2007/03/23 by Stéphanie Rousseau, S. Rousseau · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Gender Politics and Representation #Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics #Social Policy and Reform Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/sp/jxm002
crossref issued 2007/03/23 · crossref published 2007/03/23 · crossref published-online 2007/03/23 · openalex publication_date 2007/03/23 · crossref created 2007/03/29 · crossref deposited 2017/08/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
This article analyzes the politics of reproductive health policy-making in Peru in the context of healthcare reform initiatives undertaken since the early 1990s. In Latin America, women's 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.