Results by title

Mexican American and Puerto Rican women have long taken up the challenge to improve the lives of Chicagoans in the city’s Latino/a/x communities. Rita D. Hernández, Leticia Villarreal Sosa, and Elena R. Gutiérrez present testimonies by Latina leaders who blazed new trails and shaped Latina Chicago history from the 1960s through today.

Taking a do-it-all attitude, these women advanced agendas, built institutions, forged alliances, and created essential resources that Latino/a/x communities lacked. Time and again, they found themselves the first Latina to hold their post or part of the first Latino/a/x institution of its kind. Just as often, early grassroots efforts to address issues affecting themselves, their families, and their neighborhoods grew into larger endeavors. Their experiences ranged from public schools to healthcare to politics to broadcast media, and each woman’s story shows how her work changed countless lives and still reverberates across the entire city.

An eyewitness view of an unknown history, Chicago Latina Trailblazers reveals the vision and passion that fueled a group of women in the vanguard of reform.

Contributors: Ana Castillo, Maria B. Cerda, Carmen Chico, Aracelis Flecha Figueroa, Aida Luz Maisonet Giachello, Mary Gonzales, Ada Nivia López, Emma Lozano, Virginia Martinez, Carmen Mendoza, Elena Mulcahy, Guadalupe Reyes, Luz Maria B. Solis, and Carmen Velasquez

Mexican American women reached across generations to develop a bridging activism that drew on different methods and ideologies to pursue their goals. Marisela R. Chávez uses a wealth of untapped oral histories to reveal the diverse ways activist Mexican American women in Los Angeles claimed their own voices and space while seeking to leverage power. Chávez tells the stories of the people who honed beliefs and practices before the advent of the Chicano movement and the participants in the movement after its launch in the late 1960s. As she shows, Chicanas across generations challenged societal traditions that at first assumed their place on the sidelines and then assigned them second-class status within political structures built on their work. Fueled by a surging pride in their Mexican heritage and indigenous roots, these activists created spaces for themselves that acknowledged their lives as Mexicans and women.

Vivid and compelling, Chicana Liberation reveals the remarkable range of political beliefs and life experiences behind a new activism and feminism shaped by Mexican American women.

Does gender shape campaign communication? Drawing on an original dataset of candidate tweets across six election cycles, Chicks Who Tweet demonstrates that gender systematically shapes congressional campaign messaging. Not only does gender predict the issues candidates emphasize, but also the tone of their communication and their strategic decisions to engage in negative campaigning. Even after controlling for partisanship, incumbency status, district competitiveness, and overall tweeting volume, gender remains a robust and statistically significant predictor of issue emphasis.

Working to reclaim the label “chicks,” the authors show that women candidates are acutely aware of the gendered stereotypes that shape voter expectations and media coverage. Women candidates tweet more frequently than men and are more likely to criticize their opponents. However, they often face backlash to negative campaigning that men do not. Interviews with campaign communication directors and staff further illuminate how strategic messaging decisions are filtered through gendered expectations about credibility, likability, and leadership. The authors also look at how race and ethnicity interact with gender to shape issue framing and agenda-setting strategies. Although social media platforms offer women candidates new avenues to articulate representational claims and mobilize supporters, Chicks Who Tweet shows that gendered double standards still constrain strategic choices and contribute to ongoing disparities in congressional representation.