IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 7 ENGLISH | Page 53

do. 8.6% of those interviewed are professionals, scientists, and intellectuals;
there are fewer men (4%). To the contrary, the most common occupations among
them are operators at installations, on
machines and as technicians (15%). The
percentage of unskilled women workers
is also greater in number than that of
men: 35.9% vs. 26.0%. Statistics on
Head of Household Education in Lima,
according to sex, reveals that the proportion of Afro-Peruvian people who finish
post-secondary education (15.7%) is
below that of the population as a whole
(24.9%). If we divide the sample by sex,
the proportion of female heads of household that manage to finish postsecondary education (10.8%) is lower
than that of men (13.8%). The EEPA
(2014, 56) shows that 87.1% of AfroPeruvians between 3 and 17 years of age
go to school. If we divide this number
according to age, the largest group of
children not attending school is between
3 and 5 years of age (71.2%). Among
girls and boys between 6 and 11 years
old, less than 1% does not go to school.
The number of children in the 11 to 17
year old age group not going to school is
growing. A comparison by gender reveals a not very significant difference in
the rate of school attendance: 86.2%
(boys) and 88.1% (girls), although it is
lightly less (84.6%) on the North Coast,
and almost the same in Lima (87.9%)
and the South Coast (88.7%). There are
more young men than women working
(62.6% and 37.4%, respectively), but the
situation is the reverse with regard to
access to post-secondary education:

45.9% among young men, and 54.1%
among young women. There are more
unmarried people than partnered people
in both groups. In younger groups, especially women who studied at public institutions are neither studying nor working. We must explore why it is that
young, Afro-Peruvian women don’t
study or work from the point of view of
gender and its intersection, and how this
situation affects their possibilities for
development. Among younger people
who are neither studying nor working,
the percentage of them with fathers with
post-secondary education (1.1%) is less
than among youth who work (13.8%).
The difference is even greater when
comparing young people with access to
post-secondary
education
(30.3%).
Those who are neither studying nor
working are situated in the first socioeconomic quintile; those who are studying are primarily situated in the higher
quintiles.
Final considerations
Despite the lower percentage of Afrodescendant women in the Peruvian
population, when compared to Brazil,
both countries suffer from high degrees
of inequality. Evidence shows that Afrodescendant women are among the poorest in the population, which reflects a
historical process of the reproduction of
inequalities. Their structural axes are
social markers like gender and
race/ethnicity, which impact the construction of citizenship and enjoyment of
rights in the West. Peru presents a bit of
delay when compared to Brazil in the
official, statistical inclusion of gender,

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