Scholarship on the relationship between women's descriptive and substantive representation in politics has focused principally on whether the presence of more women in political office (descriptive representation) has resulted in these politicians formulating more policies that favor women's interests (substantive representation). Surprisingly, despite the fact that gender and politics scholars broadly accept the importance of intersectionality, in empirical research, the fundamental question of how intersectionality might complicate women's substantive representation is usually evaded. Lacking tools to derive an intersectional measure of women's interests, empirical research to date has determined women's substantive representation by identifying “women's interests” a priori. Yet identifying which women's interests might constitute the substantive representation of women becomes thorny once we recognize that women are diverse and hold distinct priorities that may derive from their class, race, sexual orientation, or another aspect of their lived experience. Indeed, once we introduce intersectionality, the underlying assumption behind the study of women's political representation—that women might better represent women—becomes suspect. Is this reason to abandon the study of women's substantive representation? My answer is no. Whether or not the growing numbers of women—and their increasing diversity—in elected office succeed or fail in changing traditional political dynamics is of inherent interest to their constituents and to scholars. But our methods of research must incorporate the reality of intersectionality in order to truly know whether women in political office make a difference.
In an effort to provide better tools, I develop the concept of intersectional interests and demonstrate a method for identifying these. Intersectional interests represent multiple perspectives and are constructed through processes of political intersectionality, in which political actors use strategies of “inclusive solidarity” to reach across structural inequalities in order to identify shared goals and incorporate marginalized perspectives (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1991; Ewig and Ferree Reference Ewig, Ferree, Waylen, Celis, Kantola and Weldon2013, 442). Intersectional interests can be parsed into three subtypes that I define in detail: expansionist, integrationist, and reconceived. Identification of intersectional interests begins with an inductive mapping of the differing women's perspectives that exist in a specific context, followed by identifying whether political intersectionality lead to the constitution of shared, intersectional interests. This concept and approach provides scholars a method for the inclusive identification of women's interests and an alternative to a priori approaches.
Contemporary Bolivia is a compelling place to rethink what constitutes women's substantive representation in intersectional terms because of the high numbers, and class and ethnic heterogeneity, of women in political office. In 2012, I carried out interviews with activist women in the major Bolivian feminist, indigenous, and peasant organizations, as well as with women politicians and bureaucrats. Combining these interviews with social movement materials and historical and anthropological accounts of cleavages of inequality, I first map how the intersecting structures of class, race, rural/urban geography, and sexuality result in divergent women's perspectives on what constitutes important political issues. The year 2012 was a good moment to conduct these interviews. The election of Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, meant that indigenous women felt empowered to speak to me (a white U.S. researcher) frankly, in ways that may not have occurred at a different time. The Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS) government's embrace of women's participation in government in its second term (2010–2013) also made women's representation a salient issue.Footnote 1 I then use this mapping to identify the ways in which Bolivian women forged intersectional interests, with emphasis on the reconceived intersectional interests developed in Bolivia's political parity and pension debates.
INTERSECTIONALITY AND WOMEN'S SUBSTANTIVE REPRESENTATION
Hanna Pitkin distinguishes among four views of political representation, including descriptive representation (“the making present of something absent by resemblance or reflection”) and substantive representation (“acting for others”) (Reference Pitkin1967, 11–12). While Pitkin does not consider descriptive representation to imply substantive representation, other theorists have made the case for a logical connection (Mansbridge Reference Mansbridge1999; Phillips Reference Phillips1995). As a result, there is significant research on the relationship between women's descriptive and substantive representation.Footnote 2 Yet, despite the ways that intersectionality would seem fundamental, there has been surprisingly little integration of intersectional analysis into this scholarship. The lack of attention may be due to a philosophical impasse: some theorists assert that common experiences unite women, while others insist that the very idea of shared interests is flawed.
Implicitly or explicitly, most empirical scholars appear to accept the position that shared experiences with the gender division of labor or childbirth result in women's shared interests and thus that women will be more likely to substantively represent women (Diamond and Hartsock Reference Diamond and Hartsock1981; Jónasdóttir Reference Jónasdóttir, Jones and Jónasdóttir1988, 53; Sapiro Reference Sapiro1981). Even among theorists who acknowledge women's diversity, some ultimately assert underlying continuities based on women's gendered experiences (Phillips Reference Phillips1995, 67). It is on this philosophical basis that most empirical scholars argue that one can determine “women's interests” a priori and measure substantive representation as action taken to represent these interests.
Theorists of intersectionality, however, critique the idea of shared interests based solely on gender for portraying the experiences of dominant (white, upper-class, global North) women as universal. African American feminist scholars have pointed to the powerful ways that black women's experiences are impacted by race and gender combined (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1988; Hill Collins Reference Hill Collins1991; hooks Reference hooks1984; Spelman Reference Spelman1988), while scholars of the global South have noted the effects of international power inequalities on women's experiences (Mohanty Reference Mohanty, Mohanty, Russo and Torres1991; Narayan Reference Narayan1997). These theorists argue that the myriad experiences of differently situated women make it impossible to determine women's interests a priori. Nor can interests derived from different forms of subjugation be simply added—as in expressions such as “double jeopardy” and “triple oppression.” Instead, the interlocking of two or more structures of inequality simultaneously shapes individual experiences.
