PRIDE: gender equality, sexuality, and gender fluidity

In recognition of Pride Month. . .

The Ecuadorian coastal school year just restarted a few weeks ago. Schoolboys sporting fresh haircuts and schoolgirls with tightly woven braids once again walk to school each morning in crisp white shirts, pressed navy blue slacks (for boys) or skirts (for girls), and shiny black leather shoes. They are adorable. 

As alluded to above, traditional binary gender roles are a mainstay of Ecuadorian culture and are very much reinforced in the public schools; there is little room for individuation and certainly none for gender fluidity. When I asked recently what would happen if a female-identifying child simply showed up to school wearing slacks instead of a skirt (women and girls wear pants here all the time outside of school), I was directed to the school handbook, which states that girls are required to wear skirts. "But what would actually happen? I pressed. The response was a shoulder shrug and a shy smile, "She would be sent home." 

It doesn't happen that an Ecuadorian girl wants to wear pants to school?! Guess not. Or at least not yet. Or not here.  

In the same handbook, schoolboys are required to have their hair cut short while in school -- which explains all the stylish and cute start-of-year haircuts the boys received. I imagine the short hair clause is not included the Otavalan school handbooks -- where indigenous cultural norms mean that boys grow their hair long and wear it in a long braid -- but I doubt that their gender inclusive policies are otherwise more developed.

I wonder what it would be like to have a gender inquisitive or gender fluid child in this part of Ecuador? Would they be accepted? Would we? And, relatedly, what would it mean to celebrate Pride in Ecuador?

I am going to try to provide some historical, cultural, and political context, as each relates to gender and gender rights in Ecuador. This post is by no means intended to be a complete review of this topic. 

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Let's start with a brief overview of  women's rights in Ecuador.

Ecuador was the first country in Latin America to grant women the right to vote-- in 1929 -- almost  ten years after the US. While Ecuador participated in several UN summits on women's rights and gender equality after that, the next legally mandated protections were almost 70 years in the making.

In 1997, the first Ecuadorian law to protect women against discrimination in the workplace passed. The Employment Protection Act (Ley de Amparo Laboral) also mandated a quota --  that a minimum of 20% of positions be women -- as presiding judges of Higher Courts, ordinary judges, notaries, registrars and other posts relating to judicial function. That same year saw the creation of the National Council for Women (CANAMU), a governmental body responsible for formulating and promoting governmental policies with a gender perspective.

In 2008, Ecuador took a huge leap with regards to codifying gender rights in its new Constitution (its 20th!). The Constitution recognized the right to gender equality, to a life free of violence, and to sexual and reproductive rights. The Constitution also expressly mandated equal representation of men and women in "positions of nomination or designation in public service, in management and decision-making bodies, and in political parties and movements".

The 2008 Constitution requires the adoption of affirmative action (particularly interesting this week as the US Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of affirmative action in college admissions) to promote equality in favor of "the holders of rights who are in a situation of inequality".  As a result, by 2013, the Ecuadorian Assembly achieved a total of 38% women. Currently they are 39% women. In comparison, in 2013, the US Congress was comprised of 17% women; today's Congress is comprised of 28% women, the highest proportion in US history.

Despite legal protections, the cultural concept of "machismo" --  prevalent in much of Latin America --  remains strong in Ecuador.  Machismo describes a strong sense of masculine pride, masculine dominance and often masculine sexual conquest. Gender roles certainly vary across social class and ethnicity, but men continue to hold a lot of sociocultural power. And distinctions made between "male" and "female" are extremely binary. The children often point out a "female"  sticker or a "male" color.  This is very much a culture of pink and bows and nail polish are for girls, blue and balls and cars are for boys.

I hear a lot about machismo from my Ecuadorian friends to describe and explain and rue male behaviors, including adultery, domestic violence, and differential treatment of girls and boys in multiple domains. Gender roles are still very much tied to longstanding Catholic influences of patriarchy, where women are still supposed to care for the home, the children, and submit to their male partners or male children. My friend, for all intents and purposes separated from her husband, still serves literally him, seated and waiting, his plate of lunch almost every day. 

Additional notes on three important women's rights:

Birth control and family planning. A wide range of birth control options is (thankfully) readily available through the national healthcare system and is more socially accepted than when I lived here 20 years ago. Just by looking around La Josefina, you can see that family size has decreased tremendously over the last two decades. Whereas previously there were numerous families with six or seven children, now I can only think of one. The national statistics support this trend. The current Ecuadorian birth rate is 2.3 births per woman, down from 3.0 in 2000 ,which was down from 4.7 in 1980. 

