Indigenous women are rarely accounted for in world politics. Imagined as passive subjects at the margins of power politics, they often epitomize the antithesis of international relations. Yet, from their positions of marginality, they are shaping sovereignty. In Vernacular Sovereignties, Manuela Lavinas Picq shows that Indigenous women have long been dynamic political actors that have partaken in international politics and have shaped state practices, carrying different forms of resistance. Her research on Ecuador shows that, although Kichwa women face overlapping oppressions from socio-economic to sexual violence, they are achieving rights unparalleled in the world. They successfully advocated for women’s participation in the administration of Indigenous justice during the 2008 constitutional reform, creating the first constitution in Latin America to explicitly guarantee the rights of Indigenous women, and the first one worldwide to require gender parity in the administration of justice.
With Manuela Lavinas Picq
Professor of International Relations at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador) & Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Political Science and Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College (USA).
