including
three town assemblies (one was an election) and patron saint fiestas. Engaging in the
purposes, I coded the letter, field notes, and interview transcripts according to the
tequio. The labor performed via these cargos and tequios is how one earns the right to
vote and opine in the village assembly, becoming, in the words of Yatzachitecos, an
“active citizen.” Tequio in Zapoteco is llinlaw, which literally means “working in front of
the pueblo.” Each active citizen performs twenty-four tequios per year, and activities
include potable water maintenance, street cleaning, and the demarcation of town
collectively held land and public services. Thirty-four cargos must be filled annually, but
only five of them (the town president, the syndic, and the aldermen of health, treasury,
and public works) are considered to be the official state-recognized posts of the
municipal council (cargo holder’s names are registered with the state government). They
are the positions of greatest importance, labor, and commitment, often requiring full-time
Oaxaca, they are responsible for the labors of social reproduction in their homes and
agricultural fields (Lyon, Aranda Bezaury, and Mutersbaugh 2010; Mutersbaugh 1998).
In the village sphere, they participate in many of the collective labors of rituals and
fiestas (Stephen 2005). Although they do not engage in cargos and tequios, by
conducting the labors of social reproduction, married women feel that they also do
important work for the community. Sara3 said, “When my husband does his cargo, I [the
wife] am the one who supports him. So I feel that as a married woman I do participate
and contribute to the town.” Indeed, when they do a cargo, men rely heavily on women to
manage agricultural fields or generate alternative income. Ana emphasized how, beyond
the support work for her husband in these intense moments, she also makes tortillas for
town functions, something she considers to be part of her duties as a good citizen.
However, instead of being valued in the same way as men’s labors, women’s labors are
active citizenship. Thus, married women, while they theoretically can attend the
assembly, cannot vote or opine in it. Their participation is mediated through their
participation. For example, Andrews (2014) argues that Oaxacan migrant women
become more engaged in the political stakes of local life when they return to their
hometowns. This is due both to men´s continued absence as well as the importance
women now place on improving the conditions within their villages as an alternative to
bodied men who engage in collective labor. A crisis of communal labor has ensued, and
the town has turned to the labor reserve of single women to fill vacant cargo positions,
conducting lesser cargos and participating in tequios. This official labor gives them the
right to participate in town assemblies, for the first time creating a space in which women
are representing themselves directly in the town’s most important political body. Married
women, however, remain under the schema of indirect citizenship. At the time of
research, fourteen women and around fifty men were active citizens in Yatzachi.
In general, both single and married women feel that theoretically, women’s
participation in the assembly is important. When I asked Ana if she thinks married
women should go to the assemblies, she responded, “Yes, I think so, because sometimes
we have opinions too! And my husband doesn’t share his—let alone my—opinions in the
resolve problems in a different way than men. There are some things that we just do
better, you’ve got to admit it!” A married woman, Irma, reported, “There are women that
are very capable of being on the town council. In my opinion, we’ve got to give women
However, despite the general enthusiasm and support for the idea of women’s
participation in local political life, single women signed the letter to the Oaxacan
electoral institute in which they refused to take on the more prestigious cargos of the
town council. I explore this paradox in what follows.
The letter emerged out of the annual assembly in which local elections are held.
The municipal president interpreted the mandate from the Oaxacan electoral institute
thus: “If a woman was not on the list of our upcoming municipal authorities [for the town
council], they would impugn our election.” He saw this as an incursion of the State into
the realm of Yatzachi’s collective rights: “We have our usos y costumbres [ways and
customs], and the government always talks about how they respect them, but by sending
this mandate, they were not respecting our rights [to local governance].” Josefina recalls
the assembly:
The first thing the president did was read the mandate, which said that it
was required for a woman to be part of the town council. Then they said
that the women should give their opinions—what did we think about it?
The president said if women want to, then we should do it, and if not, we
didn’t have to. One woman spoke up and said that personally, she
The president recommended responding to the electoral institute with a letter in order to
set a precedent that could prevent future government intervention in local elections.
