Empowerment and demand for self-management. Comparative study of entrepreneurships of indigenous women

Abstract

 In the first place, we described the consequences of participating in a productive entrepreneurship from the perspective of indigenous women; and, secondly, we explored whether in these descriptions the women evidenced questions about gender inequities, which could have been favored if women developed their entrepreneurship in the context of a program for their empowerment implemented with a gender perspective. For this, a qualitative study with an intercultural approach and comparative design was used to compare, on the one hand, the experiences of Chilean Mapuche women participating in a project that emerged in the framework of a program with a gender perspective and, on the other, the experiences of Mayan women in Mexico, participants of an entrepreneurship under the direction of a program without this perspective. The results showed that, regardless of whether or not the entrepreneurship has a gender perspective, what seems to have implications for the empowerment of women is whether they are self-managing their entrepreneurship