Social Dynamics,Gendered Subjectivities,and Surreptitious Acts of Agency From Women to Face Intimate Partner Violence in a Rural Community of Peru

Abstract

The article analyzes women's inner subjective processes while engaged in male-to-female intimate partner violence (IPV) situations. Through in-depth interviews with 12 women who had suffered violence in a rural community in Peru, it examines three topics: social dynamics that simultaneously contribute to resist within and openly question IPV, the transformations of hegemonic femininity in the community and the implications on their gendered subjectivities, and women's surreptitious acts and processes of agency to recalibrate power within their situation of IPV. In conclusion, women experience inner psychic tensions about themselves, their partners, and their relationships, which enables them to question IPV while resisting within the violent situation.

Keywords

intimate partner violence subjectivity agency resistance Peru

Introduction

In Peru, 62.2% of women declared that they had suffered some form of violence from their husband or partner (National Institute of Statistics and Informatics [INEI], 2017). Furthermore, in 2020, there were 132 victims of femicide and 204 femicide attempts (Defensoría del Pueblo, 2020). Between January and April 2021, Defensoría del Pueblo (2021) reported 47 cases of femicide. Most were committed by women's male partners or their former male partners.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a widespread structural phenomenon¹ and a public health issue globally. This is not an exception for the Latin America region (Sarabia, 2018). In situations of IPV, women are subjugated to a pattern of domination that is not limited to physical violence, but also to psychological subjugation and coercive control. These multifaceted dominant acts create a sense of entrapment and hinders women's autonomy, liberty, dignity, and social support (Stark, 2012). However, as it occurs around the world, in the Peruvian society, the hegemonic narrative tends to perceive women involved in IPV as passive subjects or even as responsible for it as if they enjoyed and/or provoked it. Women are often criticized for their “setbacks and incoherences,” all of which generate feelings such as guilt or shame (Fernández et al., 2002; Nóblega & Muñoz, 2009; Vásquez, 2015).

This article explores the narratives of 12 women who had suffered or were in a situation of male-to-female IPV in a rural community in Peru. The research was framed in the Reconstruyéndonos² community-action project conducted by the Academic Department of Social Responsibility (DARS) of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) in La Garita Rural Village (R.V.) (Velázquez, 2016). La Garita R.V. is a small centro poblado³ formed by second- and third-generation migrants from Coastal and Andean areas. Many inhabitants work in the region's agricultural-exports industry or informal economies and could be defined as a low-income community. In reference to Reconstruyéndonos, the project started in 2008 and aimed to fortify La Garita’s community psycho-social reconstruction after the (6.9 intensity Richter scale) August 2007 Peruvian earthquake. The project focused on the community's social organization. However, women from La Garita R.V. who participated in this project also used the group meetings to discuss their experiences of IPV. To respond to participants’ emotional needs, we organized individual systematic meetings with all the women who reported this situation, intending to accompany their emotional processes. In parallel, we invited them to participate in this study; thus, the article analyzes the participants’ stories, who openly accepted to participate in the research.

Theoretical Perspectives

To analyze IPV, first, it is necessary to discuss the main debates constructed by Peruvian scholars, who had focused on the concepts of hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1987, 1995; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005; Haywood et al., 2018) and emphasized femininities (Messerschmidt, 2004) and their role in the dynamics of violent relationships. Although Peru is a socio-cultural diverse country, most research has focused on urban or urbanized areas, homogenizing gendered power relationships, which may tend to make invisible the nuances, contradictions, or differences. In that sense, Peruvian scholars identify that the privileged masculine role is as a “provider” and “head of the household” (Ale, 2010; Fuller, 2001; Polo, 2011). Moreover, men's socially naturalized characteristics are unfaithfulness, alcohol consumption, the repression of their affections, and the use of violence. Socially, men's masculinity is systematically questioned, particularly by peers; therefore, men must constantly reaffirm and perform their masculinity, as expected, to feel secure. To accomplish this, men learn throughout their socialization process that they need to demonstrate their sexual achievements with women and distance themselves from femininity (Fuller, 2001, 2012; Polo, 2011) and homosexuality (Ale, 2010; Cáceres et al., 2002; Polo, 2011).

Furthermore, research suggests that in the case of the constitution of femininities, the Catholic Church has a profound impact in Latin American societies, and as Pastor (2010) suggests, “Marianist” feminine identity (linked to Virgin Mary) has been socially legitimized. In that sense, it is expected for women to perform what Messerschmidt (2004) has defined as emphasized femininity: to be complimentary, compliant, and subordinate to hegemonic masculinity.

Research in Peruvian settings indicates that in order for women to be socially valued they should be submissive, patient, empathetic, and responsible for reproducing welfare for their families, partners, and communities. Generally, women's emphasized femininity is associated with the “woman-wife” identity, imposing on women the idea that they should obey their partner and have sexual intercourse even when they do not feel like it (Alcalde, 2014). Women are expected to be sexually shy (Fuller, 2005; Ruiz Bravo, 2003), and their bodies and sexuality are seen as spaces of male dominance. Women's bodies do not belong to them but to their parents, brothers, partners (Kogan, 2009; Ruiz Bravo, 2003). Indeed, motherhood and the mandate “to be there for others” are spaces of social recognition. Consequently, the satisfaction of their own needs is subsumed to the satisfaction of their family, children, and partners, becoming—most of the time—an overshadowed subject (Cáceres et al., 2002; Fuller, 1993). Additionally, there is a shared social imagery that women “depend” on their husbands, that they cannot manage themselves on their own, or that they cannot be entirely and uniquely responsible for their children (Ruiz Bravo, 2003).

In the Peruvian context, where IPV is naturalized, and femicide cases are among the highest in Latin America, men control and impose their partners’ authority (Alcalde, 2014; Vásquez, 2015). The traditional social mandate establishes that men should expect total obedience from their partners. There is the perception that the use of violence could be an effective way to discipline their partner when they feel a threat to their authority, that is, when women have been unfaithful or have “failed” to fulfill the “feminine” chores they are responsible for inside the home (Cáceres et al., 2002; Ramos, 2006; Velázquez, 2002). Consequently, a traditional, intimate, inter-gendered relationship positions men with authority over women's decisions about their displacement, bodies, and sexuality, through physical, psychological, financial, and sexual violence (Alcalde, 2014; Fuller, 2005; Ruiz Bravo, 2003; Velázquez, 2002).

