“We the Women of the Northwest of Guayaquil” Self-representation as an aim and social methodology of re-significance of identities in marginal areas

Abstract

This article addresses the experience in the design and development of the popular education project “Nosotras las Mujeres del Noroeste de Guayaquil”, made between april 2012 to march 2013 from the Hogar de Cristo Corporation in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in partnership with America Solidarity, in which 32 women from the northwest participated, one of the main marginal and excluded areas of the city. This recognizes strong socio-cultural stigmatization of women, from an urban marginality that reduces them to protagonists of the red chronicle, whose only possible stories are violence, poverty and their representation as sexual objects; to a deeper and more naturalized problem, self-marginalization, assimilation as the only social role being mothers and wives, housewives and, to a lesser extent, informal workers, forgetting themselves as women. The objective of the project was to develop a sensitization and reflection process focused on self-recognition and self-confidence as women who contribute to their daily lives. The methodology, self-representation exercises, understanding it as a cultural practice that makes visible ‘how they look at themselves’, how they interpret their own realities, from participatory photography and expressive writing as creative tools, to explore and express their own views and identity stories as legitimate.