This week, I chose to look into more of the background information associated with the marginalization of Andean women. I thought it would be beneficial to look at how the roles of Andean women have been shaped over the years. In the article I will be discussing below, the emphasis is on the historical roles of Andean women in Peru.
According to the author, historically, Andean women in Peru had more power than they do currently. He starts by looking into the roles of Andean women during pre-Inca times. His findings suggested that women in the Andes during that period had political and economic leadership roles in their communities. However, the post-Inca period faded that political power, handing it over to men, and allowed the women to focus more on the economic roles of their communities. The author states that this Inca domination period influenced the creation of gender roles in the Peruvian Andes. Yet, women still carried economic roles for a period of time and both genders could complete each other’s duties without retaliation from power regimes. During that period, production of communities was of most importance. Therefore, the roles of Andean women complemented those of the men, or sometimes were the same, in order to ensure that production.
Issues with gender roles did not truly begin until Spanish colonization in the Andes. After that conquest, women were incapable of holding their previous economic leadership roles because they were withheld access to certain resources. The dynamics of gender roles began to affect “land tenure,” “property ownership,” “social division of classes,” “culture,” and “religion” (p. 235). Women began receiving extremely low wages, but still had to pay taxes even though some could also be denied pay based on their status, i.e. single or widowed. The Spanish colonization also introduced factors associated with Andean women marginalization, such as alcohol. Some men would drink alcohol to the point of abusing their wives, leading to their wives needing to escape those situations and hide in safer areas that were secluded from the rest of their population. Because of those factors, women also began rebelling against Spanish conquest by: 1) keeping their previous values (from Inca and pre-Inca times) in tact by running away and 2) teaching their male children to reject the newly-found Spanish norms.
Source: Lazaro, Juan. 1990. Women and Political Violence in Contemporary Peru. Dialectal Anthropology, 15(2/3), 233-247.