Holly Worthen | UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA BENITO JUAREZ DE OAXACA (original) (raw)

Papers by Holly Worthen

Perspectivas sobre las mujeres en México: Historia, administración pública y participación política, 2018

El valor de las cosas Aspectos sociales y culturales de la producción y el consumo, 2016

Indigenous Women´s Political Participation: Gendered Labor and Collective Rights Paradigms in Mexico, 2015

In Latin America, rights to local political participation in many indigenous communities are not ... more In Latin America, rights to local political participation in many indigenous communities are not simply granted, but rather “earned” through acts of labor for the community. This is the case in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where almost three fourths of municipalities elect municipal authorities through custom and tradition rather than secret ballot and universal suffrage. The alarmingly low rate of women’s formal participation in these municipalities has garnered attention from policymakers, provoking a series of legislative reforms designed to increase women’s roles in local politics. However, these initiatives often miss their mark. Focused on a liberal model of women as individual rights-bearers, they fail to understand the complex ways in which gendered labor influences political participation in non-liberal contexts. This article examines a case in which indigenous women reject such an initiative because it would exacerbate their exploitation within the local terms of gendered collective labor instead of promoting equality. It thus explains potential barriers to indigenous women’s political leadership at the local level, and suggests ways in which gender equality can be promoted in non-liberal contexts.

Within the last two decades, the growth of microcredit, or the provision of small loans to poor b... more Within the last two decades, the growth of microcredit, or the provision of small loans to poor borrowers, has become a key development initiative in the Global South. This is particularly important for questions of gender relationships, as the majority of microcredit recipients worldwide are low-income women. However, most assessments of microcredit and gender emphasize issues of individual empowerment rather than the large-scale political implications of credit provision. In this article, I critique the use of mainstream empowerment models employed in the assessment of microcredit’s ability to provoke changes in gender relationships. I argue that these models often fail to describe microcredit’s effects on women’s lives due to their epistemological framework, which pushes aside questions of geographical and historical specificity in pursuit of a universally empowered microcredit subject. Examining a mainstream empowerment model I used to conduct research in rural Mexico, I highlight these problems and present an alternative analysis of subjectivity, agency, and gender change as a result of microcredit provision.

Journal Articles by Holly Worthen

Political Geography, 2021

This article demonstrates how the promotion of Indigenous women's political-electoral rights in M... more This article demonstrates how the promotion of Indigenous women's political-electoral rights in Mexico has furthered a conservative agenda of state securitization. To do so, it presents a discourse analysis of national media reports focused on the story of Eufrosina Cruz, a Zapotec woman who became the figurehead for state-led initiatives to promote Indigenous women's rights. It argues that a colonial rescue narrative constructed through Cruz's figure helped generate new hegemonic discourses of gendered indigeneity that portrayed Indigenous peoples' alternative political practices and spaces as anti-democratic and illegal. In an era where advancements in party democracy were linked to processes of state securitization, these categorizations helped justify new forms of state intervention into Indigenous peoples' lives. By exploring how rights initiatives were discursively constructed through racialized, spatialized and gendered constructions of indigeneity, this article contributes to a critical geography of indigeneity within political geography.

In the mid-1990s, fairtrade-organic registration data showed that only 9 percent of Oaxaca, Mexic... more In the mid-1990s, fairtrade-organic registration data showed that only 9 percent of Oaxaca, Mexico’s organic coffee ‘farm operators’ were women; by 2013 the female farmer rate had increased to 42 percent. Our research investigates the impact of this significant increase in women’s coffee association participation, assessing the extent to which it is correlated with reductions in the gen-der asset gap and increases in women’s voice and agency in their everyday lives. We explore gender equity among 210 members of two coffee producer associations in Oaxaca, Mexico. The data, gathered between 2014 and 2016, form part of a larger, comprehensive study on this topic involving close to 500 producers across four regions, five coffee producer associations, and multiple language groups. We find that female coffee organization members report high levels of household decision-making power and they are more likely than their male counterparts to report control over their income. These significant advances in women’s agency within the household are offset by the fact that the women experience significant time poverty as they engage in coffee production while bearing a disproportionate share of domestic labor obligations. This time poverty limits their ability to fully participate in coffee organizational governance.

Books by Holly Worthen

Repensando la participación política de las mujeres: discursos y prácticas de las costumbres en el ámbito comunitario, 2015