Working Group for Gender Equality

The Working Group for Gender Equality (2018) is one of the actions carried out within the incorporation of the gender perspective in the National Library of Peru (BNP), in compliance with Law 28983, the Framework Law on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men, and the National Policy for Gender Equality approved by Supreme Decree No. 008-2019-MIMP.

The BNP established the Working Group in order to coordinate actions aimed at reducing gender gaps between women and men in the BNP, through two guidelines:

1. The internal regulations of the BNP's Working Group, which establish roles and responsibilities.
2. The BNP's Policy for Gender Equality.

Likewise, during 2019, seventeen activities were developed to allow for the spread of and reflection on the role of women through the documentary bibliographic heritage safeguarded by the BNP.

Activities aimed to raise awareness on the importance of adopting a gender perspective in the institution's activities were also carried out for BNP's officers and workers. Within this framework, two talks took place:

a. Informative talk to raise awareness about the law on the prevention of and sanctions for sexual harassment.
b. Talk on gender equality.

Additionally, the Working Group participated in the conference entitled "Presence of women in the National Library of Peru", which raised reflections on the intervention of women in the National Library of Peru (BNP), as intellectual producers and workers of the first republican cultural institution of Peru. Also, a mapping of women's collections was carried out at the BNP.

Finally, the GTIG-BNP promoted and encouraged projects for the recovery of the documentary bibliographic memories of women, kept in other institutions. For this reason, in 2019, a team of female collaborators and specialists from the Directorate of Bibliographic Collections' Protection (DPC) was organized on a voluntary basis. This team, in addition to their usual tasks, managed to work on Saturdays from March to September, to identify and inventory the collection of Maria Jesus Alvarado Rivera, an important intellectual of the 20th century and promoter of women's rights in Peru. This material is kept by the Flora Tristan Center for Peruvian Women.