Carrillo studied literature and linguistics at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.
[2] Carrillo was responsible for bringing the issue of violence against women to international prominence at the United Nations (UN) in the early 1990s.
[4] In 1991, she wrote a research paper for the Human Rights Commission on this topic and how violence affected women's lives.
[5] Carrillo's research at UNIFEM found that worldwide, a lack of economic opportunity was at the root of many different forms of violence against women.
[5] This research (Battered Dreams: Violence Against Women as an Obstacle to Development), in addition to work done by Charlotte Bunch, was the basis of "mandating a broader focus for UNIFEM in the early 1990s.