Sexual inequality in rural El Salvador begins at birth. Pregnant women are told that boys are worth more than girls, that giving birth to a boy is a reward while the only value of women is to reproduce and take care of their husbands. Myth says this difference is reflected in the way the baby is born, with boys face down and girls face up, just like in life.
After having three children of her own, the first at the age of 15, Amanda Gonzales learned the falsity of natural sexual inequality in her first experiences as a midwife. For several years she had volunteered with women’s organizations, protesting against domestic violence and for women’s rights. But witnessing women in the agony of birth proved, above all else, their strength.
Like many rural peasant and indigenous communities in Central America, Gonzales’ community has disintegrated before her eyes. Farm and plantation work in El Salvador, an industry in which most rural men, and some women, used to be employed, is no longer viable labor. As the country modernizes and increases their industrial sector, many are forced to leave the community to find work in the capital, neighboring countries, or the United States. In their desperation, many young people have turned to drugs and gangs, while women, with a number of the men gone from the community to work, are forced to do anything they can to make money, usually selling small items such as soda in local markets. Poverty and malnutrition are rampant; children and adults die regularly of treatable diseases and yet, according to Gonzales, the government has no interest in rural people.
For these reasons, it is not just women for whom Gonzales struggles. From the federal Department of Health, and various non-governmental organizations, she has learned about organic agriculture, planting crops like soy which have high nutritional value, and proper care for children which she then teaches to women and men at the local health clinic. Though Gonzales has never received monetary compensation for her work, she enjoys it and the sense of solidarity these ideas have brought to her community. For women, and for the community as a whole, she believes that change will come as their esteem increases.
Shoshaunna Parks is a regional editor at Cultural Survival.
