diff --git a/gyp/pylib/gyp/easy_xml.py b/gyp/pylib/gyp/easy_xml.py
index 0c99e29ecf..75c2ecec59 100644
--- a/gyp/pylib/gyp/easy_xml.py
+++ b/gyp/pylib/gyp/easy_xml.py
@@ -124,7 +124,7 @@ def WriteXmlIfChanged(content, path, encoding="utf-8", pretty=False,
     default_encoding = locale.getdefaultlocale()[1]
     if default_encoding and default_encoding.upper() != encoding.upper():
         if win32 and sys.version_info < (3, 7):
-            xml_string = xml_string.decode("cp1251").encode(encoding)
+            xml_string = xml_string.decode(default_encoding).encode(encoding)
         else:
             xml_string = xml_string.encode(encoding)