Juliana De La Torres

Juliana transforms the rules of participation and accompanies the political vocation and leadership of women, giving them self-confidence, tools to navigate a male-dominated world, and help them to get access to positions within the mechanisms of participation and decision-making in political spaces. At the same time, she has an impact on public policies.

Juliana discovered, through her early training at the United Nations and her participation in the Peace Movement in Colombia, strategies for dialogue and negotiation, where from conflict it is possible to achieve solutions by building bridges, without denying differences. Her involvement in peace negotiations in conflicted territories in Colombia allowed her to be in touch with an emerging female leadership, and she was surprised to witness how, despite the adversities of this context, women were willing and were in fact able to transform their communities.

Juliana saw women's political participation as the perfect route for women in these territories to canalize this emerging leadership. Initially, her focus was on training as an introduction to politics, but always with the vision of encouraging them to run for public office. She realized that, instead of only focusing on empowering women through training sessions as the majority of initiatives in the field, her approach had to incorporate a systemic perspective, involving a change in the legal framework that will ultimately push for increased female political participation and building a network of key actors that ensures women’s active role in decision-making to really cause a shift in the way politics are conducted.

Her early efforts have evolved into a methodology that combines a comprehensive training program jointly with a strategic networking approach that brings these new political leaders closer to public decision-making spaces. Importantly, Juliana is aware of how decades of vulnerability have imprinted these women’s self-identity and self-perception, to a great extent shaped by the conflict and confinement of the territories they have lived in for years. Therefore, a central element of Juliana’s program is to build safe spaces for them to grow as the newly empowered female political leaders of Colombia, and to connect them with key actors in the political arena. She facilitates these spaces through mentored training that not only includes a thorough curriculum but also offers a community of like-minded women in which they share their aspirations, challenges, and visions.

Juliana’s work aims to transform Colombia’s political decision-making processes and participation schemes. She set out to have an impact on the entire political system through the Parity Law that enables more women to participate equitably in political action within Colombia. She is proving that increasing the female political quota will not only balance and level the field in politics, but also show that it is possible to bring together actors with radically diverse political stances to collaborate jointly in a common agenda ensuring the design and implementation of more just, diverse, and equitable public policies. Juliana advocates for political and electoral reforms and succeeds in reducing polarization by bringing together women with different approaches, enabling them to work on common goals.

As an influential figure, Juliana is making a difference, inspiring and motivating other organizations, recognizing the power of collective work and building tools for citizen impact and participation. She sensitizes, trains, and involves society in understanding the barriers and stereotypes that limit the participation of women in politics to end discrimination and gender inequality.

Colombia faces two major challenges in the field of political participation and influence. On one hand, violence and threats to social leaders and activists in the country have been a constant problem in recent years. This situation has generated concern at national and international levels and has led to several organizations and government entities calling for the protection of these leaders. The 2020 report of the UN Verification Mission in Colombia states that more than 300 social leaders have been killed since 2016. In addition, the attacks and criminalization of indigenous and Afro-descendant leaders are highlighted, who represent about 30% of the fatal victims.

On the other hand, in Colombia, as in other countries in Latin America, politics are still dominated by men. This situation is evident not only in Congress, where only 28% of the seats are held by women but also in other elected regional positions. For example, the election of Vice President Francia Márquez is, so far, the highest executive position assumed by a female representative in the country.

In this context of political violence in conflicted territories, it is vital to question the exacerbation of its characteristic segregation and fight gender and role discrimination promoting parity and the representation of women in public elected positions given the perpetuation of traditional barriers embedded in current regulations of the political sector.

In addition, female leaders in the most vulnerable territories and remnants of armed guerrillas still face high levels of political and economic violence, which further complicates their participation in the political life of the country. These problems reflect the persistence of gender and territorial discrimination in Colombian society, so it is imperative to continue working to overcome them and achieve a more equitable and just future for all people, regardless of their gender.

Often, women avoid participating in politics because it is an uphill battle that puts their lives and those of their families at risk. As women’s political participation progressively increases, it is concerning that gender violence against them does so too. Consequently, it is of great importance that women are empowered to overcome the challenges that this high-risk context brings against their mental health and overall living conditions.

Persistent violence and exclusion put women in Colombia at double risk. Juliana has developed a methodology that fosters involvement, public incidence, and participative democracy that breaks with the patterns of gender violence installed within the spheres of power. In this sense, Juliana’s strategy to prepare and promote women’s involvement in politics in Colombia includes a three-pronged approach that interrelates training, three level-off participation targeted to three groups: community leaders, young raising leaders and emerging political leaders, and advocacy for a change in the narrative that reinforces the exclusion of women in political life.