The responses of scholars of substantive representation to intersectional theorists have varied. Lisa Baldez argues that because the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women has been vetted worldwide, it can serve as an intersectional template (Baldez Reference Baldez2011). Others argue that women do in fact have shared interests but differ on the issues within those interests (Beckwith Reference Beckwith, Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson2014). Still others offer additional theoretical frameworks, but none actually apply their framework, making the tools for implementation elusive (Dahlerup Reference Dahlerup, Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson2014; Hancock Reference Hancock, Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson2014).
In empirical work on women's substantive representation, common practice has been to acknowledge intersectionality but not to sufficiently attend to its consequences. For example, among scholars of Latin America, Franceschet and Piscopo (Reference Franceschet and Piscopo2008) acknowledge the dangers of essentialism but then focus on the “feminist” issues of violence against women, sexual harassment, reproduction, and political representation. Htun, Lacalle, and Micozzi (Reference Htun, Lacalle and Micozzi2013) sidestep the complexities raised by intersectionality by claiming to focus not on women's interests but on “gender equality,” and then they ignore how gender might intersect with other forms of inequality. In the U.S. scholarship, the most common measures are lists of issues identified by women's activist organizations, which are not necessarily intersectional (e.g., Carroll Reference Carroll and Carroll2001; Cowell-Meyers and Langbein Reference Cowell-Meyers and Langbein2009; Swers Reference Swers2002).
INTERSECTIONAL INTERESTS ROOTED IN POLITICAL INTERSECTIONALITY
I reconcile the reality of intersectionality with the empirical study of substantive representation by developing the concept of intersectional interests. While Pitkin recognizes interests as value-laden and disputed (Reference Pitkin1967, 213), she does not explore their constructed nature. My concept of intersectional interests begins with the recognition that individual and group interests are shifting and temporally located, generated through political dialogue and action. This constructed nature is especially true for intersectional interests, which bring together diverse perspectives and bridge different forms of inequality. Intersectional interests cannot be identified a priori; rather, they are forged if and when political intersectionality takes place. In the words of Bolivian political activist Maria Lourdes Zabala (Reference Zabala2010), “that which marks oppression and privilege and which constitutes a significant difference among women is not a fixed attribute, established and predefined, but is a contingent and situated relation that is mobilized in the collective practice of women.”Footnote 3 Our attention, therefore, must focus on identifying the range of oppressions that impact women in a given context, at a given time (and which ultimately inform their diverse perspectives), and on the ways in which intersectional political practices can generate common, shared interests in spite of deep divides.
My concept of intersectional interests draws on Kimberlé Crenshaw's three forms of intersectionality: (1) structural intersectionality, when two or more distinct structures of inequality conjoin to shape an individual's lived experience; (2) political intersectionality, when political activism recognizes multiple axes; and (3) representational intersectionality, when two or more inequalities combine to create specific cultural representations (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1991). All three play a role in women's substantive political representation. The differing experiences of individual women as they are crosscut by race, class, sexuality, disability, or other structures of inequality are the reason why identifying common “women's interests” to substantively represent is so fraught. But political intersectionality demands that we also heed the dynamics of the political process itself and evaluate whether the political pursuit of “women's substantive representation” uses inclusive political tactics or, conversely, strategies and priorities that perpetuate the dominance of one group over others. Finally, representational intersectionality shapes the context of these politics, including stereotypes that inform experiences of structural intersectionality and the dynamics of political intersectionality.
While Crenshaw's subtypes of intersectionality are illuminating, she provides few examples of inclusive political intersectionality (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1988, Reference Crenshaw1991). Separately, intersectionality as a concept has been critiqued for its tendency to further fix identities (Puar Reference Puar2007). Iris Young's approach to identity and politics helps address both of these shortcomings. Like Zabala, Young argues that group perspectives are not rooted in essential qualities but rather are actively generated through interactions within social movements and between formal representatives and their constituents (Young Reference Young2000, 127–28). Young's focus on political interaction across lines of difference also offers a model for conceiving of political intersectionality beyond static identity categories. I argue that it is in political interaction across lines of difference that intersectional interests are generated.
Building on Crenshaw and Young, my approach to identifying intersectional interests begins with a contextually specific mapping of the structural inequalities and cultural representations that influence individual women's perspectives. The inductive mapping begins with a historical understanding of the major societal cleavages, followed by analysis of written social movement and political materials and interview or observational data, to capture the perspectives of marginalized groups that may not leave written records. This contextual mapping is critical because the salience of particular structures of inequality such as class or race varies across contexts (Ferree Reference Ferree2003), and even the ways in which these structures operate—such as the particularities of race in Latin America—may also vary (Ewig Reference Ewig2010).
