U.S. and Non-U.S. Scholars

Fulbright New Century Scholars Program
Overview • Previous NCS Programs • NCS Scholar List • NCS Brochure • 2004-2005

Gioconda Herrera

Director, Gender Studies

FLASCO, Ecuador

Research: Gender in Transnational Families: The Case of Ecuadorian International Domestic Workers

Dr. Herrera did her undergraduate studies in Ecuador studying sociology and political science. She became interested in women and development issues while she was writing her undergraduate sociology thesis, which was on the labor conditions of women in flower plantations in Ecuador and the impacts on their families and communities. After graduating, she worked for five years in two NGOs that focused their activities in the rural highlands of Ecuador. She received her Ph.D in the Sociology Department at Columbia University. In her dissertation, she turned to another aspect of gender relations and adopted an historical perspective. Working on the relationship between gender, religion and nation in the period of the liberal reforms in Ecuador.

Dr. Herrera returned to Ecuador in 1998 to carry out her dissertation field work and began teaching at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Quito. She was in charge of setting a Graduate Diploma on Gender and Public Policy that was sponsored by the National Council of Women of Ecuador. She worked with a team of researchers and policy makers in the design of the program and then FLACSO implemented it. After this first experience FLACSO decided to create a Gender Studies Program in 2000. From then on, Dr. Herrera has been working as a researcher and professor of the Gender Studies Program at FLACSO. Besides continuing with her dissertation work, from 1999 to 2001 her research interests were centered on gender and public policy. She has done consulting work on these issues for UNICEF, UNDP and CONAMU. In 2001 she started research on gender and migration. Her current research proposal is a result of two previous short research projects on the impacts of migration in local communities and families.

Selected Publications:

2004, (forthcoming) ¨Remesas y estatus social: una mirada de la migración desde la sociedad de origen" in Nieves Zúñiga (ed.) Migración, desarrollo social e interculturalidad, Madrid: Instituto de Investigaciones por la Paz.

2003, "Women´s issues in Ecuador" en Amy Lind (ed.) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women´s Issues Wesport: Greenwood Press. 2003 . pg.201-223.

2002, "La migración vista desde el lugar de origen" ICONOS, 15, Diciembre. FLACSO-Ecuador. Pg. 86-96.

2001, (ed.) Antología de estudios de género en el Ecuador, FLACSO-ILDIS.

2001 Masculinidades en el Ecuador,(Coeditor with Xavier Andrade) FLACSO

Gender in Transnational Families: the case of Ecuadorian International Domestic
Workers

This research will examine recent trends of international migration from Ecuador characterized by a progressive feminization of workers toward the Southern countries of the European Union and the USA. My interest is to look at whether or not migration as a globalizing experience brings about or rather inhibits social empowerment for women in their communities and within their families in both origin and destination communities. I will compare different trajectories of migrant women as related to the following issues: similarities and differences in the way these women reconfigured their transnational families; how motherhood is handled by migrant women; the impact of remittances on the social status of women in their sending communities; representations of migrant women among family members remaining in Ecuador. The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of how global processes such as migration are shaping contradictory identities for women that involve the interplay of subjectivities, social inequalities and global processes. It may also contribute to the discussion on the consequences of globalization on the economic status of women and the social and cultural dynamics of gender present within international migration.