In 2019, Juliana created Artemisa Foundation to provide tools through training to women interested in politics. She started in vulnerable territories of Colombia, and is currently organized in ten different nodes, that comprise territories well-known for their high levels of violence, conflict and confinement (Chocó, Nariño, Cauca, Costa Caribe, Catatumbo, Bogotá, Cundinamarca, Noreste antioqueño, Bajo Cauca y Arauca.). Juliana starts by conducting interviews with key actors in the communities and with their help and references she identifies the emerging leaders. Then she invites these candidates to a 7-month training process that starts with an introduction based on their life stories and is followed by an extensive course on diverse topics ranging from democracy, political marketing, network management, and personal brand building to psychological support. Her methodology combines design thinking, communication and negotiation strategies with digital technologies to empower women as changemakers in decision-making in their country, developing their own voice that transcends the private space to be installed within their communities and scaling to a public level and from there, to participate and influence in the plural democracy of Colombia.

Juliana’s work is targeted and organized based on three different groups. She designates community leaders, or Comisionadas, as heads of each node. These are natural and respected figures within the territories Juliana works with. She connects them with diverse opportunities to develop their leadership and engage in initiatives to solve their own communities’ issues. Currently, there are 19 Comisionadas, who frequently participate in evaluating and selecting projects that they then present in competitions. Another target group is young emerging leaders in these territories, who are organized through Raíces Diversas (Diverse Roots), currently a group of 300 girls who do not necessarily have political aspirations but show a clear interest in becoming changemakers for the good of their communities. Finally, a key target group is the Nosotras Ahora (Us Women Now Network) which is a community of 700 adult and young women leaders with clear political aspirations. Since 2018 this network has been recognized for its political incidence and supported financially by National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Open Society Foundation, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FESCOL), Registraduría Nacional, and MAPP-OEA, Fundación Corona and Avina Foundation. Being part of such a territorial network enables its members to achieve collective power so that they are included in national plans for public policy making. They have participated in meetings with different entities of the government (e.g., the congress, ministers, etc.), and have a say, as territorial nodes, when government plans and new policies are discussed and debated. The network works in positioning agendas and promoting the leadership of women in Colombia’s political scene, as well as ensuring the correct implementation of public policies with a gender focus. Ana’s experience exemplifies the effect of being part of the network:

Ana Panesso is a female leader from Chocó, a zone of the Colombian Pacific with feminization and racialization of poverty. Ana joined the network 4 years ago with a history of all kinds of violence. She was a victim of sexual violence, internal armed conflict, and human trafficking as she was held to work in a house as a domestic employee without pay while being underage. She is also a leader in one of the most dangerous regions in the country and today represents 79% of confinement cases in the country. Ana states that her life has completely changed since she became part of the network; she has never felt alone again; she feels her work is recognized and valued; that she has a network to cry, fall down, and feel supported when her life is at risk physically but also emotionally. Ana’s work as a leader replicated the methodology from Nosotras Ahora, opening the first circle of Afro-descendant women in Chocó, where these women used to participate in different spaces but never before addressed such diverse issues, share their stories and gave them the possibility to recognize their territory and practices as tools for transformation.

The Nosotras Ahora network provides women from the territories with a lifelong membership, giving them access to various benefits, like being invited to topical meetings, training opportunities, visibility on RRSS and in the media, networking events, national and international advocacy spaces, connection with funding sources, legal advice, among others.

To create a solid movement, Juliana ensures that on the one hand, each node meets at least once per month to deliberate on their proposals for political influence, and on the other, all ten nodes that currently exist meet twice per year in what she calls Super Novas Meeting. In these large national meetings, all key members of the territories gather, including Comisionadas, members of Raíces Diversas, and members of Nosotras Ahora. The meeting revolves around a simple question: “Where are we going?” and discussions are facilitated in Círculos de la Palabra (Circles of Words). This is a dialog method designed by Juliana based on her experience in negotiation and reconciliation and peace processes with victims and perpetrators in conflict territories. Its aim is to guide horizontal conversations, something that is also implemented within the work of nodes with communities. The “circular” disposition of seats inspires the spatial configuration of the training, and the conversation is also shaped in the same manner as participants “rotate the words” in a kind of round table to give way to the deliberation of the action plans. Her model creates a new form of democratic participation and dissolves polarization by bringing political actors from different sectors to the same table in a more empathetic way. Through one of these iterations, the plan to push for a reform that allows more participation of women in politics called “Parity Now” was born.

