page_title: Feminism in Mexico
section_title: Changing perceptions
hierarchical_section_title: Feminism in Mexico / Feminist theory in Mexico / Changing perceptions
caption_attribution_description: English: Elena Poniatowska Español: Elena Poniatowska
context_page_description: Feminism in Mexico is the philosophy and activity aimed at creating, defining, and protecting political, economic, cultural, and social equality in women's rights and opportunity for Mexican women. Rooted in liberal thought, the term feminism came into use in the late nineteenth-century Mexico and in common parlance among elites in the early twentieth century. The history of feminism in Mexico can be divided chronologically into a number of periods, with issues. For the conquest and colonial eras, some figures have been re-evaluated in the modern era and can be considered part of the history of feminism in Mexico. At independence in the early nineteenth century, there were demands that women be defined as citizens. The late nineteenth century saw the explicit development of feminism as an ideology. Liberalism advocated secular education of both girls and boys as part of a modernizing project and women entered the workforce as teachers. Those women were at the forefront of feminism, forming groups that critiqued existing treatment of women in the realm of legal status, access to education, and economic and political power.
context_section_description: Women's depictions of themselves in art, novels, and photography were in opposition to their objectification and portrayal as subjects of art. By creating their own art, in the post-Revolutionary period, artists could claim their own identity and interpretation of femininity. While the female artists of the immediate period following the revolution tried in their own ways to redefine their personal perceptions of body and its imagery in new ways, they did not typically champion social change. It was the feminists who came after, looking back at their work, who began to characterize it as revolutionary in sparking social change. In the 1950s, a group of Mexican writers called "Generation of '50" were influential in questioning the values of Mexican society. Rosario Castellanos was one of the first to bring attention to the complicity of middle-class women in their own oppression and stated, "with the disappearance of the last servant will the first angry rebel appear". Castellanos sought to question caste and privilege, oppression, racism, and sexism through her writing. Her voice was joined by Elena Poniatowska, whose journalism, novels and short stories philosophically analyzed and evaluated the roles of women, those who had no empowerment, and the greater society.
  Up until the 1980s, most discussion of feminism centered on the relationships between men and women, child-centric spheres, and wages. After that time period, bodies, personal needs, and sexuality emerged. Some feminist scholars since the 1980s have evaluated the historic record on women and shown that they were participants in shaping in the history of the country. In 1987, Julia Tuñón Pablos wrote Mujeres en la historia de México (Women in the History of Mexico), which was the first comprehensive account of women's historical contributions to Mexico from prehistory through the Twentieth Century. Since that time, extensive studies have shown that women were involved all areas of Mexican life. From the 1990s, gender perspective has increasingly become a focus for academic study.
caption: Elena Poniatowska
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi", "Image DateTime": "2008:12:04 17:40:53", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "128", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/50", "EXIF FNumber": "9/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:12:04 17:40:53", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:12:04 17:40:53", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "45/8", "EXIF ApertureValue": "13/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "50", "EXIF SubSecTime": "02", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "02", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "02", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4272", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2848", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "2136000/439", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "356000/73", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}