Voices and Visions from the Streets: Gender Interests and Political Participation among Women Informal Traders in Latin America

The extreme social and economic crisis affecting most Latin American countries has precipitated the expansion of a vast network of collective social movements as a means to cope with the increasing difficulty of life throughout the region. This paper is an examination of the collective struggle of women informal traders as they challenge, through workplace politics, the Peruvian state to address issues of family survival and social reproduction. Although the hierarchical and patriarchal structure of the street-trader union movement limits women's participation, a ‘critical consciousness’ has developed among women traders both in the rank-and-file and in low-level leadership positions which utilizes both direct and subtle strategies to influence the course of union politics. It is argued that the actions of these ‘grass-roots feminists’ to address their practical gender interests presupposes a commitment to strategic gender interests. Hence, their activism not only recasts Molyneux's gender-interest model but also transcends the artificial bifurcation that falsely characterizes the Latin American feminist movement. The experiences of women traders in Peru suggest that women's agency in social movements, such as informal sector trade unions, is introducing new ways of organizing social relations and political activity as it transforms entrenched and hegemonic meanings of politics, influence, and power.