Women’s solidarity networks take on COVID-19: the case of Valparaíso, Chile

This innovative feminist project seeks to analyse pobladora solidarity networks in the Valparaiso hills, in order to contribute, in a situated, gendered manner, to the conversation on coronavirus, care networks, gender violence, bottom-up social policies and the intersectional nature of gender, class and race. The aim of this project is to understand the survival networks that pobladoras have developed in order to “take on” the coronacrisis in their homes and neighbourhoods, which has manifested itself as a public health crisis, an economic crisis and as a gender violence crisis, due to the increased rates of intimate partner violence in contexts of quarantine.

Womens solidarity network team — Olla común (solidarity kitchen) volunteers, Valparaiso, Chile. Photo: Olla brava del Milenio

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This project connects with two International Inequalities Institute/Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity lines of research: “Global Economies of Care” and “The Politics of Inequality”. In the first case, we note how pobladora women’s survival networks in Valparaiso, Chile, are largely sustained through community ideas on “care”, while at the same time we consider their grassroots organising to be key in the re-definition of collective care strategies. In the second case, this project contributes to the creation of new, intersectional, feminist knowledge about the inequalities that working-class women in Latin America experience, which we hope will, in turn, enrich the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity research programme.

In this context, our primary research questions are:

How do Valparaiso pobladoras design and implement survival networks and how do these networks interact with local, municipal efforts (such as the Women’s Centre) and other women’s and feminist organisations on a local and national level?
How do these survival networks promote social cohesion among neighborhood actors, while at the same time also occasionally exacerbating existing neighbourhood tensions with regard to gender, class, race, sexual orientation and migratory status?
What role does intergenerational memory transfer between older and younger pobladoras play in the formation of neighborhood organisations and strategies, particularly with regard to survival networks and resistance to state violence and gender violence?

The methodological design has a qualitative orientation and comes from constructivist grounded theory, as it aims to comprehend survival network systems through pobladora experiences. Qualitative, narrative methodologies was used. From September 2020 to March 2021 we conducted 38 semi-structured deep interviews with local women, aged 20 to 80, from different organisations in Valparaíso city.

In addition, during periods when quarantine was not in effect, we carried out ethnography and participant observation in local ollas comúnes (solidarity kitchens) and communitarian bakeries. Informed consent procedures were used, and all ethical standards established by LSE were respected.

Women’s solidarity networks take on COVID-19: the case of Valparaíso, Chile

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