Social Policy for Poor Rural People in Colombia: Reinforcing Traditional Gender Roles and Identities?

Abstract

Abstract This article provides a ‘situated’ gender analysis of the Colombian conditional cash transfer programme, Familias en Acción, offering empirical evidence from a specific rural setting. This ‘located’ approach shows that generalizations about gender implications of conditional cash transfer programmes in Latin America do not always fit neatly with realities. The article shows how the implementation of these programmes in a specific rural context, the municipality of Paipa, reflects a reinforcement of traditional gender allocations and responsibilities. At the same time, the local authorities, official workers and the mothers adapt the social programmes to recent gender trends. For example, men may carry out some domestic activities single‐handedly, take care of children without their wives, women may leave men, and women and men may work together in off‐farm activities, with husbands and wives taking joint decisions about domestic issues. In other words, the gender effects of the Familias en Acción programme in rural settings currently move between old gender customs and practices and changeable gender conditions. In Latin‐American terms, it is possible to say that these conditions range between ‘machismo’ and ‘feminist liberalization’.

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