Women of influence: Interdisciplinary participatory approaches to understanding female leadership in the Peruvian Amazon

The Mujeres que influyen (Women of Influence) project is a collaboration between researchers at University of East Anglia and PUCP, and young women from the Junín area of Peru who are members of the National Council of Indigenous Women of Peru. It takes its starting point from an acknowledgement that although women play a fundamental role in the preservation of biodiversity and ancestral knowledge, these contributions often go unrecognized and underdeveloped (Ketty Marcelo, 2018), to the detriment of the very culture and environment that should be preserved. Our women-led participatory project, uses film (production, screening, analysis) to highlight the potential and importance for active and organised participation by these young women in their communities in order to protect and nurture their natural resources. Working alongside Asháninka and Yanesha young women, we seek to demonstrate the value of young female involvement in community decision-making, addressing the cultural and societal inequalities that may disrupt their path to leadership and influence. In this paper, we focus on the methods developed in the project, particularly the value of participatory video production as a form of activism, with the outputs serving as creative manifestos in themselves. The co-designed activities have led us to reframe fieldwork as auto-ethnographic digital collaborations that have sought to disrupt power hierarchies and facilitate the co-production of new knowledge. We reflect on how our Indigenous partners have helped us rethink issues of sustainability, resilience and alternative strategies to respond to gender dynamics, political ecologies and environmental challenges.