Although the ideas mentioned above suggest a fixed notion of power relationships, Peruvian scholars also emphasize that gender mandates are not rigid (Alcalde, 2014; Fuller, 2005; Ruiz Bravo, 2003). Thus, masculinities are not always empowered and dominant, and women are not necessarily subordinate and oppressed (Haywood et al., 2018). Nevertheless, in the Peruvian context, it appears that in urban areas the hegemonic norms still provide a valid framework to analyze hierarchical gendered relationships and positions, forming complex patterns of subordination and domination.

Violence against women causes subjective and social destructiveness (Organización Mundial de la Salud [OMS] y Organización Panamericana de la Salud [OPS], 1998; Segato, 2003) and profound mental health conflicts (Hirigoyen, 2006; Velázquez, 2002). However, women do not remain unscathed or passive subjects; contrarily, they perform agency acts to face violent situations (Segato, 2003). In these scenarios, they question themselves, their male partners, and their intimate relationships (Fernández, 1993). Even though power is a set of relationships and processes that dominate and subordinate the subject, it also provides the conditions for subjects to exist, become self-aware, and be agents (Butler, 1997; Foucault, 1991).

The aforementioned ideas resonate with Lugones’ (2005) conceptualization about oppression. The author says that oppression is not total; the oppression–resistance relationship must be analyzed as dynamic, allowing one to recognize activity within the oppressive figures. In this sense, the western conceptualization of agency and resistance—where a sense of responsibility turns into intentional and conscious decision-making—must be reconfigured to create a more complex definition that recognizes women-active subjectivities. The author defines women's sense of agency as their resistant living experience within oppressive circumstances. The exercise of active subjectivity makes transformation conceivable and congruent with domination processes (Lugones, 2005). Women show acts of resistance, which, as stated by Abu-Lugod (quoted in Alcalde, 2014), are not necessarily independent from or circumscribed outside the power system they are trying to change. It does not always mean getting rid of or trying to transform power completely. Acts of resistance can only exist within the strategic field of power relationships as they result from the same power they oppose (Foucault, 1978).

In other words, it is critical to shift from the static definition of women as victims and move beyond by recognizing women's power and resistance within violent scenarios (Van Schalkwyk et al., 2014). Indeed, women's subjectivities do not move from victim to agent in a linear progression (Van Schalkwyk et al., 2014); they act in an ambivalent position within the gender system (Lugones, 2005; Segato, 2003). They are part of the symbolic economy of power; nevertheless, at the same time, they are continually resisting as social and psychic subjects capable of being autonomous and creators of well-being spaces. In this regard, women's life experiences express the ambivalent dynamics of subordination and free agency (Segato, 2003). Therefore, women live their agentic performance in tension. Women's changes, transformations, and transits are made amidst daily opposition, disapproval from society and confrontation with the social norms. However, women face various invisible subordination and subjectivity control mechanisms that coexist, in tension, with different types of agency and resistance (Alcalde, 2014; Fernández, 1993; Ruiz Bravo, 2003).

Scholars such as Mahmood (2008)—who is critical of what has been usually defined as agency by the mainstream Western feminist academy—state that agency is historically and culturally constructed. She redefines it as the capacity to make changes in oneself. Considering cultural specificities, agentic actions can vary; passiveness and subtle acts, from a progressive point of view, could be a form of agency within a particular context, discourse, and structure of subordination. Therefore, agency is observable in acts that create (progressive) change and aim to give continuity and stability. Agency is not only the subversion of norms or material performativity, but instead, the agency should be understood in the “sensations, and desires that emerge from a practice for the subject, enacting it, to the extent this is possible” (Clare, 2009, pp. 53–54).

Similarly, and regarding IPV in particular, Boonzaier (2008) conducted research that analyzed how women and men in intimate heterosexual relationships gave meaning to the man's violence against his partner. The participants were South African women and men who constituted 15 heterosexual couples. In conclusion, Boonzaier emphasized the importance of recognizing the complexity and ambiguity of IPV's intrapsychic and social processes. In that sense, the construction of femininity and the performance of women who are involved in violent relationships is “shaky, unstable, contradictory and partial, and women (even those who are marginalized in a multiplicity of ways) struggle to negotiate, resist and situate themselves concerning a multiplicity of 'feminine' subjectivities” (p. 202). In the same line, in their research at Rio de Janeiro and San Salvador, Hume and Wilding (2020) suggest that individual agency of women living a situation of IPV is complex and often contradictory strategies. For the authors, agency is a process, not an end goal. Without recognizing the advances in the dynamic and lived process, and its contradictions, women's performances may be seen as passive or simplistically positioned as victims. The authors refer to the importance to recognize “small acts” (p. 15) of everyday life and the agentic practices that suppose ongoing processes of subtle transformations.

As Black et al. (2020) manifest, it is through acts of adaptation, agency, and resistance that women living IPV are able to regain some control and safety for themselves and their children. As the authors suggest, it is to acknowledge how women resist from within violent situations and gain some control from a situation that it seems they do not have any. In this regard, women's acts of resistance and agencies are not linear, and possibilities of liberation or transformation are lived subjectively with excitement but also with fear, anger, or shame (Lugones, 2005). Therefore, women's “inner psychic conflicts” must be recognized because denying or diminishing them eliminates the opportunity to understand the subjective dimension and identify their processes toward liberation (Lugones, 2005).

In this article, we argue that women involved in IPV are not passive subjects. Although these women remain in violent relationships, women's subjectivity moves in an ambivalent manner and constantly reconfigures their positionality toward the situation. Although it seems that women stay in the relationship, they are constantly questioning it (in a subtle or open manner). For this article, we will use the concept of “surreptitious acts and processes of agency” to refer to women's actions with the tools they can encounter (Ruiz Bravo, 2003). Acknowledging the surreptitious acts and processes of agency helps to recognize what is not readily observable: the subjective dimension and the subtle, almost invisible actions undertaken within the oppressive circumstances. It is too simplistic to suggest that women may only engage in two possible paths toward IPV: staying or ending it.

