Some thoughts on Gender

I have been here for a little over two weeks now, and have has some thoughts about gender and the role of women in Peru. There are several jobs that were previously dominated by men, which are slowly seeing more and more women.

• In a previous post, I described a national program implemented by then President Alberto Fujimori to replace male traffic officers with female ones. At the time of implementation, there was a major backlash with reports of some taxi drivers running the women over. While I am here, I intend to study how perceptions of these male drivers have changed over the last ten years and how the female traffic officers' own perceptions have changed.
• Another male dominated male work area that women have penetrated is the job of conductor in public transportation vehicles. Their jobs are to fill the vehicle (whether bus, "convi," or minibus) with as many people as possible and collect the fares. The men who have this job are, by far, more aggressive than the women. However, there does not seem to be a difference int he number of passengers in the vehicles. It would be interesting to find out whether women are just as effective or maybe even more effective in their job than men. One way to do this would be to research the total fares collected by the men versus the women for a selected mode of transportation over given period of time.
  
• The last area that I have noticed women is at gasoline stands. It is not a self service system here in Peru. Rather, ther are workers who fill your tank for you. In many gasoline stands, women have replaced men in this job. However, the women in many cases are required to wear mini skirts etc. Thus instead of a gender role transformation, the women continue to fulfill constructed gender norms.