While women have always been crucial to coffee production in Peru, men traditionally held economic power. In 2004, 464 female coffee producers in Peru united to change this dynamic and take a step toward empowerment. They decided to separate their coffee production from men to gain visibility and a voice inside their community. Working in partnership with OPTCO, they developed a market for women-produced coffee to serve as an important vehicle for social change and the empowerment of poor, marginalized women coffee farmers. Since then, the Café Femenino movement now includes thousands of women farmers from nine countries across the world.