Method

The research has been developed in La Garita R.V. Specifically, participants were eleven women from La Garita R.V. who had suffered or were involved in IPV. Engaging with such complex topics as IPV leads to the conduction of research processes with empathy, respect, vulnerability, and flexibility toward participants’ emotional movements and needs. For that matter, the study followed the principles of feminist research, engaging in recognition of power relations and reflexivity. Firstly, we argue that engaging in a community action-research is also a political challenge. It involves acknowledging participants as active and dynamic members of the process to understand the context, necessities, and resources (Winkler et al., 2009). Therefore, the research topic has been previously addressed and explicitly discussed. It is an issue that participants were willing and eager to discuss in intimate, secure spaces.

Moreover, as researchers, we engaged in a systematic reflexive process to be aware of the power relationship between ourselves and the participants. Our position as private university scholars may have established symbolic and concrete distances between participants and ourselves, particularly in such an unequal country as Perú. Given the complex topic and the symbolic and material inequalities, for us, as researchers, it was essential to create an emotionally safe environment where women felt embraced and secure. Before accepting to be a part of the research, all participants attended individual and group meetings with the project Reconstruyendonos. Therefore, the individual interviews with participants took place after four years of working together and only when a transparent horizontal relationship had been constructed. Thus, the researchers conveniently selected participants after they openly discussed their IPV situations in different activities of the project Reconstryendonos (the conversation about IPV may have been an informal one or as part of a group activity). In that sense, the time and the quality of the bond between participants and researchers are fundamental to understanding how women agreed to participate in the research and to open the door of their houses to narrate their experiences.

Beyond engaging with emotionally safe spaces, we followed other ethical conditions: the participants were informed about the objectives and process of the research, they explicitly agreed to take part in the study, and participants’ names were changed to ensure anonymity and confidentiality of the information. Additionally, we ensured protective measures considering the guidelines for research on gender violence (WHO, 2016) and the impact on the participants and the researchers. Thus, as researchers, we were trained on IPV themes and how to provide ongoing support for women. Participants’ emotional needs were always prioritized. All of them preferred to talk in their houses during the day time. Hence, the interviews were done when their partners were at work, and we always make sure to do follow-ups to their emotional processes. Moreover, confidentiality was essential during the process. Thus, the audios and transcriptions were only accessible for the researchers.

To contextualize the research, we will briefly describe La Garita R.V. and the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants. La Garita R.V. is one of the 28 rural villages of El Carmen district, located in the southern coast of Peru, in the province of Chincha, Ica region, approximately three hours distance by car from Lima (capital city of Peru). The R.V. has 410 inhabitants and an area of around 23 thousand square meters of rural landscape (Rodríguez, 2018).

La Garita R.V. was founded around 1990 and was severely affected by the earthquake on the southern coast of Peru in 2007. Even though no one lost his or her life in the village, there was massive destruction of the local infrastructure. Besides, it produced psycho-social repercussions such as anxiety, personal, and collective insecurity and mistrust between the villages in the district given the misuse of donations (PUCP’s Psychology Department, 2008).

Most of the inhabitants of La Garita R.V. had been born in the area at the moment of the study. However, due to the region's agricultural-exports industry, La Garita R.V. has also been a space of internal migration from the Andean regions and other departments of the southern coast of Peru looking for economic opportunities. Most of the inhabitants are workers/wage-earners of local agro-industrial companies; a small percentage (6%) work as farmers on their lands, others perform non-agricultural tasks. For example, some women own small grocery stores and/or sell fixed food menus (Bracco & Ruiz Bravo, 2017; DARS, 2010; Rodríguez, 2018).

As for essential services and infrastructure, this area does not have potable water or sanitary infrastructure. La Garita R.V. has electric power, phone lines, and there is internet connection but only through mobile phones (DARS, 2010). There is a preschool and a primary school, but no healthcare post. In the case of any health issue, a health community agent oversees the communal first aid kit, and the inhabitants use traditional healthcare medicine such as rezadores,⁴ bonesetters, among others (DARS, 2014).

Regarding the participants, all of them were born and raised in La Garita R.V. Many have taken up leadership positions in the last few years, particularly in association with the Reconstruyéndonos community-action project (conducted by PUCP) (Velázquez, 2016) and the social organization of their community. The details of social and demographic characteristics are in Table 1.

Table 1.

Description of Participants.

Name	Age	Civil status	Level of education	Occupation	No. of children
Dora	18	Co-habitant	Incomplete High school	Housewife	1
Carola	20	Co-habitant	Complete High school	Farmer/housewife	1
Karen	30	Separated	Incomplete Technical education	Owner of a grocery store/factory laborer/housewife	3
Olivia	31	Single	Complete Elementary school	Housewife	1
Carla	36	Married	Complete High school	Farmer/housewife	2
Diana	37	Married	Incomplete High school	Factory worker/housewife	2
Fausta	41	Co-habitant	Complete Elementary school	Farmer/housewife	2
Ana	43	Married	Complete Elementary school	Farmer/housewife	4
Rebeca	43	Co-habitant	Complete High school	Owner of a grocery store/housewife	4
Norma	52	Married	Complete Technical education	Community agent/housewife	2
Nadia	72	Separated	Complete Elementary school	Housewife	2

The data was collected through participant observation and semi-structured interviews (Hennink et al., 2011). The participant observation enables to collect data about processes and relationships between people, situations, patterns, and contexts. From this approach, we were able to identify the research question and the aims of the research while building some hypotheses on the subject of study. It is important to note that during this process, we recorded two types of field notes: direct observation (descriptions of what we saw, heard, and observed about the context and the participants) as well as personal notes (our feelings, sensations, and positionality). Concerning semi-structured interviews, they were all on a one-to-one basis with one of the research team members, and we had between one to three interviewing sessions at the participants’ homes. We privileged open dialogue, exchanging ideas, and respecting participants’ time, rationalities, and feelings during the research process. This flexibility allowed us to obtain in-depth data of the women's attitudes, values, and beliefs and interpret the different social processes through the women's perspectives (Cruz, 2004).

The analysis of the data was an inductive process that identified, analyzed and developed themes and patterns from the research setting (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Creswell, 2014), aiming to provide an approach to women's subjective processes in dialogue with their social context (Andréu, 2003; Vieytes, 2004). To do so, all the audio recordings were transcribed, coded, and read several times to familiarize ourselves with the narratives (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The data analysis involved constructing themes and categories that responded to the social conditions and subjective processes of women involved in IPV (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Gomes, 2012; Willig, 2013). We focused on the organization, analysis, and reporting of recurring issues or patterns, consistent with thematic analysis (Riessman, 2008).

