Gender’s Place in the Andes: Toward a Decolonial Feminist Practice

• In Event: Women in movement

Abstract

Recent research on desigualdad in Peru has brought new attention to class and race inequalities in the nation. This has been particularly significant at a time when racialized practices have gained public notice and been the subject of protest and debate. Simultaneously, Peruvian feminist and gender activists have been active in calling for political inclusion among diverse constituencies in the nation, including indigenous and Afro-Peruvians who have frequently been under-represented. Nonetheless, these two strands of activism and scholarship rarely have been brought into the same conversation. In this paper I will seek to put these strands into productive conversation, drawing on my recent ethnographic research in Peru as well as interviews with and writings of local scholar-activists. I will argue that we need to question the geopolitics of knowledge both globally and locally in order to widen the discussion and to work toward a decolonial practice of gender, race, and class analysis in Peru and elsewhere in Latin America Moreover, I will suggest that bringing gender more fully into the conversation concerning inequality has the power to transform our understanding of its profound entanglements with race and class in the Americas.

Author

• Florence E Babb, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill