The Paradoxes and Potentials for Women’s Empowerment in Latin American Agricultural Co-operatives: The Case of Honduras

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to identify innovative strategies and practices that enable women to have equal opportunity to participate actively in the life of the co-operative. The research focuses on the case of the Honduran co-operative movement and is informed by primary interviews with women from regional and international co-operative associations and agricultural development organizations in Central America. Analysis employs a gender and development (GAD) theoretical framework combined with a socialist feminist analysis to interrogate the paradoxes and potentials for the co-operative development model to empower women. Overall, the paper argues that realizing the potential for co-operatives to empower women in Latin America depends upon the cultivation of enabling ideologies and institutions that challenge machista cultural norms and address legal barriers and other structural obstacles to women’s full participation in co-operative development.