WUNRN
ARGENTINA - WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP &
EXPERIENCE
RESEARCH, DOCUMENTATION, CHALLENGES
- POLITICS +
By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Apr 11, 2011 (IPS) - Argentina's president
is a woman, Cristina Fernández, and the country has one of the highest
percentages of women lawmakers in the world. But women also have other
leadership roles, outside the political system.
Natalia Garabano, the coordinator of a research project that
created a novel Experience Bank, told IPS that "identifying and drawing
attention to the valuable experiences of women who are leaders of their social
organisations was one of the project's goals."
In a recently published report on this research, 87 women
leaders of civil society organisations share their experiences of working for
the rights to housing, sexual and reproductive health, education,
non-discrimination and non-violence.
Garabano, of the Latin American Justice and Gender Group
(ELA), said: "In order to legitimise democracy and make it more robust, it
is necessary to promote women's political participation, but in a broad sense,
not just through political parties."
Wider participation is not achieved only by increasing
access to political office, but also by boosting women's participation in civil
society. This broader concept of participation led ELA to develop the LIDERA
(Lead) project, which has three components.
First, there is the research project titled "Mujeres
participando en ámbitos locales. Banco de experiencias" (Women
Participating in Local Communities: Experience Bank), consisting of in-depth
interviews with women who are leaders of social organisations in six Argentine
cities.
At the same time, a study was carried out on "Sexo y
poder" (Sex and Power), about women's participation in decision-making
posts in different public spheres, which has not yet been published.
The results were disappointing. Women occupy only 15 percent
out of 13,627 decision-making posts in over 4,000 institutions, Garabano said.
The third cornerstone of the project was investigating the
track records of women lawmakers at national and provincial levels, to find out
more about them: how they came to be elected, what their educational background
is, what proposals they are making, and how they manage to reconcile work and
family responsibilities.
ELA presented the first component, the Experience Bank, in
the lower chamber of Congress on Mar.31. "Women's participation in the
local sphere must be strengthened so that their leadership is built and grows
on solid foundations and in contact with their social base," Garabano
said.
"Raising awareness about these 'ways of getting things
done' may inspire action and strategies in different contexts, and spread
knowledge about determining factors and ways of overcoming obstacles, making
the most of opportunities and networking," she said.
The organisations headed by women that were selected for
this project were in the city of Buenos Aires itself, in the municipality of
Morón, in the west of the metropolitan area, and in cities in the provinces.
The provincial cities were San Salvador de Jujuy, 1,800
kilometres northwest of Buenos Aires, Mendoza, 1,050 kilometres west of the
capital, Neuquén, 1,156 kilometres to the southwest and Rosario, 300 kilometres
to the northwest.
The aim of the research was to show how women's leadership
emerges and is consolidated at the local level; how women cope with the
difficulties they face, and how they engage with the state and its official
policies in order to achieve their goals, which are varied.
The Tupac Amaru Neighbourhood Organisation in Jujuy, headed
by Milagros Sala, began building clay ovens to bake bread, and soup kitchens to
serve free meals to children, at the height of the 2001-2002 social and
economic crisis.
By 2003 the group had organised housing cooperatives and
productive enterprises, and today has 4,500 housing units in Jujuy, as well as
groups offering educational, health and recreational services for vulnerable
populations.
"Women are working in construction, in metallurgy and
in concrete block factories," says Sala in her description of her
experience, which grew out of working in coordination with the Ministries of
Social Development and of Infrastructure and Housing.
Another story in the Experience Bank is that of Foundation
PH15 for the Arts, headed by Moira Rubio, which teaches photography to young
people in Ciudad Oculta (literally "Hidden City"), a shanty town on
the fringes of Buenos Aires.
"The goal is not that they should all become
photographers," Rubio said. "The point is to show them that they can:
they can be recognised as artists, and as persons, without suffering
discrimination."
A further example is the Federation of Non-Governmental
Entities for Children and Adolescents in Mendoza (FEDEM). Patricia Spoliansky
described how they managed to bring influence to bear in order to bring about
changes.
"We started to get together to try to have an impact on
the design of public policies, and to see what we could do to get the state to
listen to us," said Spoliansky. "We were able to get funding for a
few projects for children, and we managed to get civil society organisations
officially represented on the Provincial Council for Children."
Marta Vitta, head of Fundación Síntesis (Synthesis
Foundation) in Rosario, tells how she began working on women's issues, and then
moved on to developing solidarity economy programmes.
"I coordinated a lot of women's groups, and there was
always a bottleneck over money," Vitta said. "For instance, for a
battered woman, the first thing is to 'denaturalise' violence; but afterwards,
finances are the key to changing her situation. There were so many women who
had no means of surviving."
That was when her organisation decided to make common cause
with a proposal by the Ministry of Social Development to finance a "social
bank" for the development of microbusinesses.
The report notes that there are recurrent themes in the
interviews, such as the importance of creating links to ensure better access to
financing and professional advice, or a greater impact on the public arena and
its interests.
Almost all the interviews also express the desire to build
relationships with public institutions in order to maximise benefits, if
necessary through co-management of projects, but without losing the
organisation's autonomy.
Finally, the women said that in some cases, social
leadership has hidden costs, because of the need for women to balance
responsibilities in the home, in paid jobs that cannot always be relinquished,
and in community participation.