Indigenous and Global Feminist Perspectives on the Women of Chiapas

The mythical rewrite is necessary to the demands of rewriting ideological and cultural norms that manage the theoretical framework. In Chicana/o culture three female shapes, La Malinche, La Llorona, and La Virgen de Gudalupe, separate the cultural borders of female behavior. Gloria Anzaldua proclaims in the Borderlands/La Frontera,

Despite being outcasted by other feminist groups such as the mainstream Chicano movement, and the second wave feminist movement, they wanted to set themselves apart through the use of their own personal experiences with gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class structure, and so forth. This term relates to Mexican-American and Hispanic women who oppose the traditional “household wife” role. They challenged the fundamental ideologies women, and young women are taught at an early age, and breaks away from the idea that men have dominion over women. This can also be categorized as a movement that fights against stereotypes against women. This term is important in context to our reading’s because this movement paved way for Chicano women to make their voice heard in their community. Just like we familiarize ourselves with key men in the Chicano movement, women also wanted to describe their experiences, and social injustices they were challenged with because they were women on top of other

During the Mexican Revolution, Mexico as a nation torn in many directions, people gave up simple farming lives to take up arms against causes that many of them did not fully understand. Gender roles during the period in Mexico were exceptionally degrading towards women. Having little more rights than slaves and treated as trophies or property more than human beings, women role in society was nothing near that of a man’s. In The Underdogs, Mariano Anzuela highlights the issue of gender roles by continuously illustrating the punitive role of women and their mistreatment. Augmenting Anzuelas work with citations from Oscar Lewis and Stephanie Smith will paint a picture of the degrading gender roles for women during the Mexican Revolution. Highlighted points brought up by Azuela are how men speak with and treat women, women’s place in society, and general disregard for women’s feelings.

Yet, Chicanos chose to ignore the fact that they were putting race before gender as males still continued to tell their female counterparts “the gabacho is oppressing us!” (Zamora). Nowhere in Zamora’s poem does she point out the males giving a nod to making the decision to place the fight for their equal citizenship before that of a woman. Nowhere does it mention the further oppression of women by not only Anglos but also their own race. The men wonder why their wives are spouting their “’women’s lib trip’” and because of this arrogant blindness that women begin to fester a resentment towards their counterparts. They are writing the movement’s “thesis” or in other words they are doing most of the work and still they have no fruit to show for their labor. Why is it that they are claiming to be a Chicanos if they are getting

With this came a patriarchal movement with the anthem “Yo soy Chicano” and an ideology of “Chicano = Machismo”. Women within the Chicano movement were afforded one of three roles: mothers, nuns or whores. They were not allowed self determination. This stemmed from the idea that men were the ones that were rising against oppression, when in fact women “broke their shackles and stabbed the spirit of injustice when confronted in the fields by a shotgun, when bloodied on the streets”, when constructed under the violence of “Anglo/chauvinism or Chicano machismo.” The transition from Chicano to Chicana was in protest of previous marginalization and a step towards representation and manifestation. (I Throw Punches, Chabram,

In almost every culture, machismo (or patriarchy) exists. Women are considered to be inferior and are treated as if they were objects. It is fair to assume that all women have or will face abuse or oppression for the mere fact that they are women. In Honduras, machismo is the backbone of society. In the book Don 't Be Afraid Gringo, Elvia Alvarado tells the story of the life of the Honduran campesinos (peasants) in the context of the military government of Osvaldo López Arellano and the installation of counterrevolutionary military bases between 1972 and 1975. The campesina women are expected to be servants for the men and provide for all of their children. If women dare to break away from these norms, they are denounced as a whore and

Why are Chicana women given a gender role? Ever since I was a little girl I was always given the talk “you cannot go out, nor have a boyfriend.” I asked myself that question. Why can’t I go out with my friends nor have a boyfriend? I would always get upset. I would ask my parents that question and their response would always be “you’re too young to go out and it’s really dangerous for you outside.” So I understood by then, but when I was 16-years old I wanted to go out with my friends. My parents gave me the same excuse and I told them, “Why am I treated differently than my brother, why can he go out at an early age and have fun and not me and the same response. So since then, I understood, in our society as Chicana women we are being treated unequally. Chicanas don’t get to do things that men have the opportunity to do because they are men and we are women. There are tons of gender bias roles placed upon the Chicana women as a Chicana woman ever since Before the Common Era Chicanas also had family expectations, According to The Bible, we have been given the stereotypical role that brown Chicana women have to get married at an early age and obey our husbands. Chicana women in society are given the unfair and unrealistic expectations that are only suppose to be housewives and servants, nothing more.

