From work to welfare: the response of the Peruvian state to the feminization of emergency work

This paper explores the ways in which the convergence of economic crises and gendered processes of globalization have created a new role for states and new scenarios for women's paid work. It focuses specifically on one of these scenarios—the emergence of state-backed employment programmes in the 1980s and early 1990s and examines the feminization of such programmes in Latin America. Through a detailed case study of emergency work in Peru the paper analyses the relationship between feminization and the state. Specifically, the paper interrogates the contradictory conceptualizations of work embodied in such state-backed initiatives. The example of the APRA government of Peru and its nation-wide employment programme (PAIT: Programme of Support and Temporary Income 1985–1990) is used to illustrate the ways in which states have responded to processes of feminization. The paper highlights the relationship between feminization and a shift in state rhetoric. Through empirical archive and interview based research¹ it examines the implications of APRA's move from a rhetoric of providing work for men to one that emphasized welfare aid for women.