The data analyzed does not represent all women, and neither do we seek to homogenize Peruvian women or even women at La Garita R.V. It is a case study that portrays a local relational dynamic. Still, it may provide in-depth insights into women's inner processes, contradictions, and ambivalences, providing new perspectives to analyze IPV globally.

Results

In this section, we analyze how women in La Garita R.V. experience inner psychic tensions and ambivalences about themselves as women and mothers, their male partners, and their relationships due to contradictory and opposite social and subjective discourses about gender relations. These tensions enable them to question situations of IPV while resisting within the violent situation. In that sense, women create subtle actions and processes of agency within the situation of violence which recalibrate power within the hegemonic gendered relationship. To provide an analytical order we focus on three points: (a) social dynamics that simultaneously contribute to resist within and openly question IPV; (b) the transformations of hegemonic femininity in the community and the implications on their gendered subjectivities; and (c) women's surreptitious acts and processes of agency to recalibrate power within their situation of IPV.

Social Dynamics That Simultaneously Contribute to Resist Within and Openly Question IPV

This section aims to analyze four social dynamics that participants refer to as associated with their positionality toward IPV. The participants reflect on Family Socialization during Childhood; Relationship with their Male Partner; The Perception of Motherhood in the Community; and Socioeconomic Conditions. The aforementioned social dynamics have been defined as aspects that simultaneously contribute to Tolerate and Question IPV.

Family Socialization During Childhood

This social dynamics refers to what participants observed, experienced, and learned during their childhood in their family settings with their primary caregivers. Women in this group argued that the privileged feminine gendered mandate was to be a caregiver in their homes, which put them in the private sphere and excluded other possible roles. As Karen narrates:

As big sister, I had to watch for my brothers, they were the spoilt ones … I was inside the house doing everything, my mum used to work, and I was responsible for doing the laundry, bathing them and changing them, I was not able to go to the street. (Karen, 30 years)

Karen reflects on her role in her household compared to her brothers. She said she was responsible for the household chores and caring responsibilities, while her brothers were the spoilt ones. This situation prevented her from going outside her house, to the street, to the public sphere. The quote above is an example of what Peruvian scholars had already suggested (Cáceres et al., 2012; Fuller, 1993; Ruiz Bravo, 2003; Velázquez, 2002) that it seems that generally women create their identity and seek social recognition when assuming their role as care reproducers in the private sphere. In this case, their family socialization during childhood has repercussions in identifying and performing in their adult lives, primarily as caregivers within their homes. Therefore, by learning that the roles and attributes of men and women are different (Lagarde, 1990), they tend to naturalize the fact that their partners limit the deployment of qualities and actions that “do not correspond to them as women” (study, work, participate in the public sphere). In particular, learning that women's work is secondary and that it harms their “true roles” matches what their partners propose, so they accept their partners’ position. Sometimes, this could lead them to stop working, putting them at a disadvantage with their partners and making it difficult to separate from them in cases of IPV.

Additionally, participants stated that young girls, during their family socialization, are “taught” about remaining by their partner's side despite “hard times” (generally, they are their first and unique sexual partner), which means staying with them despite the infidelities and the psychological and physical violence their male partners can exert toward them.

If they were given a drunken husband, a womanizer, it is their luck, they say, what are they going to do? … Some say they have to live with what they have been given.” (Karen, 30 years)

As Karen points out, in the R.V., there is a common belief that you have to live with what they have been given. In a way, it does not matter the kind of husband women have, it is their luck, they have to stay with them. Even more, the idea of given and luck resonates with the idea of destiny. Thus, since their childhood, the participants are constructing a role model of how women and men “should perform like” as a couple. Nonetheless, through the analysis of the participants’ narratives, we argue that the same social dynamics have also allowed them to openly question IPV. Throughout family socialization during their childhood, participants also observed their mothers and other women from their families working in the public/economic sphere. They emphasized that their mothers used to work to provide them with better living conditions. Although it was not explicitly legitimized for women to work, they recognized how their mothers were economically active and had some economic autonomy in the everyday praxis. Carola says, “My father and mother were laborers, they both worked in the fields … my mother worked since she was young.”

In some way, they also learned that women in their context are capable of working and not only can/should dedicate themselves to reproductive work. This position allows them to assume a role not traditionally assigned to them, which enables them to question their relationships.

Furthermore, their childhood memories about family socialization also set the foundations to openly question violent inter-gendered relationships. The participants who witnessed psychological and physical violence from their fathers to their mothers discursively reject this type of intimate inter-gender relationship, physical violence in particular, and consider it an important reason for ending the relationship. They acknowledge the fear and pain it caused them while growing up; thus, they want to prevent their children from feeling the same way.

I have lived it my childhood, to see that abuse … with my father and my mother … I have experienced it firsthand, to see how he mistreated my mother and I do not know why she was silent … since I was born until I was 15 years old; and it is very hard to see and remember what you have already lived … it is the fear that woman has in their home. (Mónica, 41 years)

Relationship With Their Male Partner

This social dynamic refers to who their partners are, what they are like, and the characteristics and dynamics of the couple's relationship. Taking in consideration participants’ family socialization, even if their male partners are harmful to them, they stayed in the relationship. For example, in most cases, when participants begin to live with their partners and/or get married, the couple's position is to maintain the traditional distribution of roles by sex. This results in the rejection of women's working activities for various reasons: because the workspace may be favorable for infidelities, for the harm it could provoke to womeńs dedication to reproductive work, etc. As mentioned, this action connects with what participants have learned from their family socialization, especially at the beginning of the relationship. Then, most of them stop working, resulting in a situation of dependence on their male partners. As Fatima refers:

At first my husband didn't want me to go [to work], what can I tell you, there are men that are machistas: the woman who goes to work is only to find a husband. (Fátima, 35 years)

Likewise, when their male partners do not feel “well cared for,” they become upset, leading to possible violent situations and/or abandonment. This action matches with what the participants have learned, and they consider their partners’ reactions valid, as seen in Peruvian research about IPV (Cáceres et al., 2002; Ramos, 2006; Velázquez, 2002). Furthermore, the fact that men mistreat or are physically violent to women for being unfaithful coincides with what participants have learned about sexual relations, which leads them to consider it a valid reaction.

