(Illustration by Raffi Marhaba, The Dream Creative)
We are Lumi and Paty. Our stories are different, but they have similarities. We both have worked across a variety of disciplines, including teaching, ethics, economics, architecture, and design. And although we belong to different generations, we share a culture and experiences as Mexican women. Our observation and understanding of gender inequalities derive from this unique intersection of knowledge.
Our backgrounds are different, but both of our early lives were grounded in gender-based convention. Lumi grew up in an environment with strong religious roots and deeply embedded gender roles, especially linked to caregiving, and Paty was raised in a family with macho practices. Yet we were encouraged to pursue our studies, and with the financial support of our families and scholarships, we eventually earned doctorate degrees—achievements that have contributed to our financial autonomy.
Some years ago, we participated in an activity aimed at raising awareness of gender bias among hiring managers. Thirty people attended, including managers and members of an academic gender committee we were on. Lumi presented the group with statements on inequities between women and men—for example, that women receive lower salaries than men in similar job positions—and each person shared whether or not they agreed. Only Paty, Lumi, and one other woman in the group agreed that there was gender inequity, and the other participants were astonished that the three of us aligned against their view. Afterward, we reflected on our life trajectories and professional experiences, and concluded it was time to strike out together to answer some important questions: How did we overcome societal norms and barriers to get to where we aspired to be, and how can we help other women do the same?
The result was the creation of All Women Coo, with the slogan “Gafas Moradas para Innovar” (“Purple Glasses to Innovate”), a Mexican boutique consultancy born during the COVID-19 pandemic to mitigate its negative effects on women. Our organization focuses on boosting creativity and innovation from a gender perspective, helping women forge alliances with companies and organizations and creating space for their empowerment.
Gender Inequity in Latin America
Gender inequalities have deep and complex roots in economic, social, and political structures around the world. Women everywhere face persistent obstacles that limit their potential and freedom, and undermine their well-being and fundamental rights. This challenge has different nuances in each continent, country, and community.
In Latin America, the culture of machismo—a strong sense of masculine pride—contributes to widespread sexism, including the lack of acknowledgement that women that do the same jobs as men get paid less, and high rates of gender-based violence. For instance, women earn 17 percent less than men in equivalent job roles, and one in three women face gender-based violence. These entrenched social norms deeply impact women’s lives and opportunities. They also inhibit women’s equal representation in areas of power and decision-making, in both political and economic spheres, thus perpetuating gender inequity and violence in the region.
Purple Glasses to Innovate
All Women Coo aims to transform these cultural dynamics and remove common barriers to gender equity. One important part of our approach is inviting all people to “put on purple glasses,” an expression for analyzing different situations with a gender perspective. It is inspired by Gemma Lienas’s book, El Diario Violeta de Carlota, an exploration of gender roles and stereotypes via a young girl’s journey uncovering and challenging subtle and overt instances of gender inequity in everyday life. For us, putting on purple glasses means observing the world in a way that considers gender inequities, socially assigned roles and stereotypes, and the intersectionality of experiences that women marginalized by gender have encountered.
Our methodology incorporates a few fundamental elements, including understanding the realities of a given problem and empathizing with the experiences of the people involved in and affected by it. We create a diverse team of stakeholders who highlight the local realities and challenges of women, and reflect on what needs to happen. We co-create with and for women, using our purple glasses to foster critical questioning, scientific argumentation, and the integral analysis of variables related to social problems. This process also integrates quantitative research tools and qualitative ones such as mind maps, empathy interviews, and surveys that enhance information we obtain from direct interactions with women and ensure that our findings are appropriately contextualized. Innovation thus becomes a powerful tool driven by the intellectual participation of women from diverse contexts.
We also work to translate our solutions into real-world opportunities for women. This involves collaborating with women leaders in business and academia around the world, which extends the impact of our work locally and creates valuable professional relationships and partnerships. Together, we detect, design, plan, execute, and evaluate actions and projects, setting short, medium, and long-term goals. The prototyping and iteration stages of project development are continuous. Based on feedback and ongoing analysis, we iterate on solutions until we arrive at ones that are not only innovative, but also deeply resonant with the real needs and contexts of the women we aim to empower.
Our efforts address more than the symptoms of gender inequity. We also tackle its structural causes so that our impact is comprehensive and enduring. Communicating our achievements to allies and the community is an essential part of generating effective and sustainable results.
Our projects include business initiatives and community actions, and showcase women’s ingenuity, resolve, and leadership, contributing significantly to gender equity. Here’s a look at a few of them.
1. Bridging the University-to-Workforce Gender Gap
Many academically accomplished women struggle to surpass barriers and achieve top positions and competitive salaries after they graduate from college. This situation is close to our hearts, as many of our own female students have faced it.
In 2022, an opportunity for change arose in collaboration with Universidad Insurgentes (UIN), a university in central Mexico and virtual campus that annually welcomes more than 30,000 young people. The majority of these students are women and the first in their families to access higher education. Working with managers and people responsible for strategy at the university, we created Coo Create Lab, a safe space where teachers, students, and other university affiliates who were committed to equal work opportunities for women could talk openly about the barriers they face and find role models to help them overcome challenges.
