Women’s work, and its meaning for women in fin de siècle and revolutionary Mexico, is the subject of this book. This focus goes beyond traditional women’s history by asking a central question informed both by cultural history and women’s history: What is the relationship between the discourse about women’s work and the material conditions in which it was performed? By analyzing the interpretation and meaning of women’s work alongside the actual conditions and types of work done by women, Porter enlarges the focus of her analysis and places her work in the vortex of cultural and women’s history. This original perspective, and the parallel relation she builds between discourse about work and real working conditions, provides her work with a pathbreaking analysis of this important, overlooked issue. In what is one of the major and most welcome contributions of her study, Porter traces the evolution of the discourse that shaped...

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