Machismo in Ecuador, Part I.

I have spent much time living on and off in Ecuador over the past four years. If there’s one thing that I am constantly reminded of when I am here is my existence as a woman. I’m not just talking about the common cat calls and intensely inappropriate things said to women walking down the street on a daily basis, but I am also highly aware of my status as a gringa foreigner and how my experience of machismo in Ecuador, while uncomfortable, is quite different and (yes) privileged compared to what Ecuadorian women face in their daily lives. Earlier in the year, I wrote a blog entry about my experiences of machismo, which at that point, only really consisted of cat calls and the fact that it is unsafe to walk around alone at night. This blog entry turns away from my own personal encounters with machismo and more directly focuses on the machismo that is experienced regularly by Ecuadorian women and how my position as a gringa in a machismo society presents several ironies and inequalities for women living in Ecuador. I will discuss this issue over a series of entries, as it would be hard to digest in one sitting. Bare with me, as these are relatively rough thoughts and rants. By no means am I claiming to be an expert on this issue, but living in a social climate where it is so prevalent forces me to think about it constantly. Please feel free to comment, disagree, or add something.

To give some back ground as from where I am making my claims. I have worked in the Kichwa community of Esperanza and surrounding communities in the province of Chimborazo with the NGOs, Ayuda Directa and CEMOPLAF (Center for Medical Orientation and Family Planning). Over the past several years, I have also worked and interned with doctors and public health workers in the areas of family planning and agronomy. I have learned quite a bit about the different alternatives to family planning, especially since we work in an area with highly religious populations. Hence, in order to maintain cultural competence in medicine, healthcare providers have had to recommend various types of birth control to accommodate their patients religious beliefs while simultaneously serving as a useful form of family planning. Sounds great, right? Covering cultural competence in healing practices. You would think that this would seriously help families who want to have less children (the average family size is about 5-7, though some number up to 12) and potentially help those who are living in poverty. The problem, however, is a bigger cultural phenomenon. In order for CEMOPLAF to provide a family planning program that is efficacious, both partners must be willing to engage. Enter machismo. A generalized family situation usually consists of the men and fathers working out of the community in cities (rural-urban migration) during the day or for parts of the week, while the women and children work the land (currently, almost all farming done in agricultural communities is done by women), raise their children, cook, and maintain the house. Trying to do this when you have six children of different ages to take care of without the help of a spouse gets tiring. I’m not saying that men don’t help their wives take care of children, but it is typical for the women to do all the work (‘la casa es su hogar’).

I can’t begin to count how many women have come up to me in the communities I have been working in asking me if I could provide them with some form of pill that would keep them from having children. These questions come in secrecy and usually start out with “I am tired of having so many children. It’s just that my husband wants to keep having children. He doesn’t want to use control. I am so tired. Can you help me?” If a woman wants to use a condom, or receive a depo provera shot and her partner/spouse does not agree with it, birth control is typically out of the question.

This brings up a difficult issue for public health workers and their female patients. How do you work towards changing this culture of machismo, that doesn’t give space for womens voices over their bodies? Not to mention the ethical issues and questions of power that would be brought up if an organization or institution attempted to change the culture. It’s difficult and highly problematic to mandate birth control in families (look at China, for example, in source list below), so how do you get men to become more open to listening to their wives when they say they are tired of giving birth to so many children? If you have any ideas, please comment below. Seriously, I’m quite interested. The best thing solution I can think of, which CEMOPLAF is currently working on, is to educate upcoming generations about sex and family planning. CEMOPLAF is working with a group of adolescents (PROGRAMA Adolescentes Indigenas) weekly to dispense information and to get youth more comfortable talking about sex. These youth then move out to other communities and teach other adolescents about family planning and sex. The point is to get people more comfortable open to discussing relationships, which could potentially effect the future of machismo.

My next entry will cover machismo in the domestic environment, the various ironies and inequalities experienced by young women and men growing up in the same house, and how it is complicated when a gringa is thrown in the mix.

Interesting factoid: 63.1% of indigenous women in Chimborazo experience their first pregnancy between the ages of 15-19. (CEMOPLAF 2008).

Additional sources if you are interested in healthcare, power, politics, and where women and their bodies are placed among these three topics:

Davis-Floyd, Robbie E. Birth as an American Rite of Passage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

Greenhalgh, Susan. “Controlling Births and Bodies in Village China”. American Ethnologist 21.1 (1994): 3-30.