Mapping in hand, the next step is to identify instances in which intersectional interests are forged through political intersectionality. Intersectional interests are the result of deliberative processes that include the most marginalized and implement strategies that seek to bridge structural inequalities. Intersectional interests come in three common forms. The first is expansionist: when activists or politicians expand the spectrum of women's interests to include issues voiced by the most marginalized. The second, integrationist, occurs when a gender dimension is integrated into issue areas that address other inequalities. The reality for some women may be that class inequality, racial discrimination, or another structural inequality is their most pressing concern; however, theories of intersectionality tell us that gender often works in tandem with these other inequalities. Thus, policies that address gender in conjunction with other forms of inequality are more substantively representative of women's interests than those that address gender inequalities alone. Third are those interests that are reconceptualized through political intersectionality, or reconceived intersectional interests. This third form is the most significant because reconceived interests address divergent perspectives in new, holistic ways.
Women's substantive representation, in this approach, is measured not by the achievement of specific policies that are identified as in women's interest a priori but rather those policies that enact one of these three forms of intersectional interests. Next, I employ this approach in Bolivia.
MAPPING WOMEN'S PERSPECTIVES IN BOLIVIA
Intersectionality does not operate in the same way everywhere; in different societies, distinct structural inequalities gain salience from divergent histories. My mapping of Bolivian women's perspectives begins with historical and anthropological scholarship that points to the salience of class, race, geography, and gender as long-standing structural divides that generate inequalities. Historians and anthropologists agree that class in Bolivia is the most salient structural inequality, and it is intertwined with race/ethnicity and rural/urban divisions.Footnote 4 Bolivia's mining economy helped create strong class divisions and fostered class consciousness among mine workers in particular. Leaders of Bolivia's 1952 revolution exploited these class divisions, heightening class identification (Dunkerley Reference Dunkerley1984). But the nationalist ideology of the 1950s also masked long-standing racial divisions between indigenous Bolivians and those of Spanish and mixed Spanish and indigenous (or mestizo) descent. Revolutionaries renamed indigenous rural residents campesinos (peasants), for instance, in an effort to overcome the racism inscribed in the distinction between indios and whites (Albó Reference Albó, Crabtree and Whitehead2008; Toranzo Roca Reference Toranzo Roca, Crabtree and Whitehead2008).Footnote 5 Despite strong class rhetoric, anthropologists have documented the colloquial ways in which racism has been continually practiced against indigenous Andeans (Weismantel Reference Weismantel2001).
More so than in other parts of the world, in Latin America, race is a fluid construction. “Modernity” and “civilization” are associated with whites and mestizos in urban areas, making education, economic advancement, and migration modes of “whitening”—processes that also reinforce the co-construction of race with class and geography (de la Cadena Reference de la Cadena2000; Stepan Reference Stepan1991). It is hard, therefore, to disentangle indigenous and class divisions from rural/urban divides. While not all rural Bolivians are poor and indigenous, the poor and indigenous live predominantly in rural areas. Beginning in the 1980s, indigenous identities reemerged as politically salient, partly as a result of the breakdown of class-based corporatist alignments and the dawn of a global “multicultural” discourse (Albó Reference Albó and Sieder2002, Reference Albó, Crabtree and Whitehead2008; Yashar Reference Yashar2005). The emergence of a broad indigenous movement propelled the election of Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, and his MAS party, in 2005. Morales was elected twice more, in 2009 and 2014.
Gender is also a significant structural inequality: the lack of women (until recently) in political office, their concentration in lower economic echelons, the prevalence of violence against women, and norms that discourage girls from seeking education are just some indicators (Instituto Nacional de Estadística 2010). But gender operates and is understood in different ways in rural indigenous and campesino, compared with urban mestizo/white, communities. In urban white/mestizo areas, dominant gender relations stem from a combination of Victorian ideals of female domesticity and patriarchal control and the Catholic ideal of self-sacrificing mothers, though these have evolved.Footnote 6 By contrast, the two largest indigenous cultures in Bolivia, Aymara and Quechua, adhere to an ideal of gender relations called chachawarmi (qhari-warmi in Quechua). Chachawarmi centers on the conjugal pair, with a clear division of labor between husband and wife, yet the labors of each are equally valued (Choque Quispe Reference Choque Quispe2009; Harris Reference Harris and La Fontaine1978). For contemporary indigenous women, chachawarmi is an ideal, but one that they recognize is rarely entirely realized (Burman Reference Burman2011, 78).
Gender and race interact substantially in the Andes, with indigenous women associated with indigeneity more than men because of a their greater likelihood to remain monolingual indigenous speakers, maintain indigenous dress and customs, and not travel far from their communities (de la Cadena Reference de la Cadena and Ruíz-Bravo1996).Footnote 7 Rural male migration for work has accentuated this gender/race connection as men have become “whiter” because of their growing urban ties and cultural experiences (Canessa Reference Canessa and Canessa2005). Moreover, rural indigenous communities hold more conservative views of sex and sexuality than urban mestizo communities (Canessa Reference Canessa and Canessa2005).
