This collection of essays summarizes the findings of the first projects sponsored by the Colegio de México’s Programa de la Mujer. The articles examine Mexican women in politics, the family, work, and the life cycle. Written by sociologists, anthropologists, and two historians, they employ methodologies ranging from participant observation and survey questionnaires to in-depth interviewing. Although each of these essays makes informative reading, three theoretical-conceptual contributions in particular are potentially useful to historians.
In her analysis of middle-class women’s politics in Ciudad Satellite, María Luisa Tarres critiques the notion that women act politically on a short-term basis in informal mobilizations to meet domestic demands. This, she claims, is an institutional, public-sphere perspective. She shows how the private sphere generates a field for women’s action that has an impact on institutional politics without becoming part of it. To be sure, special characteristics sustain the work of these women: high levels of education and civic motivation, free time, and a long-term project of community construction in this modem urban complex.
With social relations as capital, these women have mobilized networks based on friendship and reciprocity into campaigns for the installation of telephones, schools, and clinics. They seek to construct social life rather than to conquer institutional power. But when they have pushed their husbands into negotiating with contractors and municipal authorities, they have created the field of power, set the stage, and written the script. These women span the gamut of organizational modes, from the traditional festival, the parish, and the PTA to single-issue campaigns for the environment or respect for the vote. Paragons of female dedication and sacrifice, their goal is to be more honest and responsible than the men or the government. The dichotomy between male/corruption/govemment and female/purity/civil society is becoming familiar in Mexican politics.
For decades, scholars like Arturo Warman and Rodolfo Stavenhagen argued that the campesino family survived the inroads of modernization by diversifying its income base. Women’s contribution to income has been noted, but never has it been so well theorized in relation to changing familial power relations as in Soledad González’ essay here, which is based on research in Xalatlaco. As the campesino household moves from dependence on agriculture to multiple earning activities of men, women, and youth, the patriarch’s power declines in favor of women and the younger generation. The change is reflected both in the family and in municipal politics.
In the third noteworthy contribution, Verena Radkenau and Gabriela Cano explore the life histories of three Mexico City-born professional women who were prominent in the state’s elaboration of family, educational, and cultural policies in the 1920s and 1930s. An even deeper study of the female contingent of social engineers in postrevolutionary development policy is in order. It will be facilitated by theoretical perspectives on gender as a sociopolitical construction.
All the essays in this book provide interesting reading. Taken as a whole, the collection indicates how rapidly and creatively women’s and gender studies are evolving in Mexico.
