Women’s Politics. A conversation between Rita Laura Segato and Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar

David Goldblatt. Woman smoking, Fordsburg, Johannesburg, 1975. Fotografía. Museo Reina Sofía
David Goldblatt. Woman smoking, Fordsburg, Johannesburg, 1975. Fotografía. Museo Reina Sofía

Inside the framework of International Women’s Day, a conversation is set up between anthropologist Rita Laura Segato and sociologist Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar as they seek to pinpoint the inequalities that still exist today under a range of focal points: from gender violence and domestic slavery to the coloniality of power used strategically as an objective of war by some states.

If we think of the world on the basis of what happens to women then our view changes. This is not just because women take up a set position in societies and are affected differently by public and market policies, but also because this perspective sees deep-rooted logics to organise the world take shape but normally go unnoticed. What does the terrible violence defiling women’s bodies in so many places tell us about the world? What does the repeated postponement of the collective reproduction needs women rally for in so many societies tell us about the world?

Inside the framework of International Women’s Day, a conversation is set up between anthropologist Rita Laura Segato and sociologist Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar as they seek to pinpoint the inequalities that still exist today under a range of focal points: from gender violence and domestic slavery to the coloniality of power used strategically as an objective of war by some states.


Rita Laura Segato. Professor of Anthropology and Bioethics in the UNESCO Chair at the University of Brasilia. Her major works include: Las estructuras elementales de la violencia (Buenos Aires, 2006), La Nación y sus Otros (Buenos Aires, 2007), and Crítica de la colonialidad en ocho ensayos y una antropología por demanda (Buenos Aires, 2013). Her latest book is La guerra contra las mujeres (Madrid, 2016).

Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar. A graduate in Mathematics with a PhD in Sociology, she is a lecturer-researcher at the Centre of Andean and Mesoamerican Studies (CEAM), Mexico City, and the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Puebla (ICSYH-BUAP). She is the co-founder of the group Comuna, and author of: ¡A desordenar! Por una historia abierta de la lucha social (La Paz, 1995), Los ritmos del Pachakuti. Movilización y levantamiento indígena-popular en Bolivia (Buenos Aires, 2008) and Desandar el laberinto. Introspección en la feminidad contemporánea (Buenos Aires, 2015). Her most recent book is Horizontes comunitario-populares (Madrid, 2017).

Date: March 4 , 2017

Organización: Museo Reina Sofía and Fundación de los Comunes

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