Gender Advance in Venezuela: A Two-Pronged Affair

[Though the last decade of Hugo Chávez's "socialist democratic" government has never been far from the media spotlight, key elements of the proclaimed Bolivarian process have been overlooked: chiefly the struggle for female emancipation.]

Gender Advance in Venezuela: A Two-Pronged Affair

March 13th 2009, by George Gabriel - OpenDemocracy.net

Though the last decade of Hugo Chávez's "socialist democratic" government has never been far from the media spotlight, key elements of the proclaimed Bolivarian process have been overlooked: chiefly the struggle for female emancipation. Yet these ten years have seen Venezuelan patriarchy increasingly challenged from both above and below, by rising tides of female participation and a new swathe of innovative institutions.

Kristen Sample's overview of women's gains over the past decade in Latin America chronicles the potency of electoral law change for the realisation of effective female representation. This has also had its impact in Venezuela, where party list quotas have largely realised gender parity at the level of state legislature and the number of female mayors tripled to 19% in November's regional elections.

Yet as noted by Sample, such changes cannot alone guarantee equal representation, let alone translate into a broader social equality. She suggests a complementary group of strategies involving all sectors of society is needed to bring about female emancipation. Raquel Barrios, a committed young feminist identifies three key target areas for such strategies in Venezuela: "domestic violence, discrimination at work, and a deep moral questioning" that must come from the whole of society.

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