Elizabeth Dasso, Peru-Mujer

Peru-Mujer (Peru Woman) is a private nonprofit association, which has worked since March 8, 1979 to promote equal opportunities and rights for women and men in creating social change. The association carries out programs of study and action regarding health, nutrition, income-generating projects, and social services, working from an interdisciplinary and participatory perspective. All of its resources are directed preferentially toward poor grassroots women from both urban and rural areas in Peru.

Peru-Mujer sponsors workshops on empowerment of women and develops materials that are culturally appropriate for the participants and also take into account their low literacy level. The association's Legal Team has developed a model for legal services, stemming from the experience of offering workshops for women on legal issues. These workshops aimed to secure the legal rights of the women participating and thereby establish an atmosphere of debate, reflection, and respect for women. By June 1984, this work had developed into the Women's Legal Services Project. In its first two years, this project concentrated its efforts in the pueblos jovenes* in northern Lima, in the neighborhoods of Independencia, Payet, Ermitano, and Tahuantinsuyo.

Since 1986, we have extended our work to other pueblos jovenes in northern Lima, including Comas Collique and Valle Chillon, and to the district of Surquillo in the eastern part of the city.

The main objective of the legal project is to train paralegal outreach workers, women who have been chosen by their grassroots organizations to organize legal services in their own communities. A training program of seven months, followed by seven more of practical experience, prepares the women to become effective advocates for women's rights in the poor neighborhoods.

The paralegals offer legal consultations and defense services for individuals. They coordinate legal cases, preparing the necessary documents and assuring that everything is in order for the judicial proceeding. Technical assistance for their work is provided by law students, under the supervision of a lawyer who signs the legal papers. Most of the individual cases involve alimony, birth certificates, or domestic violence.

On a community level, the paralegals provide informational talks and assistance with public campaigns. They produce a radio program and serve as resource people in educational and organizing efforts concerned with human rights and women's rights issues. While the paralegals do not replace a lawyer, they play an active role in securing legal defense and justice for those who are most marginalized in society. What has been created is thus an alternative approach to providing legal services, using a popular education perspective in which grassroots women are empowered to exercise their legal rights by and for themselves.

Most of the women who use these services are women heads of households, abandoned mothers, women who have been battered by their spouses, and women who are unemployed and have no identity papers. Fifteen percent are illiterate and 70 percent are semi-literate. To contribute to the household income, most of these women work outside the home as street vendors or take in laundry. They may participate in food programs through their jobs or receive benefits from such government programs as OFASA or the Temporary Income Program (PAIT). They find a thousand different ways to support their families. They are also involved in community projects like laying pipes for water and drainage or building community centers, as well as fundraising schemes such as bingo, lotteries, and sales of cooked food.

The Next Phase

Women are the most active and least recognized members of their communities. They live under conditions of poverty, humiliation, violence, oppression, and subordination. These problems require more of a solution than the legal services project could possibly address, and so we began seeing the need to organize more women to work for women's rights. The first women's conference was organized in Independencia with the theme of Defending Women's Rights. Eighty women attended the meeting, representing mothers clubs, community kitchens, the Glass of Milk Committee, the Committee in Struggle, and neighborhood organizations. The agenda included:

1. Welcome and audiovisual presentation on the paralegal outreach workers.
2. Discussion of women's issues in small groups. Each group addressed a theme such as abandoned families, domestic violence, building community, single mothers, abandoned children, rape, women without identity papers.
3. Lunch
4. Plenary session, in which each group presented their work from the morning session.
5. Role plays: How can we organize ourselves to solve our problems?
6. Conclusions from the conference.
7. Election of an organizing commission for the Committees to Defend Women's Rights.
8. Distribution of certificates of attendance and closing of the conference.

Participants in the meeting shared their opinions and their problems and proposed a solution: to organize Committees to Defend Women's Rights (CODEMs—Comites por la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer). They ended the meeting by electing eight representatives to develop the objectives and work plan for these committees. All the participants agreed to carry this decision back to their organizations.

The objectives of this conference were:

• To promote the development of new forms of organization for learning about women's rights, educating the community, and securing these rights.
• To bring about more meetings where women could discuss women's rights.
• To ensure that women and their rights will be respected in the community even after the legal rights project is over.

