In 2016 I travelled to Bolivias capital Sucre and visited an orphanage for girls in the district Poconas close to the Zika Zika mountain. These young women I portrayed grew up in the orphanage. They have the opportunity of a good education which should be the base for an independent life in a society shaped by „machismo“. It is a challenging step leaving their sheltered environment at an age right in between child- and adulthood.
„In Bolivia about half of the country’s population is indigenous, therefore the struggle for gender equality and parity has been carried out in a parallel but synchronized way with the struggle for indigenous rights. […] And even if social reforms have improved the socio-economic and educational situation of many indigenous women, gender-based violence has not decreased. In the 2013 Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) report, Bolivia was ranked as the country with the highest rates of sexual and physical violence in 2008 and second regarding lifetime violence among twelve Latin American and Caribbean countries.“
(Domínguez, ER and Pacheco, MO. 2018. Beyond Parity in Figures: The Challenges in Reality of Municipal Women Councillors in Bolivia. Iberoamericana – Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 47(1), pp. 1–12, DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/iberoamericana.412)
