A. Contact information
B. Experience by geographic region
D. Gender expertise
E. Other relevant information
Paulina Pavez Verdugo is a doctoral candidate in Social Sciences at Universidad de Chile (ANID doctoral fellowship), with a thesis examining agrarian counter-reform, agribusiness, and extractive violence in the Aconcagua Valley in central Chile (1980–2021), with a focus on land and water rights dispossession and its gendered effects on rural women's body-territory. Her research draws on feminist political ecology, decolonial feminisms, and ethnographic methods.
She holds over fifteen years of professional experience in gender policy and applied research. At ECLAC's Gender Affairs Division (2009–2018), she produced gender equality indicators for eighteen Latin American countries and co-authored more than ten United Nations institutional publications. As Gender Ministerial Advisor at Chile's Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation (2022), she designed the Ministry's first institutional gender architecture. She is a certified expert and auditor in gender equality management systems (NCh3262:2021), with over thirty diagnostic and certification processes in public and private organizations.
She is the author of two book chapters currently in press: "El extractivismo como régimen de género: Una lectura desde las ecologías políticas críticas, el giro material y los feminismos decoloniales" (Universidad de Valparaíso / RIL Editores, forthcoming), and two chapters on Chile's National Care System and parental responsibility legislation in a collective volume to be published by Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) in 2026. She is also co-author of a published book chapter on the feminization of extractive violence in a comparative study from Colombia and Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74528-8_6).
Her practical background in rural territories includes ethnographic fieldwork in the Aconcagua Valley, coordination of the First National Workshop on Women Leaders in Water Governance (76 participants from rural water services across Chile), gender modules for the National School for Rural and Campesina Women Leaders (Instituto de Desarrollo Agropecuario — INDAP, 60 participants from 16 national organizations), and principal investigator of a mixed-methods study on gender-based violence perceptions in rural territories commissioned by the Office of Agrarian Studies and Policies (ODEPA, Ministry of Agriculture), with published policy brief (https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.23527.42407) and full report (https://bibliotecadigital.odepa.gob.cl/bitstream/handle/20.500.12650/73149/Estudio_PercepcionViolenciaMujerTerritoriosRurales.pdf). She also conducted participatory research in socio-ecological contexts in Aysén and southern Chile, and participates in the Territorial Committee of the La Campana-Peñuelas Biosphere Reserve.
Her areas of expertise include gender and water governance, land and water rights in rural territories, extractivism and territorial violence, gender-responsive institutional frameworks, and participatory methodologies with rural and indigenous women.