page_title: Women in Mexico
section_title: Mexican Revolution and its Consolidation, 1910-40
hierarchical_section_title: Women in Mexico / History / Mexican Revolution and its Consolidation, 1910-40
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: The Mexican revolution began in 1910 with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against the longstanding regime of Porfirio Diaz. The military phase is generally considered to have lasted through 1920. Most often it is the case that women involved in war are overlooked. Although the revolution is attributed to men, it is important to note the dedication and participation women contributed, just as much as their male counterparts. Poor mestiza and indigenous women had a strong presence in the revolutionary conflict becoming camp followers often referred to in Mexico as soldaderas. Nellie Campobello was one of the few women to write a first-person account of the Mexican Revolution, Cartucho.
  Most often, these women followed the army when a male relative joined and provided essential services such as food preparation, tending to the wounded, mending clothing, burying the dead, and retrieval of items from the battlefield. Women involved in the revolution were just as laden if not more so than men, carrying food, cooking supplies, and bedding. Many soldaderas took their children with them, often because their husband had joined or been conscripted into the army. In 1914, a count of Pancho Villa’s forces included 4,557 male soldiers, 1,256 soldaderas, and 554 children many of whom were babies or toddlers strapped to their mother’s backs. Many women picked up arms and joined in combat alongside men, often when a male comrade, their husband or brother had fallen.
  There were also many cases of women who fought in the revolution disguised as men, however most returned to female identities once the conflict had ended. The lasting impacts of the revolution have proved mixed at best. The revolution promised reforms and greater rights for women to one extent or another, but failed to live up to its promises. Thousands of women fought in the battles and provided necessary services to the armies, however their contributions have largely been forgotten and viewed as merely supportive.
  There had been agitation for women's suffrage in Mexico in the late nineteenth century, and both Francisco Madero and Venustiano Carranza were sympathetic to women's issues, both having female private secretaries who influenced their thinking on the matter. Carranza's secretary Hermila Galindo was an important feminist activist, who in collaboration with others founded a feminist magazine La Mujer Moderna that folded in 1919, but until then advocated for women's rights. Mexican feminist Andrea Villarreal was active agitating against the Díaz regime in the Mexican Liberal Party and was involved with La Mujer Moderna, until it ceased publication.  She was known as the "Mexican Joan of Arc" and was a woman represented in U.S. artist Judy Chicago's dinner party.
  Carranza made changes in family and marital law with long-lasting consequences. In December 1914, he issued a decree that allowed for divorce under certain circumstances.  His initial decree was then expanded when he became president in 1916, which in addition to divorce "gave women the right to alimony and to the management of property, and other similar rights."
  With the victory of the Constitutionalist faction in the Revolution, a new constitution was drafted in 1917.  It was an advanced social document on many grounds, enshrining rights of labor, empowering the state to expropriate natural resources, and expanding the role of the secular state, but it did not grant women the right to vote, since they were still not considered citizens.
  During the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40), legislation to give women the right to vote was passed, but not implemented. He had campaigned on a "promise to reform the constitution to grant equal rights."  Women did not achieve the right to vote until 1953.
caption: Depiction of «adelitas», or Soldaderas, of the Mexican revolution.
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