ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING, GENDER AND GRASSROOTS
DEVELOPMENT IN MEXICO

by
Amy Schell
B.A., Wilfrid Laurier University, 2000

PROJECT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF
THE REQUIRMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
m
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

© Amy Schell, 2002
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA
December, 2002

All rights reserved. This work may not be
reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy
or other means, without the permission of the author.

UNilJERSITV OF NORTHERN
BRITISH COLUMBIA
LIBRARY
Prince George, BC

ABSTRACT

Since 1980s, Mexico has undergone extensive economic restructuring symbolic of
broader 'globalization' trends. Substantial changes to Mexican economic, political and social
structures have been informed by neo-liberal principles of development. Structural adjustment
policies (SAPs) and the more recent phase of economic restructuring, the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), are two neo-liberal economic strategies implemented in Mexico to
achieve trade liberalization and deregulation. The impacts of economic restructuring on
Mexicans vary depending on gender, class and geographical location (whether urban or rural).
Guided by the gender and development (GAD) theoretical framework, I explore answers to the
question "what are the gendered impacts of Mexican economic restructuring and how have
disadvantaged Mexican women responded to these impacts?"
By using secondary research methodologies to explore feminist development literature
pertaining to the gendered impacts of economic restructuring in conjunction with literature
specific to Mexico, this project analyzes structural changes on a macro level while drawing out
contextual examples of gender specific survival strategies. This study suggests that urban and
rural disadvantaged women in Mexico have responded to negative impacts of economic
restructuring in similar ways by mobilizing into grassroots organizations (GROs). Membership
in a grassroots organization serves the dual purpose of meeting immediate perceived needs
while containing the potential for empowering women to challenge gender ideologies confining
their activities in broader contexts. Overall, this project concludes that gender must be a central
element in all development efforts. The concerns of women's grassroots organizations and
women's struggles against gender subordination must be fully recognized and represented in
policy formation and implementation processes in order to foster greater equality in
development.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract
Table of Contents

11

List of Acronyms

m

Acknowledgements

v

Introduction

1

Chapter One : Gender and Development (GAD) Theoretical Framework
The Emergence of GAD in Development Studies
GAD Conceptual Framework
Gender, Development and Globalization

7
7
11
15

Chapter Two : The Impacts of Economic Reforms on Rural and Urban Mexican Women
Mexican Economic Restructuring
Economic Impacts of Trade Liberalization on Women
Political Impacts of State Deregulation and Privatization on Women
Social Impacts of Reduced Government Spending on Women
Conclusion

22
22
29
37
50
61

Chapter Three: Mexican Women's Grassroots Responses to Economic Reforms
Economic Grassroots Activities
Political Grassroots Activities
Social Grassroots Activities
Conclusion

63
64
69
76
83

Conclusion

86

Bibliography

98

11

LIST OF ACRONYMS

CONMUJER National Commision of Women
COPLAMAR General Coordination for the National Plan of Depressed and Marginalized
Zones
CUT

Tepoztlan Unity Committee

DAWN

Development Alternatives for a New Era

EZLN

Zapatista National Liberation Army

FTAA

Free Trade Area of the Americas

GAD

Gender and Development

GATT

General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs

GDP

Gross Domestic Product

GEM

Gender Empowerment Measure

GIRE

Grupo de Informacion en Reproducion Eleginda

GRO

Grassroots Organization

IMF

International Monetary Fund

MYD

Mujeres de Yucatan

NAFTA

North American Free Trade Agreement

PAN

National Action Party

PIDER

Integral Program of Rural Development

PRI

Revolutionary Institutional Party

PROGRESA

Program for Health Education and Nutrition

PRONAM

National Programs for Women 1995-2000

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PRONASOL National Program of Solidarity
SAM

Mexican Nutritional System

SAP

Structural Adjustment Policy

SAPRIN

Structural Adjustment Participatory Review International Network

TRIM

Trade-related Investment Measure

TRIP

Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights

UNDP

United Nations Development Program

UNIFEM

United Nations International Development Fund for Women

WID

Women in Development

WTO

World Trade Organization

ZISVAW

Zonta International Strategies to Eradicate Violence Against Women &
Children

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are a number of people to whom I owe much gratitude for their help during the
writing of this project. Thank-you Johan Boyden for your unconditional assistance and
patience, not to mention your excellent editing skills. Also, thanks to Dr. Fiona MacPhail
and Dr. Heather Smith for your time, assistance, and guidance. To the girls of Prince
George, Randi, Jen, Coral and Melonie, thank-you for your companionship and for helping
me learn that laughter is a cure for almost anything. Lastly I would like to acknowledge my
parents, Wayne and Connie Schell, as being the pillar of my world. Thank-you for your
understanding and love.

v

INTRODUCTION

Neo-liberal economic practices have dominated Mexico' s recent development
resulting in substantial impacts on disadvantaged urban and rural Mexican women. My
intention in this project is to draw out and piece together what information is presently
available on how disadvantaged Mexican women are responding to structurally induced
hardships caused by gender biases present in the neo-liberal policies designed to carry out
economic restructuring (Jacobson, 1992: Staudt, 1998: Loker, 1999, 15). Thus, my research
question is "what are the gendered impacts of Mexican economic restructuring and how
have disadvantaged Mexican women responded to these impacts?" My underlying objective
is to reveal the necessity of recognizing the impacts of restructuring in present and future
stages of globalization in order to prevent any further progression of existing gender, class,
and geographical inequalities.
Mexican economic restructuring is hailed as a neo-liberal success by economists,
which suggests it is symbolic of broader trends associated with globalization (Loker, 1999,
15). However, questions arise concerning the lack of attention given to the gendered impacts
of globalization. Ignorance of these impacts could lead to severe implications for the future
of disadvantaged Mexican women as secondary citizens of an increasingly polarized
developing country. Women in Mexico are compelled to find ways of contesting economic,
political and social inequalities, and of surviving the hardships caused by macroeconomic
reforms imposed on them by two decades of structural adjustment policies (SAPs) and more
recently, by the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on
January l 8t, 1994.

I begin with the assumption that the forces forging Mexico's development are
inherently value laden. Neo-liberal principles of capitalism that are invested with patriarchal
values influence the actions of past Mexican state regimes in alliance with corporations and
financial institutions. The result of subsequent actions is the creation of power and wealth
hierarchies with poor women occupying precarious positions along the lowest rungs
(Anderson & Dimon, 1999, 170). Consequently, unequal power relations form the
foundation of economic progress because they maintain and perpetuate class and gender
inequalities, in turn creating harsh conditions for disadvantaged rural and urban Mexican
women. Furthermore, recognizing geographical location as a significant factor in the
shaping of unequal power relations points to how different races and ethnicities within
Mexico experience impacts and respond to them. lndigneous people live in southern states,
which are primarily rural whereas the dominant population group tends to live in the
urbanized north. Thus, by analyzing differential impacts of SAPS on rural and urban
peoples we can start to understand the racial differences in the impacts.
Poor Mexican women from different areas are responding similarly to the impacts of
economic restructuring by mobilizing to develop survival strategies, signaling the
emergence of social movements that often resist distorted free-market models of
development (Staudt, 1998, 19).
In this project I concentrate on the activities of women' s grassroots organizations
(GROs) because they encompass the responses of poor Mexican women to the impacts of
economic restructuring. Indeed, according to Kate Young (1997, 373), these organizations
"play an important role as promoters of interests and liberties of the citizenry." Furthermore,
women's mobilization into GROs potentially allows women's collective voices to be audible

2

in opposition to exclusion and silencing experienced by many women due to gender
subordination prevalent in the Mexican patriarchal social order.
Women's groups commonly arise from community networks wherein individuals are
united by similar needs and concerns. Women's mobilization into grassroots organizations is
a strategic response to poverty and hardship. The activities of GROs are often performed as
survival strategies and include different levels of participation. Hazel Johnson (1992, 150)
identifies survival strategies as being "partly based on individual actions and behavior,
however, they also depend on networks between individuals and households, and on forms
of group solidarity." These networks and differing forms of solidarity can transcend their
initial purpose of survival and become mechanisms for women's empowerment (1992, 150).
Women involved with GROs have proven extremely resilient in difficult times and
under the harsh circumstances of poverty. More often than not, GROs lack substantial
financial resources, which they make up for by focusing on empowering participatory
processes (Ruiz Bravo & Monkman, 1998, 486). Through their potential ability to empower
their members, GROs reveal their institutional capacity to transform the unequal structures
that cause gendered dynamics of poverty for disadvantaged Mexican women (Barndt, 1999:
Pena, 1997).
This project is comprised of three chapters. Chapter One outlines the gender and
development (GAD) theoretical framework guiding my analysis of economic restructuring,
gender and grassroots development in Mexico. Useful to scholars and policy makers alike,
this framework not only reveals the importance of gender in all development efforts, but also
allows for an analysis of the power structures maintaining unequal gender relations, class
inequalities and geographical inequalities (Visvanathan, 1997, 23). Framing this study using

3

GAD enables me to critically analyze the impacts of economic restructuring from a feminist
perspective, and also to reveal some of the causes and consequences of structural
inequalities at different levels. By conducting a gender analysis of the impacts of economic
restructuring I can draw out how the cultural construction of femininity contributes to the
ways poor Mexican women experience the impacts of restructuring. Thus, I highlight the
manifestation of gender ideologies in changing Mexican economic, political and social
structures as seen through the impacts on disadvantaged Mexican women. Furthermore, I
search for answers to the question "how do women challenge power structures through their
grassroots survival strategies?" In applying the GAD framework to this study I hope to
create an inclusive understanding of how disadvantaged Mexican women have responded to
the impacts of economic restructuring in Mexico. To do so I draw on examples from periods
of adjustment in the late 1980s to mid 1990s including several rounds of structural
adjustments as well as the implementation of the NAFTA.
The GAD theory views women' s subordination to men as an obstacle in the path to
gender equality. Both gender and class constitute two structures of power that are found on
local, national and international levels and throughout economic, political and social
systems. Marianne Marchand and Anne Sisson Runyan (2000, 8) purport that where gender
and class intersect, multiple dimensions of inequality are constructed and reconstructed.
Moreover, "[g]ender operates in at least three distinct, yet interconnected ways: (1)
ideologically, especially in terms of gendered representations and valorizations of social
processes and practices; (2) at the level of social relations; and (3) physically through the
social construction of male and female bodies." Similarly, different notions of class function
to maintain social boundaries, in tum confining certain social actors to ideologically

