Women’s Empowerment through Indigenous Social Enterprises in Latin America

This chapter explores innovative enabler mechanisms for women’s empowerment in social enterprises and how they promote gender equality and community well-being. For this purpose, three social enterprises located in Indigenous rural communities in Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala are analyzed following an inductive approach and qualitative methods. With the use of in-depth interviews, observation and analysis of secondary data, the three cases show different levels of women’s empowerment and gender equality, probably as a result of the particular mechanisms each has designed to achieve this purpose. The male-dominated culture in each community has partially prevented women’s participation in productive entities and decision-making. However, empowerment mechanisms such as access to decent job opportunities, gender equality policies, training and promotion, and governance based on local values have had a dignifying effect on Indigenous women, establishing a sense of self-worth and self-respect in them. This has also reduced structural discrimination against Indigenous women in terms of education, decision-making, and access to employment. The three cases also represent examples of how various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as no poverty (SDG#1), well-being (SDG#3), gender equality (SDG#5), decent work (SDG#8), reduced inequalities (SDG#10), and sustainable communities (SDG#11), are interrelated and interconnected.