However, women were in agreement with the creation of the letter. Indeed, Carolina
recounted, “We created the letter so that officially the government would see that it
wasn’t just that the men didn’t want this, but rather we, the women, rejected the
mandate.” Active female citizens who were not present later signed the letter before it
was taken to the Oaxacan electoral institute. The letter is composed of five numbered
1: Women have always been considered for cargo positions, but only
when they include activities that we can do, such as secretary, treasurer,
are part of the town council, the agricultural development committee, and
2: Women have been named to these cargos in the past, but those that have
accepted the cargo have not performed it themselves; instead they look for
a man to do it, and they obviously have to pay for this service since all
children, because our husbands are those who have to work for our
sustenance and we do not have daycare centers nor do we have paid jobs
for women.
pay someone to take care of our children and our domestic animals.
5. Probably these arguments will not be valid, unless within your office
there is a worker of indigenous origin that can give you a broader
In general, interview data demonstrate that women signed the letter and spoke up
in the assembly not because they are against women’s participation, but because 1) the
official work that women do as active citizens is undervalued and does not lead to equal
terms of participation; 2) town council positions present extra labor burdens when added
onto women’s work of social reproduction; and 3) active female citizens thus perceive
women, performing cargos and tequios is often seen as a burden rather than an
opportunity to be a leader in the community. This is because of the lack of value given to
both women’s official and unofficial labors. Although single women now do the official
labors of cargo and tequio, men often ignore women’s opinions in the assembly by
arguing that they have not done the same extent of labor for public works as men.
Carolina said:
Most of the time many of us don’t talk in the assemblies, because you
quickly learn that the older men will always say, “No, these girls are just
now starting to engage in town work. They don’t know what has happened
with the pueblo, they don't know what all we’ve gone through to arrive
women’s ability to engage fully in the terms of active citizenship. A common discourse
in the village is that if one cannot do and demonstrate physical labor, one cannot lead. As
point one of the letter emphasizes, leading is not simply giving commands, but actually
demonstrating physical labor in front of others. It argues that women, because of their
lack of physical strength, cannot do these tasks and motivate other men to join in the
work. Women’s inability to do these grueling physical tasks means that their labor, even
when conducted through an official cargo or tequio task, does not count the same as
men’s. Sara recounted how one man argued that women’s opinions should not count
because they were not going to be contributing equal labor force in the upcoming tequio
project. She recalls, “That’s when I understood that despite how much I would like to
express my opinion, it would never be taken into account.” Even when performing
official tasks, women’s labor is not valued as being the right amount or type that can be
Thus, women often have to find someone else to fulfill their cargo, usually paying
that person for his labor. The second point of the letter emphasizes this, demonstrating
that while the tequio and cargo system has traditionally been based on labor in kind,
women often must hire a substitute. This is especially common for older single women.
For example, Ester, now retired, spent most of her life living in Mexico City and running
a small business in a local market. In conjunction with other market women, she spent
many years organizing vendors and pressuring the government for better working
conditions and infrastructure. A woman assured of her own economic and political
abilities, she returned to Yatzachi to live in the home that she and her deceased husband
built with their savings. Ester also returned to Yatzachi with the desire to serve her
community:
In an assembly several years ago I asked why they always assigned us the
police cargo when really women should be part of the town council. I told
them that women have the same value as men and we should participate in
the town council. That way they could see what women can do—we could
Although at that moment the assembly did not accept Ester’s proposal, she was later
nominated for town council posts. Now, however, she has health problems, and being
forced to take on a more important cargo that would require more physical effort and
more hours of commitment is something she feels unable to do: “If I were younger, it
would be different. But at my age, with all my health problems, it is really difficult. I
have to find someone to do it for me and pay them, because I can’t do the work myself.”
Taking on a town council position is similarly a further financial and physical burden for
her.