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confined and defined spaces. It is the institutionalization of gender, class and geographic
boundaries that pose constant challenges to the improvement of women's positions and
material conditions. Assessing the economic, political, and social positions and conditions of
women over a period of time reveals how changes in the local, national and global structures
impact women's lives. I consider the economic, political and social restructuring occurring
in Mexico to be representative of broader international trends, and so I conclude Chapter
One with a brief discussion of gender and the international trends generally associated with
globalization and neo-liberalism in order to set the stage for Chapter Two's analysis of the
impact of restructuring on disadvantaged rural and urban Mexican women.
In Chapter Two the impacts of recent economic restructuring encompassed by social,

economic, and political aspects are discussed. The economic integration of Mexico into
trade relations with Canada and the United States throughout the 1980s and 1990s has led to
impacts that have been experienced differently by various social groups in Mexico. The
gendered effects of economic restructuring on men and women in the labor market, as well
as in the national socio-political climate, are caused by unequal structures of power
maintained through ideologies permeating reform policies. Specific policies of restructuring
have been identified as substantially impacting Mexican's lives including 1) trade
liberalization, 2) deregulation of the state, and 3) reduced government spending (Barndt,
1999: UNIFEM, 1999: Tiano, 1994: Loker, 1999: Coote, 1995). These policy changes
correspond to adjustments in Mexico's economic, political, and social systems and, in turn,
the positions and conditions of poor Mexican women within each of these systems.
Chapter Three examines a number of women's grassroots organizations in Mexico
working on economic, political and social projects in response to the increasing hardships

5

experienced by women in the wake of recent rounds of economic reforms. Membership in
such organizations provides women with potentially empowering opportunities. Through
their participation, women politically challenge the economic and socio-political structures
that maintain and perpetuate women's subordination and the inequalities that characterize
gender specific dimensions of poverty. Furthermore, grassroots organizations are bringing a
new understanding of the gender issues of development to the forefront of policy design.
This project ends with a concluding chapter that contains suggestions for the creation of
more equitable development policies that contextualize the globalization process in order to
centralize gender issues in changing local, national and global structures.

6

CHAPTER ONE:
GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT (GAD) THEORETICAL FRAMEOWRK

In this Chapter I discuss the gender and development (GAD) theoretical framework
guiding my analysis. In order to reveal how women are responding to the impacts of
economic restructuring, an examination of the underlying structural inequalities leading to
the unequal effects of economic restructuring on disadvantaged Mexican women is required.
I will use the GAD framework to do so. In outlining the GAD paradigm, I briefly discuss the
emergence of GAD within the field of development studies. By assessing the similarities
and differences between the GAD and the women in development (WID) theory (such as
how they conceptualize the causes of women's subordination) I intend to show how GAD is
more compatible with questions concerning women's empowerment. This chapter also
identifies and explains a number of conceptual tools guiding the GAD framework such as:
women's 'position' and 'condition,' 'women's subordination,' and 'strategies for
transformation.' As a prelude to Chapter Two's examination of economic, political and
social impacts of restructuring and economic reform on Mexican women, this chapter
concludes with a brief discussion of gender and development in relation to global trends
associated with modem economic restructuring.
The Emergence of GAD in Development Studies

Within the field of development studies, there are several theoretical and practical
frameworks directing women-centered development. The dominant paradigm, WID, is
based on notions of modernization and efficiency. While WID considers women's roles as
producers, it pays less attention to their reproductive labor and subordinate positions within
society (Visvanathan, 1997, 23). In contrast, the emerging GAD paradigm places greater
7

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emphasis on the complexity of women's roles and the root causes of inequality and
oppression. Both WID and GAD have specific assumptions regarding the process of
development, which for the most part, are advanced in conjunction with the evolution of
both development studies and the women's movement (Connelly et. al, 2000, 7). The
emergence of GAD as a response to WID limitations signaled a division within womencentered development efforts thus, WID and GAD share some similarities, but diverge in
their underlying beliefs about the process of development and on the root causes of women's
subordination.
The GAD perspective adopts a holistic approach and treats development as a
complex process derived from economic, political, and social forces. This approach has been
influenced by socialist-feminist thinking and is concerned with addressing the root
inequalities creating many of the practical problems experienced by women in their daily
lives (Visvanathan, 1997, 23: Connelly et. al, 2000, 65). Feminists doing GAD work have
incorporated lessons from WID models, which concentrate on issues concerning women
rather than considering broader issues of domination and subordination implicated by gender
power relations (Visvanathan, 1997, 23). Unlike WID, GAD has an expansive focus
including the social relations between men and women, in a variety of settings (Young,
1997, 51). These social relations can also be understood as gender relations, which can be
seen as "the key determinant of women's position in society, not as immutable reflections of
the natural order but as socially constructed patterns of behaviour .. . [that] can be changed if
this is desired (Connelly et. al, 2000, 65)." As such, the GAD approach focuses on the
interconnection of gender, class, and race and the social construction of their defining
characteristics.

8

The long-standing presence of WID in development theory allows for an
understanding of how the evolution of WID theories reflects changing conceptualizations of
women's roles in development. Until the mid-1970s, WID subscribed to the 'welfare
approach' focusing on improving women's traditional roles as mothers. The 'equity'
approach followed, emphasizing the integration of women into the development process,
however, Third-World feminists later debunked the equity approach for being ethnocentric
(Moser, 1993, 66). The 'anti-poverty' approach emerged by the mid 1980s and, as Caroline
Moser (1993, 66) notes, was a "toned down version of 'equity' [advocating] that poor
women increase their productivity." Women's poverty was thus an issue of
underdevelopment, not of subordination (Momsen-Henshall, 1991, 101). Finally, the
common 'efficiency' perspective advocates the integration of women into the existing
development process and women's participation in development is associated with
economic equity for women (Moser, 1993, 66).
The GAD paradigm emerged parallel with the efficiency approach in the mid 1980s.
Aiming to foster greater self-reliance, GAD began as the 'empowerment approach,' and
owes much credit to Gita Sen and Caren Grown, members of the Development Alternatives
for a New Era (DAWN) organization. In Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions:
Third World Women's Perspectives, Sen and Grown (1987, 83) conceptualize development

strategies as emerging from poor women's experiences. They concentrate on short-term and
long-term reorientation of international structures as a strategy for increasing gender equity.
Thus, since its conception, GAD has addressed the global and local roots of gender
inequality.

9

Indeed, today the perspective has clearly defined conceptual elements shaping the
scope of the GAD framework.
Drawing on the socialist-feminist perspective, the GAD approach argues that
women's status in society is deeply affected by their material conditions of life
and by their position in the national, regional and global economies. GAD also
recognizes that women are deeply affected by the nature of patriarchal power in
their societies at national, community and household levels. Moreover, women's
material conditions and patriarchal authority are both defined and maintained by
accepted norms and values that define women's and men's roles and duties in a
particular society (Connelly et. al, 2000, 10).
This summary of the GAD framework highlights the overlapping influences of ideology and
the unequal organization of economic, political and social systems leading to the
subordination of women to men. Moreover, it exemplifies how GAD views patriarchy and
capitalism as systems of social order that limit women's access to opportunities and
resources. Mercedes Gonzales de la Rocha (1994, 140) explains the relationship between
social positions and access to resources (material conditionality) in terms of power relations
and the exertion of control between different actors and groups. She states that hierarchical
structures are
[b ]ased on the existence of power relations, where individuals stand in positions
of domination and subordination. A relation of power ... is a social relationship
which derives from a situation where one group or individual exerts control over
necessary resources and, through that control, make others behave according to
her or his interests. The other party to the relationship, being deprived of the
control of mutually necessary resources, stands in a subordinated position and is
likely to act as the dominant party decides. Power, then, derives from the
struggle to gain control over material, social, and ideological resources.
More broadly, women are excluded through systematic gender discrimination manifesting in
society through the interplay of gender, class, and geographical ideologies. These ideologies
create and perpetuate circumstances confining women's capabilities. This praxis is
characteristic of the multidimensional nature of the GAD framework which looks at global

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inequalities while concentrating on local gender relations in order to explore the root causes
of women' s subordination.
GAD Conceptual Framework

The GAD framework informs this study by allowing the structural roots of inequality
to emerge through the application of conceptual tools such as: women's 'position' and
' condition' , ' women' s subordination,' and 'strategies for transformation' . In order to
develop an understanding of the process of women's empowerment, I consider an
assessment of women's subordinate positions and unequal conditions essential for revealing
what leads to greater improvements in their circumstances. Kate Young (1997, 53) argues
that empowerment entails increasing women' s power and authority over their life
circumstances and improving their abilities to manage their own lives economically,
politically and socially. Young' s view coincides with an important element of GAD theory,
the potential for social transformation. Hence, GAD theory promotes the organization of
women in local, national and international settings to mobilize for change (Connelly et. al,
2000, 67). This mobilization requires support for women's emancipation from those sections
of society imposing constraints on their capacities (Young, 1997, 53). In tum, acquiring this
support means changing existing constructs of gender (and the subsequent structures of
subordination) through activities that empower women. Unequal power relations leading to
exclusion and inequality can be transformed through equitable development strategies.
GAD, therefore, views women's active participation in development as pivotal to social
transformation. The ensuing section will briefly define and discuss a number of GAD
analytical tools which illuminate how the application of the GAD framework fosters greater
understanding of strategies leading to women's empowerment.

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In her essay "Mobilization without emancipation? Women's interests, state and

revolution in Nicaragua," Maxine Molyneux distinguishes between women's everyday
conditions and women's social positions in relation to practical and strategic gender interests
(cited in Feldman, 1998, 28). According to Molyneux (1985, 233) "practical gender interests
arise from concrete conditions of women's positioning within the sexual division of labor."
She (1985, 233) further notes that, "[p]ractical interests are usually a response to an
immediate perceived need."

