Nora Castañeda

Nora Castañeda
President of the Women's Development Bank
In office
8 March 2001 – 16 May 2015
Personal details
Born 12 June 1942
Caracas, Venezuela
Died 16 May 2015
Caracas, Venezuela
Nationality Venezuelan

Nora Castañeda (12 June 1942 – 16 May 2015) was a Venezuelan economist and activist who was President of the Women's Development Bank from 2001 to 2015. She was born and raised by her mother as one of six children; her father placed them in the care of a relative after her mother had first become pregnant.[1] Castañeda joined the Socialist League in the 1970s. After getting married to Jesus Rivero, she moved to Nicaragua and joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front during the later stages of the Nicaraguan Revolution. After the Sandinistas came to power in the early 1980s, she returned to Venezuela, joining the working class women’s movement.[2]

Throughout the 1990s, Castañeda became an advisor to and ally of Hugo Chavez.[3] Her contributions to the policies during the 1999 Constituent National Assembly included women homemakers' rights to social security, as well as female pronouns being included in the Constitution of Venezuela.[2] On 21 September 2001, the Women's Development Bank was created with the purpose of funding small business for underprivileged women. During the organization's first ten years under Castañeda, the bank provided 138,000 micro-loans, benefitting 300,000 families.[4] After her death in 2015, she was awarded an Order of the Liberator by Vice President Jorge Arreaza.[2] Gladys Requena, Minister for the Woman and Gender Equality, said of Castañeda, "A fighter, heroine, feminist, brave, compatriot, and a champion of women’s organisation… I am pained not to be able to have her here for this stage in women’s organisation, given that she was the architect of this great dream."[2]

References

  1. ↑ Wynter, Coral (21 February 2006). "Nora Castaneda and the Women's Development Bank of Venezuela". Venezuelanalysis. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Boothroyd, Rachael (21 May 2015). "Venezuela Mourns Loss of Feminist Revolutionary Nora Castañeda". Venezuelanalysis. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  3. ↑ "Mujeres del PSUV rindieron homenaje a Nora Castañeda". psuv.org.ve. 19 May 2016. Retrieved 7 November 2017. (in Spanish)
  4. ↑ "Banmujer: Benefitting Over 300,000 Venezuelan Families Since 2001". Venezuelanalysis. 3 October 2011. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.