On the occasion of International Women's Day 2018, we dedicate this monthly newsletter to the different participatory innovations aimed at increasing the political inclusion of women in the formulation, implementation, and/or evaluation of public policies in Latin America.
Across the region, governments, civil society organizations, private stakeholders, and the international community have joined efforts with the aim of raising awareness regarding violence against women, the gender gap, the exclusion of indigenous and Afro-descendent women from political processes, and the violation of sexual and reproductive rights. This newsletter will feature some of our favorite participatory innovations for women and by women!
New Book Chapter:
Can participatory governance improve the quality of democracy?
A response from Latin America
LATINNO's project founder and coordinator Thamy Pogrebinschi recently published a chapter in the Handbook on Participatory Governance. There, she delves upon how the academia could bring together the research agendas of participatory governance, democratic innovations, and quality of democracy, and argues that participatory innovations can only enhance the quality of democracy if these forms of political experimentation are institutionalized within the representative system.
After proposing an analytical framework to assess the impact of democratic innovations in the quality of democracy, and relying on evidence from a number of Latin American countries, this recent publication provides indicators for assessing the institutionalization of political experimentation and an insight into three of the dimensions of democracy: responsiveness, competition, and equality.
Featured Cases
Edit-a-Thon #MujeresHaciendoMéxico - MEXICO
The Edit-a-Thon #MujeresHaciendoMéxico (lit. Women building Mexico) took place in Mexico City on March 8, 2018. This participatory campaign was carried out with the aim of increasing the number of collaborators editing the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and the biographies of remarkable women by adding new entries or editing old ones.
The call was open to civil society organizations and volunteers, who wrote and edited the profiles of outstanding female figures in the areas of science, art, literature, music, journalism, sports, communication, culture, activism, technology and entrepreneurship.
Observatories against Street Harassment - REGIONAL
The Observatory against Street Harassment is a citizen initiative that started in Chile and was then implemented in Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Uruguay. It was created with the aim of denouncing sexual harassment and the normalization of violence in public spaces. The observatory carries out educational campaigns, academic research, legal and international consultancy, and project management. Citizens can contribute by monitoring incidents of sexual harassment in the streets and denouncing them on the observatory's website or in loco. In some countries, it also seeks to influence public policies and the domestic legislation.
Newest Innovation
The Streets of Women - REGIONAL
The Streets of Women is a collaborative mapping project that seeks to identify the streets that are named after prominent female figures in Latin American and Spanish cities, denouncing the gender gap that exists in public spaces.
Citizens can participate, either by signaling the names of the streets that are not included in OpenStreetMap, creating Wikipedia articles about the women who haven't been added to this online encyclopedia or inserting new cities. In addition to publicly disclosing the number of streets that commemorate women, it also publishes how many of them have an article on Wikipedia.
In Lima, only 8.5% of the streets are named after a female figure; in Montevideo, 8%; in Asunción, only 7.8%; in Cochabamba, 6.9%; and in Buenos Aires, 6.1%. Barely half of these figures have a Wikipedia profile.
