Gendered Labor in Rural Peru: Linking Formality and Political Subjectivity

• In Event: Negotiating the State: Citizen Demands and Marginal Activisms through Engagement with Development and Policy

Abstract

This essay examines women’s work for government and development organizations in the Huanta region of Ayacucho, Peru, suggesting that while women there are pigeonholed into lower-paying positions, they are able to use temporary jobs with local institutions to influence development. Huanta was subject to considerable rural emptying during the 1980s warfare and is now experiencing the effects of a shift to export-based agriculture, including a growing percentage of landless citizens. Women have been forced to greatly diversify their sources of income, but, due to contextual characteristics including the proximity of the VRAE jungle, are turning to precarious but formal jobs. Studies of neoliberal restructuring have repeatedly documented women’s increased labor participation as coupled with disproportionate representation in informal work; this is not quite the case in Huanta. While men migrate to the VRAE to work in the lucrative coffee, cacao and coca production, women supplement service-sector jobs by working for the municipality, NGOs and welfare programs. I examine their work in road construction, stove installation, and government-sponsored data collection to demonstrate the ramifications of such divisions of labor gendered political subjectivities. While men and women express differential attitudes towards state and non-state institutions, with men’s distrust potentially impacting women’s work negatively, some women were able to use the opportunities available to influence local development and statecraft. In these cases they were active participants in local power struggles and determining policy outcomes.

Author

• Mary Elena Wilhoit, Northwestern University