Spinning stories at the end of the world

In the province of Tierra del Fuego, a group of women spin and weave sheep's wool. For nine years, they have been working together to create a market where they can sell their products under the values of fair trade and respect for the environment. They have already managed to equip themselves and make their first collective purchases of raw wool.

They transform local raw materials in an artisanal way, creating garments that reflect the territory in which they are made. Each spinner has her own story, coming from different latitudes and countries. They are united by their love of wool and a common project. 

Along the way, they meet, talk, share knowledge, support each other, regain values, motivate each other, discuss, sometimes leave angry, come back, give each other another chance, grow, become empowered.

INTA, through its project Sujetos Sociales Agrarios en Procesos de Transformación Territorial [Agrarian Social Subjects in Processes of Territorial Transformation], has worked on an audiovisual proposal to make visible the importance of these groups of collaboration and cooperation. Where processes are built that overcome social logics, gender, distance and age. 

The group also worked on training within the group, linked to textile design or other needs identified by the group. There was also a very strong link with the community, creating training spaces provided by the spinners themselves in order to share their knowledge and experience. 

INTA highlights three important lessons from its work with a group of women sheep wool spinners and weavers in Tierra del Fuego Province:

What began as part of a group of women spinners and weavers has crossed age and gender barriers in the talks and training they have given. These have been held in schools, fairs and other venues promoted by INTA.

The women in this group are recognized as leaders and are called upon by local and regional organisations to be speakers and representatives of Tierra del Fuego.

The group has managed to have its own space where its garments are marketed, and also, thanks to special Pro-Huerta projects (2018), it has also been able to acquire equipment for spinning and carding the wool that the women manage in different ranches and production facilities in Tierra del Fuego.

Through the production of handmade textiles, the women of these communities maintain their role as heirs, creators and transmitters of ancestral knowledge, which translates into aesthetic manifestations and worldviews. These are embodied in the utilitarian objects they produce. 

Their work is often undervalued by the local market, both in terms of the prices offered and the lack of knowledge of the complexity of the process and the meanings of the forms that are repeated and reinterpreted. However, there is a market in other provinces and countries that values their work, both for the vegetable raw material and for the techniques used.

Tatiana Pereyra is a Wichí artisan who participates in a weaving group in Salta Province.

Based on the diagnosis carried out by the local INTA team and the Secretariat of Family Farming, her group began to work on strengthening commercialisation, focusing on developing innovations in design, value addition and associative commercialisation. 

This group of craftswomen, called Thañí [from the bush], has become the only space for local participation exclusively for women. Its members have managed to position themselves as workers in a new way of relating to their environment, revaluing their ancestral knowledge. The group is about to open an online shop to continue marketing their products.

Making visible the role and knowledge of women in transhumant pastoralism

The women and men who practice transhumant pastoralism are located in a vast region: north, west and south of Mendoza; southwest of La Pampa and north of Neuquén.

These men and women, also known as crianceros and crianceras, are part of a movement conditioned by climatic conditions that have a direct impact on livestock farming. This is particularly the case with goats, forcing families to use different pastures and ecological zones.

The crianceras and crianceros clearly demarcate two socio-cultural spaces: wintering and summering. This strong relationship with the environment has generated a wealth of knowledge that forms part of their cultural heritage, which INTA has proposed to rescue and make visible. 

Transhumant women participate in 80 percent of the productive projects presented by the Movimiento Puesteros del Sur, part of the National Rural and Indigenous Movement.

INTA has carried out audiovisual productions in various formats in order to make the role of transhumant women more visible. It has promoted their participation in radio programmes that reach rural transhumant communities in the south of Mendoza and the north of Neuquén.

Priority has also been given to productive projects led by women from transhumant communities in the region.

In 2019, a shelter was created in the city of Malargue to help women during the last days of labour and the first days after giving birth, as the size of the area makes it very difficult for most women to travel from their places of work to give birth.

INTA Platform on Gender, Childhood and Adolescence

INTA has a long history of working with women in agriculture and livestock farming, with children and adolescents in school.  In addition, the number of women in the institution has increased over the last two decades.

However, it was noted that there is a need to strengthen and improve its capacity in terms of gender perspective, as well as to address children and youth issues in a cross-cutting manner in all areas of the institution. 

Women are key actors in Argentina's agricultural and agro-industrial system. They play a triple role in their territories: productive, reproductive and social. 

In this context, the Gender, Childhood and Adolescence Platform was created with the aim of disseminating and addressing these issues, as well as promoting collective action in coordination with institutions and public/private entities.

Since its implementation at the end of 2019, the platform has consolidated an interdisciplinary management team made up of women from the social and agricultural sciences. They are in charge of implementing the three commissions that make up the platform: a) Institutional Strengthening; b) Gender Equity; and c) Children and Youth. The discussion on the situation of rural women has been promoted within INTA's technical teams.

The actions of this platform have been achieved through strong institutional articulation with: the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity; the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries; international organisations such as ILO, FAO and IICA; universities throughout the country, and also with political and social movements that have incorporated the area of gender and diversity within their organisations.

The platform is integrated by an ad-hoc Commission that organized the First Plurinational Seminar of Rural, Agricultural and Indigenous Women, in collaboration with the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity. It consisted of several days of women's participation and closed its cycle on 15 October 2020.

During its implementation time, the platform identified important lessons. Some of these are:

Rural women have a decisive role in development, food security and poverty eradication and must be considered in all their dimensions.

In the context of social isolation, government action seeks to articulate and make visible the efforts of the various social actors in order to provide comprehensive responses with active gender policies.

There is an institutional challenge in INTA, which is to transcend the male-female dichotomy, in which certain roles and functions are assigned to each, leaving aside a diversity of identities that lie between these two positions.