Implementing the Committees

The establishment of the organizing commission in March 1986 was a first step toward building a new type of organization dedicated to women's rights. On April 19, 120 organizations were invited to participate in a second women's conference. This time it was the commission that sponsored the event. This conference took up the proposals developed by the commission, made some changes, approved a plan for joint work, and established eight CODEMs, in the pueblos jovenes of Melchorita, El Volante, El Milagro, El Angel, Ermitano, Independencia, Tahuantinsuyo, and Valle Chillon. Each of the committees in turn elected a coordinator.

Following the conference, the coordinators met with the Peru-Mujer legal team to receive technical assistance in starting up the CODEMs. The development of each CODEM was in the hands of the coordinators and committee members, with each group completely autonomous.

The joint work plan approved by the conference called for community education regarding the objectives of the CODEMs, which included:

• Putting into practice equal rights between women and men, demonstrating that this is a realistic possibility (in work, knowledge, education, information, etc.).
• Preventing physical abuse of women.
• Offering legal support to community women, especially to abandoned mothers, rape victims, and the very poorest households.
• To create community services for women according to their most pressing needs, for example daycare and work opportunities, among other things. Such services would permit women to participate more fully in the community. Neighborhoods that do not have such services could coordinate with nearby groups.
• Perform educational outreach with all of the women of Independencia to inform them of their rights, reaching them through such forums as Mothers Clubs, the Glass of Milk Committee, community kitchens, and other women's organizations. Such efforts could be extended to women of other communities, such as Valle Chillon.
• Work towards the coming together of all of the women of Independencia and Valle Chillon (organized and independent).

The joint work plan also established the structure for the CODEMs. Each community would have its own committee. Each committee would have a coordinator, and all the coordinators would meet together as an assembly. The assembly would choose one of its members to act as director and another to act as secretary and keep records. The coordinators would be responsible for keeping their committees informed of all plans agreed to by the assembly, and would report back to the assembly on the activities in each community. The coordinators would also receive training in family and criminal law.

Another goal established in the joint work plan was to provide family programs to prevent domestic violence. In addition, it was decided to spread the word about the existence of the CODEMs through leaflets, posters, and speeches in the markets and parishes; to distribute information about women's rights; and to use whistles, leaflets, and posters to warn women of dangerous areas.

CODEM Activities

In September, a third conference was held to exchange experiences and evaluate the achievements of each CODEM. This meeting was attended by fifty-seven women, all CODEM members. The agenda was as follows:

1. Reception of the participants and distribution of conference materials.
2. Brief summary of the achievements of the first and second conferences.
3. Role plays in small groups on working with women.
4. Presentations on experiences of working with women's organizations for the defense of women's rights.
5. Lunch break.
6. Presentation by Peru-Mujer: How can we organize ourselves to better defend our rights?
7. Plans for community work.
8. Conclusions.
9. Closing and distribution of certificates of attendance.

At this meeting, the participants decided to meet regularly in each CODEM with an advisor from Peru-Mujer, to learn more about women's rights and discuss the situation of women as a gender.

Following this first stage, a process of organizational development took place in each CODEM to lay the groundwork for future work in the community. Each CODEM prepared a timeline of the activities it would undertake; these are listed below.

1. Workshops were held on constitutional, family, criminal, labor, and community law with reference to their impact on women. These programs used a booklet entitled "Coloring My Rights."
2. A slogan contest was called for November 25, the Day Against Violence Against Women; more than 100 women submitted entries. The Peru-Mujer legal team served as the judge, awarding a cash prize to the first place winner and choosing six slogans for printing on T-shirts. Two thousand T-shirts were printed up and the proceeds used to subsidize legal fees for women needing support. Each shirt also displayed the name of the author of the slogan. The winning slogans were:
   • Este donde este; mis derechos hare prevalecer (Wherever I am, my rights will prevail). The graphic for this shirt was a bird.
   • Igualdad solo pedimos y nuestros derechos exigimos (We're asking for equality, demanding our rights). The graphic was a women's symbol.
   • Aprendamos a querernos y los golpes venceremos (If we learn to love ourselves we will triumph over beatings). The graphic was a butterfly.
   • No denunciar los maltratos es cargar con un elefante (Keeping silent about beatings is like carrying an elephant). The graphic was an elephant.
   • No mas violencia contra la mujer y el niño (Stop violence against women and children). The graphic was a woman and child.
   • Peru-Mujer nos enseno que querer es poder en los derechos de la mujer (Peru-Mujer taught us that loving is power when it comes to women's rights). The graphic was a profile.
3. Workshops on violence were held in women's groups. These programs created a space for reflection and healing for participants. The groups drew up a list of types of violence against women:

