front cover of Decoding Gender
Decoding Gender
Law and Practice in Contemporary Mexico
Baitenmann, Helga
Rutgers University Press, 2007
Gender discrimination pervades nearly all legal institutions and practices in Latin America. The deeper question is how this shapes broader relations of power. By examining the relationship between law and gender as it manifests itself in the Mexican legal system, the thirteen essays in this volume show how law is produced by, but also perpetuates, unequal power relations. At the same time, however, authors show how law is often malleable and can provide spaces for negotiation and redress. The contributors (including political scientists, sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, and economists) explore these issues-not only in courts, police stations, and prisons, but also in rural organizations, indigenous communities, and families.

By bringing new interdisciplinary perspectives to issues such as the quality of citizenship and the rule of law in present-day Mexico, this book raises important issues for research on the relationship between law and gender more widely.

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front cover of Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America
Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America
Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux, eds.
Duke University Press, 2000
This collection examines the mutually influential interactions of gender and the state in Latin America from the late colonial period to the end of the twentieth century. Locating watershed moments in the processes of gender construction by the organized power of the ruling classes and in the processes by which gender has conditioned state-making, Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America remedies the lack of such considerations in previous studies of state formation.
Along these lines, the book begins with two theoretical chapters by the editors, Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux. Dore opens by arguing against the prevailing view that the nineteenth century was marked by a gradual emancipation of women, while Molyneux considers how various Latin American state forms—liberal, corporatist, socialist, neoliberal—have more recently sought to incorporate women into their projects of social reform and modernization. These essays are followed by twelve case studies that examine how states have contributed to the normalization of male and female roles and relations. Covering an impressive breadth not only of historical time but also of geographical scope, this volume moves from Brazil to Costa Rica, from Mexico to Chile, traversing many countries in between. Contributors explore such topics as civic ritual in Bolivia, rape in war-torn Colombia, and the legal construction of patriarchy in Argentina. They examine the public regulation of domestic life, feminist lobby groups, class compromise, female slaves, and women in rural households—distinct, salient aspects of the state-gender relationship in specific countries at specific historical junctures.
By providing a richly descriptive and theoretically grounded account of the interaction between state and gender politics in Latin America, this volume contributes to an important conversation between feminists interested in the state and political scientists interested in gender. It will be valuable to such disciplines as history, sociology, international comparative studies, and Latin American studies.

Contributors. María Eugenia Chaves, Elizabeth Dore, Rebecca Earle, Jo Fisher, Laura Gotkowitz, Donna J. Guy, Fiona Macaulay, Maxine Molyneux, Eugenia Rodriguez, Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, Ann Varley, Mary Kay Vaughan

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Women's Movement in international perspective
Latin America and Beyond
Maxine Molyneux
University of London Press, 2003
The essays collected in this volume reflect the remarkable analytical scope and geographical range of their author, engaging fully with the debates over the politics of gender as well as appraising women's movements in widely varying societies. Most chapters deal directly with Latin American issues and experiences, including anarchist feminism in the nineteenth-century Argentina; the politics of gender and those of abortion in Sandinista Nicaragua; the role of the official Cuban women's organisation in the 1990s; and appraisals of the relations between gender, citizenship and state formation in twentieth-century Latin America. '... the work of an original and candid scholar ... Enlightening and refreshing, this book should be read by anyone concerned with contemporary questions of citizenship and social membership' Matthew C. Gutman, Brown University 'This is an important book about big concepts - political interests, social activism in authoritarian states, revolution, and democracy' L. D. Bush, University of Pittsburgh '... this book definitively distinguishes Molyneux as one of the leading contemporary thinkers in the field' Sylvia Chant, London School of Economics
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