Each of these axes of structural inequality intersects and informs the experiences of women political activists, while representational intersectionality informs their perceptions of one another. My interviews with activist Bolivian women and review of their social movement documents confirm these divisions and show how they manifest among politically active women.Footnote 8 These materials also reveal that sexual orientation serves as another crosscutting inequality.
To obtain a sample of the full range of women political activists across these cleavages, I used news reports, websites, and the “snowball” method of asking initial contacts to identify others in order to locate women leaders of independent women's organizations, leaders of women's branches of male organizations, and women leaders within mixed-sex activist organizations. I also identified women currently or formerly in the legislature and government bureaucracy. I began the interviews by asking about their personal political trajectory, and then their organization's priorities. I probed key issue areas, to identify similarities and differences in perspectives among women. I asked about the relationship between their organization and others that engaged women of different class or ethnic compositions. I also asked about their political strategies. I supplemented the interviews with written materials from these organizations.
The interviews made evident different understandings of gender and how it operates in Bolivia. Drawing on chachawarmi, most rural indigenous women saw their place for activism alongside men, not separate from them.Footnote 9 This was clear in all of my interviews with women who were part of either peasant or indigenous organizations or identified with these.Footnote 10 Many of these women emphasized the importance of women's contributions to family and community alongside their individual empowerment.Footnote 11 By contrast, several urban activist women, organized principally in feminist organizations, rejected chachawarmi in favor of more individualist ideals. Bolivian feminists Victoria Aldunate and Julieta Paredes, from the collective Asamblea Feminista (Feminist Assembly), write that the idea of indigenous complementarity “denies women the possibility of being political representatives autonomous from men—normally their husbands—and denies lesbians the power to be legitimate members of the community” (Reference Aldunate and Paredes2010, 11). Paredes self-identifies as Aymara, but her urban lifestyle and radical politics make her “feminist” rather than indigenous in the perceptions of women engaged with indigenous and peasant movements.
In the Aldunate and Paredes quote, sexuality is enmeshed with these differing ideals of gender. For these feminists, chachawarmi, intimately tied to the male-female couple, denies the possibility of alternative sexual preferences. These differing perspectives are reinforced by stereotypes. For example, Julia Ramos, the national leader of the peasant women's organization Bartolina Sisa, described the differences between peasant, indigenous women and urban feminists this way:
The majority of us, we are married … we respect that there is [among feminists] a different way of life. They are single, divorced, others are widows, so they have a different way of perceiving things, and well, we also are not very interested in being on the extreme—neither one side or the other. We women, the majority married with children … we don't believe women should submit to men, nor men to women.
For Ramos, key differences include sexuality as well as differing ideas of male-female relations. Bolivia is predominantly Catholic, with a growing evangelical Protestant presence, especially in rural communities. Both religions promote male domination over women and reject deviations from heterosexuality and the gender binary. Despite the growth of a LGBTQ movement in recent decades, negative cultural representations of LGBTQ individuals have been slow to change, as Ramos’ comment makes clear.
The structural inequalities of gender and sexuality are informed by class and race. Cecilia Enríquez, director of the feminist nongovernmental organization (NGO) Gregoria Apaza, was most graphic on this point:
In a society like ours, in which there is a process of whitening as one advances in the power hierarchy [before the government of Evo Morales] calmly, as a mestiza women, I could beat an indigenous man. Because within the hierarchies of power, I am more. So, if an indigenous man said something to me, insulted me. … I would turn around and slap him because, again, in the power hierarchies, I have more power than an indigenous man. So that demonstrates the relativity of the power hierarchy dependent on your ethnicity, class, gender and the possibilities of who you can be in life.
The result of this racial (and its related class) subjugation is that for peasant and indigenous women, racial equality is as important as, and often more important than, gender equality.
Class also creates significant divisions among women. The differential effects of economic structural adjustment in the 1980s, when poor women suffered disproportionately, further divided an already highly class-stratified society, and its effects remain stark within the women's movement. Feminist NGOs—such as the Centro de Información y Desarrollo de la Mujer (Center for Women's Information and Development, CIDEM), Gregoria Apaza, and the umbrella organization Coordinadora de la Mujer (Women's Coordinator)—are mainly run by urban, college-educated mestizas. In the 1990s, feminist NGOs collaborated with the World Bank and the Bolivian government to implement development projects serving peasant and indigenous women in rural areas, but they rarely considered rural women peers.Footnote 12 Peasant women's distrust of NGO feminists increased during the Morales era, when the MAS government broke with neoliberalism and anti-imperialism became rhetorically central.Footnote 13
There are also divisions between liberal and radical urban feminist organizations, which often compete for resources and recognition.Footnote 14 Here, too, divides of class (in the form of representational stereotypes) and sexuality play a role. In contrast to liberal NGOs, radical autonomous collectives such as Mujeres Creando (Women Creating) and Asamblea Feminista take decidedly antistatist positions. While the professionalized NGOs work on development projects, direct services to women, and legislative proposals, the collectives advocate unconventional forms of protest aimed at changing culture. The collectives are also led by out lesbians who make sexual orientation central to their discourse. And, similar to peasant and indigenous women, the collectives are suspicious of the NGO feminists’ past collaboration with neoliberal governments and organizations—even though there are no real class differences between them. As María Galindo, one of the founders of Mujeres Creando, recounted,
When in 85 they implemented structural adjustment, the World Bank understood well that the economic support for this process was going to be women. So, they directed a lot of policies towards women and the agent of these policies was the women's NGOs—with “a gender perspective” with “gender equity.” And, what emerged, from my point of view, was not feminism but gender technocracy.
