Institutions and Gender Empowerment in the Global Economy: The Peruvian Case, 1990–2005

Development orientations changed radically in Peru from 1990 to 2005 and institutional changes took place to move it toward a market-led economy. Do liberal institutions facilitate or hamper the empowerment of marginalized groups, such as the majority of women in Peru? Trends in the participation of Peruvian women in the economy and labor markets show ambivalent outcomes for women's empowerment. While the struggle for setting a market-led economy is producing an increasing pressure for women's labor, it does not necessarily translate into women's empowerment in all aspects and among all Peruvian women. In highly unequal societies like the Peruvian, women's empowerment seems differentiated as far as the institutional changes of the 1990's did not take into account the general unfavorable starting conditions for women's human capital formation and the particular exclusion of indigenous women. So far, liberal institutions in labor markets seem to have brought about the feminization of flexible, informal, lowly qualified, and hidden labor, tending to make working Peruvian women a “mass” of unorganized, low-wage, temporary workers without labor rights and with little choice and voice in labor markets.