"Worthy wives and mothers:" State-sponsored women's organizing in postrevolutionary Mexico
Abstract
During the mid-1930s, as the postrevolutionary Mexican government embarked on its
modernization project, women mobilized for rights ranging from suffrage to religious
freedom. In an effort to control and direct women's organizing energies, the regime
established a network of official women's leagues, which policymakers hoped would
attract women away from both left- and right-wing movements. Although these leagues
sought to circumscribe women's activism, they also created an organizing infrastructure
that women instrumentalized. This article examines women's leagues as both an explicitly
gendered instance of state formation and a historical case study in women's organizing.
© 2002 Journal of Women's History.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6924Collections
More Info
Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Jocelyn Olcott
Professor of History
Jocelyn Olcott is Professor of History; International Comparative Studies; and Gender,
Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. Her first book, Revolutionary
Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico, explores questions of gender and citizenship in
the 1930s. Her second book, International Women’s Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising
Event in History considers the history and legacies of the United Nation’s first world
conference on women in 1975 in Mexico City (Ox

Articles written by Duke faculty are made available through the campus open access policy. For more information see: Duke Open Access Policy
Rights for Collection: Scholarly Articles
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info