Consecutively, 'gender interests' are those arising from

women's roles within the sexual division of labor, enabling them to meet their basic needs
and, also to challenge women's subordinate position by, for example, lobbying for formal
legislation prohibiting gender discrimination in the labor market.
A woman's position in society is important for understanding her status relative to
men's status. Women's status can be defined as "the degree to which they [women] can
have access to, and control over material resources and social resources within the family,
community and society" (Dixon, 1978 cited in Stromquist, 1998, 7). Women occupy
subordinate positions within these social institutions and experience limitations in their
abilities to improve their circumstances. Such gender disparities are observable in wages and
employment opportunities, participation in legal and political institutions, vulnerability to
poverty and violence, along with other disparities within economic, political and social
systems (Connelly et. al, 2000, 67). Re-conceptualizing women's existing productive and
reproductive roles, therefore, challenges women's subordinate positions within uneven
structures of gender (Moser, 1993, 39).
In this project, my understanding of women's positions draws on a combination of

sociological and feminist assumptions. I see society as made up of overlapping structures

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which are created by people who live within these structures but are, at the same time,
shaped by how these structures function. If we consider the economy, the political system
and the day-to-day interaction of the social system as such structures, we can begin to
understand how structures are guided by ideologies that function to maintain generalizable
positions. An example is the patriarchal ideology that views women as subservient to men.
This entails the positioning of women in societal structures as lower than men, essentially
creating a gender hierarchy wherein women are considered less valuable to society than
men. According to Nelly Stromquist (1998, 4), "every social system tends to preserve a core
set of roles through mechanisms of social persuasion and social control." Moreover, she
states "the critical issue is the disadvantaged position that many of these roles create for
certain groups in society - in this case women. Most societies tend to hold up male behavior
as the norm and to evaluate female behavior against that standard" (Stromquist, 1998, 4).
There are a number of terms used by feminists to explain this male norm.
Androcentrism or phallocentrism are two such terms used to explain the gender bias inherent
in patriarchal social orders. The male norm permeates each layer of society, limiting
women's access to wealth and privilege particularly in the lower layers of the social stratum,
and women thus experience greater challenges to improving their conditions (Stromquist,
1998, 4).
Closely linked to position, the concept of women' s condition draws out distinctions
in women' s everyday experiences. Condition refers to women' s material state in their
immediate sphere of experience (Connelly et. al, 2000, 67). More specifically, condition
entails what work a woman does, where she lives, and what are her basic needs to survive.
The concept of condition is closely linked to the roles women perform. The state of

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women's conditions can also be thought of as relating to standards of well-being. For
instance, women living in impoverished circumstances experience sub-standard conditions
comprised of few material resources and limited access to infrastructure.
Feminists have identified a number of systems of social organization that operate by
placing women at the base of gender hierarchies. Feminist scholars often view unequal
gender divisions of productive and reproductive labor as the root causes of women's
subordination (Gonzalez de la Rocha, 1994: Young et. al, 1981). More specifically, as
Young et. al (1981, ix) relays, women's subordination arises from the ways in which
"women are made vulnerable by the isolation of domestic life, and are largely dependant on
men who represent them 'outside.' Women generally and, wives in particular, often do not
have direct access to the market; their access is mediated, either directly, by men, or
indirectly through their acceptance of male ideologies of appropriate female roles." This
statement reveals the complexity of women's subordination to men and the maintenance of
male domination in society as well as in emerging economic market systems.
'Strategies for transformation,' another GAD concept applied in Chapter Three,
hinges upon women's empowerment through their active participation in the development of
survival strategies, serving to challenge their subordinate positions and induce social change.
Poor urban and rural women's lives revolve around daily survival and the employment of
survival strategies (Johnson, 1992, 150). Deeply embedded in "the material conditions of
work, food provision, and the daily needs of family members, survival strategies are partly
based on individual actions and behavior, but they also depend on networks between
individuals and households, and on forms of group solidarity" (Johnson, 1992, 150). Young
(1997, 51) notes that the GAD framework "views women as active agents and not passive

14

recipients of 'development' but does not assume that women have perfect knowledge of
their social situation." Women' s survival strategies may implicitly and/or explicitly
challenge the limitations imposed on them by gender inequalities. This further illustrates
how gender subordination is neither static nor homogeneous. Women's participation arises
in organizations as a response to changes in their material conditions and, in turn, a climate
with the potential for change emerges. Thus, grassroots strategies for survival have the
potential to empower women and transform women's subordinate positions, at the same
time as creating positive change in their material conditions.
Gender, Development and Globalization

The following discussion on gender, development and globalization illuminates
features of the global economic climate affecting women' s lives as a result of the economic
restructuring associated with globalization. This discussion is relevant to the ensuing
chapters in that the economic reforms made through the preparation and implementation of
economic, political and social reform policies in Mexico such as trade liberalization, state
deregulation and reduced government spending, are symbolic of the shifting regional trends
correlated to globalization. As the result of emerging global forces, the organization and
functioning of international, national and local economic, political and social systems are
being restructured. Consequently, in many areas of the world, structural inequalities such as
class and gender are intensifying.
Increasing class and gender polarization and the perpetuation of women's
subordination arise from ideologies in practice (Anderson & Dimon, 1999, 170). Led by
neo-liberal principles of capitalism and invested with patriarchal values, the gendered
consequences of globalization are complex and, in many ways, still unknown. However,

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looking at how ideologies and lived realities interact reveals numerous discoveries about the
impacts of economic restructuring on women, including the exploitation of women in the
economy, the continued presence of patriarchal biases in politics, and the persistent
ignorance of women's valuable contributions to society (Marchand & Parpart, 1995, 13).
The emerging globalization framework for development does not explicitly
acknowledge the underlying aspects of gender present in the current transformation.
Isabella Bakker (1999, 207) confers by noting that, "neo-liberal policies affirm the new
gender-neutral, self-reliant citizen and atomistic market player." Feminists have criticized
neo-liberal market ideas for being gender biased and for wrongly assuming that
development is gender neutral~ that is, that men and women alike benefit from the
liberalization of national economies and their integration into volatile regional and global
market systems (Elson, 1991: Jacobson, 1992). Bakker (1999, 207) reiterates that feminists
doing development work have "consistently demonstrated that restructuring is not a gender
neutral or genderless process, as women have a fundamentally different relation from men to
national and international paces of production, politics, identity, and culture."
Joyce Green and Cora Voyageur (1999, 143) poignantly express their skepticism of
the omnipotent nature with which globalization and development have been portrayed by
neo-liberalists.
Globalization .. . is far from neutral, nor is it an ineluctable consequence of air
masses aloft. Globalization is tied to development, its connotations suggesting a
rising trajectory of economic and cultural growth carrying human well-being
with it. It has an aura of historical inevitability about it. Like globalization,
development is taken to be an uncontestable feature of human existence. Both
emerge from the practices and the propaganda of capitalism.
The suggested use of propaganda indicates a need to protect institutions built on vested
interests, maintained through strategic structures of power. In fact, Judith Adler-Hellman
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(1997, 5) states that during the most recent round of economic reform in Mexico, where "the
press is muzzled [and] television is in the hands of the corporate giants," the government
maintained a close vigilance on its opponents and transmitted only general propaganda
messages to the public. From a critical gender perspective, globalization as portrayed in
capitalist propaganda "represents the construction, reconstruction, and transformation of
categories of knowing, which tend to produce new gender biases as well as rectifying
others" (Marchand & Sisson Runyan, 2000, 8). The same can be said for class biases,
observable in the polarization occurring in developing countries wherein wealth is
concentrated in the top quintiles of the population while segments of the population living in
poverty increase. Having said that, it is also necessary to recognize that some groups, like
women from higher classes, may benefit from the forces of globalization. However, an
increase in wealth concentrated in a small segment of the population indicates an unequal
distribution of wealth and privilege (Feldman, 1992, 13).
To assess the impact of global trends associated with economic restructuring on poor
urban and rural Mexican women, numerous categories of inquiry can be considered. As
outlined in the previous section on GAD, changes in women's position and condition in
economic, political and social systems are influenced by features of economic restructuring
such as trade liberalization, deregulation of the state, and reductions in government
spending. Although economic reforms implemented around the world are similar, the
regional effects are not. For instance, in Southeast Asia, economic restructuring led to rapid
economic growth and accumulation. However, in other areas like Africa, Central Asia and
Eastern Europe, countries have been "marginalized from the global economy" and, by

17

extension, previously marginalized groups, such as women, are pushed further into the
fringes (Kerr, 1994, 12).
Trade liberalization and increasing export economic processes have massive effects on
disadvantaged women in terms of their position within the economic system. Despite their
substantial workloads, women generally hold a subordinate economic status and,
subsequently, impacts of trade liberalization translate into additional burdens on women
(Stromquist, 1998, 5). The continuation and emergence of exploitation, infringement of
women's reproductive freedom, abuse and violation of their human rights, and unsafe and
hazardous working conditions are features found where trade liberalization occurs. This is
especially true in areas experiencing fast industrial growth, such as Mexico's maquiladora
industry, wherein a free market model has shaped the manufacturing industry by relying
heavily on female labor (Kopinak, 1995, 1). Trade liberalization is often accompanied by
policies calling for state deregulation.
Deregulating the state is intended to divest the state of its institutional capacities and
decrease government involvement in the economy. Deregulation also involves the
privatization of state owned and operated assets which impact women's positions within the
political system by reducing the state's, often already limited, responsibility to them
regarding public service provisions and public safety. As a feature of neo-liberal economic
reforms, supporters of state deregulation claim it benefits all, however, Jacqui True (2000,
90) contends that, as seen in the context of Eastern European transitional economies,
"privatization of state agencies is associated with the construction of a specifically
masculine form of political agency that is represented discursively as universal and gender
neutral." Furthermore, deregulation of the state is often marked by a replacement of the

18

state by an almost religious faith in market mechanisms, creating and reinforcing gender
inequality as well as class and geographic barriers (2000, 90). Bakker (1999, 206-208)
agrees with True and argues, deregulation of the state along with privatization shifts power
from the state to institutional processes outside formal state agencies.
For governments, credibility with the financial markets and multilateral
development banks is becoming perhaps more important than credibility with
voters .. . in other words, a dramatic shift in commitment from securing the
welfare of citizens to facilitating the flow of global capital [has
occurred] ... economies are becoming self-regulated and depoliticized ... This
disembedding process means that the market not only frees itself from society
but also imposes its logic upon politics.
The imposition of the market affects women in terms of their political rights (control over
reproduction, freedom from violence, democratic rights) since the ability of the nation-state
to form policy is severely restricted by international institutions such as the International
Monetary Fund (IMP) and the World Bank, and increasingly, by the power of transnational
corporations (Connelly et. al, 2000, 18). Thus, deregulating the state and privatizing its
public provisions and services has further removed political support for women in their roles
as mothers, spouses, workers, and political actors.
At the same time, neo-liberal ideology hails the individual and then the household as
the fundamental units of capitalist market economies (True, 2000, 91). The neo-liberal
focus on the household and the family implicitly perpetuates patriarchal assumptions about
women's primary care-giving roles and further shifts the burden of social reproduction onto
them in place of the state (True, 2000, 90). Capitalist and patriarchal ideological
assumptions, thus, lack consideration for women' s disadvantaged conditions and further
marginalize their rights and interests through political alienation by market forces in the

