Gendered Paradoxes
Women's Movements, State Restructuring, and Global Development in Ecuador
Published on 23. May 2005
Book
Hardback
200 pages
978-0-271-02544-5 (ISBN)
Description
Since the early 1980s Ecuador has experienced a series of events unparalleled in its history. Its "free market" strategies exacerbated the debt crisis, and in response new forms of social movement organizing arose among the country's poor, including women's groups. Gendered Paradoxes focuses on women's participation in the political and economic restructuring process of the past twenty-five years, showing how in their daily struggle for survival Ecuadorian women have both reinforced and embraced the neoliberal model yet also challenged its exclusionary nature.
Drawing on her extensive ethnographic fieldwork and employing an approach combining political economy and cultural politics, Amy Lind charts the growth of several strands of women's activism and identifies how they have helped redefine, often in contradictory ways, the real and imagined boundaries of neoliberal development discourse and practice. In her analysis of this ambivalent and "unfinished" cultural project of modernity in the Andes, she examines state policies and their effects on women of various social sectors; women's community development initiatives and responses to the debt crisis; and the roles played by feminist "issue networks" in reshaping national and international policy agendas in Ecuador and in developing a transnationally influenced, locally based feminist movement.
Drawing on her extensive ethnographic fieldwork and employing an approach combining political economy and cultural politics, Amy Lind charts the growth of several strands of women's activism and identifies how they have helped redefine, often in contradictory ways, the real and imagined boundaries of neoliberal development discourse and practice. In her analysis of this ambivalent and "unfinished" cultural project of modernity in the Andes, she examines state policies and their effects on women of various social sectors; women's community development initiatives and responses to the debt crisis; and the roles played by feminist "issue networks" in reshaping national and international policy agendas in Ecuador and in developing a transnationally influenced, locally based feminist movement.
Reviews / Votes
"A nuanced and critical reading of gender, development, and globalization issues. Lind's panoramic analysis of Ecuadorian women's negotiations with development projects, the state, neoliberal adjustment policies, and NGOs provides a theoretical framework and an ethnographic account of issues with a global resonance. Exploring the gendered political cultures of development in Ecuador, she analyses the contradictory processes by which gender, institutions, and political movements come together in the uneven process of neoliberal restructuring."-Sarah A. Radcliffe, University of Cambridge "Amy Lind provides an excellent account of the paradoxes of gendered neoliberal politics in a country about which little on this topic has been published. Through a detailed analysis of women's organizational and community survival strategies, the author ably demonstrates how women's politics both reshape and are shaped by the dynamics of neoliberalism. Tackling the essential task of 'making feminist sense of neoliberalism,' Lind's timely study provides invaluable insights into the contradictions of development and globalization."
-Lynne Phillips, University of Windsor "Gendered Paradoxes takes us through the complex processes though which women in Ecuador have increased their participation in the country's political, social, and economic battlegrounds since the 1980s. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and based on a good understanding of gender analysis, Amy Lind describes how women have negotiated with the state and gained visibility within the context of neoliberal policies and gender politics. Analyzing the different strands of feminism that have shaped activism, she shows how they have contributed to rethinking democratic governance while mobilizing themselves to encounter the 'contradictions of modernization and development.' The book is an important contribution to the literature on gender and development in Latin America."
-Lourdes Beneria, Cornell University, author of Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Pennsylvania
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Illustrations
0 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
481 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-271-02544-5 (9780271025445)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Amy Lind is Mary Ellen Heintz Associate Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Cincinnati.
Content
Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Preface and Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
Introduction
1. Myths of Progress: Gender, Citizenship, and Modernization in Ecuador
2. Ecuadorian Neoliberalisms and Gender Politics in Context
3. Neoliberal Encounters: State Restructuring and the Institutionalization of Women's Struggles for Survival
4. Women's Community Organizing in Quito: The Paradoxes of Survival and Struggle
5. Remaking the Nation: Feminist Politics, Populist Nationalism, and the 1998 Constitutional Reforms
6. Making Dollars, Making Feminist Sense of Neoliberalism: Negotiations, Paradoxes, Futures
Appendix: Chronology of Events
Bibliography
Index
List of Tables and Figures
Preface and Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
Introduction
1. Myths of Progress: Gender, Citizenship, and Modernization in Ecuador
2. Ecuadorian Neoliberalisms and Gender Politics in Context
3. Neoliberal Encounters: State Restructuring and the Institutionalization of Women's Struggles for Survival
4. Women's Community Organizing in Quito: The Paradoxes of Survival and Struggle
5. Remaking the Nation: Feminist Politics, Populist Nationalism, and the 1998 Constitutional Reforms
6. Making Dollars, Making Feminist Sense of Neoliberalism: Negotiations, Paradoxes, Futures
Appendix: Chronology of Events
Bibliography
Index