Análisis de la participación de las mujeres en el sistema comunitario de agua potable de la parroquia Victoria del Portete, cantón Cuenca, provincia del Azuay a partir del año 2010 al 2012

Abstract

The participation of women in Victoria delPortete´s community water system is an issue that links gender analysis from feminist theories and aims to reveal the circumstances in which women, through processes of social agency, acquire an indispensable role fighting for both the human right to water and the recognition of sex equality.

The proper characteristics at a local level: the indigenous peasant identity; the gender roles historically assumed by women; the history and visibility of local organization, among others, condition the dynamics of organizing and participating within a community. Due to this condition, both women and men have assumed differentiated responsabilities and leadership exercises which, nevertheless, have been communally recognized.

During 2010-2012, some top moments of social action from the organized community showed that participation in formal spaces lost validity in this territory because the responsability that grants the legal right to water implicitly contains the right and duty to visibly participate in politics; therefore, the participation of women in the public sphere is becoming more persistent and the roles these women assume are becoming more indispensable in order to maintain the dynamics of both social resistance and water management.