The Cultura Mujeres UIN, our internal name for the initiative that came out of the lab, includes networking and other activities that strengthen university groups such as Mujeres Líderes and ADN UIN 2030. These groups have benefitted teachers, students, and collaborators by recognizing the inequities and challenges of professional life, making women’s talent more visible through role models, and stimulating empowerment and collaboration between women. The perspectives and connections students gain are helpful to them during their time at the university as well as later in their professional life.
2. Developing High-Potential Women with “Womentoring”
Women in the workforce also face systemic obstacles that restrict their professional development and keep leadership roles out of reach, and they often lack the support they need to advance.
This challenge brought us to Grupo Regional, a bank in northern Mexico. As part of its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative, it had the specific goal of strengthening female leadership within the organization. We began our work with another Coo Create Lab, this time in collaboration with promoters of the initiative and members of the bank’s training and development department, all women. Together we applied our purple glasses to innovate lens and ultimately developed a mentoring initiative called Womentoring Banregio, aimed at promoting the professional development and leadership of 47 high-potential women. The effort involved training senior executives, both women and men, on how to be mentors, as well as working with the mentees to ensure that both groups strengthened their development and valued mutual learning during the mentoring sessions.
Each of the two programs operated for six months, first virtually in 2022 and in hybrid format in 2023, both starting on International Women’s Day. The programs averaged 50 mentees and 46 mentors for a total of 158 hours of mentoring and about 2,700 hours of training. Thirty percent of the mentees were promoted to positions of greater responsibility and authority within the year, and 12 percent of women received financial support through scholarships for postgraduate studies.
3. Building a Time Bank for Women Caregivers
One of our main motivations for starting All Women Coo was the need to highlight and address the problem of caregiving—work that is often invisible, unrecognized, unpaid, and primarily done by women. The pandemic increased caregiving demands among women, underscoring gender inequity.
In 2022, the San Pedro Garza García, a municipality in the Mexican state of Nuevo León; Instituto Municipal de la Familia, a research and public policy organization; and Sistema para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, which promotes family development and manages the municipality’s assistance, approached us to conduct an ethnographic study on women caregivers in the San Pedro 400 area of the city. Our objective was to obtain information about the social and cultural norms surrounding unpaid care work in this economically vulnerable area to inform the development of the Cuidemos, Banco de Tiempo, a government program that provides respite for people who care for infants, people with disabilities, or the elderly.
We began by conducting friendly, semi-structured interviews with women caregivers from diverse backgrounds in their homes. These included discussions about their aspirations and obstacles, and helped us identify pathways to improving their well-being, family life, and community integration, as well as respect for their human rights overall. Some women offered specific recommendations for supportive services, such as talks on sexual education and violence prevention for young people. The home visits also highlighted how geography increased their vulnerability.
Our findings and recommendations provided the main input for the government program, which later established a support network that recognizes, reduces, and redistributes care hours. The program now also offers services and support such as grocery cards, free medical care and transportation, and training programs for economic independence. Currently, this program benefits more than 700 caregivers and their families in the municipality.
Since then, we’ve conducted other ethnographic studies, including a joint effort with Save the Children in Puebla, Mexico, to identify how gender and power dynamics affect young women and men’s access to and participation in training, the labor market, and education. We’ve also collaborated with the nonprofit Vida y Familia Mexico (VIFAC), an organization based in Municipality of Guadalupe, Nuevo León, Mexico, that supports pregnant women in vulnerable situations, to understand the experiences, needs, and aspirations of its beneficiaries with an eye to improving their well-being and independence. One outcome of this study is a microenterprise project developed in collaboration with VIFAC that helps women establish and manage their own sources of income, promoting their financial independence and autonomy.
In Solidarity With Women’s Pending Struggles
Our aim with all of these projects is to contribute to the empowerment, autonomy, equity, and advancement of all women, and create a positive and sustainable change in society. Our approach is to clearly see and innovate alongside the women who want to change the educational, business, and political dynamics around them. Success requires that we continue to weave strong networks of sisterhood, collaboration, and support across the governmental, corporate, academic, and civil society sectors—what Lumi has described as, “the art of establishing and cultivating professional and business relationships.”
We feel deep empathy for women and girls, who face a lack of recognition of and respect for their most basic human rights, and we stand in solidarity with their struggle to be treated as full persons with equal opportunities, access to the use and benefit of resources, freedom, and respect. It’s time to challenge stereotypes and retire gender roles that hinder their growth and development. At All Women Coo, we are committed to working to build a world where all women and girls are valued, heard, and respected to reach their full potential. Together, we can transform limiting cultural systems from the ground up to provide a more equal future for women and girls.
SSIR works with publishing partners in six countries to produce local language editions of SSIR
that help foster social innovation, learning, and knowledge exchange
worldwide. Each local language edition has its own unique character and
approach to informing and inspiring innovators in the regions they
cover.
Read the Spanish version of this article here.
Support SSIR’s coverage of cross-sector solutions to global challenges.
Help us further the reach of innovative ideas. Donate today.
Read more stories by Luz María Velázquez & Patricia Torres.