Women leadership in the Valle del Cauca: daily life and tensions between the public and the private spheres

Abstract

Historically, the concepts of the masculine and feminine have been projected as composite dichotomies of opposing values, socially priviledging the values that characterize the male. Thus, women have been assigned roles as reproductive as opposed to productivity; affection, as opposed to the force; private as opposed to public. However, there are paradigmatic cases that are blurring the apparently clear boundaries of gender that imposed these dichotomies. This document is derived from a research project that explores the everyday life of women “community leaders” who, by their work and vocation of leadership and power, represent an example of how fuzzy the boundaries between the values assigned to the masculine and the feminine may become. This article seeks to identify, in the lives of these women, the conflicts and the facilities with which they have to perform a leadership work subjectively demanding and forces them to stake resources to distinguish or being consistent the private and the public.