1. Yucatec Maya Women and Empowerment Evaluating the Framework for Development in a Small Village Ellen R. Kintz (SUNY Geneseo)

2. 2 My work with the Yucatec Maya has shifted to focus on empowering women and on building a framework for development in the small village of Cobá, Quintana Roo, Mexico.

3. 3 A Brief Consideration of the Concept of Agency

4. 4 Duality of Structure

5. 5 The Riddle We Seek to Solve… How does social reproduction becomes social transformation?

6. 6 When agency is considered, it must focus attention on personhood, desire, and intentionality.

7. 7 The focus of this presentation is on - (1) simple social structure (the construction of kitchen gardens (2) other small development activities) and agency - the capacity to make a difference - - as these are revealed by Yucatec Maya women in the very beginning of the 21 st century.

8. 8 Women and Development

9. 9 Women’s Unemployment Rates and the Rural Poor

10. 10 Indigenous Women Continue to Struggle…

11. 11 Poverty, Indigenous Women and Their Children

12. 12 The Case of Cobá, Quintana Roo, Mexico

13. 13 The Amelioration of Poverty…

14. 14 The UN Millennium Goals To Meet the Needs of the World’s Rural Poor

15. 15 This project design seeks to assist families in the village whose income was less than $1 per day. The project seeks to eliminate the number families who suffer from hunger.

16. 16 Material Poor Schools were Targeted as Part of the Project.

17. 17 The project targeted development that would empower women…

18. 18 The project targeted interventions that would increase environmental sustainability and improve biodiversity across the village.

19. 19 Building a Locally Designed Grassroots Program

20. 20 Yucatec Maya Women and Empowerment

21. 21 Developing Kitchen Gardens

22. 22 The Importance of Men’s Labor

23. 23 Innovation - Cinder Block Gardens

24. 24 Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

25. 25 Viruses Rage on in a Short Order...

26. 26 Two other simple questions that need to be addressed – (1) Why is it that some ideas or behaviors or products start an epidemic and others do not? (2) And what can we do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own?

27. 27 The Law of the Few The Stickiness Factor The Power of Context.

28. 28 The Law of the Few

29. 29 The Stickiness Factor

30. 30 Delivery of 10 cinder blocks to 145 Women

31. 31 The Power of Context

32. 32 Seasonality…

33. 33 Tipping the System…

34. 34 The Law of the Few and Word-of-Mouth Why does it work some of the time?

35. 35 Connectors, Mavens and Sales(wo)men.

36. 36 How connected are we?

37. 37 What is the importance of the role of the Connector?

38. 38 The Maven…

39. 39 The Maven of Cobá…

40. 40 The Sales(wo)man

41. 41 Emotion - From the Outside In

42. 42 The Sales(wo)man of Cobá ~ Doña Tomasa

43. 43 Sales(wo)man of Cobá Doña Ermalinda

44. 44 Movers and Shakers

45. 45 Evaluating the Cost of Development

46. 46 Women and Agency

47. 47 Women - Testimonies to Struggle and Achievement

48. 48 Concluding Remarks

49. 49 Change is Possible…

50. 50 It is possible to tip the world!

51. 51 The research in Coba has been designed to contribute to and support the work of other scholars who have revealed the complexity of women’s public and private roles in Latin America. If you are interested in this review, please contact me for references. kintz@geneseo.edu