2. *Associate in Liberal Art Degree from North Hennepin Community College *Anthropology Major with double emphasis in both Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology-This should be my last year! *Interested in Primatology and Museum Studies
3. *From Minneapolis, but living in Fargo during school with my boyfriend and my Chihuahua. *Youngest of three girls (there are 14 years between me and my oldest sister; 10 between me and the second oldest.) *Used to want to major in Creative Writing, but after taking an Anthro course years ago I changed my mind. I still write though, just not as often, and not as well as I used to when I thought I was going to be a writer. This is my second Women Studies course, both have been taken at MSUM. I’ll be the first to admit that, even though I am a woman I was never very interested in it, but as I’ve grown older I’ve began to understand the importance of Women Studies classes.
4. Women In Peru Population: 22.4 million Infant Mortality Rate: 52/1000 births Fertility Rate: 3.3
5. Currently… Women in Peru are considered equal to men according to the constitution. Eleven years ago, they passed a law making it a crime (where it had not been before) to discriminate against women. The current legal age of marriage (for both men and women) is 16. It used to be 14. If a divorce should happen between parents, and the children are over 7 years old, then they are divided up by sex. The boys will stay with the father and the girls will stay with the mother. Women make up 17.3% of head of household.
6. Women have very little say in land ownership. They can’t really own land, and they have no legal rights in selling the land they “own” with their husbands, though the constitution claims equal ownership for both men and women. There is a great deal of violence against women in Peru. Centers just for women who have experienced violence/abuse have been built, but little seems to be changing in the manner of violent actions towards women. Spousal rape is illegal just the same as rape. Psychological abuse is more common towards women than physical abuse. 80,000 cases of abuse towards women in Peru
7. Women and Healthcare Wealthy and middle class women have access to basic healthcare including maternal care. Poor women and women of indigenous background (or both) don’t have the same assurance of maternal care. Many pregnant women from the poorer regions die during pregnancy/birth as do the babies they were pregnant with due to lack of proper medical care. They die from things such as infection, preeclampsia, hemorrhage, etc… All things that are easily avoided with the proper medical care. “Mermaid” Baby. Born in Peru in 2005
8. Women and Agriculture Women are involved in a great deal of agriculture throughout Peru’s different regions. However the amount and the exactitudes changes from region to region. In general it can be said that women are solely responsible for the household tasks, the processing and the marketing of agricultural living. It should be noted that the amount of women living in rural, agriculture heavy areas has declined by nearly half in the recent years.
9. Some problems-Even with the help There are organizations created by and ran by women to help other women in Peru. Some of them are to teach women about their rights in their country, teach them to read and write, teach them art, teach the indigenous women Spanish, and help to get food to the extreme poor, but all of these organizations are in Lima, miles and miles away from the poor, indigenous women. Though the constitution has formally given women equal rights there are many traditions and social ideas towards women that are going to take a long time to change and that are going to keep Peruvian woman down in many ways despite their advances. I see a lot of the problems still in the poorer and/or more rural parts of Peru. Note: In searching for the current status on women in Peru, I came up with a lot of websites that offered “singles tours” in Peru, Lima mostly, with taglines referring to picking “your best choice amigo” and “Peruvian women do things American women won’t do.”
