Women and Social Movements in Latin America

"This book promises to make a significant contribution to the literature on women and social movements in Latin America. The fact that it draws upon collaborative relationships with the women written about is a further strength, making it of interest to activists and academics alike... It would make an excellent teaching text, and it would also be of interest to general readers." -- Florence E. Babb, author of Between Field and Cooking Pot: The Political Economy of Marketwomen in Peru

This innovative, comparative study explores six cases of women’s grassroots activism in Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, and Chile.

Women's grassroots activism in Latin America combines a commitment to basic survival for women and their children with a challenge to women's subordination to men. Women activists insist that issues such as rape, battering, and reproductive control cannot be divorced from women's concerns about housing, food, land, and medical care.

This innovative, comparative study explores six cases of women's grassroots activism in Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, and Chile. Lynn Stephen communicates the ideas, experiences, and perceptions of women who participate in collective action, while she explains the structural conditions and ideological discourses that set the context within which women act and interpret their experiences. She includes revealing interviews with activists, detailed histories of organizations and movements, and a theoretical discussion of gender, collective identity, and feminist anthropology and methods.