Social Studies and Publications Center, of Peru, Women's Department

An important theme in the discussions of the Latin American women's movement is how to bride the gap between the feminist movement, which has roots mainly among middle-class women, and the growing movement among poor women for their own empowerment and development. The following article which explores this theme, was translated by Isis International from the Spanish version which appeared in Mujer Socieded. vol. 6 no. 10. March 1986. The publications offices are located at Av. Nicolas de Pierola 677. Of. 503 Lima Peru.

Some months ago, the Women's Department of the Social Studies and Publications Center of Peru (Centro de Estudios Sociales Publicacione-CESIP) invited a group of feminists to exchange ideas on the relationship between feminism and women from poor sectors of society. For this occasion  CESlP prepared a 13-page document which served as the basis for two days of discussion.

As it emerged from the talks, one of the most striking realities of the struggle for a better society in Peru at the present moment is the leading role being played by the poor women's movement through their grassroots organizations.

This forum sought to create a space for reflection within feminism to deal with the concerns of the grassroots movement of poor women as it is developing. It also hoped to come up with an integrated approach to promote the development of the women's movement. We are presenting here an excerpt of the document that was prepared in an effort to enrich discussions on this issue.

Hunger: A problem of Class and Gender

Because of their reproductive role, women are assigned the responsibility for food provision and for the general well being of their families. The poor classes are forced lo carry out this responsibility in very unfavorable living conditions with regard to housing, health, etc. With their scanty income, they can just barely satisfy the minimal condition of survival: food

Poverty,  the class condition that affects these women, is at the same time the condition in which they lace their problems as a gender. For instance, the condition of poverty also means very unfavorable circumstances for their maternity. health and sexuality.

Over the past decade. this permanent situation of poverty has become so acute that it is now a condition of real hunger and a threat to life. This condition of hunger is, again, a class condition affecting the poor and not all women. However, it is the condition of under which these women carry out their reproductive responsibilities — bearing children, feeding and caring for their families — and therefore it is the problem of gender for the great majority of women in Lima.

The situation of having to reproduce while living in poverty have led women to organize themselves through a series of activities aimed at providing food for their families. These organizing efforts have paved the way for a series of important experiences for the poor women's movement of Lima.

A key moment for the women's movement was the time of the school strikes of 1978-1979. The massive and militant support of poor women was the decisive element in this struggle.

One of its most important dimensions was that it crossed the individual and private life of each women. Normally there are few who will sacrifice or change their domestic responsibilities and routine to participate in social or political struggles. The women participating in the occupation of the schools could not leave. They could not return to their homes. No cleaning, no washing clothes. They took care of their children only if they had accompanied them in occupying the schools. They cooked only in a common pot and the family ate at the school. They did not return home at night to sleep with their husbands, much to the surprise or fury of the men.

What happened at this time was a break in the domestic space, the tempo of the daily routine, the individual isolation, the authority of the husbands and the constant commitments to their children. There was a was a break on a small scale, in the patriarchal order and in the gap between the private and public worlds.

This experience transformed their relationship with society at least for some of the groups of women who were involved. What usually happens when a struggle ends is that the women return to their homes and kitchens and everything goes back to normal. This did not happen here.

A Women's Movement

The period from 1979 to 1983 is important in the development of a movement which was clearly a women's movement. It was the time of the appearance and growth of "people's kitchens."

"These are organizations created and directed by women to try to define and resolve the problems facing them such as feeding their families. They are autonomous organizations through which women can exercise democracy and self-government. They are a new form of social organization which the women are trying out in order to resolve their problems of reproduction and their personal and social development.

Other ways in which women have been trying to seek collective solutions to their reproductive responsibilities are the marches for water, their rejection of the "food coupons" of the Peoples Action (Accion Popular) government and the marches against hunger. The attempts of the government [Department of New Towns and Urbanization to coordinate and centralize these people's kitchens and other women's organizations date from this time.

