Bringing Gender into Culture: Women and Interlegality in Ecuador

Although legal recognition of indigenous justice is a major component of democratization in Latin America, customary law can be detrimental to women. In Ecuador, indigenous women seized the opportunity of the 2008 Constitutional Assembly to advocate for gender parity within indigenous law. As women’s support for indigenous justice proposes more diverse understandings of democracy, it also challenges conventional practices of citizenship. To understand the attractiveness of legal pluralism for women and its impact on the state, the paper explores the confines of feminist alliances and the accessibility of indigenous justice.