ERIGAL is pleased to invite you to the conference entitled “Care in Peru: Childcare services as a reflection of the fragmentation of state provision,” presented by Stéphanie Rousseau, a collaborator of our team and Full Professor in Political Science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
📅 Friday, May 15, 2026
🕝 2:00 – 4:00 PM
📍 Université de Montréal
📌 Pavillon Lionel-Groulx, Room C-4149
About the conference:
Andean countries are characterized by highly segmented social protection systems, largely informal labor markets, and strong cross-cutting gender inequalities. According to Martínez Franzoni (2008), Peru’s social protection regime historically corresponds to what she calls the “non-state familialist type.” In this context, family strategies remain central to meeting social needs. Social security, due to its segmented and limited nature, fails to meet the needs of the majority. Private services are of limited usefulness and/or vary widely in quality due to income inequalities.
For example, women’s best chances of accessing childcare services for their young children often rely on the unpaid or highly exploited labor of other women through informal domestic work arrangements (Pérez 2019; Valdez 2014), and/or on the use of scarce public childcare services (Rousseau, Cavagnoud and Espinosa 2025; Cavagnoud, Rousseau and Velarde 2026).
This conference will review the main elements of childcare policy architecture, highlighting its fragmented and limited nature, the tensions inherent in the various objectives and modalities of services provided, and the impact of this architecture on gender and class inequalities in a context of strong racialization.
About Stéphanie Rousseau :
Stéphanie Rousseau holds a PhD in Political Science from McGill University (Montreal) and a Master’s degree in International Studies from Carleton University (Ottawa). She is a Full Professor in the Political Science section of the Department of Social Sciences at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
She teaches courses such as Introduction to Comparative Politics, Social Policy, Democratic Theory, and Research Methods. Her research focuses on gender and politics in Peru.