19

process of economic restructuring. Economic reform policies calling for cuts to social
spending incorporate the same uneven gender ideologies with similar results.
Evidence of reduced public provisions in the form of cuts to government spending
appear in changes to women' s positions within the social system. The government' s
divesting itself of many of the (already limited) state welfare responsibilities implicitly
assumes the availability of women in the home to provide services such as health care,
education, and care for children and the elderly. Maria Mies (1998, 40) has termed this
assumption 'housewifization' wherein the ideologized passive and subservient wife remains
in the private sphere of the home, dependent on a male breadwinner. The proliferation of
'home-work' as an informal economic option in the emerging global economy (ie. sewing,
cleaning and cooking) is a sign of women's compromise between ideology and reality.
However, low remuneration for such work reflects the traditional devaluation of women' s
work within the domestic sphere (1998, 40). Therefore, reduced social spending increases
women's workloads, perpetuates traditional gender divisions of labor, reinforces unequal
gender relations, while maintaining the notion that women are naturally suited for caring
work (Connelly et. al, 2000, 15). Marianne Marchand and Anne Sisson Runyan (2000, 17)
concur that cuts to social spending shift
[p]ublic responsibility for social welfare back to the private realm of the home
where women must pick up the slack ... many women must now simultaneously
be in the workforce and at home to serve the global economy, make up the
shortfalls in working-class men's declining wages and jobs in the industrial
sectors, earn money to pay for privatized social services and provide the
reproductive services for which the state is abandoning responsibility (Marchand
& Sisson Runyan, 2000, 17).
As the result of cuts to government spending, women, on average, are working longer days
and putting in longer hours than men (Connelly et. al, 2000, 13). Thus, the impact of

20

reduced government spending for poor women is a generalized decrease in living conditions
due to intensified poverty and decreasing access to resources and opportunities.
Due to gender, geographical and class inequalities, recent rounds of economic
restructuring have had harsh impacts on disadvantaged rural and urban Mexican women.
Moreover, gender blind policies amplify the unequal impacts of economic restructuring and
thus, increased hardship falls on women, poor people and indigenous groups resulting in
disproportionate suffering during times of reform.
Drawing on the GAD framework, the underlying assumptions of this paper suggest
that the presence of gender discrimination in economic, political and social systems
adversely affect women's positions and is apparent in the unequal access to resources that
could potentially enable them to improve their conditions. Mexico's development policies
have differential impacts on men and women, as well as on indigenous and dominant
groups. This study, therefore examines the gender and racial differences, where racial
differences are observed by analyzing rural and urban differences since indigenous peoples
tend to live in rural areas. Furthermore, the negative impacts on poor Mexican women's
positions and conditions influence their strategies for survival as seen with disadvantaged
Mexican women's development of grassroots organizations.

21

CHAPTER TWO:
THE IMPACTS OF ECONOMIC REFORMS ON RURAL AND URBAN MEXICAN
WOMEN
The purpose of this chapter is to outline the impacts of restructuring related to the
implementation of the neo-liberal development policies on disadvantaged Mexican rural and
urban women. I organize my analysis by examining three interconnected realms, the
Mexican economy, politics and society as they relate to three associated areas ofneo-liberal
reform policies: trade liberalization, state deregulation, and reduced government spending
respectively. I intend to reveal how economic restructuring in Mexico has caused an
acceleration of detrimental trends contributing to increased hardships for poor Mexican
women. In some cases these changes are hidden and in others they are explicitly observable
in changes to disadvantaged Mexican women's positions and conditions. I highlight the
interplay of both Mexican gender ideology and gender bias in neo-liberal macro-economic
reform policies. This chapter begins with a brief discussion of economic restructuring in
Mexico, followed by three sections entitled: 1) Economic Impacts of Trade Liberalization on
Women, 2) Political Impacts of State Deregulation and Privatization on Women, and 3)
Social Impacts of Reduced Government Spending on Women. Each of these sections
contains two subsections discussing the impacts of reform policies on disadvantaged rural
women and on disadvantaged urban women.

Mexican Economic Restructuring
Mexico's recent history, encompassing approximately the last twenty years, has been
plagued by financial volatility accompanied by social instability, political corruption and
nepotism. In 1982 Mexico had a foreign debt of $86 billion and its foreign exchange

22

reserves had been emptied by capital flight in the wake of the international oil crisis in the
1970s (Coote, 1995, 5). Economic growth came to a standstill in the shadow of a 75%
decline in the value of Mexico's currency- the peso (Warnock, 1995, 48). President Lopez
Portillo, leader of the long-standing and oppressive Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI),
responded by nationalizing the private banks in an attempt to prevent further draining of
Mexico's finances. Reductions in employment opportunities and wages followed the
financial crisis. Subsequently, changes in the economic climate led to public discontent as
health and education standards fell and the quality of life deteriorated "as suggested by an
increase in the crime rate and by the dramatic deterioration of public transportation problems
and pollution standards (Beneria, 1992, 88)." However, as the poor Mexican population
suffered from economic and social instability, the Mexican elite enjoyed a comfortable level
of wealth, including President Portillo and his cronies. The corruption and nepotism present
in the political and legal systems was apparent in the rampant drug trade, assassinations of
political rivals, appointment of friends and family to political positions, and not least of all
in the pilfering of money from the federal budget for personal use (Adler-Hellman, 1994,

~

Warnock, 1995, 48). Thus, during the 1982 financial crisis Mexicans in the lower strata of
society had limited political representation on the international stage and Mexico's debt
increased eightfold during Lopez Portillo's administration (Adler-Hellman, 1994, 5).
In December of 1982, led by the newly instated president Miguel de la Madrid
Hurtado, the Mexican government relinquished any attempt to turn Mexico's failing
economy around and appealed to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) for development loans (Coote, 1995, 5). Granted the loans, the Mexican state began
implementing the conditional structural adjustment policies intending to shift Mexico's

23

largely import-oriented economy to an export-oriented economy (Cravey, 1998, 54-55). In
Mexico, this process was referred to as modernizacion, which was enthusiastically promoted
by the Department of Planning and Budget the PRJ bureaucracy leading the implementation
of the SAPs (Beneria, 1992, 85). Mexico's previous import-substitution orientation
concentrated on developing the domestic economy by limiting the amount of foreign direct
investment, thus allowing local firms to develop with limited external competition (Heredia
& Purcell, 1994, 3). Essentially the shift to an export-oriented economy involved reversing

the country's economic orientation by reducing state support to national firms while
encouragmg foreign

investment,

mainly through low-cost industrialization. This

reorientation was predominantly characterized by industrial growth and an associated
decrease in agriculture along with the implementation of numerous other neo-liberal
development mechanisms.
Claiming the market as the means through which development could most efficiently
be accomplished, the World Bank and the IMF prescribed neo-liberal mechanisms to be
employed by the Mexican state including fiscal adjustment, privatization, decontrolling
prices, trade and investment liberalization, and a decreasing of the state's role in the national
economy (Loker, 1999, 12). The result is less than equal to neo-liberal aspirations. Since the
onset of the modernizacion structural adjustment policies (SAPs) in Mexico, numerous
social scientists and social justice organizations have documented their negative impacts on
disadvantaged portions of the Mexican population. Overall, this literature reports that SAPs
have widened pre-existing gender, class and geographical inequalities (Heredia & Purcell,
1994: Deere, Safa & Antrobus, 1997: Beneria, 1992).

24

In 1986, Mexico became a member of the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs
(GATT). As a result of joining GATT, the Mexican state lost much of their already
dwindling influence over Mexico's trade-related investment measures (TRIMs) and traderelated intellectual property rights (TRIPs). Consequently, Mexico's resources increasingly
came under the control of transnational corporate interests (Warnock, 1995, 164-165).
The most recent round of economic restructuring, the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), was negotiated throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s by
delegates from the American, Canadian and Mexican governments. In sum, NAFTA "is an
agreement between the governments of Mexico, the United States, and Canada to phase out
the restrictions on the movement of goods, services and capital between the three countries"
(Coote, 1995, 4). President Salinas de Gortari, leader of the repressive Revolutionary
Institutional Party (PRJ), along with his regime, selectively represented Mexico in the early
1990s by concentrating on the interests of Mexico's elite during trade negotiations. As
Loker ( 1999, 19) points out, "those in power during periods of structural adjustment are not
disinterested managers of the economy, but instead are actively pursuing advantage in the
context of the new regimes being created." Judging by the fact that during the Salinas
administration the number of billionaires in Mexico rose from 2 to 24, it is apparent that
throughout this period of economic restructuring the interests of the Mexican upper-class
elite were represented by the state while the interests of disadvantaged women, indigenous
populations, and poor people were not (1999, 19).
At the time the agreement was signed, NAFTA supporters claimed "economic
reforms and the NAFTA, taken together, [would] reduce Mexican economic inequality by
encouraging new foreign investment that would reduce unemployment and increase wages"

25

(Robinson, 1993, 25). The proposed effects of phasing out trade restrictions also included
high economic growth rates leading to better enforcement of Mexican labor and
environmental laws as well as the strengthening of the fragile SAP reforms made by Salinas
in an effort to create an hospitable environment for foreign investors (Anderson et. al, 1996,
4 ). However, the implementation of NAFTA in Mexico entrenched liberalization measures
already begun by the Mexican government, thus hindering future governments abilities to
change the free-market orientation of Mexico's economic policies in case of their failure
(Coote, 1995, 4). Indeed, after more than seven decades of the autocratic-type PRI ruling,
Vincente Fox, a member of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), was voted into
the presidency. Since his inauguration on December 1st 2000, Fox has been contending with
the liberal entrenchments created by the PRI legacy (Katz, 2002, 29).
Critics of NAFTA argue that not only did fast-tracking Mexico's economic
restructuring contribute to increased social problems but also to the crash of the Mexican
peso late in 1994. As Thomas Kelly (1999, 26) elucidates, there is no simple answer to the
question of what caused the peso crash, rather there is much speculation. However, Kelly
(1999, 26) further notes "[i]n 1994, a series of political shocks in Mexico caused
international investors to become concerned about the currency risk of Mexican
investments." These fears, combined with higher interest rates along with a weakening of
the currency caused capital flows to slow down. "Policies to correct the current account
imbalance were not taken, and the government was forced to finance the deficit primarily
through a reduction of foreign exchange reserves which fell from $30 billion in January of
1994 to $5 billion on December 22, 1994" (1999, 26). In the aftermath of these events, the
international financial community fell into a panic that led to a "massive redemption of short

26

term government debt, the private sector lost access to international capital markets, and the
government was forced to allow the peso to float. .. the sudden drop in the demand for
Mexican financial instruments caused the value of the peso to plummet." Impacts of the
peso crash on the Mexican poor are difficult to isolate from the more general impacts of
economic restructuring that occurred throughout the early 1990s including the
implementation of NAFTA reforms which, created profound economic, political and social
changes in Mexico.
A broad range of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Mexico are involved
with coalitions drawing attention to issues of social, economic and cultural rights. Several of
these organizations are Equipo Pueblo, Habitat International Coalition, Mexican
Commission for Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, Food First Information and
Action Network, and the Youth Network for Sexual and Reproductive Rights. In a
collaborative document prepared by these and other NGOs, the NGO perspective on
Mexico's recent circumstances concerning economic and social justice is thus outlined.
Our country is experiencing a serious downturn in the general living conditions
of an increasing number of Mexicans. This is largely a result of the structural
adjustment policies implemented during the past 17 years which prioritize
macroeconomic market indicators over the welfare of the population. This
deterioration has become more accentuated since the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) entered into force in 1994. Such policies have
proven incompatible with the spirit and letter of the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and deepen the economic and social
inequalities that exist amongst the population (Laboris, 2000).
More generalized impacts of economic restructuring involving structural adjustments and
NAFTA include growing class polarization with wealth concentrated in the hands of a few
elite, limited state power due to deregulation, decreasing wages, rising unemployment,
increasing urbanization, decreasing peasant agriculture due to reforms to the land

