Similar to David Hirschman's chapter about bureaucratic resistance to the implementation of gender equality, Marunja Barrig tried to understand why gender analysis has been rejected in the rural Andes. Barrig identifies three sources for this rejection. The first focuses on representations of "the Andean" especially indigenous women. Ethnographers often represent the power relations between Andean men and women as characterized by the notion of "symmetrical duality" (113). Ethnographers also explain current inequality because of modern influences. Tensions between indigenous rights and individual rights, and the policies of international institutions and power relations between these institutions and Southern NGOs. In the previous chapter, when Louise Fortmann discusses contextualizing knowledge, the work of ethnographers appears to be part of this. However, as Barrig shows, there is still a tendency to romanticize and create knowledge that fits within the scientists' schema rather than seeing their subjects for who they are.
This chapter reveals the tension between universal theory and homogenous culture. Attached to universal notions of economic growth and the necessary political systems to further than system, is a moral-value system that privileges certain practices and customs over others. For example, it is customary for Andean women to give birth standing up. Health clinics in the Andes have not taken account of this custom and not integrated this with the services that they provide. Clinics are available but not being utilized by the indigenous population because they do not honor their customs.
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