Género y empoderamiento comunitario en un contexto de posconflicto: el caso de Vergara, Cundinamarca (Colombia)

The female rural population has been particularly vulnerable to the impacts of social inequality and armed conflict. For this reason, and against conditions of discrimination, poverty, and violence, some rural women have found alternatives of community cohesion from environ­mental conservation, which have become a way of mitigating and facing those difficulties. This paper shows the results of a case study carried out in Vergara, Cundinamarca (Colombia). Our objective is to analyze the actions of community participation implemented by the members of the vereda Llano Grande, in order to identify the potentiality, difficulties, and lessons learned around environmental governance and community empowerment. Use was made of indepth interviews, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and focus groups, through a model of Participatory Action Research (PAR), to define strategies of local strengthening, gender equality, and environmental governance in a post-conflict rural context. We will argue that the environmental community participation has been an instrument for rural women's empowerment in a post-conflict context while making a positive contribution to the consolidation of best practices of environmental governance in a gender perspective.