No detail is too small. Gender bias in public policy for solidarity economy: Insights from Ecuador

Ruiz Rivera, Maria José
(2022) Third International Conference in Heterodox Economics: The Crucial Role of Women within the Heterodox Economics Community — Location: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia (16.November.2022)

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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 target organizations. 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— normalizing a gendered division of labor, to the detriment of reciprocity and householding (Polanyi, 1977). Second, I question how organizations have tackled these pressures and propose a typology of strategies that involve adaptation, inter-cooperation, and collective action in the public sphere. By combining macro-institutional 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 solidarity economy and the state by showing that organizations are likely to interpret, challenge and transform formal institutions by their enrollment in public action. References: 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. 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. En 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.
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Ruiz Rivera, M. J. (2022). No detail is too small. Gender bias in public policy for solidarity economy: Insights from Ecuador. Third International Conference in Heterodox Economics: The Crucial Role of Women within the Heterodox Economics Community, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/213551