However, Ester, as well as others, felt that the question of women’s lack of
strength, especially for the younger women, was a patriarchal excuse to keep women
from holding more powerful positions, and is no longer a valid pretext for women´s
exclusion:
I think that a younger woman can be part of the town council. For
but if she is young, why not? They say that it’s hard work because they go
and cut down weeds, but nowadays the alderman just tells people what to
do. A woman can do that too: “Hey you—grab that weed eater and start
However, as Josefina recounts, in the assembly meeting “one woman spoke up and said
that personally, she wouldn’t accept [a town council position] because they are physically
difficult,” a point further echoed in the letter. Why did women rely on the discourse that
so regularly excludes them from participation? It was a way to reject what they deem to
be the unfair terms of cargo participation, not the cargos themselves: Women already feel
burdened by their labors of social reproduction, making the addition of a town council
cargo overwhelming.
Single women’s active citizenship also does not translate into greater political
equality because the gendered political economy of the communal system has not shifted.
In addition to conducting cargos and tequios, single women must still perform women’s
This idea is taken up in points three and four of the letter, which emphasize the other
labors of social reproduction that women conduct. They argue that women do the
important job of caring for children, a job which has economic value (that in other
contexts is remunerated). By focusing on the way in which women would (or in this
case, would not) be able to monetarily remunerate someone to do this childcare labor in
their absence, these points demonstrate how women’s labor is valued in both capitalist
terms and in community governance terms. Someone has to subsidize the “free” labor
given to the municipality. If women do not engage in social reproduction, how would
men be able to give of their labors? And if they do official labors, who will take on their
productive and reproductive work in their absence? Ramona said, “When men go to the
municipal offices in the morning, they have a woman at home who makes them their
the case for Carolina. A young mother who was abandoned by her migrant husband,
Carolina was working in a nearby town when she was named town secretary. As part of
her cargo duties, Carolina would have to be present in the municipal offices every
morning and evening and would have to quit her job. Luckily, her grandparents provided
her with childcare and a place to live, but she also had household responsibilities
(washing, cooking, and cleaning) to fulfill. Carolina believes in the importance of doing
town service. She emphasized that the citizens of Yatzachi “have to participate, and have
to give what they can to the pueblo, especially because there are so few people.”
However, she was in agreement with the letter written to the Oaxacan electoral institute
and spoke up in the assembly because “in my situation, it would be really difficult, and
unfair. For example, a group of young single women without children felt it unjust that
they are considered heads of household when they don’t yet have a household (i.e.,
children) who use community resources. Ana commented, “If single women don’t have a
husband to help them out, and if they have kids, it’s unfair for them to do cargos.” Single
women with children felt somewhat torn: They agreed that it was a fair expectation that
they give time and labor to the community, but felt that the terms of participation were
unfair. For many, this led to the conclusion that it was actually considerate of men not to
Although women in general agreed that their participation in cargos and tequios is
important, they felt opposed to the forced nature of the mandate from the Oaxacan
electoral institute. Instead, women argued that the town council cargos should be
voluntary. Carolina told me, “It wasn’t in our best interest to agree to the mandate,
because they could have named any one of us to the town council and we would have
been forced to accept.” Minerva, who was not present at the assembly but later signed the
letter, told me that the negation was not about the cargos themselves, but about their
obligatory nature. For her, it was a declaration so that “they [the men in the assembly]
Although the letter was addressed to the state government, it was created in the
town’s most official and public space: the community assembly. This means that it was a
rare opportunity to publicly debate the question of women’s labor in Yatzachi. As such, it
served as a moment when women were able to emphasize the role and value of their work
within the communal system, an important first step toward identifying the unequal
systems of gendered labor upon which local participation is based and validated.
change within the system, women grouped together to ensure that cargos of greater labor
requirements would not be forced upon them. This was not an outright rejection of the
cargos themselves, but rather, as demonstrated earlier, a way to defend the sphere of their
labor from further exploitation within a communal system in desperate need of extra
laborers. As such, it was a rare moment in which women acted in solidarity in the town.