• Telling stories about adventures with other women.
• Mocking; disparaging actions, attitudes, and ideas.
• Denying affection.
• Calling women helpless, crazy, cows.
• Criticizing, discounting, blaming.
• Demanding attention.
• Making accusations and threats.
• Harassing and spying.
• Isolation and living in fear.
• Emotional dependency.
• Economic dependency.
• Husbands who are jealous and compete with the children.
• Men who lie to a woman, telling her they will stay with her.
• Yelling and making insults, publicly and privately.
• Damaging the woman's belongings.
• Denying women the freedom to come and go.
• All forms of physical violence: slapping women around, pushing, choking, kicking, punching, pulling hair.

The groups discussed whether there was one form of violence that was more humiliating than the others. They concluded that every manifestation of violence was equally humiliating to women, and agreed that they needed to talk about this issue with more women.

4. All the CODEMs together organized a Women's Rights Day with skits and a panel discussion. This was a very productive gathering, in which women celebrated their joys in many ways.
5. The final activity was an evaluation of CODEM activities, using an educational game developed by Peru-Mujer called "The Questioning People."

As a result of this second stage of providing technical assistance and follow-up to the CODEM groups, we decided that it was important to institutionalize the CODEMs within already existing organizations. This would mean including one more secretary or otherwise adapting the structure of the mothers clubs, neighborhood groups, community kitchens, and the like. In this way, defending women's rights would become an integral part of the community organization. To move toward this goal, we planned a workshop on Women, Rights, and Popular Organization. Participants included the CODEM coordinators, the paralegal outreach workers, and the leaders of the neighborhood and women's organizations. Through this event everyone's energies were joined in a larger strategy for defending women's rights.

Evaluation

In spite of the conditions they live under—poverty, unemployment, lack of basic services including housing, water, health care—women have a lively interest in learning more about their rights. Thus in Peru—the country of machismo, of racism, of segregation of the humblest and most vulnerable members of society—women are emerging as a new force for democracy. In the popular sectors, "law" and "justice" are usually considered to be part of the machinery of oppression, exploitation, and abuse of authority. An alternative vision of empowering women to claim their legal rights for themselves, through their own popular forms of organization and expression, has introduced a new element that can change shift the balance of forces.

Even more women might have joined this process, but government income assistance programs like PAIT and PAD take up all of the time of their women participants. This factor also explains why there were fewer participants in the third conference.

Among the errors we made was overestimating the possibility for developing an autonomous women's organization. Many of the women we reached already belonged to other organizations; meeting in CODEM meant adding on one more responsibility. It was easier for the CODEM groups to operate with ongoing assistance from a member of Peru-Mujer, since then they could rely on some help in completing their tasks.

One of the most positive outcomes of this work has been the changes in women's attitudes towards their spouses. For some, the discussion groups offered a lot of self-affirmation. Others came to make decisions that were questioned by their husbands, with the result that they withdrew from CODEM. Those who stayed in the groups were even more convinced of the importance of reaching out to other women to prevent domestic violence and to raise their children in an egalitarian atmosphere.

Today the challenge is to integrate the experience of the CODEM groups into the ongoing work of existing organizations. This means moving from internal discussions within CODEM to discussions that also include individual men, neighborhood leaders, and the local authorities. It means working toward a perspective of respecting and guarding women's rights as part of community life. We believe that this endeavor will contribute to the creation of a new society and a new way of life.

Members of the Peru-Mujer legal team who have offered technical assistance to the CODEMs include Begona Subiria, Elsa Palacios, Giovanna Vargas, and Carmela Bardales, who are students of social work and psychology.

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