Gender Solutions and Feminist Expressions in Poor Women's Organizations

Between 1984 and 1985,  we see contradictory developments. Women were becoming increasingly organized and participating through their organizations in the neighborhoods. At the same time governmental bodies were setting up their own people's kitchens, partially copying those of the women. What they omitted was precisely the autonomous and democratic organization of the women.

The United Left (Izquierda Unida- lU) city government in Lima. by basing the whole of its Emergency City Plan (for alleviating poverty) on the women's organizations, did something of which it was not completely aware. The Cup of Milk Committees, the health committees and the people's kitchens are completely women's organizations.

The lU had an important intuition: in a situation like the one in which we are living, the reproductive sphere occupies an increasingly greater space in survival strategies. The "defense of life " is in good measure the defense of the minimal conditions for reproduction. That is to say, women are playing a key role and are carrying greater political weight than before.

This can be seen in the indisputable space that the peoples kitchens, the Cup of Milk Committees and other women's organizations have gained in the neighborhood organizations. Even though they are not part of the formal structure of the neighborhood organizations, there is no meeting or event which does not include women's concerns.

What the lU has not understood and in this they are similar to their colleagues on the right — is that the poor women's organizations need their autonomy, their own dynamic and development. Because of this the Cup of Milk Committees are not content with receiving and distributing milk, with being mere intermediaries.

In almost all the towns, conflicts have arisen and continue to grow between the women and the patriarchal authoritarianism of the officials who do not want to give them access to the policy, decision-making and administration, that is to power, in the Cup of Milk program.

The poor women's organizations are becoming increasingly important politically. They are the target, objective and coveted goldmine of all the political sectors. Everyone seems to be interested in them. Except feminists.

Over r the past years there has been a clear absence of feminists in a process of great importance. It is an absence which seems to suggest a conscious holding apart, a choice. There certainly are explanations: the external political manipulation, the need to affirm gender demands above all, the rejection of the imposed criterium of "the class" to which we must "subordinate" ourselves according to the opinion of the Left. Women searched for organization which is essentially gender-oriented, feminist.

We must ask: Why not also carry out this search in the forms of organization that women are developing in the poor neighborhoods?

We said at the beginning of this document that poverty and hunger cannot be treated just as conditions of class. They are conditions of gender inasmuch as they are the conditions of reproduction of the majority of women.

We can also affirm that not only are the problems gender-based but so are the solutions found in some of the most significant experiences of the poor women's organizations. The composition of the organizations, the way of formulating and resolving things and of constructing and defining the spaces are undoubtedly women-based and oriented. We do not want to idealize them, nor ignore the numerous and notorious authoritarian leaders, or the manipulation and various intrigues that are also present In organizations of these kind. However, in the majority of cases, the autonomy, the democracy and the solidarity are new and fundamental values — and there is the search for different concrete alternatives, such as the collective preparation of food.

We must also say that the women have proposed gender solutions to their class problems, with the means, resources and style of the women themselves.

We are also interested in the contents and forms with which the women's organizations arc entering into political debates. We have seen that the political and social weight of women is increasing in the poor, urban scene.

The women's organizations are beginning to dispute the terrain of real power in various places — city programs, neighborhood organizations, coordination bodies, political organizations — and arc developing leadership among women. The fight for power is carried out from the defense and recognition of their own women's space, from the intersection of the public and the private which is the context of their organizations and their new alternatives in the sphere of reproduction. The new women leaders are also coming from and find their legitimacy in these spaces. This is even the case with activists within political parties.

What characterizes all the struggles for power in which women's organizations are involved is the struggle for autonomy. Women are searching for their own path and resisting the "guidance" that other institutions, political parties, or the church would like to give them. A fundamental clement of the struggle for autonomy is the permanent domestic conflict with the patriarchal authority of the husbands for which the women receive support from the organizations to which they belong.

These collective, autonomous expressions of searching for alternatives — at least in some specific areas — to the existing patriarchal order lead us to affirm that in the grassroots women's movement there are significant feminist expressions.

These are dearly feminist expressions without a feminist discourse. From another point of view, they are feminist expressions which our movement has not included in its discourse. And we must ask ourselves: Why?