Active Aymara women inside and outside of Parliament

Since the beginning of 2000, Bolivia has been going through a process of re-structuring of the state that is intimately connected to the organisation of civil society. Bolivia has had a remarkably gender unequal official political sphere. However, women’s participation in party politics and government structures has increased during the last decade due to different factors: the introduction of new contexts of participation, for one, such as the new local political governments introduced through the decentralisation reform in the mid-1990s, and the constituent assembly of 2007/2008; and the increasing political influence of the MAS (Movement Towards Socialism), through which women active in the social movements have been able to enter party politics. In this paper I discuss the experiences of female Bolivian politicians of social movement and indigenous background, in order to analyse the possibilities and restraints of female participation and influence on decision making processes. The paper is based on anthropological research conducted in La Paz and El Alto during the period of 2006–2009. Its focus lies on interviews conducted with female leaders active at different levels of Bolivian society: within formal political structures and/or within NGOs and social movements.