For two years, a multidisciplinary and international team explored women’s mobilizations in several Indian and South American states (Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia). Beyond the diversity of regions, sectors and forms of action, these initiatives share many common points. They reorganize and politicize what feminists call “social reproduction”, that is to say, the set of activities and institutions allowing the maintenance and perpetuation of life. They explore new ways of doing economics, politics and democracy. They redefine the very notion of wealth, the meaning of work and of belonging to a territory. They build social relationships of solidarity and fight against their subordination and for their rights. Last, and not least, they combine local actions and “here and now” responses with long-term political actions leading to legislative and regulatory changes and the adoption of new public policies.
These mobilisations are fragile, chaotic, often ambivalent, sometimes ephemeral. But they have much to teach us, both about the dead ends of the dominant economic and political system and about other possible futures.
The documentary is an outcome of project Feminist Analysis of Social and Solidarity Economy Practices: Latin America and India, carried out between December 2015 and March 2018 was financed by the Swiss Network for International Studies, SNIS, Geneva.