Feminism in Mexico is the philosophy and activity aimed at creating, defining, and protecting political, economic, cultural, and social equality in women's rights and opportunities for Mexican women. Rooted in liberal thought, the term feminism came into use in late nineteenth-century Mexico and in common parlance among elites in the early twentieth century. The history of feminism in Mexico can be divided chronologically into a number of periods with issues. For the conquest and colonial eras, some figures have been re-evaluated in the modern era and can be considered part of the history of feminism in Mexico. At the time of independence in the early nineteenth century, there were demands that women be defined as citizens. The late nineteenth century saw the explicit development of feminism as an ideology. Liberalism advocated secular education for both girls and boys as part of a modernizing project, and women entered the workforce as teachers. Those women were at the forefront of feminism, forming groups that critiqued existing treatment of women in the realms of legal status, access to education, and economic and political power. More scholarly attention is focused on the Revolutionary period (1915–1925), although women's citizenship and legal equality were not explicitly issues for which the revolution was fought. The Second Wave and the post-1990 period have also received considerable scholarly attention. Feminism has advocated for the equality of men and women, but middle-class women took the lead in the formation of feminist groups, the founding of journals to disseminate feminist thought, and other forms of activism. Working-class women in the modern era could advocate within their unions or political parties. The participants in the Mexico 68 clashes who went on to form that generation's feminist movement were predominantly students and educators. The advisers who established themselves within the unions after the 1985 earthquakes were educated women who understood the legal and political aspects of organized labor. What they realized was that to form a sustained movement and attract working-class women to what was a largely middle-class movement, they needed to utilize workers' expertise and knowledge of their jobs to meld a practical, working system. In the 1990s, women's rights in indigenous communities became an issue, particularly in the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Reproductive rights remain an ongoing issue, particularly since 1991, when the Catholic Church in Mexico was no longer constitutionally restricted from being involved in politics.
Matilde Rodríguez Cabo Guzmán was Mexico's first female psychiatrist. Also a surgeon, writer, feminist, and suffragist, Rodríguez was an activist for the right of Mexican women, and affiliated with the Mexican Communist Party. She was married to General Francisco J. Múgica; they had a son, Janitzio Múgica Rodríguez Cabo.
Marta Lamas Encabo is a Mexican anthropologist and political science professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and lecturer at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). She is one of Mexico's leading feminists and has written many books aimed at reducing discrimination by opening public discourse on feminism, gender, prostitution and abortion. Since 1990, Lamas has edited one of Latin America's most important feminist journals, Debate Feminista. In 2005, she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
María Rosa Torre González was born in the state of Yucatán, Mexico. She was the first woman in Mexico to hold an elected office.
Feminism in Argentina is a set of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women in Argentina. Although some women have been considered precursors—among them Juana Manso and Juana Manuela Gorriti—feminism was introduced to the country as a result of the great European immigration wave that took place in the late 19th and early 20th century. The first feminists did not form a unified movement, but included anarchist and socialist activists, who incorporated women's issues into their revolutionary program, and prestigious freethinker women, who initially fought for access to higher education and, later, legal equality with men. The early 20th century was also full of women fighting for their freedom and rights in the workplace. Despite the efforts of the first-wave feminists, Argentine women did not acquire the right to vote until 1947, during Juan Perón's first government. His highly popular wife, Eva, championed women's suffrage and founded and ran the nation's first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party. Although she refused to identify herself as a feminist, Eva Perón is valued for having redefined the role of women in politics.
Fem is a major feminist magazine and the first Latin American one. It was published in print between 1976 and 2005, and has been digital ever since.
Ximena Bedregal Sáez is a Chilean-Bolivian architect, writer, theoretician, professor, editor, photographer, and feminist lesbian. In Mexico, she founded Centro de Investigación, Capacitación y Apoyo a la Mujer, and edited its magazine, La Correa Feminista.
Anilú Elías is a journalist, publicist, theoretical scholar, professor and feminist activist from Mexico City, who has been on the front lines of the fight for reproductive rights of Mexican women. Her written works focus on gender studies from a feminist perspective and evaluate the impact of patriarchy on women and its ties with sexual violence. She is a professor at the College of Mexico and a publicist at Dirección Creativa, managing advertising in both the United States and Mexico.
