Women In Latin America

A highly readable survey of women's experiences in Latin America from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries.

This book is a critical resource for understanding the relationship between gender, social policy and women’s activism in Latin America, with specific reference to Chile. Latin America’s mother-centered kinship system makes it an ideal field in which to study motherhood and maternalism—the ways in which motherhood becomes a public policy issue. As maternalism embraces and enhances gender differences, it has been criticized for deepening gender inequalities. Yet invoking motherhood continues to offer an effective strategy for advancing women’s living conditions and rights, and for women themselves to be present in the public sphere. In analyzing these important relationships, the contributors to this volume discuss maternal health, sexual and reproductive rights, labor programs, paid employment, women miners’ unionization, housing policies, environmental suffering, and LGBTQ intimate partner violence.

The women’s movement is a central, complex, and evolving socio-political actor in any national context. Vital to advancing gender equity and gendered relations in every contemporary society, the organization and mobilization of women into social movements challenges patriarchal values, behaviours, laws, and policies through collective action and contention, radically altering the direction of society over time. Twenty-First-Century Feminismos examines ten case studies from eight different countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to better understand the ways in which women’s and feminist movements react to, are shaped by, and advance social change. A closer look at women’s movements in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Haiti, Mexico, and Uruguay uncovers broader recurrent patterns at the regional level, such as the persistence of certain grievances historically harboured by regional movements, the rise in prominence of varying claims, and the emergence of novel organizational structures, repertoires, and mobilization strategies. Dissimilarities among the cases are also brought to light, including the composition of these movements, their success in effecting policy change in specific areas, and the particular conditions that surround their mobilization and struggles. Twenty-First-Century Feminismos provides a compelling account of the important victories attained by Latin American and Caribbean organized women over the course of the last forty years, as well as the challenges they face in their quest for gender justice.

The expansion of married women's property rights was a main achievement of the first wave of feminism in Latin America. As Carmen Diana Deeere and Magdalena Leon reveal, however, the disjuncture between rights and actual ownership remains vast. This is particularly true in rural areas, where the distribution of land between men and women is highly unequal. In their pioneering, twelve-country comparative study, the authors argue that property ownership is directly related to women's bargaining power within the household and community, point out changes resulting from recent gender-progressive legislation, and identify additional areas for future reform, including inheritance rights of wives.

"This outstanding collection makes available for the first time a remarkable range of primary sources that will enrich courses on women as well as Latin American history more broadly. Within these pages are captivating stories of enslaved African and indigenous women who protest abuse; of women who defend themselves from charges of witchcraft, cross-dressing, and infanticide; of women who travel throughout the empire or are left behind by the men in their lives; and of women’s strategies for making a living in a world of cross-cultural exchanges. Jaffary and Mangan's excellent Introduction and annotations provide context and guide readers to think critically about crucial issues related to the intersections of gender with conquest, religion, work, family, and the law." —Sarah Chambers, University of Minnesota

The rationale stated for studying radical women of Latin America is first to throw light on the development of dictatorship and authoritarianism, second to transcend the stereotype of inherently violent men and inherently peaceful women, and finally to demonstrate that there is no automatic sisterhood among women even of the same class and ethnicity. Brief chronologies of three countries each in Central and South America open the two sections. The contributors are historians and political scientists primarily from the US. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Understanding the role of women in Latin American history demands a full examination of their activities in the region's political, economic, and domestic spheres. Toward this end, historian Gertrude M. Yeager has assembled the multidisciplinary collection Confronting Change, Challenging Tradition. The essays in this volume explore the ways in which Latin American women have shaped-and have been shaped by-the traditional practices and ideologies of their cultures. The selections are arranged in two sections: Culture and the Status of Women, and Reconstructing the Past.

" Sánchez Korrol considers the shifts in women's roles between the 1880s and 1930s and accompanying societal transformations.