Amazingly, 92% of Ecuadorian women between 15 and 49 use contraception, yet sadly two out of three pregnancies are not planned. Ecuador also has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Latin America -- 63.49 per 1000 women ages 15-19. The US teen pregnancy rate is just under 17 per 1000 women in this age range.

Gender violence and femicide:  In 2014, as a result of lobbying and activism by Ecuadorian women's rights advocates and organizations, Ecuador criminalized femicide. The language of that law states: “The person who, as a result of power relations manifested in any type of violence, kills a woman due to the fact that she is or because of her gender, they will be punished with imprisonment." Passage of this law was considered as an important milestone in the movement for women's rights in Ecuador.

There is still plenty of work to be done. Just last week, in a widely publicized case, a male police lieutenant was sentenced to 34 years in prison for killing his wife, Maria Belen Bernal, a 34-year old lawyer. The femicide occurred on the grounds of the police training center in Quito with multiple high level officers and police trainees hearing the deadly argument without a single one intervening. Bernal's murder was seen as particularly important because it involved a law enforcement officer, the very people who are tasked to respond to episodes of violence. 

Closer to home, after an elementary school principle brutally killed his wife in front of his teenage son, the local town leaders met to discuss their official response. An Ecuadorian friend and trained psychologist, a woman, was present at this meeting in her professional role as a therapist for the health department. She stood and watched as every leader-- male and female, all professionals-- nodded and appeared to agree with a statement that the man's brother made during this meeting --- "that his wife must have done something to ask for it." When she exploded and incredulously addressed the obvious problem with his statement, the response from her colleagues was silence.

Abortion: Abortion is illegal in Ecuador. However, in 2022, Ecuadorian legislators approved regulations to allow women and girls access to abortions in cases of rape, following a constitutional court ruling that decriminalized abortions for this reason. Previously, Ecuador allowed abortions only when a woman’s life was endangered by pregnancy. Under the new law, women over 18 can abort pregnancies arising from rape until 12 weeks gestation, while teens and girls under 18 will have until 18 weeks. Adult women belonging to indigenous groups or who live in rural areas also have until 18 weeks’ gestation to get an abortion. For comparison, Mexico and Colombia have both recently decriminalized abortion, and Chile is seriously considering it. 

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Now for a light primer on LGBQT legal rights and social acceptance in Ecuador

I remember so clearly, in the summer of 1999, sitting in La Josefina on a rock in middle of the river with my Peace Corps Spanish teacher, Arturo -- he sporting a bright rainbow PRIDE shirt from SF PRIDE --  as he explained to us that he was totally "in the closet in Ecuador" but "out" in the rest of the world. He was bilingual and had done some international travel, and he loved his PRIDE shirt. He also loved the idea that he could wear it nonchalantly in rural Ecuador because 1) it was in English, which people could not read and 2) no one knew what PRIDE (or the rainbow symbol) meant. He thought it was hysterical. 

Things have certainly changed -- and when I say changed, I mean improved -- for LGBTQ people in Ecuador. It turns out those changes were starting to happen during the same time I was sitting on that rock with Arturo.

In 1998, Ecuador became the first country in the Americas (and the third in the world) to include sexual orientation as one of the categories protected against discrimination in the constitution.  The other two countries were South Africa and Fiji . That same year, Ecuador hosted its first PRIDE parade. It is important to note here that, as mentioned above, machismo is still a predominant cultural norm in much of the country, and homosexuality tends to be viewed negatively outside of large urban areas.

There is an annual Pride parade in several large Ecuadorian cities, including Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca, which is widely known as relatively conservative university city in the Southern Highlands, but which is home to thousands of international expats. 

In 2019, Ecuador legalized same-sex marriage.  Interestingly In South America, same-sex marriages are recognized and performed without restrictions in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Uruguay. "Free unions" that are basically equivalent to marriage have begun to be recognized in Bolivia. Of note, adoption for same sex couples remains illegal due to a constitutional ban.

When gay friends were coming to visit with their two children this winter, I tested the waters beforehand with my Ecuadorian, casually disclosing their upcoming arrival, "Our friends are lesbians. They have two kids. They are married in the US". 

