WUNRN
Latin America-Rural Women's Success & Challenges
By Milagros Salazar
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LIMA, Dec
14, 2010 (IPS) - The traditional image of rural women in Latin America is
shifting, from one of subsistence farmers raising their families to that of
women playing a growing role in small- and large-scale commercial and
productive activities. But behind that change lie both success stories and
exploitation.
Gladis Vila,
a Quechua farmer from a village in mountainous
"Indigenous
women farmers are preservers of biodiversity; we do business respecting
nature,"
Women
produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries,
with the proportion rising in relation to a country’s poverty level, according
to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Rural
activists, researchers and representatives of development organisations from
different Latin American countries met early this month in Lima, in the seminar
"Mujer rural: cambios y persistencias", in which they discussed the
problems and needs of rural women in the broad range of situations they face in
the region.
One of the
participants, anthropologist Kirai de León, shared the success story of a group
of women who grow aromatic and medicinal herbs in
The
Calmañana Cooperative, currently made up of 17 women farmers, has been working
for 25 years in the southern
The members
of the cooperative not only supply local supermarkets, but export their
products to
"They
are highly respected" by people and businesses selling herbs and spices,
and "have made quite a name for themselves," de León, who has
supported the cooperative from the start, told IPS.
She
explained that one of the medicinal herbs in greatest international demand is
"marcela" (anchyrocline satureioides), which has antioxidant,
cell-protective, anti- inflammatory and antiviral properties.
According to
the World Health Organisation, 85 percent of the world population uses herbal
medicine for some aspect of primary health care.
These
Uruguayan women help meet these needs, while growing their plants without the
use of chemicals.
"We
have to change the way we work: we have to not only take care of our husbands, but
also the environment. That is an important shift," said Jeanine Anderson,
an anthropologist who specialises in gender issues at the
Caring for
the environment is linked to the question of access to land. Bolivian activist
Elizabeth López of the Latin American Network of Women Defenders of Social and
Environmental Rights stressed the importance of this, in order for rural women
to be economically independent.
But
"The issue isn’t just access to land, but guaranteeing that women have
effective control over water use, biodiversity, soil, and other natural
resources," the Bolivian activist remarked to IPS. "Without that,
their possibilities are limited."
López said
the expansion of other economic activities, like mining, limit rural women’s
right to land. And although women are the main producers of food, they own less
than one percent of land in the world, according to the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP).
In the
Another
growing phenomenon is the increasing participation of women as agricultural
wage workers.
In
"We
worked 17 hours a day for poverty wages,"
Similar
stories were described by other women at the seminar.
When she
worked for the Sociedad Agrícola Virú, one of
Non-traditional
products, such as fresh asparagus, carmine - - a food colouring extracted from
the cochineal beetle (Dactylopius coccus) -- grapes and mangos, represent 74
percent of the country’s agro-exports.
"Those
who actually sustain the economy at the cost of long hours of work are the
workers, not the companies,"
In
Colombian
social worker Flor Edilma Osorio said one of these displaced women told her
that "In the countryside, you have hope." The remark, she said,
reflects "the longing for the countryside felt by rural migrants caught up
in urban poverty.
"In the
countryside you can be poor, but you have food. In the city, however, if you
don’t have money, you can’t survive. The loss is total," said the expert.