Photo @ Koman Ilel
On 3 February, the Center for Investigation and Action for Latin American Women (CIAM AC) and the Movement of Mesoamerican Women in Resistance for a Dignified Life organized a roundtable discussion entitled “Neoliberalism in the Lives of Women: Let Us Unite the Seeds and Fruit of the Struggles of Women.” The goal was to analyze the problems of women regarding the neoliberal capitalist system at present. Panelists included Mercedes Olivera, from CESMECA – UNICACH and the Independent Movement of Women (MIM); Diana Damián, from Formation and Training (FOCA AC), and Victoria Chuj Cojtin, from Movement of Mesoamerican Women in Resistance for a Dignified Life Guatemala.
In her intervention, Mercedes Olivera mentioned that “Each economic system has a special form of the sexual division of labor and each time this division has become increasingly unequal between men and women, especially with the institution of capitalism in the world and from the beginning of its mercantilist phase, the accumulation of capital, which some female authors have defined as the base of the system, such that women would dedicate themselves in the most developed and industrialized cities to produce whatever labor the system requires […]. Now it is women who are taking charge of the ejido and the milpa, and it is they who must organize work or take charge of the milpa; this is not sufficient because they only produce enough for sustenance, not for surplus, and this implies that they have had to become informal laborers, with bad pay and insecure conditions, and that they must do this in combination with caring for children. This has been difficult because now they must be producers and reproducers.”
Lastly, Victoria Chuj Cojtin indicated that a “state of welfare does not serve the new global economic system; it is incompatible with the interests of the great economic powers.”
For more information (in Spanish):
Juntemos las Semillas y los Frutos de las Luchas de las Mujeres (Koman Ilel, 3 de febrero de 2014)
Mesa Redonda “El Neoliberalismo en la Vida de las Mujeres”. Juntemos las Semillas y los Frutos de las Luchas de las Mujeres (Frontera Sur México, 4 de febrero de 2014)
For more information from SIPAZ (in English):
Chiapas: Popular Forum for the Defense of the Land, Territory, and Food Sovereignty (26 November 2012)
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