Reflections on Feminism and Social Movements
By Marc Becker
Truman State University Professor and WCCN Study Tour Participant
I have become interested in two themes related to constructions of gender in Latin America. One is more academic and concerns the meanings of “feminism” in a Latin American context. The other is related more to political strategies, specifically the relationship between social movements and electoral politics. The WCCN Women’s Empowerment Project study tour to Nicaragua helped me rethink both of these themes, challenging my assumptions and coming to deeper understandings of how gender works not only in Latin America but throughout the Americas.
Feminism
A subcurrent of thought in Latin American studies argues that feminism is a western import that has little meaning or rationale in traditional societies. While urban, educated, white women may be attracted to its central tenets of gender equality, these ideas allegedly have little resonance in agrarian societies that rely on different gender roles as part of production cycles. Sometimes referred to as “gender complementarity,” this perspective contends that men and women occupy different roles and that both are equally important and necessary for society to function. One gender is not more important than the other, and having those of one gender perform the role of the other would cause society to quit functioning properly.
Our experiences in Nicaragua challenged this notion of gender complementarity or gender duality. While, as could be expected, educated elite women we met in Managua overtly and proudly identified themselves as feminists, their counterparts in rural societies did not shy away from these same concepts and identifications.
We visited the Committee of Rural Women in Los Mangles near León in northern Nicaragua. A group of women, ranging in age from late teens to mid-60s, from the surrounding area came to visit with us. Xiomara, who works with the Committee, explained to us how this collective organization was formed in 1993 to transform power relations between men and women and to work on economic empowerment and consciousness raising. The women went around the circle and each told us how they were involved in this project and what they gained from it. Repeated themes were how literacy training and access to funding to plant a garden had remarkably improved their lives.
Berta told us how she is no longer the person she was before, timid and hiding and afraid. Now she is strong, confident, and capable of speaking. Juana explained that in learning to read and write she not only was now better able to help her family, but she also has more self-esteem and has learned to defend herself. A problem that the women faced was that houses and agricultural plots are owned by the men, giving them control over women’s lives and actions. Often husbands feel threatened when their spouses participate in the Committee, and even prevent some women from participating in the organization.
We had an even stronger experience when we met with women from the Xochilt-Acalt group in the community of El Barro, Malpaisillo. We met with a school group who, because of the work of Xochilt-Acalt, learned about a range of issues–domestic violence, contraception, motherhood, their rights, and even more global issues like immigration and free trade agreements. When the young students told us what they wanted to do when they grew up they mentioned professions like becoming a doctor or lawyer. One young girl said she wanted to get married and have kids, not at 17 but when she is older. The students noted a problem that out of insecurity girls used to get pregnant and marry early, and now they see the importance of developing their own lives.
We then met with an adult group of women ranging from their twenties to their seventies; they told stories of struggling to survive and emerging stronger than ever. Often men saw the women’s organizations as a waste of time, and called the women “vagos” (vagrants) for participating. But the women improved their lives through literacy and other training, and men grudgingly came to respect their efforts.
These experiences cast the Sandinista revolution in the 1980s in a different light than many solidarity activists saw it at the time. In the mid-1980s, I worked with Witness for Peace in Jinotega in northern Nicaragua. People told us then that gains such as literacy training and agrarian reform could never be rolled back. Surprisingly, we found women in rural Nicaragua fighting for many of these same issues that we thought had been solved in the 1980s. Literacy training is an ongoing process, we realized, and without use or additional training, it can be lost.
Perhaps more dramatic is how patriarchal the Sandinista agrarian reform appears in retrospect. Too often, land was distributed based on personal friendships and caudillo styles of leadership that continue to plague Sandinista leadership. Those without connections did not receive land. More importantly, and perhaps as a direct result, land almost always ended up in the hands of men. Ninety-eight percent of the land went to men, which extended the notion of men as landowners. Women were left at the mercy of their male relatives.
On the bus ride back from the community of El Barro, I chatted with a rather vivacious Johanna who was from that community but now is studying at the university in León. She has the advantage of experiencing this question of feminism from both a rural agrarian and urban educated perspective. Her response to my question of whether women in traditional societies would consider themselves to be feminists was quite abrupt and direct. While rural women might not necessarily know or use the word “feminist”, since indeed it does come from an external world, they do actually embrace and adhere to the concepts of equality and empowerment.
While gender duality or complementarity may be a nice academic construct, the way it is practiced in rural societies in Nicaragua is very much a continuation of patriarchy. Men own the land, gain the advantages of literacy training, and play an increasingly pronounced role in the public sphere, while women continue to perform domestic functions, remaining hidden, timid, and afraid. Both roles are important, but in no sense are they equal–even if male Sandinista leaders claimed that they were. Rather, it becomes a convenient trope to continue systems of domination.
Social Movements
While we were in Nicaragua, the Women’s Autonomous Movement signed a political agreement with the Sandinista Renovation Movement Alliance (MRS) to collaborate in October’s elections. The agreement raises a long running debate among activists of whether a struggle for social justice is best carried out in the electoral arena or as a non-governmental social movement. In recent years, the World Social Forum phenomenon has inspired many activists to emphasize non-state solutions to social problems. The WSF has brought together civil society in a coherent and motivated fashion that political parties have not been able to accomplish. Critics, however, point out that while the WSF could mobilize large masses against the war in Iraq, it took the election of a socialist government for Spain to pull its troops out of the country. Social movements can express dissent, but it takes political engagement to implement policy solutions.
My question to Nicaraguan activists whether the struggle should be carried out in the electoral or civil realm inevitably triggered the response that any stupid gringo question typically elicits. Of course, the answer is “yes.” Both aspects are important, and there is little that makes them inherently contradictory. Rather, they are two aspects of a unified struggle. Different people, of course, will emphasize different roles. Sofia Montenegro, who signed the agreement with the MRS, told us that her role was as a leader in Nicaragua’s women’s movement, and she had little interest in giving up that important position for an electoral campaign. Nevertheless, it did not bother her to sign the accord with MRS presidential candidate Herty Lewites.
However, a certain amount of tension does continue to exist between electoral campaigns and social movements and this becomes particularly clear in relation to women’s movements. After a week of meeting with women’s empowerment groups, our last meeting on the final day with the MRS came as a bit of a shock. All of the previous meetings had been led by women, and on this occasion the men were present and the women quietly hung back in supportive roles. Although both men and women participated in the conversation with the MRS, the male candidates took the lead and set the agenda. Electoral campaigns remain very much a realm for traditional power politics, which implies a certain amount of contradiction for social movements, in particular those informed by feminist principles.
Arguably the best way to understand a society and the social processes under which it is developing is to see it from the perspective of a marginalized population. Rural women are often considered one of the most disadvantaged sectors, facing the “triple” burden of racial, class, and gender discrimination. Attempting to view Nicaragua through their eyes is at once profoundly depressing as well as inspiring. Given all of the economic, political, and social problems, the country faces decades of struggle to overcome these barriers. There are no simple solutions. On the other hand, the women we met continue to struggle and inspire us to continue our struggles in our own lives.
Marc Becker teaches Latin American history at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri and is a member of Community Action on Latin America (CALA) in Madison.