ABSTRACT
I would like to offer a personal reflection on the complex relationship between the feminist movement and feminists working in academia. I will draw on my experiences and articulate some of my multiple identities:1 as a founder, activist and organizer in the Peruvian feminist movement, intermittent professor, and as a founder/employee in a feminist non-governmental organization, the Flora Tristán Centre in Peru.21 will begin with a brief overview of the women’s movement in Latin America and focus primarily on the relationships and tensions between the movement and academia, the ways in which the movement has contributed to a better understanding between these two and its reflections on how to put this into practice. I will discuss the experiences of the feminist meetings in Latin America and the Caribbean that have been taking place since 1981 in different countries. More than any other space, these meetings represent the advances, difficulties and problems in the formation of movements and the production of knowledge. At the most recent meetings, women from academia have participated with force and enthusiasm, contributing in this way to closing the gap that had been widening since the initial stages of the feminist process in the region.