Galindo viewed the feminist NGOs as opportunists who simply “changed their skirt” (cambiar la pollera) and shifted from working with neoliberal governments to working with the MAS government.Footnote 15
Yet, as antistate radicals, the feminist collectives also rejected coordination with the peasant and indigenous women activists. Galindo extolled her belief that the Bartolina Sisa peasant organization had been coopted by the MAS:
At one time we had an alliance with the Bartolina Sisas. But today we don't because it is now a completely coopted movement. … I believe that even the Bartolinas themselves don't have real contact with their base. So, there is no value in allying with them … It could sound very correct, “Oh, we have alliances with peasant women…” Yes, it could sound very correct, but politically, we are in disagreement.
Given her misgivings, it is perhaps not surprising that María Galindo believed “that the only feminist expression in Bolivia is Mujeres Creando.”Footnote 16
These differing experiences within interlocking forms of inequality among Bolivian women lead to radically different perspectives on similar issue areas. For example, when I asked indigenous leader Viviana Lima, director (with her husband) of the Department of La Paz section of the indigenous organization CONAMAQ, whether violence against women was a concern for women in her organization, she emphasized the problem of women-against-women violence, not just male violence. Referring to mestiza women committing violence against indigenous women employed as domestic servants in their homes, she explained: “they whistle at you, shout at you—I don't know what all else—that that woman has to cook, that she has to watch her baby, that that house is her house.”Footnote 17 Lima's observation underlines the dominance of race and class inequalities in the Bolivian context.
On abortion, there is an even stronger divide. For both liberal NGO and radical feminists, abortion liberalization is a central political demand.Footnote 18 By contrast, indigenous women generally support abortion only in cases of rape or medical need, which is already legal in Bolivia.Footnote 19 These different perspectives stem from urban and rural women's divergent experiences with eugenic policies and the high rates of infant mortality in rural areas (Zulawski Reference Zulawski2007). Some argue that indigenous women have their own methods of inducing abortion, making legal change a low priority.Footnote 20 Still other influences include conservative evangelicalism in indigenous communities.Footnote 21
In other instances, these differing perspectives lead to the prioritization of issues not traditionally conceived of as “women's” issues. For example, peasant activist Berta Blanco demanded “that education … extend outside of urban areas, and also outside of universities. Because some have opportunities, and some do not” (Coordinadora de la Mujer 2006, 156). Aymara leader Rosario Arias made clear, “Our principal objective is to defend property rights”—referring to gender inequalities in land titling and the centrality of titling to indigenous membership (Coordinadora de la Mujer 2012a, 136). The strategic plan of the La Paz Federation of Bartolina Sisa focuses on the economic consequences for women of desertification due to climate change (Federación Departmental de Mujeres Campesinas 2010). Still other issues emerge if one speaks to poor, urban women (indigenous or not)—from domestic workers’ rights to the safety of women migrants.
Like other societies, in Bolivia, the category “women” is less one of solidarity based on shared experiences, and more often one cut through with other hierarchies. As Enríquez noted, Bolivian “women are as different from one another as women are different from men.”Footnote 22 And their interests are, too. This makes defining “women's interests” as a measure of women's substantive representation complicated, and it is why a focus on political intersectionality helps to move this enterprise forward.
INTERSECTIONAL SUBSTANTIVE REPRESENTATION
If it is impossible to identify common interests when one maps women's diverse perspectives, are intersectional interests identifiable? I argue that they are, and that there are three complementary forms, all products of political intersectionality. To recap, these are (1) expansionist: expanding the spectrum of individual issues considered to be women's substantive representation; (2) integrationist: incorporating a gendered dimension into policies that address other inequalities; and (3) reconceived: issues that are reconceptualized. Next, I provide examples of how each of these forms was forged in Bolivia. Given that the first two are easier to identify, I provide brief examples. Given the complexity of achieving reconceived intersectional interests, I describe in greater detail two instances: in the debates on political parity and pension reform.
