Battles of Belonging: Women Journalists, Political Culture, and the Paradoxes of Inclusion in Colombia, 1943–1970 Available to Purchase

In October 1944 the first issue of Agitación Femenina, a Colombian women's periodical, published a satirical column advising women “to sterilize the brain to prevent those harmful microorganisms called thoughts, reasoning, and will from overpowering it” (p. 84). All women, the column elaborated, “march in pursuit of beauty, and, why not say it?, also in search of a handsome boy who governs, protects, directs, and sustains us” (p. 81). This piece—by Cucufata, a pen name that referred to a word used to mock women perceived to be stepping out of line—was one of many similar columns parodying prevailing gender roles and ideas of femininity. In Battles of Belonging, Sandra Sánchez-López examines Colombia's little-studied women's press from the 1940s to the 1970s and the work of women journalists who, like Cucufata, defied gender expectations of the time. Sánchez-López focuses on the struggles of Josefina Canal, Mercedes Triana, Ofelia Uribe,...