Barría (2015) identifies that gendered identities and the establishment of inter-gendered relationships are configured during the early periods of our life histories. In this case, the participants, during their childhood, learned to naturalize power inequity and violent relationships from men to women, which is performed in their adulthoods in their Relationship with their Male Partners, establishing an intergenerational transmission of violence (Franzese et al., 2017; Salas, 2005). Having been witnesses of IPV between their parents, in a certain way, leads the participants to legitimize these kinds of behaviors within their own relationships.

Nonetheless, in the analysis of the participants’ narratives, we argue that the same social dynamics also allowed them to question IPV.

The participants from the study questioned the hegemonic masculinity and the relationship with their Male Partners. Unlike their mothers, participants recognized men's infidelity as a lack of respect toward their marriage, not as a “naturalized” masculine act. In that sense, it caused them discomfort, and they expressed a desire to separate from them. Another aspect participants rejected about hegemonic masculinity was the exercise of physical violence. If these situations occurred systematically, women's discontent and questioning toward IPV was higher.

Until now I listen, I see that there are women whose husbands beat them, I am outraged by that because it should not be like that, in a family, there is respect, love but there should be no abuse; if there is no love, [ they] should not be with that person; there are silent women. (Mónica, 41 years)

On the other hand, participants who worked and/or engaged in communitarian participation showed rejection and questioned the violent dynamics of their relationship, particularly the controlling attitude of their partners.

They do not let their women go out. They believe that their partner is their property … if he is free to choose, I think she also has the same capacity. Sometimes, they have to ask for permission to make a decision, and I don't think it has to be like that. One thing is to tell them and another to ask for permission. (Mónica, 41 years)

Mónica explained how in the R.V., most of the inhabitants had the belief that the wives were property of their male partners. It was possible to observe this in La Garita R.V. in the fact that male partners did not allow women to go out, women had to ask for permission. Nonetheless, the participants questioned their partners’ control over their decisions and actions.

Moreover, when participants started working, that is, when they also became suppliers, they felt the right to demand that men also get involved in the reproductive role since they were no longer fulfilling the traditional “pact” (women reproducers of care—men providers of wealth). Consequently, if women became providers, it was expected for men to become reproducers of care.

I tell my husband, “In reality we all have the same rights”… my husband tells me: “why are you going to have the same rights as me?”… I tell him, I work the same as you and you should help me with the house chores, chores. (Fátima, 35 years)

If male partners continued to be absent from domestic and care work after this claim, this becomes a strong reason for women to question their relationship as a couple.

Perception of Motherhood in the Community

This social dynamic refers to the community's perceptions, which impact participants’ personal ones, regarding the characteristics and obligations women should assume as mothers.

As many of the participants mentioned, becoming a mother implied resigning to working and studying opportunities. In their community and their households, there is a common belief that they have to quit studying or working to comply with their responsibilities as mothers fully. This belief is internalized; therefore, women are "forced”—by themselves and their partners—to remain in the private sphere to dedicate themselves exclusively to their children, reproducing the traditional sexual division of labor (Federici, 2010). As Carola remembers: I quit studying because I got married; Carola got married because of her pregnancy.

To stop studying and/or working in order to take care of their children means that women do not have sufficient educational training to access good jobs. This limitation restricts their access to money and the possibility of establishing social support networks. In other words, it places participants in a vulnerable situation and of greater emotional, social, and economic dependence on their male partner, which is why they tolerate their partner relationships.

Nonetheless, in the analysis of the participants’ narratives, we argue that the same social dynamics have also allowed them to question IPV. As we will discuss in the next point, the legitimate hegemonic femininity model is “mother-wife.” Therefore, to be seen as good mothers in the community, they have to protect their children from violent situations, including violence inside their homes. Throughout their role as caregivers, they find the strength to question more or even end their intimate relationships.

Where there are problems in your house, the ones that are most affected are the children because they grow up with that conflict and think that life is like that. (Mónica, 41 years)

Interestingly, participants who had daughters were more empathetic with this premise: they found the social support they require inside their homes to feel stronger and express their rejection of IPV. Indeed, their daughters publicly question IPV, which provides participants with an identificatory model with younger women that propels possible subjective and material transformations.

Socioeconomic Conditions

This social dynamic refers to the characteristics (economic, labor, basic services, etc.) of the R.V. and the 2007 earthquake that affected the area.

Participants did not only deal with traditional roles and beliefs regarding themselves, but also, with the socioeconomic conditions that reduced their possibilities to leave their situation of IPV.

After the earthquake, I stopped working because my baby was only one month old. My husband made me quit work because she was a baby and this, about the earthquake, shocked us … the project that he has is that in a few more years and I will have to stop working and dedicate myself to my children, who are growing up and start our dressmaking business. (Diana, 37 years)

Many women in the R.V. had to stop working after the earthquake; they linked the aftermath consequences and their husbands’ demands as reasons to stop working. As previously mentioned, La Garita R.V. was deeply affected by the earthquake of 2007, which worsened the precarious economic situation of families. The earthquake led to the loss of homes, businesses, educational plans, and caused conflicts among the community by breaking social support networks (DARS, 2010, 2014; Psychology Department, 2008). Participants suggested that the earthquake produced financial distress. Consequently, it put them in a situation of greater economic, emotional, and social dependence, hindering their autonomy to be able to support themselves and their family.

In general, the context is one of family and community economic poverty; unsatisfactory housing conditions (no drinking water or sanitation infrastructure); low-wage jobs in precarious conditions and limited labor rights; and limited access to educational and health institutions (there is a kindergarten and an elementary school, but no health post). These socioeconomic conditions place women, in particular, in a situation of vulnerability, generating a position of greater dependence on their partners. Even if they work, it is challenging for them to have the economic resources to support their families independently, so they consciously opt to stay with their partners.

Nevertheless, in the analysis of the participants’ narratives, we argue that the same social dynamics also allowed them to question IPV. The earthquake intensified the precariousness of socioeconomic conditions, and it was a milestone that propelled IPV. Due to the earthquake, many women in La Garita R.V. found opportunities in labor and inside their communities that allowed them to start questioning such situations. Their economic situation motivated them to start or return to the public/economic sphere. As demonstrated by Ruiz Bravo and Castro (2012), women in the agricultural sector in Peru face labor uncertainty and instability. Labor does not provide them with enough income to have financial autonomy. However, all participants reinforce the idea that earning a salary symbolizes the recalibration of power relations with their male partners. Because of having an income, they have more capacity to make decisions inside their homes, question the sexual division of labor, and reduce the control exercised on them by their partners. Therefore, the fear of separating from their male partner decreases (who is often the only economic provider), and participants feel more capable of providing for their families on their own. Consequently, the idea of separation arises.