The foregoing mapping signals that political intersectionality is not easy in Bolivia. Yet the period under Evo Morales was also one of significant power shifting, empowering indigenous women, and forcing mestiza and upper-class feminist women to begin to see peasant and indigenous women as peers. Morales's election in 2006 and the subsequent rewriting of the constitution led to “an incremental process of inclusion of marginalized social sectors with little [previous] presence in the institutional political space, in particular indigenous peasants and women” (Mayorga Reference Mayorga2011, 20). The Morales government's anti-neoliberal discourse and its related discourse of “decolonization”—or reversal of internal colonization by whites and mestizos— created an opening for political intersectionality.
Expansionist intersectional interests are evident in the overall strategy of the Coordinadora de la Mujer in the period following Morales’ election. The Coordinadora is a network of 26 organizations with either an explicit or a strong interest in gender issues. Led by urban mestiza feminists, in both the pre– and post–Constitutional Assembly periods, the Coordinadora reached out to women in the main indigenous organizations (CONAMAQ and CIDOB), as well as to the peasant women of Bartolina Sisa, Women Miners, and others, in addition to feminist affiliates, in its efforts to influence the new constitution and subsequent legislation. This process served to orient Bolivian activist women, across their deep divides, to a wider variety of issue areas. While traditional “feminist” interests such as reproductive rights and violence remained part of the agenda, the agenda expanded to include questions such as land tenure and migration that reflect the concerns of rural, poor, and indigenous women. These issues are now present in places that set the activist agenda, such as the Gender Observatory, and were achieved through a process of political intersectionality.Footnote 23 Coordinadora executive director Katia Uriona explained that the process “presuppose[d] generating alliances, generating consensuses.”Footnote 24 Former parliament member Elizabeth Salguero described it as “[an] organic, strong and impactful coordination that changed [how indigenous women] have been present in spaces of power; they have become valid interlocutors.”Footnote 25 While the publications that document this process do not reveal conflicts, my interview with Uriona indicated that generating consensuses required significant trust building. Yet, while expanded agendas are an advance, the true test will be dedication of resources to all of the identified issue areas.
Forging integrationist intersectional interests by incorporating gender into a policy that seeks to address another intersecting inequality can be observed in the formulation of Bolivia's 2010 Law Against Racism and All Forms of Discrimination, which outlaws discrimination by government and in the media. The clauses in the proposed law that sought to restrict racist stereotypes in the media dominated the national debate over this law. Less known is the fact that a small coalition of feminist and human rights NGOs worked with women parliamentarians to insert “all forms of discrimination” into the law. Specifically, the feminist organization Gregoria Apaza worked with human rights NGOs focused on racism, such as the Capítulo Boliviano de Derechos Humanos (Bolivian Chapter of Human Rights), to integrate other forms of discrimination into the law.Footnote 26 Including gender discrimination in a law focused on race resonated, in part, because, as discussed earlier, racist stereotypes especially affect indigenous women. Moreover, in 2008, just preceding formulation of this law, indigenous women had born the brunt of racist attacks in conflicts that took place in the city of Sucre during the writing of the new constitution. Vice Minister of Decolonization Félix Cárdenas made the tie explicit in his advocacy for the law: “in some places it is natural to beat a woman in a pollera (traditional indigenous skirt)” (La Prensa 2010). With the support of President Evo Morales and indigenous National Assembly member Marianela Paco—who herself was attacked in the Sucre protests—the bill was revised to cover “all forms of discrimination”—including, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity (Democracy Center 2008).Footnote 27
While expansionist and integrationist intersectional interests are important, when an issue is reconceived, this is a more powerful form of intersectional interest. Next, I recount how reconceived intersectional interests emerged in debates over political parity and pensions.
Political Parity: Allying Concepts of Gender
Adoption of the principle of political parity by the Constituent Assembly and then by the legislature in the 2009 Transitory Electoral Regime Law, which required alternation of women and men on party lists—for both the main candidate and the alternate—for all elected political offices is perhaps the most robust example to date in Bolivia of political intersectionality leading to reconceived intersectional interests.Footnote 28 In this process, not only were women of wide-ranging perspectives included, but also the debate itself led to a reconception of gender equality in political participation from the original feminist vision of gaining a foothold in politics to demands for full partnership with men rooted in chachawarmi.
Multiple interviewees from feminist NGOs noted that in the meetings leading up to the Constituent Assembly, for the first time there was dialogue between urban feminists and rural women.Footnote 29 Uriona of the Coordinadora de la Mujer described the shift in the feminist movement from “a very homogenized vision in terms of our urban roots and a movement that did not articulate alliances with other actors or organizations” to a “new articulation” as a result of the pre-Constituent process.Footnote 30 And it was not just urban-rural divides that were crossed. More than 25,000 women representing organizations of all kinds—afro-descendants, domestic workers, neighborhood leaders, and more—took part in 400 workshops in nine departments and 150 municipalities across the country. In that process, they agreed upon a shared set of principles to promote in the Constituent Assembly (Mujeres Presentes en la Historia 2006; Novillo Gonzáles Reference Novillo Gonzáles2011, 38–39).
