Directions in Latin American Women's History, 1977–1985

Abstract

Although the history of Latin American women has emerged only recently as a dynamic field of research, it is already shedding light on a range of social and cultural issues. Thirteen years ago, Ann Pescatello edited the first anthology of Latin American articles on gender issues, Female and Male in Latin America. One of her greatest contributions was a hefty interdisciplinary bibliography listing not only secondary sources but primary documents as well. In 1975 and 1976, Meri Knaster's excellent bibliographies appeared. “Women in Latin America: The State of Research, 1975” surveyed the research centers in Latin America with active publishing programs and assessed the state of the art. Women in Spanish America: An Annotated Bibliography from Pre-Conquest to Contemporary Times (1977) is an interdisciplinary bibliography that has become a standard reference on women in Spanish-speaking America. Asunción Lavrin's historiographic essay in Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives charted the course taken by subsequent historical researchers and indicated new directions and resources (Lavrin 1978a). Marysa Navarro's “Research on Latin American Women” discussed the effects of economic development on gender roles in less-developed countries, pointing out that Marxist and radical feminist perspectives do not adequately analyze female society. June Hahner's article, “Researching the History of Latin American Women: Past and Future Directions,” briefly reviewed scholarly trends (Hahner 1983). Her most recent report in this journal identified research centers and important interdisciplinary studies on women in Brazil (Hahner 1985).

Women and Working-Class Mobilization in Postwar São Paulo, 1945–1948

“…The broader generalization about such unusual periods holds true for Santo Andre and Sao Caetano: the greater the extent, depth, and intensity of working-class mobilization, the greater the involvement and visibility of working-class women,2 housewives as well as women workers. 3 This article is thus intended to fill two lacunae in recent research on women in Latin America: the scarcity of historical studies of women and politics (Hahner 1985;Lavrin 1987) and the lack of detailed examinations of women's participation in trade unions (Stoner 1987; for an exception, see Navarro 1985).…”