1. Cultural Constructions of Gender and Sexuality
Week 9

2. Latin America
Aztec and Inca civilizations were patriarchal, yet women played major role
Women could become priestess or work under the royal family
In some Pre-Columbian societies, they could be elected (Taínos)

3. Modernization Socialism Populism Liberalism Authoritarian
Uruguay: 1927
Brazil: 1932
Chile: 1935 / 49
Argentina: 1946
Why does feminism expand only after the 1980s in Latin America?

4. 1964: Military coups in Bolivia and Brazil.
1965: US forces, fearing a Communist takeover, occupy DR.
1967: Che Guevara is killed in Bolivia
1968: Medellín Conference
1973: Socialist Salvador Allende overthrow in Chile
1976: Videla, Massera and Agosti form military junta in Argentina.
1979: Sandinistas take power in Nicaragua
1980: Archbishop Oscar Romero assassinated in El Salvador

5. From Colonial era to early XX Century: age of inequality
Native Americans, slaves, and people of mixed races continue to be victims of prejudice (formal or informal)
Slavery continued into the 19th century
Tension between homogeneity and diversity (Virgínia Vargas)
“Unity among women is not a given, but rather something to be constructed on the basis of our differences. Feminism is not a question of building a politics for women for women, but should be something that men can also embrace.”

6. Latin America Machismo: sexist attitudes; masculine bravado
Marianismo: the ideal of womanhood is self-abnegating motherhood (Catholic Church)

7. Feminism
Women are subordinated (universally, in domestic and public spheres)
What are the sources of subordination?
Activism to end subordination
Biological differences, but social construct

8. Opposition:
Church – Inappropriate
Media – Feminists are radical, privileged
Marxists – Capitalism is gender neutral, class
Systems of Oppression
(gender, class, race,
ethnicity).
How to separate Social from biological?

9. Liberal Feminists:
Equality through difference
Equal treatment, but the right to differential treatment based on women’s uniqueness
How do we reconcile all that? Is it possible?

10. Marxist Feminists:
Liberal feminists are bourgeois, unconcerned with class struggle
Subordination comes from capitalist system of production
Gender inequality is subsumed under class inequalities
Men’s wages tied to production
Women’s with reproduction, (receive money from men in exchange for managing family life)

11. Radical Feminists: No differences between men & women
Orthodox Marxism is reductionist, gender-blind
Class & Gender issues intersect
Subordination based on men’s control of women’s sexuality
Gender inequality is subsumed under the system of patriarchy

12. Salvador Allende ( )
Augusto Pinochet ( )

13. Arpilleras

15. Colonialism
Women’s subordination: power relations and ideologies of colonial expansion
Global capitalist expansion and patriarchal model of accumulation
Exploitation of colonies and women (sexism) = development of world capitalism

16. Men and women = global North and global South
Women as a
Last Colony
Both low wage producers
Both share structural subordination & dependency
Both overwhelmingly poor
Capitalist patriarchy colonized women by devaluing their household labor

17. 1990s – Challenge Canon and Post-Colonialism
Expansion of feminist ethnology
Question objectivity
More reflexive approach
Effort to liberate anthropology from its links to colonialism

18. it is a social construction, how does it relate to:
If women’s identity
it is a social construction, how does it relate to:
Class
Race
Ethnicity
Nation
Locality
Mexico’s Third Gender: