Opening our Eyes: Learning Consciousness as Central to Justice Work in Ecuador

• In Event: Embodying Justice: Intersectional Identities and Solidarity Work as Tools for South and North American Women’s Resistance Struggles

Abstract

Dana Hill uses sociocultural learning theory to examine how critical political and self-aware consciousness are acquired among organized women in Ecuador. She shows how the process of learning and unlearning ways of seeing the world and public identities is marked by both acceptance and transgression of the multiple types of violence they face. She finds that women’s consciousnesses as well as their actions are contradictory as they emerge from the interaction between society’s hegemonic and colonial teachings and an inherent knowledge of equality described by the women. These contradictions mark the struggle for gender justice in Ecuador.

Presenter

• Dana Hill, Syracuse University