Based on comparative research this article analyses indigenous women's organising trajectories and the creation of spaces where they position themselves as autonomous political actors. Drawing on social movement theory and intersectionality, we present a typology of the organisational forms adopted by indigenous women in Peru, Bolivia and Mexico over the last two decades. One of the key findings of our comparative study is that indigenous women have become social movement actors through different organisational forms that in part determine the degree of autonomy they can exercise as political subjects.

In Latin America, rights to local political participation in many indigenous communities are not simply granted, but rather “earned” through acts of labor for the community. This is the case in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where almost three fourths of municipalities elect municipal authorities through custom and tradition rather than secret ballot and universal suffrage. The alarmingly low rate of women’s formal participation in these municipalities has garnered attention from policymakers, provoking a series of legislative reforms designed to increase women’s roles in local politics. However, these initiatives often miss their mark. Focused on a liberal model of women as individual rights-bearers, they fail to understand the complex ways in which gendered labor influences political participation in non-liberal contexts. This article examines a case in which indigenous women reject such an initiative because it would exacerbate their exploitation within the local terms of gendered collective labor instead of promoting equality. It thus explains potential barriers to indigenous women’s political leadership at the local level, and suggests ways in which gender equality can be promoted in non-liberal contexts.

Throughout the 2000s, Indigenous women became leaders in the struggle of their peoples for their lands and rights. They began by occupying positions of power in local organizations and, more recently, gained prominence on the national, regional, and global levels. Brazilian Indigenous female leaders have followed the path established by other movements of the Indigenous women in Latin America and also have framed their human rights claims. Their proficiency in the language of human rights has allowed them to speak and to be heard in different arenas, such as in the rights of women and Indigenous peoples and also in the environmental aspect. This article is based on Seyla Benhabib's cosmopolitanism approach, particularly on her conception of democratic iteractions with the aim to argue that, by using the human rights language in order to translate global norms into local contexts, Indigenous women have become mediators between the local, national and global levels. In addition, their cosmopolitanism lights up and pressures the traditional liberal cosmopolitanism at the same time. We propose a theoretical article with an empirical support which is resulted from a qualitative field research developed within the years of 2014-2018.

The shift towards legally plural multicultural and pluri-national citizenship regimes in the Andes formally recognised indigenous peoples’ community-based governance systems. These tend to emphasise participation, deliberation and service to the collective, but are often criticised for discriminating against women. We argue that recent constitutional reforms and legislation combining recognition of collective rights claims with institutional guarantees for gender equality have in fact amplified indigenous women’s di fferent strategies of ‘negotiating with patriarchy’, allowing them to further the transformation of their organisations and ‘custom’. Such strategies are necessary because of the intersections of race, class and gendered exclusions that indigenous women experience, and possible because of the diverse and dynamic nature of community governance systems. Despite systemic and structural constraints on the guarantee of indigenous peoples’ rights, the actions of organised indigenous women over the last two decades point to new ways of imagining more plural, less patriarchal forms of citizenship.

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