BOLIVIA: Unprecedented Gender Parity in Cabinet

[amyrose2712]

BOLIVIA: Unprecedented Gender Parity in Cabinet
By Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Jan 27 , 2010 (IPS) - Evo Morales began his second term as president of Bolivia by swearing in a cabinet made up of an equal number of women and men - unprecedented in this South American nation with a strong patriarchal tradition.

"My great dream has come true: half of the members of my cabinet are women, and half are men," said a visibly moved Morales when he presented his new team of ministers Saturday, the day after he was sworn in to a second term.

"This was an impressive surprise," Jimena Leonardo, one of the heads of the Bartolina Sisa federation of peasant women of La Paz, told IPS.

Three of the 10 female members of the cabinet are indigenous social activists.

The 50-year-old Morales, the first indigenous president in this country where Amerindians make up over 60 percent of the population, said that since his days as a rural trade union leader, he had stressed the need for women's participation in top posts to be "chacha-warmi", which means roughly fifty-fifty in Aymara, his mother tongue.

Bolivia has thus become the second country in Latin America, after Chile, to have a cabinet with gender parity, said Mónica Novillo, head of advocacy and lobbying for the Coordinadora de la Mujer, a Bolivian umbrella organisation of more than 200 women's groups.

Referring to the new constitution that took effect in February 2009, Novillo told IPS that "this was a promise that President Morales made when the new constitution was enacted, which has been fulfilled with the swearing in of the new cabinet."

Noting that the women in his 20-member cabinet include "singers, lawyers, activists and social leaders, economists, doctors and workers," the president highlighted the fact that Bolivia will have a female labour minister for the first time ever - while calling on trade unionists not to protest the historic appointment.

Novillo pointed out that there are now twice as many women in Morales' cabinet, compared to his first term, which began in January 2006. The leftist leader was reelected - to a five instead of four-year term under the new constitution - in an unparalleled landslide victory, with 64 percent of the vote, on Dec. 6.

She added that gender parity in the three branches of the state is a long-time demand of the women's movement.

The new constitution, which guarantees equal rights for men and women, empowers both women and the country's historically downtrodden indigenous majority.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50123

[Peace Patriot]

1. K&R! Thanks for posting! News like this of the leftist democracy revolution in Latin America

seldom reaches our people. When the Chavez government tried to get an equal rights for women and gays amendment passed in Venezuela, it wasn't reported by our corpo-fascist press (that I ever saw). Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela are the most advanced countries on these issues--equality, empowerment of excluded groups--yet are reviled as "dictatorships"--the opposite of the truth.

White racists call it "dictatorship" when they are barred from enslaving the brown and the indigenous.

The rich and the corporate call it "dictatorship" when they are barred from looting everything in sight.

The U.S. and its rubber-stamp corpo-fascist press calls it "dictatorship" when "little countries" in the U.S. "back yard" assert their sovereignty against the likes of Exxon Mobil and Bechtel and the failed, corrupt, murderous U.S. "war on drugs."

The significant accomplishments of these countries--on equality, on poverty reduction, on education, on health care, on clean elections and democracy--can't be found in the black holes in corpo-fascist 'news' articles where information should be.

[femrap]

2. K and R

Absolutely wonderful. Too bad we don't have a leader like Morales...a true gentleman who serves justice and liberty.

I'm going to learn Spanish. I studied French and have been told the languages are similar.

Bless Morales and the best of luck to his Women Cabinet Members!

This needs to be K and R a zillion times....at least by every female DUer.