Women's rights in Peru: insights from two organizations

In this article we explore the appropriation of ideas about women's rights in Lima, Peru through an ethnographic study of two non‐governmental organizations. SEA is a local NGO grounded in the Catholic Church's liberation theology movement, which seeks to promote integrated human development, and is linked to the worldwide Catholic Church. DEMUS, the second NGO, with feminist roots, actively fights gender discrimination and belongs to networks of international women's human rights movements and UN organizations. We argue that the struggle for women's rights is part of a broader struggle for recognition and equality for the poor, shaped by changing notions of national identity, citizenship and diversity. Our research revealed clear examples of vernacularization, whereby local context, values and culture played a decisive role in the adoption of women rights ideas. Encounters with other concepts and movements, including social justice, family violence and women's mobilization, intimately shaped the vernacularization of women's rights. Ultimately, the adoption of rights ideas involved changes in women's individual and collective empowerment.