The most recent Super Novas Meeting gathered 300 women from different territories and political parties in Colombia, and invited at least 100 leaders who met in Melgar, Tolima. The event included workshops focused on electoral strategies and how to handle misinformation, as well as playful activities that let participants perceive politics in a fun and artistic way. In this way, Juliana builds alliances between actors of different ideologies, building bridges and new narratives. According to Juliana: negotiations take place in everyday life and not at the negotiating table.

Additionally, thanks to her digital activist platform Somos Muchas1 (We are many) Juliana has indirectly impacted over 10,000 people promoting women’s participation and interest in politics across Colombia. Since 2018, she has trained more than 2,700 women through her Escuela de Mujeres y Liderazgo (Women’s and Leadership School), and 700 of them are part of Nosotras Ahora and 400 of them are now candidates from different political parties. Juliana’s work was essential for engaging around 900 women through her different platforms, to push for the modification of the parity law. This law allowed the participation of women in Congress increasing it from 18% to 30%, and enabled 400,000 jobs in the public sector to be occupied by women and generated additional employment sources in regions where the main employer was the government. Similarly, in departments where women had never been registered to run for elected office, the registration of at least one woman on the list will be mandatory. Additionally, she has promoted other laws such as Political Violence, Digital Violence, Vicarious Violence, Adoption from the Womb, Action Plan of Resolution 1325 (impact on more than 5MM women victims of armed conflict), and the National Development Plan; in the latter, she achieved a consensus to prioritize 10 proposals prepared by a group of organizations led by Artemisa and managed to include 6 of them in the Work Plan of the National Government, approved by the National Congress.

It is worth noting that since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic pushed the world to connect virtually, Juliana has established connections with other organizations in the civil society to articulate political processes, promote gender and feminist training, and strengthen democratic systems in Latin America. She has identified and strengthened approximately 300 people as democratic leaders with great potential to be elected to public positions in Venezuela, Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia. During the 2021 electoral period in Colombia, she accompanied 100 women candidates from different political sides and territories, from whom 30% were elected in different political positions. Specifically in Bogotá, she accompanied political leaders who aspired to elected positions and helped to get 50% of them elected. Juliana gives them technical assistance, and accompaniment, discusses strategies with them, and connects them with political and social actors, but not act directly. She also managed to get all parties to consider presenting lists with half women and half men as an obligation in the 2022 elections. She disseminates her ideas through media and research, where one of her co-authored books "Democracia en III actos" (Democracy in III acts) has been downloaded 5,000 times across Latin America and Spain.

Juliana comes from a loving family that instilled in her the value of justice. From an early age, she played leadership roles such as student representative at her school. When she was a child, Juliana dreamed of working for a humanitarian organization in Africa because she thought that was where the greatest needs were. However, at that time she was not aware of the difficult situation in her home country, Colombia. She was unaware of the daily struggle of thousands of women who faced armed groups and raised their children in an environment of extreme violence. But it was during her adolescence, while participating in the United Nations model, that her global perspective on poverty expanded and she became aware of the problem of inequality, as it was shown in Africa, also existed in Colombia.

At 21 years old, in 2011, she focused her graduate thesis on Finance and International Relations on the topic of political marketing, to make the Colombian armed conflict visible. After graduating in 2016, she joined the peace movement and participated in the signing of the Peace Agreement in Colombia with the vision of building democracy. It was then that she began working with women and dedicating herself to supporting victims of violence.

As a social entrepreneur, she became involved in advocacy activities and coordinated campaigns to promote women’s participation in Congress. She co-founded Extituto in 2017, an organization focused on strengthening leadership and collective processes so that they can influence, occupy and participate in politics.

With this experience in Colombia, plus working with networks of young changemakers for democracy in Venezuela, she worked on the writing of the book “Permanent Citizenship for Political Incidence”, in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Colombia. In 2019, she decided to found Artemisas, her NGO, with a focus on women’s participation in decision-making places. Today it is a reference on the feminism and women participation topics in Colombia.

Her vision of a plural democracy, where women participate in the creation of public policies and in the very core where national decisions are made, and her dedication have earned her broad respect and admiration in feminism and politics, playing a fundamental role in building solidarity and affective networks of change and progress in the fight for gender equality in Colombia.