The story illustrates the overlapping influences of women’s status and roles in Mexican culture, and the social institutions of family, religion, economics, education, and politics. In addition, issues of physical and mental/emotional health, social deviance and crime, and social and personal identity are

Anzaldua identifies as a part of an emerging new mestiza consciousness and community, which strives to move beyond simple dualistic thinking and endeavors to “act and not react” This important contradiction lies at the heart of Anzaldua’s analysis. “From this racial, ideological, cultural, and biological cross-pollicization, an ‘alien’ consciousness is presently in the making — a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a consciousness of the Borderlands.” (Anzaldua, 1987, 420). Anzaldua’s proposition of the new consciousness mediates social relations, revolutionary social change, and its wider relevance to feminist theory through discussions of the Borderlands and its implications for ‘identity.’

How has gender inequality affected women in Latin American countries? Gender inequality has affected the women of Latin America in a multitude of ways, but it can be argued that the division of gender equality is extremely prominent when analyzing reproductive rights and health care access. Compared to countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, Latin America is far behind in terms of civil rights and reproductive rights. The lack of rights is not in question; women’s barrier to reproductive health can be seen through anecdotes and statistics. The question thus becomes, is there a definite answer to why these rights are absent? Factors concerning the absence of reproductive rights include cultural norms and religion, but the one that plays the biggest role remains the lack of female political leaders in Latin American countries. What exactly is it that is keeping Latin America behind other countries in terms of being progressive regarding reproductive rights? Women’s political absence in Latin America has shaped reproductive rights and health care services immensely.

Over the course of the semester, we have examined a multitude of issues facing women across Latin America. The complex struggles are diverse and vary greatly throughout the region, however parallels can often be drawn based on shared historical roots and influences. The access to full sexual and reproductive health and rights, is one of these parallel-presenting instances – and is the issue confronted in Gideon, Leite and Minte’s article titled “What is hindering progress? The marginalization of women's sexual and reproductive health and rights in Brazil and Chile.” Along with summarising the nature of this specific issue as described in the article, this paper will be connecting the phenomenon to other occurrences and realities that we have

The literature on gender and democratization documents the crucial role that women’s mobilizations play in bringing about many transitions (Britton 2005). In Latin America, women protestors often strategically incorporated authoritarian regimes’ gendered discourse of women as devout, self-sacrificing mothers into the framing of their own claims against the state. This left authoritarian regimes in the uncomfortable position of justifying the authoritarianism of grieving women’s to local and international audiences (Alvarez 1990, Okeke-Ihejirika and Franceschet 2002). With democratization, however, new political players on both the left and the right used women’s own framing of distinctive gender differences to encourage women’s return to the home (Chinchilla

Sadly, most of the issues that are concerned in the public health fields about women are related on their abilities to be good human reproducers, and they focus on them most of the time. For example, an article, which was written by Marcia Inhorn in title of “Defining Women’s Health: A Dozen Massages from More Than 150 Ethnographies” remarks this issue. She mentions, “The medical and public health fields devoted to

The United Nations declared menstrual hygiene a public health, gender equality, and human rights issue, but on what ground? Often times, policies are routed on or based off theoretical perspectives from philosophers, ethicists, economists, etc. Unfortunately, not all countries agreed with the UN on this declaration of women’s right, despite women make up half of the global population. The understanding of women’s bodies is relatively new, and literature on women’s rights is also relatively new. Women in countries around the world are shamed and limited in activities they are legally and socially permitted to do depending on their menstrual cycle. In this paper, I will agree with the UN’s declaration that menstrual hygiene management (MHM) is a public health issue, gender equality, and human rights issue through the lens of Sen and Nussbaum’s “capabilities” approach in addition to Jagger’s criticism of Nussbaum.

Many women in developing countries do not have access to services like family planning, antenatal care and delivery by a trained personnel (WHO, 2007). For example, in a country like Uganda, only 30 percent of married women from the age of 15 to 49 use modern family planning methods (Salwa Bitar & McKenzie Lamborne, 2014).