Feminisms

Abstract

Feminism is a very transforming unarmed revolution of the twentieth century, still facing new and complex challenges in the twenty-first century (Chesler and Hughes 2004; Coronado 2017; Fernández 2018). It encompasses women’s struggles – half of the population of the planet – against the historical violence and oppression exerted by patriarchal dominant structures in different geographical contexts and aspects of the existence: family, work, political, economic, academic, urban, rural, among others. Feminism strives for making visible and valuing the roles that diverse women play in society, promoting the recognition of their human rights and proposing other ways of thinking, inhabiting, and acting in the world. It has brought key concepts and methodologies to light, transforming different fields of knowledge in social sciences, politics, economics, and health research, among others, with important contributions to the development of public policies.

However, feminism achievements are far from being attained, especially by poor and racialized women from the Global South. The South understood here not as a geographical concept – even though the great majority of impoverished populations live in countries of the Southern hemisphere – “but as a metaphor of the human suffering caused by capitalism and colonialism at the global level, as well as the resistance to overcome or minimize such suffering” (Santos 2012:43). Thus, feminisms from the South emerge in plural from different anti-colonial and anti-racist movements, in which exploited and racialized women struggle for just and equitable societies. In this chapter, we want to call the attention on how Latin American women from Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and Peasant Mestizo origin are creating other possible ways of relating in society and with nature by: (1) debriefing the sequels of colonialism and racism in their personal, community, and societal lives; (2) bravely facing current predatory approaches to nature from hegemonic extractives economies, which are destroying community territories and displacing their inhabitants from the access to water and land; and (3) actively questioning and transforming patriarchal traditions at the interior of their own families and communities.