Table III.-Age of Gainfully Employed Persons, by Industry and Sex, Peru, 19401

1 Source: Peru Census of Population and Occupation, 1940, pp. 368-369. 2 These are persons with professional degrees who are practicing their professions independently. The census does not reveal the number of persons practicing in professions who are employed by commercial and manufacturing firms and by the Government.

grocery stores, meat markets, in the general markets, in selling fruits and flowers.

Few women or men are employed in selling wearing apparel. Clothing is custom-made, and large numbers of women are working at dressmaking. (They are classified as manufacturing employees in the census report.) The statistics for Lima, where a larger number could normally be expected to be employed in retail stores, show that 285 women and 871 men are employed in department and dry-goods stores and 158 women and 268 men in shops selling cashmere and other materials, ready-made clothing, and hats. The dressmaking shops combine selling, making, and fitting the garments; in these shops in Lima there are 2,264 women and 125 men employed.

Public Administration and Other Public Services

In the census classification "public administration and other public services" the largest number of women, 5,503 out of a total employment of 9,608, are found in the Ministry of Public Education, which includes the public schools. In private educational institutions there are 2,683 women and 2,185 men.

Professional, Domestic, and Personal Services

This group ranks fourth in importance in women's employment. Extensive employment of women is found in domestic and other

Table III.-Age of Gainfully Employed Persons, by Industry and Sex, Peru 1940 1

personal services, as is shown in table II.

In the professions practiced independently, there are 561 women out of a total employment of 3,324. As shown in table II, the largest numbers are found in midwifery and in law.

Number of Employed Women According to Age

According to the census the largest number of employed women are in the age group 30 and under 45, the next largest number in the age group 20 and under 30. The gainfully employed were counted from age 6, the first age group being 6 and under 15. Cattle raising employs the largest number of girls in this classification; agriculture, domestic service, and manufacturing follow in the order mentioned. The children who watch the sheep and cattle in the pastures, for their food and shelter and sometimes a small wage, account for the number in cattle raising. Undoubtedly the majority of those between the ages 6 and 15 employed in agriculture are working as helpers; the number in domestic service would be for the most part those who do light work in homes and who watch younger children. Since work in factories is regulated for children under 14, the majority of the 7,219 girls included in manufacturing would be working in home industries.

Table IV.-Women in the Population, Employed Women, and Women in Specific Industries, by Area Visited, Peru, 1940 1

1 Source: Peru Census of Population and Occupation, 1940, pp. 55, 58, 61, 287, 316.

2 These are persons with professional degrees who are practicing their professions independently. The census does not reveal the number of persons practicing in professions who are employed by commercial and manufacturing firms and by the Government.

Three different sections of Peru were visited by the Women's Bureau representative in 1943: Lima, the capital of the Republic, and Callao, the nearby port city, on the Pacific coast; Huancayo, a city in the mountainous Department (State) of Junín east of Lima; and Arequipa, a city in the Department of Arequipa in the southern part of Peru, which is also high and mountainous. The extent of women's employment in these areas is shown in table IV.

Factories and other work estalishments employing women, educational and social-welfare institutions, labor unions and other employee organizations, government agencies, and women's organizations, were visited, and individuals were interviewed. The program was planned and carried out in each place with the cooperation of the Peruvian Department of Labor.

Of the 28 factories and small work establishments visited, 11 were textile and knitting mills, 6 were making wearing apparel and accessories, 3 were making food products. There was one each of pharmaceutical, paper products, perfume, metal products, and laundry and cleaning establishments. Two telephone exchanges and the office of an export-import company were also visited.

Table V shows employment of women in these establishments.

Table V.-Products or Service and Number of Employees in Establishments Visited, Peru, 1943

Of special interest were the several workplaces where a woman manager or owner was found. In a small plant making knitted materials and articles of clothing, a young woman was in complete. charge. In another knitting shop, the woman who was the manager did her own designing. In a shoe factory, the wife of the owner had carried responsibility for the plant since her husband's death. Small businesses are frequently owned and managed by women, particularly by women in the lower economic brackets.

WOMEN IN MANUFACTURING PLANTS

Jobs on Which Women Are Employed

Women in Peru were employed at the same jobs in consumer-goods industries as in other countries. The women learned on the job with experienced workers as their instructors. There were only a few women supervisors.

In textile mills women work at all the machines at which women are customarily employed. However, in one woolen mill (in the interior part of the country) women were not working at the weaving machines; most of them were at the spinning and winding machines. In this plant a few were filling the hoppers of the carding machines, and others were sorting the raw wool according to quality and length of fiber.

In shops making men's clothing, they were working at the sewing machines and doing all the finishing.

In one establishment making knit goods, women were working at the knitting and sewing machines, at designing, cutting, packaging, and in the stockroom.

In the pharmaceutical plant, women shaped, filled, and sealed the glass ampoules, stamped the labels on the ampoules, inspected and packed them.

In the metal-products plant they worked at the punch-press and cutting machines.

Women were engaged largely in hand work in the paper-products and in the candy factories, although they worked at a few of the machines.

Working Conditions

The plants on the whole were clean and had good natural ventilation and light, owing to large windows. Artificial lighting was deficient in some instances where overhead lights were too high and where individual lights for close work were not provided.

Two of the cotton mills had air-carrier systems, and in two cotton and lint were removed from the machinery by a vacuum-cleaning