Women and participatory mechanisms in Latin America: deepening democracy or more of the same?

Abstract

Traditional understandings of political participation frequently overlook the forms of local-level participation that women are more likely to engage in. The emergence of local participatory democracy mechanisms in Latin America offers the potential to disrupt this pattern. Authors have noted a strong relationship between women’s participation and local democracy. Proponents of participatory democracy argue that citizen engagement should produce more equitable access to public goods and a greater sense of political efficacy, particularly for members of traditionally marginalized groups. Ideally, participatory democracy should also challenge the divide between the public and private sphere and relocate decision-making to more familiar spaces. Critics charge that participatory mechanisms may reproduce the public/private demarcation that relegates women and their interests to the private sphere and renders them apolitical, particularly in societies where paternalistic practices remain firmly entrenched. Yet while the theory is well-developed, there remains a lack of comparative empirical work focused on the lived experiences of women participants that would reveal under what circumstances participatory mechanisms can allow women to experience the benefits of participation. Based on extensive fieldwork in Latin America, a region which has been at the forefront of participatory initiatives, this paper examines the extent to which local participatory mechanisms provide spaces for women engage in the public sphere and the ways in which participatory mechanisms can be designed to better support women and to challenge the public-private distinction that silences women’s voices.