Boyacá’s rural women in an organizational experience: Description and analysis from social work

Abstract

This qualitative research project seeks to analyze the organizational dynamics of a group of rural women in the state of Boyacá, taking into account the experience of Fundación de Artes y Oficios Kokopeli from the municipality of Boyacá (Boyacá), a nonprofit organization that promotesh and craft activity with fique (Furcraea bedinghausii) as a productive alternative for the region.

This project incorporates elements from diverse approaches suchas action research, narrative, and ethnography, in order to recognize thepotentials, relationships, and effects of rural women in their surroundings, as well as the aspects that influence the forms of human interaction andorganization by interpreting their group dynamics.

The analysis is therefore presented in four categories: background, forms of interaction and dynamics, management capacity, and impact/projection. These categories allowed identifying rural women´s participation in nonconventional organizations which involve productive activities that donot mean extra burdens to their responsibilities in their families, jobs, and communities, so that working from home, responsibility division within the productive chain, and human capacity development in relation to traditional knowledge are therefore effective.