The Social Constitution of Gender Identity among Peruvian Men

Abstract

Through analysis of 120 in-depth interviews carried out among men from the middle-class and popular sectors, this article reconstructs the representations of masculinity of a sample of men living in three cities in Peru. The central question posed is how men reaffirm and constitute their gender identities in a context in which, despite the fact that men continue to maintain a monopoly over the political and economic life of the country as well as authority within the family, some qualities and roles traditionally assigned to them have lost their legitimacy as a result of the democratization of values, changes in family structure and the status of women, and the emergence of new discourses of masculinity and gender relations. Two additional issues are also analyzed: the way that discourses regarding masculinity intersect with regional, class, and generational identities, and how gender identity is linked to macrosocial processes.