1. Case Study 1. Peru: How Gender-Restrictive Groups May Lose the Legal Battle, but Win the Communications and Cultural War
- Author:
- Juliana Martínez, Ángela Duarte, and María Juliana Rojas
- Publication Date:
- 03-2021
- Content Type:
- Case Study
- Institution:
- Elevate Children Funders Group
- Abstract:
- Peru is the birthplace of one of Latin America’s strongest transnational gender-restrictive movements. Understanding its sociocultural and political context sheds light on the operation of gender-restrictive groups and the rise of neoconservative politics in the region. Lima is geopolitically and strategically important because it hosts the headquarters for various gender-restrictive organizations in the region, including Ceprofarena, the Office for Latin America of the Population Research Institute, Latin American Alliance for the Family, Opus Dei, and Sodalicio de la Vida Cristiana (interview with George Hale, 2020). Therefore, many strategies that instrumentalize children32 to manufacture moral panic and oppose “gender ideology” in countries such as Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile are oftentimes planned or tested in Peru, or implemented in the country after their success elsewhere. Concretely, the Don’t Mess With My Kids (DMWMK) movement33 in Peru is representative of how genderrestrictive groups instrumentalize children to threaten children’s rights, along with gender-justice, in a country with disturbing evidence of gender-based violence and intense sexism. The Peruvian case also illuminates the ways in which gender-restrictive groups identify key battlefields related to women’s and children’s issues—such as Comprehensive Sexuality Education—that they use as a toehold to advance gender-restrictive initiatives in many policy areas and at several political levels.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, Children, LGBT+, Gender Minorities, and Gender
- Political Geography:
- South America and Peru