I like that, to be independent and not depend on anyone or what your husband gives because when the husband is the only one who gives for the house, one becomes dependent on them and believes that one is their property. I go to work because I like it and not only out of necessity but also because I like to be free and independent and not expect my husband to give me [money]. (Mónica, 41 years)

Moreover, labor strengthens their social support networks. It is legitimate for women to socialize with other women in labor spaces without being perceived as “gossipers” or “lazy.” They can create intimate trustful relationships between them and share their problems. As Segato (2003) suggests, women's acts of resistance move within unequal gendered power structures, which situates women in an ambivalent positionality: they are given precarious spaces and conditions, but at the same time, they accept them, they are continually reconfiguring themselves and being subjects within, expressing their agency and their capability and autonomy. In the public/economic sphere, without denying that it is a coercive and unstable labor space, participants discover new attributes, roles and develop new well-being spaces, which allows them to question hegemonic masculinity and the control their partners impose on them.

That is why I always tell my ladies here never to shut up, talk … sometimes we don't have a close family. However, we have friends or someone but speak for us to know, if you keep quiet, they will mistreat you when they want. I have always had problems because of that because sometimes I have listened and got involved because it is already too much, I don't like it … as women, as men we have the right to be respected … first respect ourselves, love ourselves, then our husbands, children but first us. (Mónica, 41 years)

Additionally, because of the earthquake, many institutions (like the Reconstruyendonos project and governmental institutions) approached the R.V. The participants suggested that these new encounters allowed them to access new information and other emotional support (referring to the team of psychologists and sociologists). They discovered new femininity models, particularly for their children, which allowed them to question IPV. Therefore, following Bradshaw (2015), the reconstruction process between external institutions and inhabitants of La Garita R.V. not only enabled them to provide practical needs such as food, water or a household, but it put into debate women's strategic gender needs. As the author refers, strategic gender needs are those “transformations necessary to change the unequal situation between men and women. Focusing on women's strategic interests demands the questioning of the nature of the relations between men and women with the aim of overcoming women's subordination” (p. 563). In Reconstryéndonos, women's empowerment and access to information were key variables that sought to address gender inequalities. About this point, Olinda manifests:

They [referring to institutions that approached after the earthquake] taught us how to value ourselves; before the earthquake, there was none of this … It helps us all the women be informed.

Synthesizing, we have identified four social dynamics that validated traditional feminine ideals, roles, and attributes and led participants to remain in their relationships, which does not mean they remain passive or submissive. On the contrary, the same social dynamics also propels them to question, discover, construct, and engage with new gendered references, making it possible for them to reject the unjust and violent dynamics of their relationships, fortifying their questioning and reconfiguring ideas about themselves, their male partners, and their relationships. Most of these questions are not verbalized or even conscious in a rational-cognitive dimension but are performed and practiced in their everyday lives and sensed in an embodied dimension.

Transformations of the Hegemonic Femininity in the Community and the Implications on their Gendered Subjectivities

Through their narratives, the participants refer to three types of “woman” or “femininity” models in La Garita R.V.: “wife-mother,” “working woman,” and “independent woman/the other.”

Wife-Mother

This is the first type of femininity that appears in participants’ narrative:

We used to play among women. We played cooking and with the dolls with my mum. I carry that tradition. I have transmitted the same traditions to my daughters; they did not leave the house to play. (Ana, 43 years)

Ana talks about how she reproduces some of the traditions that she learned when she was a child. As identified by other research in Peru (Alcalde, 2014; Fuller, 2005; Ruiz Bravo, 2003) and linked to the “Marianist” model of the Catholic tradition, participants privileged in their discourses the traditional hegemonic femininity of “wife-mother.” Indeed, the “wife-mother” femininity model is publicly valued and legitimate in La Garita R.V. The participants feel comfortable identifying themselves with these roles: as wives, participants refer to themselves as faithful and obedient; as mothers, as self-sacrificing women committed to satisfy their children's needs and maintain the “family unit.” Therefore, participants prioritize and publicly perform the traditional hegemonic femininity and configure their gendered subjectivity, defining themselves as caring figures of their families inside the private sphere.

Despite recognizing the “wife-mother” role, participants in the interviews emphasize the importance of entering the public/economic sphere, although it has some social conditions. In this sense, the second type of femininity model appears: “working woman.”

Working Woman

This second type of femininity becomes a second idealized model valued significantly by participants, but only if they engage in labor as a legitimized act of care for their families. In other words, in a discursive dimension, work is supported by their families and accepted by themselves as long as it has the objective to gain more financial resources to comply with the traditional feminine mandates of care toward their families, especially their children. As Rebeca (43 years) states: “What my husband provides is not enough. I work so my children can have an education.” In that sense, in La Garita R.V., it is not legitimized that women engage in economic activities for their well-being and development but it is as long as it responds to others’ care (Bracco & Ruiz Bravo, 2017).

I tell the young women that are starting their families: you have to work … you work, and he works, one saves to build their house, the other one brings the money to be able to eat. […] Sometimes they listen, and they tell me: look, I have bought my refrigerator, I have bought my kitchen. (Karen, 30 years)

Karen explains the advice she gives to young women regarding their entrance to the salaried sphere and how to organize their family economy. Rebeca and Karen conceive that both parties in a relationship must provide family development (both material and opportunities).

Independent Woman/The Other

Finally, the participants refer to the third type of femininity, which appears as a counter-model of the “wife-mother” type: “independent woman/the other.”

He used to go to work and provide her with money, but she did not care, she used to go to parties, left their children with her younger sisters, hang out with her friends, and because of that miss-care their children died. […] In the end, they used to tell him she was not good for him because she was with somebody else. (Fausta, 41 years)

Fausta gives an account of this type of femininity, providing an example of the relationship between her brother and his partner. As she points out, women that go out to parties neglect their role as “wife-mother.” This femininity model is described as “seductive” and “opportunistic” and is associated with women who have affairs with married men. Therefore, such women are deemed responsible for breaking conjugal families, their own and their “lovers” families. Participants, such as Fausta, distance themselves from this type of femininity, which symbolizes subversive or transgressive femininity, closer to the Biblical imaginary of “Maria Magdalena” (León, 2013). Women who perform this type of femininity are considered seductive, exuberant, and active objects of erotic desire (León, 2013) and careless of their home and children.

