Collaborative Barriers and Cultural Brokers: Competing Conceptions of Gender Equality in Potosí, Bolivia

Abstract

This article examines barriers to collaborations that arise between Andean farmers and a Bolivian rural development NGO in efforts toward agroecology. Despite their shared concerns, tensions are evident in the power imbalances embedded in these relationships, as well as in the divergent values and meanings assigned to participation and equality, most evident when viewed through the lens of gender. The implications of these tensions extend to how gendered human rights are understood more broadly. Western liberal notions of human rights may conflict with local cultures’ notions of these rights, informed by the organizing principle of gender complementarity. To explore this, ethnographic data on farm women’s participation, issues of decision-making power, and their public voices and silence are brought forth, demonstrating how the NGO is positioned as cultural broker between two different conceptions of equality – that of the farm families and the funding agencies and partners from the Global North.