Sarah A. Radcliffe (Geography, University of Cambridge)
Indigenous women and development in Ecuador: Selective visibility and the contested politics of presence
During the 1990s, the international development field increasingly treated indigenous peoples as a specific beneficiary group in production and social projects. Viewed as holders of positive attributes of social capital, indigenous peoples became the explicit justification for interventions in Ecuador, as well as elsewhere in Latin America. Ethnic women were an ambivalent policy category during this period, appearing in discussions of their leadership potential but otherwise discussed in terms of their unknowability. Yet since 2000, the development category of “indigenous women” has gained greater prominence in policy and programmes. The paper traces this genealogy, exploring particularly the ways in which diverse groups of indigenous women contest how they are represented, their labour drawn upon, and their presence is de-politicised.