Although participants’ statements help understand three types of femininity models, women's positionalities are not static, but they waver between them. It is in the confluence of this diversity of discourses where participants reconfigure their gendered subjectivities. They oscillate between these models, engaging in contradictory and ambivalent inner psychic processes about themselves. Following Anzaldúa (1987), it is necessary to embrace the complexity, ambiguity, and inner conflicts of women and how relational modes are defined and transformed in these processes.

To fully understand what we are trying to argue, it is necessary to introduce the participants’ discourse about the community's masculinity model. Taking in consideration participants’ discourses, in La Garita R.V., men tend to fall within the characteristics described by Connell's (1987, 1995) traditional concept of hegemonic masculinity: they are granted the power and authority within the homes, the title of “head of the household,” and the role of being the provider of the economic resources. Furthermore, as seen in the above section, masculinity is associated with the exercise of psychological and physical violence to control women's bodies and put limits on their movements, whether they are their husbands, fathers, brothers, etc.

Brothers used to hit their sisters. Indeed, I think that is why women are used to receiving punches from men when they get married. It is a custom; since they were kids, they have learned that. (Karen, 30 years)

If we consider the hegemonic masculinity model in dialogue with the privileged femininity model of “wife-mother” (making invisible the existence of the other two incipient femininities), it would be simplistic to infer those intimate inter-gendered relationships in La Garita R.V. reproduce traditional patriarchal mandates. Nevertheless, the existence of the femininities “working woman” and “independent woman/the other” show how participant's gendered subjectivities in the village are in the process of reconfiguration. Most of the time, these transformations are not observable, and it does not appear in the immediate discourses of women. However, they have been introduced in an inner psychic configuration that may lead to more concrete transformations.

Look, when I got separated, well, at first, I was a bit shocked, but then there was a time when I felt, what can I tell you? As if suddenly, I would have been locked up, thus imprisoned and suddenly, free. In other words, I felt like new, so renewed, with all the desire to put it forward, to stand out. And I proposed myself the plan. Then I started to make the plan, this way, this way, that is, everything looked fine until … Oh, now, and we went out, we started going out to parties with Carmen, with Hilda, with her sister. And for what? We had healthy entertainment too. (Karen, 30 years)

In that sense, although participants immediately trace a discursive distance from these two types of femininities (positioning themselves only as “wife-mother”), they also describe how they find personal satisfaction—not only related to care—when performing as “working woman,” and/or even as “independent woman/the other.” As previously mentioned, it is at their labor spaces where it becomes possible for them to encounter other women, socialize without being questioned in their homes and find spaces of recreation and dialogue that help them question potential violent scenarios. As Monica expresses:

I like being independent, not only depend on my husband, then he thinks I am his property […] that is why I go to work, not only for necessity but because I like to feel free and independent, and not only hoping that my husband is going to provide. (Mónica 41 years)

On the other hand, the workplace is also where they create “friendships” with other men, it is valued because they feel listened to and recognized by masculine figures. In this sense, in a conscious or a fantasized manner, participants also perform as the counter-model of femininity of “independent woman/the other.” For them to accept publicly and for themselves that they are more than wives and mothers is not an easy process. They imagine distancing themselves from the privileged and recognizable social role, which creates an inner psychic conflict.

Consequently, participants face the processes that may lead to subjective transformations with fear and shame and appropriate other feminine models’ characteristics with ambivalence. These ambivalences are a reproduction, in a subjective dimension, of the oscillations of the social dynamics described in the section above. Indeed, these ambivalences and contradictions demonstrate how oppressive liberatory (Lugones, 2005) processes act simultaneously, in this case in the social and subjective dimensions.

Women's Surreptitious Acts and Processes of Agency to Recalibrate Power Within Their Situation of IPV

Social dynamics and the reconfiguration of hegemonic femininity provide elements for participants to question hegemonic gender roles and inter-gender relationships, enabling them to perform surreptitious acts and processes of agency to resist within coercion situations—from their partners or internal coercion—and internalized gendered roles and attributes. These are dynamic and lived processes or tactics of resistance that allow women to make their lives more live able and represent a day-to-day survival (Black et al., 2020), but mostly ongoing processes of subtle transformations for them and their children (Hume & Wilding, 2020). We have categorized the acts and processes of agency in five groups shown in Table 2.

Table 2.

Types of Surreptitious Acts and Processes of Agency.

Agentic act or process	Description	Women's quotes
Participants evade and try to minimize the impact of intimate partner violence.	Women display strategies to evade episodes of violence like sleeping in a different room, leaving the house if they see their partner is “altered,” negotiating with them their freedom of movement, and even facing them when the violent situation is going to start and threatening their partners with denouncing them to governmental authorities. These strategies are performed mainly to avoid physical and psychological harm to their children. These types of acts are stressful because there are more chances that they receive more violence from their partners in response.	One day, I stopped my husband and told him: You never put your hand on me again because I have my hands too. If you ever lay your hand on me again, I will denounce you…I will throw a frying pan at you or anything else I can throw at you, I told him. (Rebeca, 43)
Participants discuss their situation with their intimate support networks.	Women question the violent actions of their partners, talk about stopping the “naturalization” of their actions, and start to denounce them inside their intimate support networks. They share their experiences with their sisters, their closest neighbors, and the psychologists and sociologists of the community-action project. Moreover, women start to seek emotional support within their closer network after episodes of violence.	We women should not keep quiet about it; we should talk about it; we have told you about our problems because you already know how we are by looking at us. (Rebeca, 43 years old)
Participants transmit new discourses on masculinity and femininity to their children.	Women start to discursively question the hegemonic gender mandates that situate them in a disadvantaged position with their partners and in potentially violent intimate inter-gendered relationships. Although participants mention that it is “late” to create a radical transformation, they expect their children's relationships to be different. Consequently, they try to modify their discourses and transmit reconfigured gendered mandates to future generations.	I lived through it with my son because he married young…he got married very young and wanted to leave her, and I told him…she is a human being…he was in a hurry to leave her…I had to get tough, and I threw him out of my house and stayed with his wife…that served him as an experience because now they are calm. (Nadia, 72 years old)
Participants set expectations on the development and well-being of their children.	Women carry out actions to contribute to the development and well-being of their children. Therefore, they secretly save money to contribute to their children's education and motivate their daughters to be independent through education. Most women stay with their partners despite questioning violence because they feel unable to fulfil these goals by themselves. They need money from their husbands. However, participants believe their partners would disappear and not fulfil their parental economic role after separation.	What I have gone through I would not want my son to go through…under that sun suffering…with studies at least you have the advantage of finding a better job, you will earn a little better, you will be able to support yourself…. you have the possibility of being a little better. (Carla, 36 years old)
Participants acknowledge the possibility of a separation.	Women wish for and propose the separation as a strategy to recover their well-being. Specifically, they try to separate to avoid harm to their children. Nevertheless, this is lived in a contradictory and ambivalent manner, as the femininity “wife-mother” prevails, they have the conscious desire to separate from their husbands, but at the same time, they view separation as a failure of the privileged femininity model.	The relationship is not going well…. only time will tell…sometimes I think about separation, but I can't come to a decision. (Carla, 36 years old)

