Motherhood, gender and militancy. Disjunctives and contradictions on maternal experiences during Peruvian armed conflict

Abstract

Family and motherhood are controversial subjects in all societies. The hegemonic maternal ideal continues even nowadays being of an essentialist nature. Frequently, the responsibility and the subsequent upbringing still lay only on the mother. Those women have to face rigid social values -despite recent changes- that relate to a traditional type of femininity, which defines the task of being a mother. In case of transgression, the «bad mothers» will be punished both socially and symbolically. This is the case of the Peruvian women who challenged the traditional role of gender during the Peruvian internal armed conflict (1980-2000) by participated in the Peruvian Communist Party-Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. This paper analyzes the memories of these women who had to deal with breakdowns, contradictions and disjunctions about the meaning of family and being a mother, as well as social stigma and social representations that portrayed them as «more cruel and monstrous» than her male comrades, but above all, «anti-women» and «bad mothers» for having questioned her role in society.