CHAPTER 12 WOMEN AND GENDER IN MESOAMERICA 449lationships. In this way, society rationalized women’s need for “protection” by fathers
and other male relatives, as well as by authorities. When a father sought redress in
court for another man’s failure to make good on a marriage promise to his daugh-
ter, the father used his daughter’s vulnerability to justify her behavior (e.g., eloping
with the man). This strategy promoted the family’s aim to force the man to marry her
or to pay a dowry for having dishonored her. If the accused man rebutted by bring-
ing up the woman’s previous illicit affairs or dubious reputation, the woman and her
family had no recourse; the court would protect only a woman who submitted to pa-
triarchal behavioral codes.
Adulterous women were deemed to have committed a serious social offense. On
the other hand, adultery by a man was taken lightly, especially if he was discreet and
the affair did not lead to his wife’s and family’s humiliation. Women usually resigned
themselves to their husbands’ affairs and were unlikely to sue for divorce or separa-
tion based on the affairs. Because they depended economically and legally on their
husbands, most women attempted to bring their errant husbands back to the family.
Women’s Work in Colonial Mexico City
At the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, women
accounted for one-third of the labor force in Mexico City. Whereas 46 percent of In-
dian women and 36 percent of “caste” women (mixed blood) were engaged in pro-
ductive activities, only 13 percent of Spanish or creole women worked. These figures
illustrate the contrasting situation of women in different social classes. Poor women
(largely Indian and caste) could not comply with the ideal of women’s enclosure.
Living in conditions of extreme poverty and high mortality rates, lower-class families
needed the economic cooperation of husbands and wives to survive. Most women
found work as domestic servants, work that was considered degrading. Others sold
fresh produce or cooked foods in corner stands and in the market; worked as wait-
resses in public eating houses; took in laundry; sewed, sold thread, or wove for other
people, and so on.
In the early Colonial period, many middle-class women were shopkeepers. This
was a more prestigious occupation than manual labor, because it enabled women to
follow the rule of seclusion since these shops were usually attached to their homes.
At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, new
possibilities opened up for middle-class women when reforms introducing women’s
education began to take effect. Middle-class women who pursued education were
trained to care for sick or abandoned women in welfare institutions, reputable work
for women at this time. As for elite women, those who wanted a career rather than
marriage took religious vows. Other women from this class were involved in the man-
agement of properties they had inherited.
Feminists today draw attention to women’s historical efforts to remain produc-
tive and socially involved in the face of patriarchal control. Colonial society, how-
ever, accorded high status to women who did not work, and it stigmatized those who
did. Out of pure necessity, lower-class women engaged in labor considered degrad-
ing and transgressed the social precept of women’s enclosure; thus, their purity and