Thanks to the Mountain Women of the World Network, we had the opportunity to carry out, throughout the year 2022, a research on Women and Mountain with the support of the FAO Mountain Partnership:
A social research project in order to identify the main challenges faced by mountain women and collective power, especially in the context of COVID. The main objectives were to identify the multiple and diverse challenges faced by mountain women in different contexts and geographies around the world in the 8 countries in which we as a Network are represented; to highlight the ways in which solidarity and mutual support have enabled us to strengthen resilience and build collective power; and to present the main learnings drawn from the research.
The research was developed with a social participatory research approach through face-to-face interviews and conversations, seeking to be supportive to the women who participated. We were able to interview 313 mountain women from Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Kenya, Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan, Italy and Nepal. Most of the interviewees were between 30 and 50 years old. By mountain women we mean those who live in mountain and rural areas, carry out mountain activities such as farming, animal care or handicrafts, as well as women mountain and trekking guides, mountain sportswomen, those in the mountain tourism industry with guiding roles, porters, cooks, guesthouse managers, etc. Participants representing a range of experience levels and activities were sought to provide guide perspectives at different points in their careers.
It was led by local mountain women (professional mountain workers). The researchers who went to the field come from different professions, specialties and backgrounds. Some of them work professionally in the mountains as mountain or trekking guides. Others are related to areas of community tourism and teach outdoor activities and conversation, and others work in universities and are linked to international cooperation and sustainable tourism projects. This reflects the diversity of profiles, cultures and backgrounds of the researchers themselves.
The research itself was an 'instrument' to empower the local guides who in turn were researchers, who saw themselves in a different role than the one they usually have, gaining recognition among the locals and their peers. This project undoubtedly changed us, transforming our own lives as we worked as researchers.
With all of this we hope to be able to contribute by making visible the voices of these mountain women who trusted us to share their experiences and desires.
We were able to launch a first publication in December 2022 with the general results and now we are launching the second publication. We are also producing audiovisual material that is allowing us to highlight the voices and testimonies of these women.
This work is intended to be a tool for change, a collective compilation of the different stories of these mountain women. Now we have a great responsibility, and a call to action, which is to continue working on the data, and focusing the research to give it continuity.
We still have a long way to go with all that has been collected, but these instances are important to raise awareness about the need to empower women in mountain areas to raise their voices, so that they can participate more effectively in decision making for sustainable local development and at the same time help to decrease migration to the cities.
We want to make sure that the insights provided can be useful for the mountain women who trusted us to share their experiences and desires with us.
As the Mountain Women's Network, we intend to continue this work in the future to try to give voice and visibility to the needs and hopes that emerged from the research. We are also motivated to continue to learn and collect more testimonies of mountain women.
Below, you can download the 2 publications that have resulted so far from this Research Project: