From Colombia to the World: A Feminist Critique of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

• In Event: The Visibility and Invisibility of State Governance: A Critical Analysis of Educational Policy and Development Educational Initiatives (Panel 2 of 2)

Proposal

Colombia became visible as the 37th member of the OECD in April of 2020, concluding an accession process that had started in 2013. As an unfortunate coincidence, the OECD welcomed Colombia right at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Against Colombia’s new status, the purpose of this paper is to explore what it meant for vulnerable Colombian families to navigate the Covid-19 crisis and the OECD welcoming pressure. From a decolonial feminist approach, this paper proposes three categories of analysis to make sense of the ways in which vulnerable families faced the difficulties: situated knowledge, collaboration, and reflection towards mind freedom. This research drew from two sources of information: document review and interviews. Findings expose that, even if mothers were expected to cope with social and educational demands during the Covid-19 crisis in education, not only were there no state gendered policies or programs to assist them, but also the state support for families was reduced, which left students even more vulnerable during the emergency of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this context, the challenges mothers faced in relation to the education of their children included distress, frustration, economic limitations, lack of technological resources, among others. At the same time, vulnerable families became decolonial agents when they grouped and collaborated with each other and with other members of the society through different means, developing coping strategies through collective survival projects and situated knowledge embodied in solidarity relationships that helped them face the demands from the education system and the state absenteeism.

Authors

• Viviana Veloza, The University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Patricia Grillet, University of Hawaii / East-West Center