From Promise to Reality: Equal Opportunities and Real Capabilities of Women in the Era of Globalization. an Approach Based on the Study of Female Seasonal Agricultural Workers in Chile

From Promise to Reality: Equal Opportunities and Real Capabilities of Women in the Era of Globalization. An Approach Based on the Study of Female Seasonal Agricultural Workers in Chile.

After years of numerous worldwide strategies and policies, implemented by different public, private, national, and transnational actors, who want to install a gender and equal opportunities approach for women, what is the final assessment of these practices? What true empowerment and what real capabilities have been achieved by these different actions? Are there any significant transformations that we can identify in these attempts?

Some interesting answers to these questions can be found in the case of female seasonal agricultural workers. After going through a process of proletarianization and insertion into, by definition, precarious and unstable work, numerous changes have affected their social, economic, cultural and domestic environment. These include access to a consumer society, participation in new networking and the sharing of responsibilities in the family area.  But in a context of great inequality and precariousness, how can we talk about empowerment and capability?

This ethnographic study carried out in Limarí Province in Chile, provides some answers to those questions. It analyzes how the situation has changed for women, tracks progress in gender equality, and explains to what extent the current situation both comes close to and moves away from the desired development project.