The Politics of Reproductive Health in Peru: Gender and Social Policy in the Global South

Abstract

This article analyzes the politics of reproductive health policymaking in Peru in the context of healthcare reform initiatives undertaken since the early 1990s. In Latin America womens body politics are emerging within a complex architecture of institutionalized social stratification and religious lobbies. The case of Peru is approached from a gendered specifically South-World analysis revealing the deep embedding of a vast constellation of reproductive healthcare issues within the nascent social welfare policy-making process. Through limited national public health insurance schemes a new social policy model based on a targeted poverty-reduction paradigm is now partially addressing the reproductive health needs of the majority of Peruvian women. Policy implementation however is highly contested fragile and has been subject to setbacks and deadly abuses. The article shows that in addressing developing countries such as Peru the role of international actors and the impact of unconsolidated democratic institutions are two key variables in the comparative analysis of social policy regime formation. (authors)