27

distribution system, decreasing nutrition, and cuts to social spending leading to reduced
accessibility to education and health care (Coote, 1995,25: Barndt, 1999, 70).
Among other changes occurring in Mexico due to economic restructuring is the
growing concentration of jobs in the urban-industrial sectors leading to an increase in ruralurban migration. Indeed, since the 1980s Mexico has consistently experienced urbanization
as droves of the population migrated from the predominantly rural south to the more
urbanized north (Loker, 1999, 28). Mexico City is an extraordinary example of this modern
urbanization pattern with a growing population already close to 23 million (World Fact
Book, 2000, 1). Nor is Mexico City alone. Guided by industrialization through trade
liberalization, northern border cities are following a similar path leading to increased levels
of urbanization (Warnock, 1995, 73). According to the 2001 United Nations Human
Development Report, 12.2% of the Mexican population lived below the income poverty line
of $1 a day between 1983 and 1999 (United Nations, 2001, 149). However, when the rate of
population growth is taken into account, the lack of change in the percentage of poor
indicates a greater number of people living in poverty. Despite extensive economic
restructuring, the lack of change can be taken to indicate the failure of reform policies.
Approximately 75% of Mexico's population now lives in cities. By and large, Mexico's
poor are concentrated in sprawling squatter settlements, flourishing around the country's
ever expanding cities. Escalating female migration has contributed to the prevalence of
women in these densely populated urban areas and women make up 70% of the poor
population (World Bank, 2000, 277: Heredia, 1999, 2).
What does the increased urbanization and concentration of jobs in urban centres
mean for those remaining in rural areas? Rural dwellers experience greater economic,

28

political and social marginalization as increased migration creates economic insecurity,
political alienation and social fragmentation in the countryside. The rate of poverty in urban
centers is higher; however, the rural poor, predominantly located in the marginalized south,
suffer more in terms of extreme poverty due to their lack of access to public services and
adequate infrastructure (Gantt & Gonzalez de la Rocha, 1995, 16). Economic restructuring
including trade liberalization, state deregulation and privatization, along with cuts in
government spending affect disadvantaged urban and rural Mexican women in different
ways, however, many of the overall impacts are similar in terms of the negative implications
on women's positions and conditions.
Economic Impacts of Trade Liberalization on Women
The nexus of capitalism and patriarchy is evident in Mexico' s gender impacts of trade
liberalization. In rural and urban areas of Mexico, trade liberalization (opening of the
Mexican economy to international market forces while removing government control on
markets and exchange) produces not only gendered polarization in the division of labor and
income, but also increases flexibilization and informalization of women's work- a process
collectively known as 'maquilization' (Barndt, 1999, 71). Throughout the 1980s industrial
workers were almost exclusively female. Women were concentrated in both the industrial
sector and the service sector of the economy, however, after further liberalization of trade
along with the peso crash in late 1994, women' s positions in the entire economic system
began to falter as unemployment soared and wages plummeted (Anderson & Dimon, 1999,
170). Women' s positions in both the formal and informal sectors of the Mexican economy
have suffered from the implementation of structural adjustment policies along with the more
recent rounds of economic reforms involved with the implementation of NAFTA policies
29

(UNIFEM, 1999, 5). Fluctuating markets and unstable currency rates negatively impact

women's positions within the economic system. Moreover, poor women' s material
conditions are detrimentally impacted by economic reforms because of reduced access to an
adequate income.

Trade Liberalization in Rural Areas
In this section I argue that trade liberalization has impacted disadvantaged women in
rural areas negatively due to the removal of government controls on national market forces.
The liberalization of trade has impacted rural Mexican women through agricultural reforms
undertaken in order to open the agricultural sector to control by foreign corporations. In
sum, trade liberalization has affected rural communities involved in the agriculture sector
through the following reforms:
1. The removal of subsidies and price support mechanisms.
2. The removal of border restrictions on trade goods (Coote, 1995, 19-20).
Mexican peasant producers previously relied on subsidies to enable them to buy fertilizers,
fuel, credit, water, seeds and crop insurance. Throughout the implementation of trade
liberalization policies, these subsidies were withdrawn, as were price guarantees for crops.
Due to the Mexican government's cuts in farming subsidies, the cost of producing
agricultural goods became relatively cheaper in the United States, resulting in the dumping
of United States food surpluses in Mexico at low prices (Coote, 1995, 19-20). The
elimination of trades and tariffs in the agricultural sector has further led to the unrestricted
movement of agricultural products between Mexico, Canada and the United States and has
devastated rural communities abilities to compete in the new free-trade market system
(1995, 19-20). Subsequently, fewer Mexican farmers are producing food and because of the

30

growing reliance on food imports, the prices are beginning to rise. Many rural residents are
left without food, including displaced women who are often nutritionally deprived, and
possessing few economically viable skills (Barndt, 1999, 71). Small-scale Mexican
producers usually cannot compete with international food producers and are wiped out by
the tide oftrade liberalization (Coote, 1995, 21-22).
Liberalization of the agriculture industry has ultimately led to the displacement of many
peasants from rural areas and increased urban migration. Because of decreased government
investment in agriculture, fewer employment opportunities exist in the agricultural sector.
Besides fewer jobs, the removal of trade regulation, food and farm supply subsidies, and
uniform product pricing has led to decreases in nutritional food supplies, and subsequently
poor rural Mexican women's burdens increase in harsher economic conditions (Otero, 2000,
188).
Neo-liberal policies implemented to reform the agricultural sector in Mexico have
contributed to the increasing marginalization and impoverishment of rural Mexican
communities. Between 1993 and 1996, more than 1 million men lost jobs in the agricultural
sector (UNIFEM, 1999, 6). Women's share oflabor in this sector increased, but only by 3%
between 1991 and 1996 (1999, 6). Indeed, the increase in women's participation in the
agricultural sector resulted from the replacement of higher paid male workers with the lower
paid, flexible labor of women, suggesting that agro-industrialist consider 'women's work'
less valuable than men's.
Impoverished and displaced rural women from indigenous groups in the south as well as
the rural poor and peasantry from across Mexico often migrate seeking employment with
agro-industrialists. Indeed, the Mexican agro-industry, now predominantly foreign-run,

31

employs a small number of skilled, mostly male workers while female migrants and migrant
families are only hired during the harvest season (Barndt, 1999, 72). Agricultural
employment is casual, low paying, and often performed under very harsh conditions
(UNIFEM, 1999, 6). In addition, due to the prevalent ideology of the 'family wage' wherein
women's earnings are assumed to only supplement men's incomes, women are paid less
than men for doing the same work (Barndt, 1999, 72). This employment strategy requires
workers to be flexible in their availability to work, a conditionality which, according to
Deborah Barndt (1999, 72), is a form of discrimination and exploitation. Moreover,
regulations concerning the improvement of working conditions and wages threaten capitalist
operations and, specifically, trade liberalization through labor exploitation, thus
exemplifying the corporate valuation of money over people during economic restructuring
(Kerr, 1994, 22).
Although women increasingly rely on the rural informal sector for income and are
commodifying the products of their domestic labor activities such sewing and cooking, they
are still regulated by market forces guided by the social ideologies and cultmal practices
concerned with 'machismo ' or the Mexican system of male dominance/female
subordination. In her extensive work on gender hierarchies in Mexican workplaces and
households, Susan Tiano (1994, 49) provides a critical understanding of how the machismo
ideology serves to regulate Mexican women's positions and, therefore, their everyday
economic conditions. Mexican women' s
[o]pportunities have been shaped by culturally prevalent ideologies that define
women in terms of their reproductive roles ... the cornerstone of Mexican society
is the family, which according to cultural ideal is held together spiritually and
emotionally through the mother's steadfast devotion ... women must also
maintain their purity by remaining in the safe haven of the household. [This
ideology] view[s] women' s waged work as threatening their families' well-being
32

by impairing their ability to perform their roles as wives and mothers
adequately ... women in the work force pose a threat to men and their abilities to
support their households.
Tiano (1994, 49) further notes that the concentration of Latin American women in childcare
and domestic work not only determines their participation in paid labor but also weakens
their bargaining position within the household. Therefore, the combined impacts of trade
liberalization in rural areas including reduced trade restrictions on agricultural goods, along
with confining gender ideologies, have negatively impacted rural women's positions and
conditions. Poor rural Mexican women's abilities to access employment, adequate wages,
and to sustain overall economic stability is hampered to the point where migration becomes
their most viable option.

Trade Liberalization in Urban Areas
For urban women, many of them migrants from rural areas, trade liberalization has
caused fluctuations in their economic positions and, has consequently impacted their
material conditions. Changes in women's economic positions do not randomly occur on a
level playing field. As Anderson and Dimon (1999, 169) reveal, the Mexican economy is
structured like a pyramid based on female labor. As a result of this unequal structure, a
'gendered polarization' of wages and formal labor force participation occurs. In the new
free-market economy Mexican women are disproportionately represented in the low paying,
informal sector. The underlying causes of urban gender polarization, such as women's
insecure, low-mobility and low-paying employment, can be summarized as 'maquilization'
(Barndt, 1999, 71). Although this term comes from the earlier industrialization of the
Mexican/US border with maquiladora factories, the term 'maquilization' is now used to
33

generally refer to work processes characterized by four features: " 1) flexibilization of the
female labor force, 2) extreme segmentation of skill categories, 3) the lowering of real
wages, and 4) a non-union orientation" (Barndt, 1999, 71). All of which negatively impact
disadvantaged urban women' s positions within the new free-market Mexican economic
system, in turn impacting their economic conditions.
The trade liberalization process has attracted foreign investment in industry. Changes in
women's participation as well as the treatment they receive in the urban industrial and
informal sectors provide ample evidence of the impacts of trade liberalization on urban
Mexican women. Carmen Valadez and Jaime Cota (1996, 1) point out "[p]rior to NAFTA,
Mexico had an important domestic manufacturing industry, of which the maquila sector
represented only 11.7% in 1980. By 1990, this had increased to 46.2%. In 1995, the second
year of NAFTA, the maquila sectors represented 73.1% of manufacturing." However,
foreign-led industrial development is highly automated and thus, much less labor intensive
than previous operations (Coote, 1995, 23). Consequently, the maquila industry is unable to
provide "sufficient employment to cater to the vast portion of the population unemployed by
the restructuring of the economy" (Coote, 1995, 23). Even though the maquila industry
employs approximately 17% of the manufacturing labor force in Mexico, the majority of the
inputs come from abroad, thus contributing little to Mexico's domestic economy. In other
words, job creation throughout the economy is feeble, indeed as Loker states "Mexico is a
prime example of jobless growth" (Loker, 1999, 104).
Mexican government figures show the unemployment rate doubled between
September 1994 and the first eight months of 1995, with estimates in the area of 1.5 million
lost jobs (Anderson et. al., 1996, 2). The United Nations International Development Fund