In this inclusive process, the meaning of gender equality in political representation was reconceived. Historically, gender equality in political representation had been an exclusively feminist demand. In 1997, after years of lobbying, organized urban and middle-class feminists—without the participation of rural women—won a 30% electoral quota for women representatives.Footnote 31 The quota was viewed as a means for individual women to gain a foothold in the political system. Feminists came to the Constituent Assembly hopeful that the 1997 law could be improved, as its implementation had been poor (Albaine Reference Albaine2009; Uriona Crespo Reference Uriona Crespo2009, 28). By contrast, most indigenous and rural women came to the Assembly prioritizing decolonization; many believed that gender subordination was a result of colonialism and, with its repeal, the egalitarian ideals of chachawarmi would thrive (Burman Reference Burman2011, 90; Rousseau Reference Rousseau2011). In this context of conflicting priorities, feminists had to “rethink what they understood to be gender,” and for the first time they debated the concept through the lived experience of indigenous and peasant women—rather than through their own experiences and theoretical scholarship. They sought to understand how rural women “lived gender in their daily lives, and why they resisted the concept” and began the work of “mutual understanding.”Footnote 32
For many rural women, the dialogues that ensued and experiences in the Assembly pushed them to consider gender inequalities in political representation more directly. But their concept of gender relations, rooted in chachawarmi, led them to view 50-50 gender parity as the only proposal that would reflect their vision of gender relations (Uriona Crespo Reference Uriona Crespo2010, 54). Their objective was not simply about allowing individual women to gain a foothold but rather about reshaping the political system to reflect the ideal of gender complementarity. As one peasant representative in the Constituent Assembly remarked, “We want 50-50, and that we women be taken into account … in the Aymara world we always talk about equity and complementarity, which is chachawarmi” (Viceministerio de Asuntos de Género y Generacionales 2007, 18). CONAMAQ leader Viviana Lima described her thought process: “women, we voted, we elected, but we had not been elected. So organized women, we said: ‘we can't elect and elect and nothing else, so that they keep marginalizing us more—so we should be elected.’” She also expressed the hope that now that Bolivia has had an indigenous male president, the next should be an indigenous woman.Footnote 33
The alignment did not come easy, however, and faced opposition from within the MAS party. Constituent Assembly member María del Rosarios Ricaldi noted,
I came in confident that the 146 MAS Constituents would have to say yes to women's demands … but I suddenly realized that of the 88 women constituents, only three of us were militants from the women's movement; so it was very difficult to debate the issue of women when there was so much prejudice about the social inclusion of our demands. They would say they must be wild women, and things like that—the opposition came at you from your own political party (Vicepresidente del Estado Plurinacional 2008, 1:19)
Moreover, there was no consensus even among feminists to pursue political parity. Galindo of Mujeres Creando questioned participation in the formal political system: “What happens? That patriarchal, machista, hierarchical, corrupt power is disguised, is camouflaged with a woman's figure.”Footnote 34
The inclusion of gender parity in the constitution and the final structure of the law—alternating women and men in the candidate and alternate positions—was in keeping with the chachawarmi concept of couples sharing in decision-making. In addition to broad coalition building between feminists in civil society and feminist parliamentarians, the law's successful passage rested on the intervention of an indigenous woman senator, Leonilda Zurita, who called on indigenous women to speak in favor of the legislation when it faced substantial resistance (Htun and Ossa Reference Htun and Ossa2013; Novillo Gonzáles Reference Novillo Gonzáles2011, 52–58). Despite the misgivings of some feminists, political parity constituted a reconceived intersectional interest because its debate deployed inclusive political strategies and led to a new conceptual understanding that incorporated diverse, previously marginalized perspectives.
Pensions Law: Reconceiving What Counts as Work
Following the passage of the new constitution, the Coordinadora de la Mujer built on its prior experience of political intersectionality and led a nationwide initiative that brought together women's organizations, indigenous organizations and women parliamentarians to develop a plan to integrate women's perspectives into the new legislature's agenda (Coordinadora de la Mujer 2012b).Footnote 35 One of its foci was the proposed reform of Bolivia's pensions law. Like political parity, the effort to influence pension reform displayed political intersectionality in its inclusive solidarity and dialogue that led to reconceptualization—this time of what constitutes the work for which pensions provide compensation and who is deserving of these.
The Social Security Working Group brought together civil society organizations and representatives of government institutions to discuss the state of the Bolivian pension system and the draft reform bill that was eventually passed in 2010 as Pensions Law 65. The organizations included were broadly representative of working women—including domestic workers, union women, women miners, and professional women.Footnote 36 Red Boliviana de Mujeres Transformando la Economia (The Bolivian Network of Women Transforming the Economy, REMTE) played a pivotal role in pulling the organizations together.
