How are women heard? Implementation gaps in public policy for solidarity economy and women's agency: Insights from Ecuador

Ruiz Rivera, Maria José
(2023) International Conference on Public Policy - ICPP6 — Location: Toronto Metropolitan University’s Faculty of Arts and Public Policy, Toronto (27.June.2023)

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Since Correa's government (2007-2017), Ecuador has constitutionally acknowledged a plural economy comprising private capitalistic and public statist forms of economic organization and a solidarity economy sector (Nelms, 2015). However, the operationalization of public policies that promote a solidarity economy (e.g., those fostering women’s empowerment) has raised tensions between the criteria underpinning state programs and the plural operating logics of the target organizations. Solidarity economy organizations have emerged in Ecuador through historically particular institutional paths: the cooperative tradition, associations supported by the Catholic Church and development-oriented NGOs, and more recent expressions embedded in social movements. Those initiatives vindicate a common rationale not driven by the sole purpose of profit maximization but the securitization of their members' livelihoods (Ruiz-Rivera & Lemaître, 2019). Through an inductive empirical approach (six in-depth case studies conducted with organizations and policymakers from 2015 to 2019), first, I analyze the implementation gaps —including a gender bias— of an emblematic program 'Inclusive Public Procurement' and their effects on production, commercialization, and governance of the target organizations. Drawing on Polanyi's work (Polanyi, 1977), I argue that this state intervention mobilizes two contradictory rationales: on the one hand, the recognition of economic pluralism, and on the other hand, the solidarity economy inscription into a predominant market logic —through imperatives of technification, professionalization, and specialization, which deepen gender inequalities— to the detriment of other economic logics such as reciprocity and householding. Second, I interrogate how organizations (led by women) have tackled these pressures and propose a typology of strategies that involve adaptation, inter-cooperation, and collective action in the public sphere. Beyond representation, the latter sheds light on how women’s voices are integrated into public policies and how they influence public policy development. By combining macro-institutional (based upon context analysis) and micro-social analysis, this research highlights the imbalances around gender when institutionalizing economic pluralism in the Global South (Verschuur et al., 2021). This paper also contributes to the debates on the interplay between the solidarity economy and the state for public policy development (e.g., Eynaud et al., 2019) by showing that organizations (in this case, through the agency of their women leaders) are likely to interpret, challenge, and transform formal institutions. References Eynaud, P., Laville, J.-L., Santos, L. dos, Banerjee, S., Avelino, F., & Hulgård, L. (2019). Theory of Social Enterprise and Pluralism: Social Movements, Solidarity Economy, and Global South. Routledge. Nelms, T. C. (2015). The problem of delimitation: Parataxis, bureaucracy, and Ecuador’s popular and solidarity economy. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21(1), 106–126. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12149 Polanyi, K. (1977). The livelihood of man. Academia Press. Ruiz-Rivera, M.-J., & Lemaître, A. (2019). Popular and Solidarity Economy in Ecuador: Historical overview, institutional trajectories and types of organisations. In M. Nyssens, L. I. Gaiger, & F. Wanderley (Eds.), Social enterprise in Latin America: Theory, models and practice (pp. 139–168). Routledge. Verschuur, C., Guérin, I., & Hillenkamp, I. (2021). Social reproduction, solidarity economy, feminisms and democracy: Latin America and India. Palgrave Macmillan. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=3028213
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Ruiz Rivera, M. J. (2023). How are women heard? Implementation gaps in public policy for solidarity economy and women’s agency: Insights from Ecuador. International Conference on Public Policy - ICPP6, Toronto Metropolitan University’s Faculty of Arts and Public Policy, Toronto. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/213549