34

for Women (UNIFEM) (1999, 5) concurs, that by the end of 1994 "a growing trade deficit
fuelled by liberalized trade, and ignited by political and financial instability, led to a crisis.
Drastic devaluation of the peso followed, GDP fell by 6% and real wages plummeted. "
Women's share of maquila employment declined in 1993 from 59.5% to 57.7% revealing a
diminishing, yet persistent, preference for female labor in the industrial workforce
(Anderson et. al, 1996, 2: UNIFEM, 1999, 5).
Kathryn Kopinak: (1995, 1) offers an explanation for the continued preference of
employing women in the maquiladora industry. She argues that state policies, such as trade
liberalization, promote the maquila industry, which uses gender as a vehicle for
subordinating female workers. Predominantly young women are concentrated in factories,
hierarchically organized by gender, class, and, in this case race, with white American
middle-class male managers at the top and low-skilled, young, poorly paid Mexican women
at the bottom (Wright, 1998, 120). These systematic structures are essential for maintaining
low labor costs and preventing unionization activities. By hiring young and often
inexperienced Mexican women, the maquiladora managers create a workplace structure that
is perpetuated by gender ideologies normalizing women's subordination (Nathan, 1996, 19).
For example, Gloria Tello, a grassroots organizer from Mexico, states that female workers in
the maquiladoras "are treated as throw-away women" exposing the corporate perspective
that views the Mexican female work-force as a renewable resource (quoted in Abowd, 1993,
14).
The precariousness of women's employment in maquiladoras more generally reflects
their insecure economic positions within the broader urban industrial sector. Although
gender inequality in both wages and occupational distribution are less acute in the urban

35

industrial sector than in the rural agro-industrial sector, urban women are still over
represented in low-paying, low skill jobs (Anderson & Dimon, 1995, 311). In 1993 women
working in maquiladoras in Tijuana, Jaurez and Nogales, all located on the Mexico-US
border, earned an average of $30-40 US/week. Following the 1994 peso devaluation their
income dropped by half (Staudt, 1998, 117). Kopinak (1995, 6) further points out that
women generally receive less job training than men and earn 5% less than their male
counterparts for the same work, although this is a relatively small difference compared to
discrepancies in the informal and agriculture sectors. Moreover, during the most recent
round of economic reforms involved with NAFTA, between 1994 and 1997, the purchasing
power of the average wage in Mexico fell 54% (Anderson & Dimon, 1999, 170). It can be
deduced from these drastic changes in the economic system during times of restructuring
and economic reform that women's positions within the system are volatile. In turn, the
material conditions of disadvantaged urban women deteriorate as wages fall and jobs
become scarce.
Liberalization of Mexico's trade relations with Canada and the U.S. has created a rise in
women' s informal labor force participation as women become street vendors, prostitutes,
home workers, and domestic laborers (Coote, 1995, 24). According to Joan B. Anderson and
Denise Dimon (1995, 311) the increase of women working within the urban informal labor
sector is the result of a shift in occupational distribution. The liberalization of trade in
Mexico along with the 1994 peso crash led to the massive unemployment of many skilled
male laborers. Maquiladoras then began to replace female workers with more highly skilled
male workers willing to work for low wages. Consequently urban female workers became
displaced within the labor force. As Diane Elson more generally notes that the informal

36

sector employment women resort to is extremely insecure and susceptible to competition
from international markets (Elson, 1991, 40).
In terms of female formal labor force participation, reliable statistics are difficult to

come by. Robert McCaa, Rodolfo Gutierrez and Gabriela Vasquez (2001) report on the
discrepancies between different sources of statistical data used to reveal Mexican women's
labor force participation.
According to the 1990 national census, the global labor force participation rate
for Mexican females aged 12-64 was 20.6%. However, 34.8% was the figure
reported by the national urban employment survey taken during the same
quarter. The 2000 census data are now available and a glaring disparity between
the global figures for the census and survey remains, notwithstanding
remarkable efforts by Mexican census officials to improve the quality of
reporting on females in the workforce. The apparent disparity for 1990 of 14.2
percentage points is reduced by only 3.8 to 10.4 for 2000. While the rate in the
census had risen by more than one-half to 32.9%, the survey figure soared,
reaching 41. 7%.
Despite the growth of women in the labor force, the proportion of women working,
according to statistical data, is skewed by the number of women employed in the informal
sectors as discussed above. Thus, there has been an increase in women's participation in the
labor market and also a shift from formal to informal forms of work.

Political Impacts of State Deregulation and Privatization on Women
Examining the impacts of state deregulation and privatization on disadvantaged
urban and rural Mexican women's political positions and conditions reveals how political
changes occurring because of restructuring, pervasively impact women in various direct and
indirect ways depending on their geographical location. Rural and urban poor women
experience various impacts according to the issues that are most prevalent in their particular
regions. In addition, the daily roles that women perform determine how they are impacted
37

by reform policies of state deregulation. For instance, the reduced function of the state in the
national economy leaves the activities of transnational corporations and labor standards
dangerously unregulated, thus implicating women's political positions in their roles as
workers. Specifically, I refer to women's political positions in relation to their abilities to
choose how to govern their own lives and how their interests are represented within political
institutions locally, regionally, and nationally. With increased agency, through a stronger
public and political voice, women's abilities to govern their lives in terms of freedom from
abuse and exploitation could develop. I refer to women's political condition as their abilities
to work through the political system in order to ascertain adequate material resources.
Both patriarchy and capitalism are significant mechanisms present in the political
marginalization of Mexico's urban and rural disadvantaged social groups. For instance,
Mexican women as a group are grossly underrepresented in formal Mexican politics. The
United Nations Development Program' s (1996, 141) Gender Empowerment Measure
(GEM) for 1993 reports that 13.9% of the seats in parliament were held by women; this is
equal to less than 1% of the female population of Mexico. The 1998 GEM reports this
number had risen 0.1% to 14.0% by 1995, showing no improvement in women's position
within the political system (UNDP, 1998, 134). This is not to say there has been no effort at
all made to improve women's lot in Mexican politics. Indeed, according to Elizabeth Katz
and Maria Correia (2001, 293),
[t]he Zedillo administration established the National Programs for Women 19952000 (PRONAM) with the objective of expanding women's participation in
development processes and providing women and men equal opportunities ... In
1998, to ensure institutional continuity, the government created the
Coordinacion General de la Comision Nacional de la Mujer (CONMUJER) as a
decentralized organization under the Ministry of the Interior .. . Given its mandate
to help women, however, the thrust of CONMUJER's work continues to be on
compensatory programs for women.
38

In other words, these actions taken by the state are servmg as an improvement of

appearances rather than true commitment to increasing the role of women as well as the
numbers of women in Mexican politics, especially in their capacity as policy developers
during times of adjustment and restructuring. Adjustment policies that require the state to
reduce its governing role decrease the, albeit limited, representation women have in the
political system. The reduced role of the state further decreases the opportunities for women
to enter into politics where they may be able to work toward changing the gender inequality
present in the Mexican political system. Notwithstanding the tokenism of the Coordinacion

General de Ia Comision Nacional de Ia Mujer of the National Commission of Women
(CONMUJER) within Mexico's male-biased political system, as an institutional mechanism,
the women's commission has successfully brought several gender issues such as violence
against women to the political forefront (Katz & Correia, 2001, 293).
As the new free-market economy, with its base principles drawn from neo-liberalism,
permeates throughout Mexican politics the combined impacts of machismo and capitalism
serve to create categories of interest of which poor Mexican women's are considered least
important in the political system. For many disadvantaged rural indigenous women, land is a
central tangible and political concern. Policies calling for state deregulation are thus relevant
to rural women's political concerns because the process of land occupation and distribution
along with the shift to privatize collective lands pose challenges to their sustainability on
lands many of their families have occupied for centuries. However, the interplay of gender
ideology and powerful corporate interests leaves women in vulnerable political positions due
to unequal relations of gender- particularly in terms of retaining land ownership.

39

For urban women, deregulation is presenting indirect threats to their safety and wellbeing through the devolution of state institutions. State deregulation explicitly impacts
women' s political rights as workers and perpetuates women's subordinate political
positions. In place of the state, a re-regulation of poor working urban women by
transnational corporations is being led by derogatory gender stereotypes of Mexican women.
This has contributed to the legitimization and maintenance of women's subordination and to
the denial of their political, legal and human rights within the workplace as well as in the
broader urban society.

State Deregulation and Privatization in Rural Areas
Land is a central political issue for Mexican rural women and men who are members of
the 'campesinos ' or peasantry since virtually every facet of their way of life depends on their
possession ofland (May, 1995, 37). In the early 1990s, the Salinas government implemented
the "National Program of Modernization of the Countryside" involving the privatization of
agricultural parastatal bodies (Coote, 1995, 20). Reformation of the land-tenure system
involved three-fifths of Mexico's agricultural land (205 million acres), owned by peasant
collectives known as ejibos. Under the ejibo communal land system, small plots are farmed
and passed on to the next generation but not sold, thus ensuring the stability of the peasant
way of life (Townsend, 1999, 9). Changes made to Article 27 of the Mexican constitution
resulted in the state's absolution of its responsibility for carrying out ejibo land

tr

ut

n~

instead, the state sold this duty to private investors (Otero, 2000, 188).
Under Mexico' s land reform policy, individual land-holders are limited to 100 hectares
(although the average is 9.4 hectares), while corporations may hold as much as 2500

40

hectares (Wise, 1998, 65). Carol Wise (1998, 65) notes the bulk of peasant owned lands "are
rain fed, and less than half have potable water or ready access to a paved road," indicating
that rural women trying to retain land are also heavily burdened by lack of infrastructure.
Even in the event that peasants (despite harassment from larger landholders and government
strong-arms) reserve their land holdings, those receiving state assistance for agricultural
inputs decreased from 59.6% in 1990 to only 8.6% in 1994, thus severely limiting their
competitive chances in the agriculture sector (Otero, 2000, 188). In spite of the odds,
campesinos remain on the land, although in decreasing numbers and against increasing
challenges like political alienation and impoverishment.
As a result of economic restructuring, the ejibos owners were given the option to sell,
mortgage or lease their lands. This rapid and radical transformation in the political
regulations governing Mexican rural populations and the land distribution system led to a
large scale acquisition of land by private investors. Furthermore, privatization led to the
displacement of peasants along with increased urbanization. Rural women' s political
positions were severely impacted due to mass displacement (Pena, 1997, 320: Coote, 1995,
19). Moreover, because of women's subordinate political statuses, they experienced
additional restrictions in their political positions in terms of access to power and security,
especially when it came to their possession and retention of land. Within the ideological
structure of machismo, women should not be land-holders unless they are widowed,
however, in times of economic instability rural men tend to migrate making women
responsible for looking after land holdings. Dorien Brunt (1992, 24) discovered how gender
plays a part in women's abilities to control land in her research on women in the ejibo
system.

