440 UNIT 4 MESOAMERICAN CULTURAL FEATURES
domestic realms. Women, especially those at lower socioeconomic levels, have always
worked hard in both formal and informal economies to support their families. But
the economic crisis in the region beginning in the 1980s has driven them into the
labor force in unprecedented numbers. Women have also been involved in armed
struggles, from the civil wars in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, to the low-
intensity war in Chiapas (on these wars, see Chapters 8 and 10). Women’s involvement
in the economy and in wars has helped them realize that their input is essential to
transforming society. It has also encouraged them to overcome their feelings of in-
adequacy, to speak up, to organize, to become leaders, and to defend their rights.
Involvement in armed struggle has raised women’s consciousness about the lim-
itations that the patriarchal order imposes on them. Although often relegated to
jobs of secondary importance, both on the battlefield and in supportive activities,
women nevertheless asserted their rights to equal participation; and in certain con-
texts, such as the Zapatista movement, they have proven themselves capable of tak-
ing on positions of highest responsibility. The new Mesoamerican woman, epitomized
by Rigoberta Menchú and Comandanta Ester, has gained a sense of her own worth
and her place in local, national, and international society.
This chapter consists of two main sections. The first section considers women’s
roles in Mesoamerican societies from pre-Hispanic to the mid–twentieth century. We
describe women’s active economic and political participation through the centuries
as well as the central part women have played in ensuring the survival of the native
cultures that give this region its distinctive shape. Such information has been miss-
ing from the record of human experience in the region; researchers and readers
have assumed that women’s lives unfolded exclusively within the domestic sphere, that
their efforts to band together to improve their societies were prepolitical experi-
ments, and that their roles in society were of secondary social importance. Influ-
enced by the recent growth of feminist scholarship, ethnographers and historians
have brought a critique of Eurocentric and androcentric assumptions to their stud-
ies of women and gender in Mesoamerica.
The second section explores important events and issues of the latter twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries, such as the effect of the economic situation and of
the politico-military crisis on women and gender, and the development of feminist
movements in the various countries. Like ethnicity and class, gender configures the
nature of modern Mesoamerican societies, allocating resources, rights, and privi-
leges unequally between men and women, and creating specific controls to guaran-
tee the reproduction of this system. Although indigenous and nonindigenous systems
differ, the ideology and practice of male privilege are strongly rooted in the region,
determining women’s access to educational, economic, and social opportunities.
Furthermore, recent economic trends—industrialization in rural areas and the emer-
gence of maquilasin urban areas (see Chapter 9)—have become strongly associated
with increased violence toward women and new forms of exploitation and subordi-
nation.
Throughout this chapter, complementarity and interdependence are dominant
themes in the gender systems discussed. Another prevalent theme is women’s ac-