ABSTRACT
This book has examined the relationship between class and gender in the context of rapid industrialization in Peru. It has particularly focused on the nature of differentiation and mobility within the labouring class and its effects on class consciousness and political action. It has come up with a picture very different from that depicted by the literature of the time which stressed marginality, a weak and deferential class consciousness and ineffectual political action. It has shown that the growth process was not as exclusionary as was assumed, there was much less marginalization, a greater spread of income growth and more fluidity in class structure. To be sure, the benefits of growth were distributed unequally, but the poor were definitely a part of the process. Only a very small proportion of the urban labour force had stagnant real earnings during the period—probably less than 10 per cent of the squatter population according to Lewis (1973).