41

Within [the] ejibo the dominant ideology is that women are not supposed to
claim any land rights, unless under narrowly defined circumstances: namely
being a widow. But even then, their rights are usually questioned by male
relatives. Being an ejidatario implies not only titles to land, but also the right to
participate in the most important official administrative and political event at the
local level, the monthly ejibo meeting... .It is considered natural, a given, that
men should be in charge. Women owning land rights oppose this social order,
not explicitly, but just by being ejidatarios. The men neutralize this by treating
women as second rate ejidatarios. This becomes very clear in the ejido meeting.
Their opinions are not asked for, they hardly ever occupy formal positions on the
ejido board, they are treated as exceptions.
Thus, economic reform involving policies of state deregulation and privatization concerning
land negatively impact disadvantaged rural Mexican women because neo-liberalism assumes
each actor is gender neutral when in fact women's subordinate political positions, both in the
local political system and national political system, make it more difficult for them as female
land-holders to retain their claim on land in the absence of a man. Gender blind policies that
do not recognize disadvantaged rural women's unequal political positions, detrimentally
impact women by removing their pillar of stability, their land. Yet, in their own right, rural
women are challenging these inequalities.
As previously mentioned women have an important role in the survival of peasant landholdings as they often remain on family farms while men migrate to find work (May, 1995,
38). As such, deregulation and privatization impact rural women in terms of their daily
survival and thus, their material conditions. For instance, despite state-led terror and political
repression by the government, Mayan women and men have stood their ground in the state
of Chiapas. In response to the PRI state regime's efforts to remove them from their land in
order to sell it to private foreign investors, members of the indigenous Maya formed the
revolutionary Zapatistas in Chiapas (Cuninghame & Corona, 1998, 19). The Zapatistas are
fighting against private corporate projects intended for their homelands involving the

42

exploitation of natural mineral reserves, one of the world's largest untapped oil fields, 30%
of Mexico's total water supply, the Lacandona Jungle (one of the world's most biodiverse
areas), and an abundance of agriculturally rich soils (Cuninghame & Corona, 1998, 19).
Corporations, the world over, are already bidding for these resources.
Essentially, the Zapatistas are demanding the direct control of the land, a demand which
threatens neo-liberal plans for opening Mexico's south to investment and market
development. Since the 1994 inception ofNAFTA, violent encounters between the Zapatista
National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the PRJ regime (now, no longer in power), included
an attack involving a 1000-strong column of [PRJ] soldiers, police and
paramilitary forces supported by tanks, helicopters and artillery [resulting in]
hundreds being imprisoned or forced into the mountains, leaving women,
children and old people at the mercy of the Mexican army ... A brutal massacre
of 45 indigenous sympathizers, mostly women and children, of the EZLN in a
refugee camp near Acteal in the South-Eastern state of Chiapas in 1996
(Cuninghame & Corona, 1998, 12).
These occurrences of violence are in addition to the mass murder of prisoners, aerial
bombings of villages, and continued army surveillance throughout lands occupied by
indigenous peoples (Anonymous, 2001, 1).
Women in the state of Chiapas, as political actors, often remain in their communities
while men retreat to the mountains to implement guerilla warfare tactics (although women
also engage in combat) (Cuninghame & Corona, 1998, 12). Subsequent impacts on
indigenous women's political positions and conditions in these rural areas revolves around
state attacks on their collective way of life facilitated by the implementation of reforms and,
specifically, the move to privatize the very lands indigenous peoples have lived on for
centuries.

43

Rural women's conditions are deteriorating due to state deregulation involving
privatization. The participation of peasant men in violent combat against the state in
opposition to privatization often leaves women solely responsible for daily survival under
adverse conditions. And not least of all, rural women remaining in villages or in refugee
camps are vulnerable to the state-led policies of terror employed in the southern states of
Mexico. Thus impacts of deregulation and privatization on disadvantaged rural Mexican
women, particularly those of indigenous groups, include the divesture of state representation
in terms of their land rights and also the direct brutality of state-led policies of terror.
Disadvantaged rural Mexican women's political positions are negatively impacted by the
states reduced ability to regulate land distribution processes due to the combination of state
deregulation and the move to privatize collective lands.

State Deregulation and Privatization in Urban Areas
As with women in rural areas, women in urban areas have experienced negative impacts
resulting from state deregulation during periods of economic reform. In terms of their
political rights poor urban women have had to contend with a state that has been
unaccountable to the Mexican people. Related issues include, but are not limited to: relaxed
labor regulations in the maquiladora industry involving discriminatory hiring practices,
labor rights, and wages; decreased pension provisions; limited legislation concerning
violence against women and parental support; and severely lagging infrastructure including
water, land, housing, roads, transportation, schools, and public health and safety
(Casasbuenas, Heredia, & Purcell, 1997, 5). Urban poor women are particularly affected by

44

these impacts because of their subordinate political positions within the patriarchal Mexican
society.
The impacts of state deregulation and privatization on urban women arise from their
exclusion from decision-making processes pertaining to their lives. Within the liberalized,
deregulated Mexican political system, decisions are increasingly made in, what Joanna Kerr
(1994, 10) more generally refers to as, corporate structures where profit is the dominant
concern. The maquiladora industry is such a structure. Maquiladoras rely on women's
under paid labor, yet companies are not held accountable for their exploitative treatment of
employees. Instead the state, partnered with transnational corporations, actively repress the
establishment of independent trade unions and tightly control all unionization activities in
the maquiladora industry. Belinda Coote (1995, 27) relays that
[t]he victims of human rights violations are most often individuals who have
tried to secure union rights or form independent labor unions to improve the
abhorrent working conditions in transnational factories. They have been actively
targeted: many have been captured, tortured and assassinated.
More often than not, workers trying to organize are fired from their jobs and black-listed
within the sector, making it difficult for them to find and keep work. Women have
consistently been active participants in these efforts and, thus have been both political agents
acting against state deregulation as well as targets of state repression.
The growing role of corporate interests in the lives of disadvantaged urban women
indicates a certain re-regulation following the deregulation of the state. Increasing corporate
control further weakens women's political rights because their interests take a backseat to
capitalist goals of maximizing profits mainly by exploiting Mexican women's labor.
Mexican female workers' reproductive activities are also of interest to privatized industry in
Mexico. State deregulation that weakens labor standards actually empowers the industrialists
45

and gives them more control over workers, further symbolizing corporate re-regulation.
Debbie Nathan (1996, 3) reports that, quite often maquiladoras will not hire a woman until
she has taken a pregnancy test and then once every three months while employed. In the
plant where Nathan (1996, 3) conducted studies, management went so far as to inspect
"workers' sanitary napkins for monthly menstrual flow." This is done so that employers may
avoid paying maternity leave, which as a result, is virtually non-existent in many
maquiladoras.

The state's complicity of such hiring practices further legitimizes the company's
claim to power over female worker's bodies during the term of employment at the
maquiladora. These standards for recruitment represent the institutionalization of a

patriarchal construction of gender which views young, single, childless women as ideal
workers because they can more easily devote themselves to their jobs. In turn, these hiring
practices create a conceptual dualism wherein older, partnered, mothers are constructed as
being unreliable workers with competing responsibilities of home and work (Tiano, 1994;
73). Furthermore, as Susan Tiano (1994, 73) notes of maquiladoras in 1994, employers
presume young women will only be in the labor force until they find husbands and take up
their domestic destinies, and that young women are more likely to live in homes where a
patriarch resides, making them more docile and responsive to male management. One
American male manager reported to researcher Melissa Wright (1998, 118), "Mexican
women just don't have the cultural upbringing for industrial careers. They're here to find a
mate and raise some kids." This sentiment represents a racially derogatory gender stereotype
held of Mexican women by maquiladora management indicating the homogenization of
working Mexican women and the gender bias present throughout the industrial sector.

46

Maquila managers attempt to legitimize women's exploitation and marginalization from real

political representation by portraying female workers as incapable of representing
themselves. Rather they are presented as submissive both to factory managers and potential
husbands as the result of their cultural upbringing. The political implication of this view,
combined with the deregulation of state institutions, leaves urban Mexican women
disempowered both in the workplace and in the public sphere. Their political positions thus
suffer due to derogatory stereotypes created to perpetuate systems of gender subordination
of which the maquiladora industry relies on and that the Mexican state complies with as
shown in the deregulation of the state in the industrial urban sector.
State policy changes have also aided in reconstructing the maquiladora workers'
domestic or private sphere. In Nogales, for example, transnational companies are now
providing services previously provided by the state. This includes company-housing
provisions, predominantly characterized by dormitory style buildings, where workers are
packed together, running water is scarce and public safety is lacking (Cravey, 1998, 137).
Altha Cravey (1998, 137) notes
[t]he company-run dormitories in Nogales are a novel form of household in
Mexico, reflecting the increased power and control of employers over their
employees. For workers who must accept this control, both productive and
reproductive activities are strictly regulated by their transnational employers,
resulting in a loss of autonomy and privacy.
The transition of housing provisions from the state to corporations has also caused gender
relations to shift as workers in dormitories renegotiate reproductive activities, often leading
to a reorganization of the domestic division of labor with men, sometimes, sharing more of
the burden. Nonetheless, in most cases, women still predominantly carry the heaviest load.
Thus, although some shifts have occurred in household gender politics, it has been at the

47

severe cost of privacy and freedom as the workers are subject to corporate surveillance and
regulation both in the workplace and now in their homes (Cravey, 1998, 138).
Moreover, the industrial boom initiated by restructuring has caused a swelling of
migrant workers in the border towns. The Economist (2001, 29) reports that since 1990 the
population of the north has increased 150%. The conditions of instability and
impoverishment of border towns is interconnected to the rapidly growing populations.
Infrastructure provisions are often scanty at best Due to state deregulation and privatization,
infrastructure projects that benefit the poor are considered a waste of money and fmancially
unrewarding by private investors. For instance, Vivienne Bennett (1995, 90) notes "agencies
such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank do not finance in-home
water service for urban poor ... because they consider the costs of doing so unrecoverable."
Consequently, many migrant workers reside in camps such as this one described by
members ofUNIFEM (1999, 5): "the camp consisted of300 families crowded into a yard in
makeshift structures with no roofs, one shared tap and no proper cooking facilities." As
UNIFEM (1999, 5) observers aptly noted, "for women who have to perform domestic tasks
as well as work grueling shifts, such conditions pose particular hardships."
State deregulation and privatization also impact urban women in terms of their right
to live free from violence. The concentration of labor opportunities in the urban
maquiladoras and decreasing social programs, along with class, and gender power

structures, leave women vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and even murder, adding to the
dangers they face in their day-to-day conditions. In Cuidad Jaurez, a border town that is the
site of a booming maquiladora industry, hundreds of women have been murdered since
1993, many of them migrants from poorer southern states working in maquiladoras

