page_title: Women in Mexico
section_title: 19th c. Liberal Reform and Porfiriato 1850-1910
hierarchical_section_title: Women in Mexico / History / 19th c. Liberal Reform and Porfiriato 1850-1910
caption_attribution_description: English: Laureana Wright de Kleinhans, Mexican Feminist.
context_page_description: The status of women in Mexico has changed significantly over time. Until the twentieth century, Mexico was an overwhelmingly rural country, with rural women's status defined within the context of the family and local community. With urbanization beginning in the sixteenth century, following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, cities have provided economic and social opportunities not possible within rural villages. Roman Catholicism in Mexico has shaped societal attitudes about women's social role, emphasizing the role of women as nurturers of the family, with the Virgin Mary as a model. Marianismo has been an ideal, with women's role as being within the family under the authority of men. In the twentieth century, Mexican women made great strides towards a more equal legal and social status. In 1953 women in Mexico were granted the right to vote in national elections.
  Urban women in Mexico worked in factories, the earliest being the tobacco factories set up in major Mexican cities as part of the lucrative tobacco monopoly. Women ran a variety of enterprises in the colonial era, with the widows of elite businessmen continuing to run the family business.
context_section_description: As with Liberalism elsewhere, Liberalism in Mexico emphasized secular education as a path forward toward equality before the law. In the colonial era, there were limited opportunities for Mexican girls and women, but with the establishment of secular schools in the middle of the nineteenth century, girls had greater access to education, while women entered the teaching profession. Quite a number of them became advocates for women's rights, becoming active in politics, founding journals and newspapers, and attending international conferences for women's rights. Women teachers were part of the new middle class in Mexico, which also included women office workers in the private sector and government.  Women also became involved in general improvement in society, including better hygiene and nutrition. Toward the end of the Porfiriato, the period when General Porfirio Díaz ruled Mexico (1876-1910), women began pressing for legal equality and the right to vote.  The largest sector of Mexico's population was rural and indigenous or mixed-race, so that the movement for women's equality was carried forward by a very small sector of educated, urban women.
caption: Laureana Wright de Kleinhans, considered the most brilliant and radical defender of women's emancipation.
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