Montserrat Boix Piqué is a Spanish journalist, considered among the most influential women in her country. In early 2000, she created and developed the concepts of social cyberfeminism, and a year later those of feminist hacktivism. Another of her main areas of work is gender violence and communication. She has also stood out as a defender of the right to communication and citizenship rights for women. Since 1986, she has been a journalist for the Information Services of Televisión Española (TVE), in the international section.
Ana Victoria Jiménez is a Mexican feminist, photographer, editor, and activist, that actively participated in the second wave of Mexico's feminist movement. She is best known for her archive, Archivo Ana Victoria Jiménez, which contains photographs, posters, and flyers that demonstrated or related to women activism in Mexico.
Feminism in Francoist Spain and the democratic transition period took place in a specific socio-historical context. Spanish feminism went through several waves in the Francoist period. Broadly speaking, they are first-wave feminism taking place from the mid-nineteenth century to 1965, second-wave feminism taking place from 1965 to 1975, and third-wave feminism taking place from 1975 to 2012.
Women's sexuality in Francoist Spain was defined by the Church and by the State. The purpose in doing so was to have women serve the state exclusively through reproduction and guarding the morality of the state. Women's sexuality could only be understood through the prism of reproduction and motherhood. Defying this could have tremendous negative consequences for women, including being labeled a prostitute, being removed from her family home, being sent to a concentration camp, a Catholic run institution or to a prison. It was only after the death of Franco in 1975 that women in Spain were finally allowed to define their own sexuality. Understanding Francoist imposed definitions of female sexuality is critical to understanding modern Spanish female sexuality, especially as it relates to macho behavior and women's expected responses to it.
Tlacuilas y Retrateras was one of the first feminist art collectives in Mexico. It was founded in May 1983 by Ruth Albores, Consuelo Almeda, Karen Cordero, Ana Victoria Jiménez, Lorena Loaiza, Nicola Coleby, Marcela Ramírez, Isabel Restrepo, Patricia Torres and Elizabeth Valenzuela based on a feminist art workshop taught by Mónica Mayer at the Academia de San Carlos, National School of Plastic Arts (UNAM).
María Elena Urritia was a Mexican journalist, writer, researcher, and activist. She played a key role in starting the feminist magazine Fem. She was the fourth of six children born to conservative Catholic parents.
The Coalition of Mexican Feminist Women was a Mexican feminist organization created in 1976.
Raquel Ramírez Salgado is a Mexican researcher, communicator, feminist and women's rights activist.
Mujeres en Acción Solidaria was a Mexican feminist organization active in the early 1970s. It can be seen as the first example of second wave feminism in Mexico.
The First Feminist Congress of Yucatán was a gathering of Mexican feminists that happened in 1916. The delegates gathered at the José Peón Contreras Theater in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico from January 13 to 16. It was held under the auspices of the Yucatecan government. The Mexican government and historians largely consider it the first of its kind in the country. It was the second to be held in all of Latin America and the Caribbean, the first held in Argentina in 1910.
Yan María Yaoyólotl is a lesbian feminist activist and a Mexican feminist artist, painter, curator and cultural promoter. She was co-founder of the groups Lesbos (1977) and Oikabeth (1978) which have their origins in the lesbian-feminist movement in Mexico.
Teresita de Barbieri García, was an Uruguayan feminist sociologist, academic, and researcher based in Mexico. A researcher in social sciences and gender studies, she was a pioneer in research on the condition of women in Latin America from the Institute of Social Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). A socialist militant, she survived the 1973 Chilean coup d'état and went into exile in Mexico where she developed her research career. A sociologist at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), she researched the daily life of women, the Latin American feminist movement, reproductive health, secularism and, in particular, population and development. She wrote articles for various newspapers and magazines, including Fem magazine and the "La Doble Jornada supplement" of La Jornada newspaper, as well as for Cimacnoticias (CIMAC).
