Women of the Andes (Women and Culture Ser.; Patriarchy and Social Change in Two Peruvian Towns)

Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A.: University Of Michigan Press, 1981. First Edition . Trade Paperback. Very Good. 6" x 9. 241 Pages Indexed. Some minor staining on front cover near top of spine and top of first few pages and carried through to top page edges. Otherwise appears hardly read. No marks, stamps, or names. Very tight and square. Pilar is a capable, energetic merchant in the small Peruvian highland settlement of Chiuchin. Genovena, an unmarried day laborer, faces an impoverished old age without children to support her, Mariana is a single mother, without husband or communal land, Carmen is the wife of a prosperous farmer in the agricultural community of Mayobamba, 11,000 feet above Chiuchin in the Andean sierra. These lives form part of interlocking networkd that the authors carefully examine and in doing so they explore the riddle of women's structural subordnation by analyzing the social, political, and economic realities of life in Peru. They examine theoretical explanations of sexual hierachies against the backdrop of life histories. The result is a study that pinpoints the mechanisms perpetuating sexual repression and traces the impact of social change and national policy on women's lives. Contents in Nine Chapers: Mother's Day Ritual Ironies and Realities, Analyzing Women's Subordiantion, Analyzing Women's Subordination Alternative Frameworks, Childbirth Marriage and Family Politics, The Sexual Division of the Economy, Women's Positions in the Agrarian Class System, Consciousness and Participation in a Patriarchal Power Strucdture, Women Social Change and National Development, and the Dynamics of Sexual Subordination. Includes Bibliography and a center section of black and white photographs.