Participants perform acts and processes of surreptitious agency throughout their role of caretakers of their children, or as stated by Alcalde (2014), throughout an “empowered maternity” (p. 166). In other words, participants make decisions and display actions to impact their children positively. These actions, in turn, imply questioning and/or transforming the relationships with themselves and their partners. In that sense, through expressing care for their children, they also display acts and processes of agency to construct self-care and engage in transformation processes toward liberation.

Conclusions

The analysis revealed that the participants, who were involved in abusive heterosexual relationships, do not engage in linear processes toward leaving their partners but perform subtle actions to minimize the violent actions in their relationship or transform their discourses about inter-gender relationships to prevent future generations’ violence, particularly their daughters. In other words, even though women at La Garita R.V. do not openly leave the violent situations, following Lugones (2005) and Mahmood (2008), we argue that participants are not passively submissive to violence; they have subjective ambivalences and inner psychic conflicts that allow them to engage in the (subtle or open) questioning of many aspects of their relationships and propose surreptitious transformations. Therefore, even though women may not explicitly put an end and leave the situation of violence, they are constantly questioning and resisting, in an inner psychic dimension, transforming the way they perceive and perform femininities and how they relate to masculinities. They are in an awareness state toward IPV. Participants may publicly privilege hegemonic gender roles but simultaneously acknowledge, value, and ambivalently appropriate new models, roles, spaces, and attributes. Thus, the hegemonic femininity model “wife-mother” is subjectively questioned by giving space to new femininity models such as “working woman” and “independent woman/the other.” The objective is to reinforce these new types of femininity without questioning womeńs role as caregivers, which in turn provides them with a sense of identity.

Additionally, it is necessary to understand the acts and processes of agency in light of particular contexts of structural violence. As observed, the life experiences of social dynamics provide ambivalent and contradictory messages about naturalizing or questioning intimate gender violence. Therefore, the process of leaving violent partners is not consistent. On the contrary, it supposes an internal journey of contradictions that moves between their positionality as powerless and simultaneously as agentic subjects concerning their abuser (Van Schalkwyk et al., 2014). This inner psychic experience produces multiple and contradictory emotions: joy, pride, anger, fear, and shame. Thus, their processes are not linear but filled with advances and setbacks. Indeed, we propose that neither social dynamics nor hegemonic femininity are static or rigid concepts. Conversely, they are continually changing, and it is in recognition of these small and subtle reconfigurations that transformations are possible.

Mahmood (2008) stated that it is necessary to understand agency and acts of resistance within particular contexts of structural dominance. In that matter, agency and resistance is not only the linear act to concretely transform a situation, but also the capacity to stay, suffer, resist, and, amidst all that, try to construct well-being within the possibilities. In this case, participants are questioning their constitution as subjects, and that is a demanding and exhausting task; they experience different types of femininities and construct new subjectivities in a contradictory and ambivalent manner. In the process, they experience tension during the surreptitious acts of agency; therefore, it is necessary to emotionally support them with patience, empathy, and respect toward these processes.

We aim to move beyond the imagery of women as only victims, give an account of their agentic acts, and move from “female paternalism” (Fili, 2013, p. 4). Female paternalism portrayed women as waiting to be rescued because of a dependency and lack of control of their own lives (Fili, 2013) and diminishes our capacity (as scholars and psychologists) to acknowledge, understand, and problematize women's ambivalent positionality toward their situation.

Finally, we would like to acknowledge a limitation of the analysis of the data. We recognize a wide variation in terms of age and marital/living status in the group of women who participated in the research. Given that it was an exploratory study, we have not differentiated the discourses or created an intersectional analysis about the participants’ meaning-making and agentic strategies, but we consider this a fundamental approach for future research about IPV in Peru and its socio-cultural–ethnic–racial diversity.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The study was possible through the ﬁnancial support of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (grant number: Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social)

ORCID iD

Tesania Velázquez

Notes

Author Biographies

Lucia Bracco Bruce: I hold a PhD in Philosophy in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, a Master's degree in Gender Studies, and a Licentiate degree in Clinical Psychology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP). I am a member of the Research Groups on Community Psychology, Forensic, and Penitentiary Psychology of the Department of Psychology of the PUCP. My research interests involve the intersection between gender and culture, women's imprisonment and confinement spaces, gender violence, agency and community mental health.

Maria Teresa Rodriguez Campos: I have a Licentiate Degree in Social Psychology and a Master in Gender Studies and a Licentiate Degree in Social Psychology from the PUCP. I have specialized in the design, execution, and evaluation of social development projects. I have experience in the design and implementation of public policies of the education sector, the design and execution of social research, mainly qualitative, and as a professor at the graduate level.

Tesania Velázquez: I have a Master's degree in Clinical and Forensic Evaluation from the University of Salamanca, Spain. Doctoral candidate in psychology at the PUCP. Senior professor of the Department of Psychology and the Master of Community Psychology of PUCP. Coordinator of the Research Group in Forensic and Penitentiary Psychology and member of the Research Group of Community Psychology of the Department of Psychology of PUCP.

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