Not one of my friends flinched or even asked any "just curious" questions. I was pleasantly surprised. We live in a very Catholic, relatively traditional rural town. If my family here were non-plussed, things definitely have changed!

When our friends were visiting in La Josefina, a local tween asked me casually as we walked to the chocolate factory, "So, which one is the mom?" I explained that they were both moms, they were a couple, but that one had carried the two pregnancies, He followed up with lots of really good questions about how they made babies, how they knew they were gay, what their families thought. I am pretty sure he had never before spent time with a person who was openly gay. And while he was curious, he was never inappropriate. Later in the year, when two different single women visited, he asked me each time if they were gay or straight,  once again displaying curiosity without obvious judgement. Times are a' changing!

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Let's finish off with the issue of gender neutrality and/or gender fluidity in Ecuador

What would it be like to be non-binary or gender fluid in rural Ecuador?

The Spanish language itself would make gender fluidity in these parts a constant topic of conversation. In English -- at least where we live in Northern California -- stating one's preferred pronouns (mine are she/her) has become the norm. My kids are comfortable enough with the process that I hear them use this norm in imaginative play and when speaking with other children. The use of the singular "they" pronoun for those who prefer to be fluid and/or not disclose is also widely accepted. 

In Spanish, every noun as well as its accompanying adjective has a gender assignment. Masculine is generally marked by ending in -o, feminine in -a. This includes objects (chair=silla, which is feminine, horno=oven, which is masculine) but also proper nouns. "Brynna" is designated a female noun and most words use to describe Brynna are also feminine (pretty=bonita, powerful=poderosa, hungry=hambrienta, tired=cansada). On the other hand, "Dillon" is, by default, a masculine noun and any adjectives used to describe Dillon would be masculine (observant=observador, careful=cuidadoso, expert=experto). Granted, some adjectives are inherently gender neutral, usually those ending in a consonent or in the vowel -e -- words like agile=agil, intelligent=inteligente, 

Using the ending -x, as in Latin-x has gained popularity in progressive circles in California and other places, but it is hard to pronounce with many words. Some scholars have advocated, instead, for the use of the gender neutral -e to replace the o/a of masculine and feminine. This would look like a change from words like chicas (girls) to chiques and amigos (friends, male) to amigues, some of which apparently has been integrated in both Spanish-speaking Argentina and Colombia. 

The Spanish language, then, is possible to adapt, but it would certainly be remarkable to attempt to do so here.

My children, at least for the time being, all identify as cis-gender (that is, they identify with the gender they were assigned at birth);  they dress and act in line with binary gender norms. Jonah wears basketball shorts and t-shirts, likes cars and Legos; Brynna dons dresses, and while she definitely enjoys Legos, she tends toward dolls and "playing house."  They rarely rock the Ecuadorian gender boat.

Months ago, when Jonah and I were shopping for a sweater for him in Cuenca, the vendor chastised us for looking at sweaters that were "made for girls", several times drawing us away from the sweaters that Jonah was most attracted to to -- presumably because they had dominant pink and purple colors. 

I like to think that my children, just by virtue of being my children, would be accepted and loved here, no matter what their pronouns or suffixes, but it is hard to know what it would really be like to push norms here, considering how binary much of Ecuadorian world is, at least the rural one where we spend the bulk of our time. Options like gender-neutral bathrooms are not a thing here, even gender neutral clothing for babies is hard to find.

When I hear an overt comment from kids or adults here, I do my best to interrupt and act curiously -- "Why do you call that a 'girl' sticker?" or "Why do you think that being 'manly' means not crying?" But so much of our gender norms are subconscious and acculturated in insidious ways. Plus, these are mostly not gender norms that are unique to Ecuador. The world has long been binary.

And yet, and yet. . .just like across much of North America, gender norms are shifting, even in rural Ecuador.  Women are having less children and exerting more control over their bodies and their life trajectories; there are PRIDE parades and legal gay marriage; and the next generation is being raised with a new and more fluid lens. This last part is more subtle here than back home, less conspicuous, perhaps the correct term is less advanced, but it is happening still, I see it.

I have hope. I have lots of hope. 

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References:

https://latinoamerica21.com/en/the-timid-advance-of-ecuadorian-womens-rights/

https://latinoamerica21.com/en/the-timid-advance-of-ecuadorian-womens-rights/#:~:text=In%201997%2C%20the%20first%20quota,non%2Ddiscrimination%20in%20the%20workplace.

https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/Review/responses/ECUADOR-English.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9793367/