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Popular Women, Unpaid Labor, and the Making of the Bolivarian Revolution

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Popular Women, Unpaid Labor, and the Making of the Bolivarian Revolution They Want Our Work, But Not Our Power: Popular Women, Unpaid Labor, and the Making of the Bolivarian Revolution by Rachel Elfenbein M.A., School for International Training, 2005 B.A., Vassar College, 2001 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences © Rachel Elfenbein 2015 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Spring 2015 Approval Name: Rachel Elfenbein Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology) Title: They Want Our Work, But Not Our Power: Popular Women, Unpaid Labor, and the Making of the Bolivarian Revolution Examining Committee: Chair: Wendy Chan Professor Hannah Wittman Senior Supervisor Adjunct Professor Jane Pulkingham Co-Supervisor Professor Alison Ayers Supervisor Associate Professor Elisabeth Jay Friedman Supervisor Professor CELASA, International Studies, Latin American Studies, Politics University of San Francisco Kathleen Millar Internal Examiner Assistant Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Maxine Molyneux External Examiner Professor Institute of the Americas University College London Date Defended/Approved: February 10, 2015 ii Partial Copyright Licence iii Ethics Statement iv Abstract The Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is part of broader Latin American institutional restructuring that aims to expand social, political and economic inclusion through increasing popular participation. This dissertation elucidates the gendered implications of attempts to construct post-neoliberal state-society relations and corresponding practices of popular power. It analyzes the dialectical relations between popular sector women and the Bolivarian state by focusing on the role of women’s unpaid labor in the revolution during Hugo Chávez’s presidency. This study examines for whom and for what ends popular women’s labor was deployed and discursively invoked. It also assesses the consequences of state-society relations for popular women, their power, and the gendered division of labor in Venezuela. This dissertation is based on an extended case study developed from interviews and participant observation with popular women; feminist analysts and organizations; and state women’s leaders and institutions. In reshaping state-society relations from the standpoint of the subaltern, the Bolivarian regime incorporated popular women as central participants in the revolution. This gendered political opening generated new opportunities for women’s rights, organizing, and articulations with the state. In 1999, Venezuela recognized the socio-economic value of housework and entitled homemakers to social security in Article 88 of its new constitution. The state instituted several programs that recognized some women’s unpaid reproductive labor and lightened and/or socialized their reproductive burdens. Yet this recognition rendered popular women’s unpaid labor and organizing vulnerable to state appropriation because of popular women’s positioning in the gendered division of labor. The state incorporated them through its practices and institutions by reconfiguring the extant hegemonic gender role of women as mothers in service of the revolution. It expected them to be both mobilized and contained for what it saw as the revolution’s broader interests. Popular women performed much of the unpaid social and political labor necessary to build and sustain the revolution. This utilization of their unpaid labor did not necessarily transform gender power relations. Initiatives to legislate Article 88 were forestalled, social security was not universally accessible, reproductive labor persisted as predominantly popular women’s responsibility, and many popular women remained socially, economically, and politically vulnerable. v Keywords: Women’s Rights, Women’s Organizing, Unpaid Labor, Social Security, Popular Power, Bolivarian Revolution vi Dedication For my mother, Christine Bastl, and all the women whose labor and care have raised me to be the human being I am vii Acknowledgements The first seeds of my idea for this dissertation began to germinate far from Venezuelan shores, during my time living and working in South Africa. There, I witnessed how poor and working class women’s unpaid labor was vital to household and community reproduction in the face of structural unemployment, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and neoliberal welfare state restructuring. I became interested in institutional mechanisms to recognize such work and socially protect the workers who carry it out as a means to mitigate their vulnerability to poverty, gender violence, and disease. These experiences triggered my curiosity in Venezuela and the implications of Article 88 in that country’s new constitution. Such experiences were of political and professional interest to me, and they were also personal. Perhaps no one has taught me more about the value and intensity of such work than the women of the Lukhele and Khumalo families in