Guerrilla Shadows on Gender: The Lingering Effects of the Peruvian Internal Armed Conflict on Women’s Political Inclusion
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Abstract
How does political violence during armed conflict shape women’s access to elected office? I combine victim-level data from Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission with municipal electoral records from six elections held during the internal conflict. Using two-way fixed effects models that exploit within-district variation, I separate recent from cumulative violence exposure at local levels. Violence leaves women’s candidacies unaffected but shapes their electoral success: recent violence increases the share of women elected, while cumulative violence reduces it. These effects stem primarily from violence perpetrated by insurgent groups, as opposed to state violence. Extending the analysis to post-conflict elections, I find that the positive effect of recent violence disappears while the negative effect of cumulative violence persists, reducing women’s electoral success and access to competitive list positions despite the 1997 gender quota. The findings show that the timing and perpetrator of violence, not its mere presence, determine its gendered electoral consequences.
BibTeX citation
@unpublished{Castro2025Guerrilla,
title={Guerrilla Shadows on Gender: The Lingering Effects of the Peruvian Internal Armed Conflict on Women's Political Inclusion},
author={Castro, Francisca},
year={2026},
note={Working paper}
}