Through a process of political intersectionality, what transpired was a rethinking of whom the pension system might include and the work it would recognize. Traditionally, pensions are designed so that employees, employers, the state, or some combination of these contributes to a fund that an individual can draw on in old age. Originally conceived to serve men employed in the formal labor force, over decades, pension systems evolved to include payments to wives, and as women entered the formal labor force, they, too, became eligible for pensions and eventually were granted the ability to cover their spouse. In the 1990s, Bolivia converted its state-run pension system into a system of individual private accounts. At the time, this was viewed as a means to increase efficiencies through market competition and increase national investment, but in practice the high administrative costs of the private system cut deeply into individual earnings (Mesa Lago Reference Mesa Lago2014). The 2009 reform proposal opened a window for women's organizations to integrate greater gender equity into the pension system and address the fact that just 10.3% of economically active women were affiliated (López Reference López2011, 100).
The political process by which this occurred was key: REMTE first sought an inclusive dialogue among women from all walks of Bolivian life. In addition to professional women—lawyers, sociologists, etc.—who studied the gendered implications of the existing pension system, REMTE invited leaders of domestic workers organizations, women miners, and experts in gender and migration to participate (López Reference López2011). While the full vision of gender-equitable pensions imagined through the inclusive dialogue was not ultimately achieved, some progress was made.
Feminists have long recognized three principal ways that women end up with lower pension levels than men: first, because they are paid less than men, and second, because they often have interrupted working years because of child and elder care responsibilities. A third obstacle is life expectancy: because women live longer than men on average, pension providers (including in Bolivia prior to 2010) often provide smaller monthly sums to women than men on the assumption that they will be making these payments over a longer time. All three of these issues were raised in the working group discussion, and the proposed reform attempted to address these through (a) a shorter total number of years of required pension payments in order to receive a pension, (b) credit for time taken out of the workforce to care for a family member, and (c) the use of a single age expectancy table when calculating pension payments.
However, the process of bringing in diverse perspectives from a variety of women led to a reconceptualization of the work for which pensions provide compensation. One influential factor was the particular gendered nature of the Bolivian economy: in 2009, only 41% of Bolivians worked in the formal workforce, and 66% of working women were employed in the informal sector, by far the majority (CEPALSTAT 2017). Thus, the pension system excluded most Bolivians, and women in particular. In the discussions, the group realized that the pension system, by using the last two years of earnings as the baseline for retirement payments, privileged a male norm of retiring at a high wage, whereas women, because they tend to work in the informal sector with more flexible scheduling, often taper off their work as they near retirement. A key proposal to come out of the discussion of informality was support for a system that would not only cover more informal sector workers but also award payments based on the two highest-earning years.
The inclusion of women miners was also crucial in shaping the vision of the group. Women miners in Bolivia are often considered “informal” workers, in that most do not work directly for the mine companies but rather work in self-organized cooperatives that harvest what value remains from the refuse left from the initial mining process. Out of the dialogue came the recognition that 74% of women miners were not covered by the pension system and that it was necessary to create a formal relationship between the pension system and the cooperatives to achieve greater coverage (López Reference López2011, 98). The fact that domestic workers—an almost entirely female workforce—were not covered by the pension system also became a central advocacy point.Footnote 37 Also unearthed was the practice of some men of divorcing after midlife, marrying younger women, and denying social security pension payments to the first wife.
The political process of asserting these new concepts of work and workers into the proposed legislation faced large obstacles. The legislative process started with two competing reforms, one presented by the executive branch and the other by the Central Obrera Boliviana (Bolivian Central Workers Union, COB), neither of which addressed gender inequities (Marco Navarro Reference Marco Navarro2010). It took a concerted effort by the women's movement to demand that a gender chapter be incorporated into the final law. To achieve this, key negotiation interlocutors were the Bartolina Sisa peasant women's organization and union women.Footnote 38 In the end, the reform of Bolivia's pension law included the use of a uniform life expectancy table and a credit of one year for each child a woman had, up to a maximum of three. The expansion of Bolivia's solidarity pension for the poor was also an important gain especially for the poorest women (Arza Reference Arza2012; Mesa Lago Reference Mesa Lago2014). These amounted to just a small slice of the proposals that the intersectional process revealed; indigenous women, dependent on subsistence production, for example, remain largely excluded. But the reform began to adopt the new, broader concepts of work and workers.
CONCLUSION
That strong divisions and suspicions still existed among Bolivian women, after these instances of developing intersectional interests, drives home the temporal nature of intersectional interests. Intersectional interests are not static indicators to be identified but rather are forged through political intersectionality. And while the constitutional re-founding in Bolivia may have been an especially propitious context for forging intersectional interests, instances of forging intersectional interests abound. Scholars who wish to more accurately measure women's substantive representation by including intersectional perspectives need to identify one or more of these three forms of intersectional interests and determine whether political representatives promote these. To do so first requires an inductive understanding of societal cleavages and how these intersect to generate diverse perspectives among women in a specific context. Then, it requires the researcher to ask, have instances of political intersectionality led to an expansion of the array of women's interests, so that those of marginalized women are included? Are there instances in which individuals or organizations have crossed divides of structural inequality to integrate a gender perspective into policy proposals that address other forms of inequality? Finally, and most importantly, are there ways in which interests themselves have been reconceived through inclusion of previously marginalized perspectives?
