On Andariegas, Carishinas and Bad Mothers -.pdf (original) (raw)

Indigenous women of Cotacachi, Ecuador have participated in the local indigenous organization since its emergence in the late 1970s. Their leadership requires that women attend a series of events, meetings, and training opportunities for which they need to be absent from home, and go to the municipal town and to other national and even international locations. For those who are married and have children, their mobility and leadership responsibilities enter in constant conflict with their domestic and maternal roles. Husbands, relatives, neighbors or other members of their communities sometimes use tactics of shaming that tap into local ideas of proper femininity: women stay at home; they care for their husbands and children; and they work in the house, fields, or community. Female leaders were accused of being andariegas, “fond of walking,” or carishinas, from the Kichwa cari = man, and shina = like, “like a man.” Not only do these adjectives have negative connotations of neglecting the role of mother and wife but they also cast a doubt on the morality of the women so described. In addition, children, especially as they grow older questioned their mothers’ political involvement and were vocal regarding their mothers’ absence from home. Even when indigenous women took their small children with them, others, such as development workers, found that practice oppressive and detracting from women’s full participation. Indigenous women found ingenious strategies to circumvent these challenges to their political participation, sometimes accommodating to expectations of femininity and motherhood and other times directly contesting them. In Mothers in Public and Political Life http://demeterpress.org/books/mothers-in-public-and-political-life/