Bananeras by Dana Frank

Author:Dana Frank
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608465361
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2016-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

WRITING THEIR OWN STORY

In addition to this rich world of leadership development, networking, and support for national-level women’s work, COLSIBA women, beginning in 2000, took on two larger projects that illustrate how quickly their abilities were expanding and how broad their strategic thinking had become. The first was an extensive regional self-study of women banana workers in all the countries affiliated with COLSIBA, completed in July 2001 as a 110-page report entitled Diagnóstico Participativo con Enfoque de Género Sobre Condiciones Sociales, Económicas, Laborales y Organizativas de las Mujeres Trabajadoras Bananeras (Participative Analysis with a Focus on Gender Regarding Social, Economic, Working, and Organizing Conditions for Women Banana Workers). Here, as with their initial, brief self-study, the COLSIBA women were replicating their approach in Honduras. But this time the task was much more complex, given the geographical span, enormous national differences, and participants’ disparities in education.32 The report was explicitly designed to further the interests of women banana workers within their unions. As one of their advisors put it in the report’s introduction, “This type of action-investigation has a political goal at its base that will permit COLSIBA through its national coordination of women to propel and broaden its presence and organization at both the local and national levels.”33

From the start, the banana women and their allies consciously designed their Diagnóstico to be as much about their process of conducting the study as about the final product. Women packinghouse workers from leadership to rank and file got to learn how to conduct a formal, social-scientific investigation, in the process developing new skills, raising their political consciousness, and increasing their intellectual self-confidence. Each of the COLSIBA affiliates put together an investigative team for their country: one or two women union leaders, two or more rank-and-file activists, and a university-trained facilitator. Together, each team conducted interviews with managers, union leaders, and government officials; researched available printed documents; and wrote a report on conditions in their country. At a March 2001 workshop in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the participants compiled all the material from the different countries into a final overall report. All told, 175 people participated in the project, seven of them men.34

The minutes of the project’s final workshop capture beautifully individual women’s empowerment through the project. When asked on the evaluation form how she felt about the process, one woman replied, “At first I felt fears and doubts. Later optimism and a sense of teamwork.” Another, evidently a facilitator as well as participant, responded: “I felt very satisfied at having pulled off the job and in coming to know that we women have a great capacity to achieve many things.” Another, evidently also a facilitator, confessed: “At first I felt a little afraid. Later, as my women comrades were obtaining the information, we felt a great deal of satisfaction. I also felt enthusiastic and a little anxious about reaching the final stage.” Summing up the experience, in response to the next question—“What did I learn? What did I teach?”—one participant wrote, “I learned about the methodological steps and structure of an analysis with a focus on gender.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.