Facilitating Indigenous women’s community participation in healthcare: A critical review from the social capital theory

Abstract

This article examines how Indigenous women who receive intercultural healthcare programs manage to develop cooperation networks, get involved in community affairs and improve their reproductive healthcare. It concentrates on the case of the Bolivian intercultural health program ‘EXTENSA’ and analyzes how this program is successful at activating greater community participation in health prevention and improving the reproductive healthcare of the Indigenous women who live in the Department of Beni, Bolivia. Through an ethnographic analysis, it argues that community participation and healthy behaviors are the result of tapping into bonding social capital and fostering women’s empowerment. The analysis shows that the program gives women community leaders and women networks members (who predate EXTENSA) access to different types of resources, allowing women to transform their community assets into sources of collective empowerment.

Keywords:

• intercultural healthcare
• community participation
• social capital
• sociology
• gender
• Bolivia