A Outline on Peruvian Feminism/s: Facing Multiple Challenges

Abstract

This paper is about the developments of feminism in Peru since the struggle for women’s suffrage as the starting point till the post-war, with the positioning of the female body as the center of a new manner of thinking the political. Feminism is shown to be a middle-class women’s movement, which stemmed from governmental initiatives and with not much presence of European schools of feminist theoretical thought. On the contrary, it was a movement bound with leftist ideologies whose proposals were paradoxically never considered by leftist parties. In the current changing context, which began with Peru’s democratization and its lack of state institutionality, feminism/s – lacking an evident organizational capacity – faces different demands, being the ability to meet diverse emerging actors the most relevant challenge.