This thesis analyses the process of social construction of women's citizenship rights in Peru under the regime of Alberto Fujimori (1990--2000). It builds on an existing body of literature on democratization and women's movements in Latin America, to develop an understanding of the forms of women's mobilization under new democratic regimes and the impact of the pattern of state-society relations on the advancements and losses in women's citizenship rights. More specifically, it shows that the 1990s witnessed a significant range of advances in women's civil and political rights, while social and economic rights suffered serious reversals. It is argued that the strategies and opportunities of different sectors of the women's movement in Peru, as well as the objectives pursued by the state under Fujimori's rule, combined to generate this evolution of women's citizenship. The forms of mobilization of these different sectors followed the course of their own constraints and choices, while they were also importantly shaped by the broader political framework: a neopopulist model of political rule together with the implementation of a neoliberal program of structural adjustment and liberalization. The influence of a set of international factors also contributed to structuring the political incentives and resources of the different actors involved in the social construction of women's citizenship in Peru. The thesis concludes that the democratic or authoritarian nature of the political regime as such cannot explain the pattern of construction of women's citizenship rights, as witnessed by an increased space of women in the public sphere and advances in civil and political rights under the restricted version of political democracy which characterized most of Fujimori's rule. Contrary to the literature on other Latin American women's movements, which detected a marginalization of women's movements in the political sphere following the transitions to d

No description available.