eNhlazatshe, Mpumalanga, South Africa. Through the years, they have opened their homes to me, fed me, cared for me, and treated me as family. Siyabonga kakhulu, mndeni wami. There are many people across countries and continents to whom I am grateful, whose many different forms of support have contributed to the completion of my PhD journey. The strong and committed guidance of my supervisory committee—Hannah Wittman, Elisabeth Jay Friedman, Alison Ayers, and Jane Pulkingham—was integral to my successful completion of this dissertation. Hannah, when we first worked together, seeing my potential but noting how I had been outside the academic world for some time, you said you were going “to make an academic out of” me. Through your many years of attentive supervision, I believe you did. Thank you for your excitement, your energy, and for sticking with me and supporting me through the thick and thin of all the personal and academic changes I have undergone during this time. Elisabeth, I feel I have found a feminist big sister in you. Your listening to me and responding with constant encouragement that what I had to say and write about what I was observing in Venezuela mattered really helped me to carry onward during difficult years of researching and writing. Alison, thank you for your radical energy and ideas and your compassion. I am very grateful that I was at SFU at the right time, while you were on viii campus. Jane, thank you for joining my committee mid-stream and making valuable contributions to my ideas and my writing. At SFU, several other professors contributed generously to my development. I am full of gratitude for Adrienne Burk for being a valuable mentor to me both within and beyond academia. Thank you to Eric Hershberg, for your comprehensiveness and engagement in your teaching, advising, and support. Funding from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the SFU Dean of Graduate Studies, and the SFU Department of Sociology and Anthropology supported my dissertation research and was instrumental to my fieldwork in Venezuela. Estoy agradecida a tod@s que participaron en mi investigación en Venezuela y a tod@s que la facilitaron. Gracias por invitarme a conocer sus mundos, sus experiencias, y sus conocimientos. Estoy especialmente agradecida a Gioconda Espina y Juana Delgado, quienes compartieron su sabiduría conmigo y ayudaron a facilitar mi investigación en Caracas. También estoy especialmente agradecida a Monica Berrios, quien me abrió las puertas de las instituciones estadales regionales de las mujeres e igualdad de género y me proveyó un hogar institucional en el estado Falcón. Gracias a tod@s l@s emplead@s de la Secretaria para el Desarrollo e Igualdad de Género, el Instituto Regional de la Mujer, y la oficina regional falconiana del Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Mujer e Igualdad de Género por compartir sus experiencias laborales conmigo. Gracias a Gabriel Páez por apoyarme tanto en mi búsqueda para documentos en los archivos de la Asamblea Nacional. En particular, estoy agradecida a Eneida, Georalberth, Luis, Masaya, Elba, e Inocencia, cuyo apoyo durante mi estadía en Venezuela fue tanto personal como profesional. I am extremely grateful to the staff of Industrial Health Resource Group in Cape Town, South Africa, and especially to Nicholas Henwood, Richard Jordi, and Ashraf Ryklief. Thank you, comrades, for providing me several times with a vital work home to return to and engage in the valuable and necessary work of praxis while I was making my way through my PhD. Your passion, dedication, and commitment to participatory bottom-up development (in addition to your wonderful senses of humor) inspired me and helped me to keep my bearings as I navigated my place in and out of the academic world. ix I am also grateful to the Teaching Support Staff Union at SFU for providing me with a community and space to engage in praxis while on campus at SFU. Special thanks to Karen Dean. My PhD journey could often be a lonesome pursuit of knowledge, and because of this, the multiple forms of support of close friends animated and grounded me throughout the many stages of this journey. Jesse and Joanna, the love from both of you through these many years has buoyed me, and I see you as sisters. Aga, I am very grateful for our connection as PhD companions and friends that both was instant and has remained constant. Lila and Femke, you have been wonderfully understanding friends in this long process, finishing your PhDs before me and showing me how they can be done. Thank you, too, for sharing your homes with me in your homelands. Potiphar, your constant willingness to be present, talk, listen to me, and make me laugh lifted me up. Your friendship, Christina, Melodie, Amrit, Pat, Itrath, Efe, Cathy, Jen, Karen, and Ed and Anita, was crucial during my stay in Vancouver. Amy, thank you for being such a good friend just across the border during my time in Canada. Margie, I am extremely grateful that you have been like a mother to me in Cape Town. Dan, thank you for always opening your home to me while I have been in transit and being so real and generous with me.
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