Leadership From the Margins: Women and Civil Society Organizations in Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador

6. Policy Implications of Women’s Civil Society Leadership in Latin America

185 6 Policy Implications of Women’s Civil Society Leadership in Latin America This is why we have made such an effort to work with types of leadership other than classical styles. Sometimes they are more subtle or delicate , hidden in the social base. But they are there, producing and building a distinct way of life. —Rita Moya, CETSUR, Penco, Chile Obviously one’s judgments, opinions, and priorities evolve over time, and so have mine during the eight years it took to write this book. My dedication to Latin American women whose efforts are making a difference in their communities and spheres of action—even though they face discrimination due to class, ethnicity, gender, or other forms of difference— continues to deepen. As a researcher, I feel an urgency to broadcast the results these women are achieving—this way I can contribute to undoing the invisibility generated by gender subordination and other forms of discrimination . I have been aware of women’s contributions to development and democracy in Latin America since the mid-1980s, when I lived in Nicaragua and El Salvador. I saw women ensuring the survival of their families and communities during periods of conflict and economic crisis while men were fighting with one side or the other: with the Sandinistas or Contras (counterrevolutionaries) in Nicaragua, or with the government armed forces or the FMLN in El Salvador. During my graduate studies in the 1990s gender studies played an influential role in my coursework and informed my master’s and doctoral research as I tracked the impact of microcredit loans on women marketers, their communities, and the organizations serving them. Through my years in Central America and ensuing research trips to the region during graduate school, I came to recognize the catalytic role that leadership can play in community development, especially women’s leadership. After graduation I chose to join the staff of AVINA because of their focus on leadership and sustainable development throughout Latin America. I had found an organization that contributed much-needed resources and capacity building to Latin American civil society leaders. In 2000 I was working as a project analyst for AVINA when Stephan Schmidheiny, AVINA’s founder, stopped by my desk and asked, “Serena, what is the gender breakdown of AVINA leaders?” This one question has led me to discover a series of lessons, the first of which was the significance of disaggregating project and partner data by gender; if an organization’s files do not include the gender of the individual, then the only way to know how many men and women the organization serves is to go through files one by one. So, with the help of an intern I began to comb through the files, and we came up with a very disquieting result: only 23 percent of AVINA leaders were women. Since that initial shock, a number of institutional responses have transpired at AVINA. First, the institution implemented a series of changes in data management that allowed files to be disaggregated by gender, education, and age. Today 39 percent of AVINA leaders are women, and every year the foundation raises its goal in an attempt to reach parity. This one simple question about women and men leaders raised a deeper set of unanswered questions for me about women’s civil society leadership. Are women leading as much as men? What are women’s civil society leadership contributions in Latin America? What challenges do women face that men do not? Does gender affect how people lead? Since that day in 2000, I have dedicated my research time to tracing the extent of—and attempting to measure the impact of—women’s leadership in CSOs in Latin America, which has coalesced into this book’s focus on Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador. Common Trends between Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador Although some progress has been attained for women in health, education , and income generation, women still lag behind men in terms of political representation, financial remuneration for work, and access to LEADERSHIP FROM THE MARGINS 186 formal leadership opportunities. Many women perceive political representation as vital for democratization, and when a culturally marginalized group such as women occupy political positions, commonly held stereotypes can be transformed. Furthermore, the more that marginalized sectors can gain access to the state, the more that they can contribute to determining state priorities, thereby making these institutions more responsive to citizen concerns. This does...