Soy mujer, escucha el rugido!

Being a girl has its perks. We get to wear makeup, have giggle/tickle fests, openly cry in public, and give birth, among many. 

And while in the states, women’s rights have come a long way thanks to our sisters before us, the rest of the world is still catching up, including Peru. 

Many people still can’t read and the majority is women. Women are expected to stay at home, cook, clean, and take care of the children, but to NOT get an education. And this isn’t something of the past; it is still going on today. My host mom’s father has another family, in which he has 3 young kids, and she recently told me that he is making the one girl stay at home, even though she really wants to go on to high school. He wants her to take care of the house with her mom. I was livid when she told me this and had half a mind to go find him and make him explain to me why she can’t go to school. 

Many studies have shown that when more women are educated in a society, the overall development improves.  So what’s the deal? 

Being a woman in Peru is tough because machismo is alive and well. Men are the ones who are offered food first at the table, men are the ones that get recognition in the community meanwhile women are looked upon as sex objects, whistled at constantly, and not given any respect. 

[Side story: Just the other day, I was walking around in the plaza when a bunch of teenage boys were whistling at me. As usual, I ignored them and went on my way. But the whistling got louder and then they started following me. “The nerve”, I thought. But again, I just ignored them and continued on my errands. I slipped into a store, where the boys were outside still yelling and whistling at me. “I’m going to give them a piece of my mind,” I thought, and then all the sudden, I actually listened to what they were saying. They were trying to tell me that I dropped something, so I looked in my pockets, and yes, I had lost my wallet! So I finally turn around and go up to them, and they explained that my wallet had fallen out and a man had taken it, and they were just trying to let me know. Ooooh, was I mad. I told them, the next time they are trying to get a girls attention, DO NOT WHISTLE AT THEM. Okay, back to my original blog....]

And being a foreigner and the self-titled-feminist that I am, it has been quite the experience so far. 

In my youth health promoter club, we’ve done some workshops on sex and gender, where I say a statement, such as “Women are supposed to stay at home and take care of the kids” or “Men are allowed to have sex before marriage and women are not” kind of statements, and the kids have to decide whether they agree or disagree with the statement. Because Peru has such gender divides, a lot of the boys, and even girls, agreed to those statements. When I asked them to explain why, they couldn’t really explain it, “it is just the way it is” they said.

In another activity, I handed out words, such as strong, sports, drinking, weak, cooking, taking care of babies, etc., and they had to put the words underneath “Man” or “Woman.” Of course, drinking, sports, and strong were put under “Man”, while weak, cooking, and taking care of babies was put under “Woman.” When I asked them to explain their reasoning, again, they couldn’t answer why. So then I said, “If a woman cooks, cleans, and takes care of the children, is she weak?” “No,” they answered, and then a light bulb went off in their little heads, and they started to realize that all of those words can apply to both men AND women. Hooray for small wins! 

So as a foreigner here in Peru, I’ve gotten to experience how a woman might have felt a century or even, 30 years ago! 

When I hear girls here saying they can’t do this or are not allowed to do that, my chest puffs up, and I give them my spiel: Just because you are a girl, doesn’t mean you aren’t as strong or smart as men. You can do whatever you put your mind to! 

And it makes me smile when I see girls doing just that when they graduate high school and go to the big cities to continue their educations. It’s like I can hear them saying, “Soy mujer, escucha el rugido (I am woman, hear me roar).”