“Being a woman in Peru”: our criticism of the book by Josefina Miró Quesada and Hugo Ñopo

To be a woman in Peru is to live in a spiral of violence, it is to advance daily through the labyrinth of inequity. I discover nothing affirming this: we know it, the evidence burns the eyes, only the dogmatic of conservative sign elaborate forced explanations to keep the injustice intact. It is true that in recent years we have seen some partial improvements in our way of thinking and acting, but these continue to be insufficient: we are a country that disputes the record of sexual abuse with nations as backward as Ethiopia or Bangladesh, we continue to maintain a staggering annual figure of femicides and an important sector of society is convinced that a woman deserves punishment for disobeying her husband or that rape can be understood by the way she decides to dress.

The facts are known, reiterated in their horror. However, the causes of the iniquitous situation of Peruvian women are usually explained with a sometimes pernicious simplicity, which does not provide an adequate perspective or real solutions to the cruelties and crimes with which we live and which have become customary among us. That is why “Being a woman in Peru. Where are we and where are we going”, an essay signed by the lawyer Josefina Miró Quesada and the economist Hugo Ñopo, is very important. It is a book as short as it is substantial, didactic and illuminating, which combines a large load of data with an analysis that interprets them and offers a view that does not get bogged down in ideological biases, suggesting actions and measures aimed at changing a reality with which no rational person can agree.

Ñopo and Miró Quesada join forces to understand the reason for these disgraceful conditions. Its most terrible facet is gender-based violence. From the rigor of the figures presented, we are warned that the underreporting of complaints for that crime makes it difficult to establish its real magnitude; however, this approach manages to elucidate the beliefs and risk factors that make the panorama so complex. A series of circumstances –individual, family, community and social– interact with specific facts –mistreatment in childhood, excessive alcohol consumption, that the aggressor earns a lower salary than that of the victim– to trigger a latent conflict and usually tragic.

To all this we must add a forceful aspect: the masculine vulnerability that wishes to maintain its privileges, that does not tolerate an aspiring woman to reject the resigned and submissive roles that society imposes on her. Many times death is the price of such daring. The authors assure that it is not with greater penalties that we will be able to stop or reduce the rate of femicides, but with prevention, to which only 20% of the budget allocated to combat gender violence is dedicated.

Another valuable fact that we must take into account is that, during the months of campaigns carried out with the aim of raising awareness about the situation of women, femicides skyrocket up to 37% due to men who see their control compromised on those dates. The solution, of course, is not to stop these campaigns, but to be careful how they are formulated and carried out.

This book carefully reviews other vectors –work, family and politics–, although perhaps the most interesting chapter due to its conclusions is the one focused on education. There, this paradox is unraveled, which consists of the fact that women, enjoying a higher rate of schooling, receive salaries up to 20% lower than men. The inhomogeneous presence of both genders on university campuses, their propensity to choose less economically valued professions such as arts and humanities, the loss of prestige of the teaching career, which is mostly female, and the lack of inclusive environments where the skills of women girls can develop without preconceptions or hostile contexts constitute a difficult but necessary triad to overcome. It is also a question of consolidating balances: single-sex schools tend to have better results in the areas of science than mixed ones, but it is not feasible to sacrifice the benefits of coeducation, which are many and proven.

Nobody said that the solutions to these problems were easy; In any case, books like “Ser mujer en el Perú” are a propitious tool to discuss them in depth. That’s why you have to read it.

The token

Author: Josefina Miró Quesada and Hugo Ñopo.

Qualification: “Being a woman in Peru. Where are we going and where are we?

Editorial: Planet

Year: 2022.

Pages: 149

Relationship with the authors: cordial.

Assessment: 4 stars out of 5 possible.