For example, Ramona and Gema, older single women, bemoaned the fact that women did
not jump at the chance of being on the town council. However, they agreed with the
letter out of solidarity with younger single women: They did not want other women to be
too often in Yatzachi women think only about their own homes and labor commitments:
“What happens is that each woman does her work individually. She just looks after her
family and house. She doesn’t get involved with others, and that’s why our town doesn’t
prosper.” However, as with Ramona and Gema, for Carolina the creation of the letter
was the first time that she considered women’s combined interests when taking a stance
in an assembly:
Holly: Since you are one of the few women at the assembly, have you ever
felt like you speak for the interests of all women in assembly meetings?
Carolina: The only one I can think of is that of rejecting cargos in the town
Although the creation of the letter was as an act of gendered solidarity, women have not
taken further steps to elaborate a more consolidated critique of the gendered terms of the
communal system. In this sense, the discussion and subsequent creation of the letter was
While the liberal intervention of the government mandate did not reach its stated goal—
indeed, the outcome was the opposite of what it intended—it did force a discussion that
brought the question of women’s labor, and thus participation, to the table. This
CONCLUSIONS
Scholars have argued that alternative rights paradigms play an important role in
indigenous communities (Reyes 2012). However, the Achilles’ heel of some alternative
rights paradigms has been the question of women’s continued oppression in communal
systems (Paredes 2008). This article has contributed to this issue through an in-depth case
As such, it emphasizes how the question of women’s roles and political participation in
many indigenous communities is not just about an abstract notion of participation, but
Microsoft Office User 7/22/2015 9:50 PM
Comment [10]: QUESTION IS, NOT
rather about the very tangible and powerful effects of quotidian labor practices. Gendered ARE.
Consequently this article posits that non-liberal systems themselves are not by
nature “bad” for indigenous women, as some feminists would argue (Okin 1999); rather,
the issue centers on the gendered political economies that structure these systems. In this
gendered spheres of labor are not invariably deterrents to greater equality for women
(Sieder and Macleod 2009). However, this only works if separate labored spheres are
given equal value within alternative rights paradigms. In the case of Yatzachi, this means
Bernstein, Mary 6/27/2015 9:31 PM
Comment [11]: Shouldn’t this be “not”?
valuing women’s informal labors of social reproduction to the same extent as men’s
Microsoft Office User 7/22/2015 9:52 PM
Comment [12]: I modified this to make
official labors, and qualifying both as work that counts for the earning of local political more sense.
rights.
liberal government intervention into their communities (Blackwell 2012). In this case, it
demonstrates that women are not adverse to the idea of the importance of women’s
participation as espoused by this intervention; rather, they are adverse to the terms of
what participation would mean: Being forced to take on town council posts that increase
Finally, these findings have implications for those working to promote gender
equality in non-liberal settings. They add to numerous feminist arguments about the
undervaluation of women´s social reproductive work and the role this plays in women´s
non-liberal contexts, this article also emphasizes the failings of liberal rights paradigms to
value. This is outlined in the final point of the women’s letter, in which they posit that the
Joya Misra 6/27/2015 9:31 PM
Comment [13]: I actually see a broader
Oaxacan electoral institute will probably not be able to comprehend the logic behind importance, as the critique about women’s
social reproduction is true everywhere.
women’s denial to take on town cargo posts. Accordingly, initiatives attempting to Microsoft Office U…, 7/22/2015 10:08 PM
Comment [14]: I agree. I´ve modified this
promote indigenous women’s political participation in Latin America should explore the paragraph to hopefully make this clearer.
alternative notions of rights that exist in these contexts in order to support indigenous
women’s self-defined struggles of gender equality within communal systems. Microsoft Office User 7/22/2015 9:54 PM
Comment [15]: Great! I´m happy to take
the limitations out.
NOTES
multicultural legislation on the federal level and was met with limited success;
meanwhile, the Oaxacan state government made its own legislative advances.
2. For the specifics of international pressure, see the 2012 report by the United Nations
3. Names have been changed for privacy. Interviews were conducted in Spanish and all
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