48

(LaFranchi, 1999, 6). Few of the murders have been solved due to inadequate political and
legal efforts by the state (LaFranchi, 1999, 6-7). Growing violence against women reveals
the shameful lack of concern for women's rights and the increasing patriarchal backlash to
the rise in women's participation in the economic system. According to Patricia Fluharty
(1999, 1-3), a member of the Mexican women's organization Zonta International Strategies
to Eradicate Violence Against Women and Children (ZISVAW), there are no specific
provisions on domestic violence, laws against marital rape, nor procedural protections for
abuse victims in Mexico. Furthermore, legal institutions do not enforce compliance to legal
norms mandating family support (Sara-Lafosse, 1998, 109). Officially, the purpose oflegal
obligations is to enable people to survive in a stable society; in contrast, the lack of support
from the legal system and, in extension, the political system (due to the decreased power of
the state to form policy), hinders women's abilities to survive free from abuse, a human
right. Therefore, as Violeta Sara-Lafosse (1998, 110) more generally argues, compliance of
the legal system in maintaining patriarchy (machismo) is an act against women's rights to
survive, in turn indicating women's subordinate political position within Mexican politics.
In sum, emphasis on opening the industrial sector of the economy through
privatization accompanied by state deregulation has further institutionalized patriarchy and
constrained women's already limited political representation by biased federal labor unions,
an unrepresentative legal system, and the shift of power from the state to privately owned
corporations. Furthermore, the corporate re-regulation of women's productive and
reproductive activities reduces disadvantaged urban women's abilities to politically
represent themselves in a democratically open way. Deregulation of the Mexican state has
further decreased the enforcement of policies that reduce gender discrimination, hence

49

reforms reinforce the subordination of Mexican women within the political and legal
systems.

Social Impacts of Reduced Government Spending on Women
Along with policies entailing trade liberalization and state deregulation, cuts to
government expenditures have also impacted poor rural and urban Mexican women' s lives.
Systematic changes in women' s economic and political positions predictably coincide with
changes in their social positions. General features of reduced government spending include:
reduced spending on education, reduced spending on health care, and, in turn, reduced
access to resources and an increased reliance on women' s productive and reproductive
activities for survival within the social system. Consistent gender disparities in education
and health reflect the subordinate social status of women and thus, their unequal positions
relative to men in society. In this section I argue that cuts in government spending on
education and health reduce women' s access to social resources resulting in numerous
negative impacts on their positions and conditions within Mexican society. Furthermore, the
privatization of medical services reduces women's abilities to access affordable quality
health care. The same is true for education, as the costs involved with education beyond the
elementary level are inaccessible to disadvantaged rural and urban Mexican women.
Over the course of the last two decades, the Mexican people have endured numerous
rounds of government cuts. The dismantling of social institutions, originally created for the
purpose of protecting disadvantaged Mexicans from falling into severe circumstances of
poverty, predictably causes rifts in the social safety net leading to harsher living conditions.
Several non-governmental organizations have documented the progress as well as set backs

50

of Mexico's social development efforts. The umbrella organization called Structural
Adjustment Participatory Review International Network (SAPRIN) represents groups in
Mexico working in the maquila sector, small business and producers' associations, rural
organizations, associations of farmers and indigenous peoples, credit unions and microfinance institutions, trade unions, development organizations, neighborhood groups, healthcare organizations and youth groups. In a 2001 report written by members of SAPRIN
(2001, 18), the process of government cutbacks initiated by structural adjustments is
described:
Three important social programs disappeared in 1983: the Integral Program of
Rural Development
~ part of the larger Mexican Nutritional System
~ and the General Coordination for the National Plan of Depressed and
Marginalized Zones (COPLAMAR). The first two were geared to stimulating
the production of staple grains for the Mexican population, while the latter was,
in its time, the most important program to combat poverty in marginalized areas.
During the rest of the decade a series of programs were established to ameliorate
the poverty resulting from the crisis .... In 1990, given extra sources of income
obtained from privatization, the National Program of Solidarity (PRONASOL)
began to function under the presidency of Salinas. With the crisis in 1995 and
the entry of a new cabinet once more, the social programs aiding the poor
suffered a change, and that policy was the Program for Health Education and
Nutrition (PROGRESA).
While the Salinas regime was negotiating the implementation of NAFTA in the late 1980s
and early 1990s, social programs such as PRONASOL meant for rural infrastructure
improvements, and PROGRESA which was meant to cushion the blow of government cuts
in health and education (collectively known as Solidarity) were introduced in order to
decrease the negative impacts of neo-liberal economic restructuring (Otero, 2000, 192).
Although these programs were meant to help the poor, critics now charge that Solidarity was
simply a program to keep poor Mexicans voting PRI while the country restricted its
economy. Evidently, the programs were subject to both abuse by local PRI authorities and
51

manipulation for political ends including direct misuse of PRONASOL resources for PRI
electoral purposes (Otero, 2000, 192).
Weaknesses in the design and implementation of these programs result in limited
improvements for those in dire need, particularly poor Mexican women.
The narrow-focused national poverty-alleviation programmes which have been
favored over the past few years are selective, short-term and function as mere
palliatives rather than addressing structural causes of poverty. These
programmes, for instance the Programme for Education, Health and Nutrition
(PROGRESA) ... are used for political and electoral ends, heightening
discrimination and hindering the construction of a truly democratic political
system which is vital for social development (Laboris, 2000).
Furthermore, funds intended for aiding struggling farmers were distributed on the basis of
size of landholdings and agricultural yields and only targeted male heads of household.
Therefore, the amount distributed to subsistence farmers, small landholders, and female
heads of household were limited and according to Gerardo Otero (2000, 194) "the program
more resembled a subsidization of agricultural resources rather than a poverty reduction
program." Otero (2000, 194), also points out that funds are being progressively reduced over
time, on the assumption that producers will turn to other crops in which Mexico has a
'comparative advantage.'

Similar oversights were present in the planning and

implementation of other Mexican poverty reduction programs.
The reduction of state expenditures involving food and medical subsidies implicates
gender disparities. Gender differences in education and health reflect the subordinate social
status of women and thus, their unequal social positions relative to men. The United Nations
Development Program's (UNDP) 1996 Human Development Report (1996, 138) reveals that
in 1993, before the implementation of the more recent rounds of government cuts, women in
Mexico had both lower literacy rates and school enrollment levels than Mexican men. In

52

terms of adult literacy rates, in 1993 there was a 5.7% gap between men and

en~ the

female literacy rate was 85.4%, whereas the male literacy rate was 91.1 %. By 1995 the
overall literacy of females above the age of fifteen had risen as did overall adult literacy,
showing an improvement in literacy rates, however, not in gender disparities in education.
(UNDP, 1998, 143).
Similar gender disparities are present in terms of access to adequate and affordable
health care as can be seen in the lack of maternal health care. Malnutrition and decreased
access to health care have led to increasing maternal morbidity and mortality. According to
the coordinating committee ofSAPRIN (2001 , 19).
Drastic governmental cuts in health services have modified maternal health care, a
factor of pivotal importance for children. In Mexico in 1995, trained personnel
attended only 88.5% of births, and the number was even lower in rural areas. In
that same year, 6.8% of pregnant women received no prenatal care, and those
that received it averaged 3.9 consultations, a number far below the minimum
recommended by the World Health Organization (5 consultations perpregnancy).
Negative changes in prenatal health may also be caused by falling nutrition levels m
pregnant women as well as an overall decrease in women' s health, making them more
vulnerable to illness and complications during pregnancy.
Moreover, divorce rates are rising and women (for whom lower income is the norm)
are increasingly heading households (UNDP, 1998, 381). Indeed, SAPRIN reports (2001,
19) that "[i]n 1990, between 13.5% and 15% of the total domestic households had women
as heads of the family. Some 80% of these were divorced, separated or widowed." The
interaction of these variables leaves poor Mexican women fighting a vicious cycle of
poverty, induced by the inadequate consideration of women's subordinate social positions
and the subsequent barriers to accessing resources and opportunities during times of

53

restructuring. Consequently, poor urban and rural Mexican women experience substandard
material conditions.
Reduced Social Spending in Rural Areas
Gender bias, class polarization, and the marginalization of rural interests influence
rural women's access to resources such as health care and education. This is especially true
for rural Indigenous women in the south, with those in Chiapas suffering the greatest social
exclusion. Indeed, as Cruickshank and Purcell (1998, 4) report on gender and education in
Chiapas,
[w]hile the percentage of women without education at the national level is
15.3%, in rural zones it is 25.4% and among indigenous women it is 45.8% .. . the
r ~ the
three principal reasons for not attending school are: the need to
absence of a school nearby; and the family' s refusal to register their children. In
the last case it is mostly girls who are not allowed to attend school.
In Mexico, elementary school is compulsory by federal legislation but is generally not
enforced, especially in rural areas where schools are few and far between. Moreover, due to
changes in economic and political circumstances and cuts to social spending, children (and
particularly girls) from rural families are needed at home to contribute to the growing
financial and social burdens of the rural poor. Women's lack of formal education is thus
compounded by reduced government funding not only to schools, but to social development
programs in general.
According to statistics available from state sources, in percentage terms, state
spending on education appears to have risen between 1993 and 1995, the period NAFTA
reforms were being implemented. Mexican state spending and the allocation of the gross
domestic product (GDP) for education rose from 3.6% in 1993 to 3.8% in 1995, however,
the GDP decreased 6.9% in 1995, skewing the percentage of a substantially lower GDP
54

dedicated to education, and thus limiting any real improvement (Casasbuenas, Heredia, &
Purcell, 1997, 5). Furthermore, the education budget had previously been cut by 21%
between 1982 and 1992 making any recent improvement somewhat superficial (Warnock,
1995, 180).

Critics of Mexican health care argue that

[t]he social policy that underlies the neo-liberal approach to health is closer to
charity than social welfare. It does not recognize that citizens have social rights,
nor does it propose to universalize benefits to the whole population (Warnock,
1995, 181).
In general, services are concentrated in urban areas producing large discrepancies in both
education and health conditions between the rural and urban populations. This is especially
pronounced in the southern states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero where poor women have
less access to increasingly limited public provisions (SAPRIN, 1998, 3). Indeed, after
budget cuts in 1994, 22% of the Mexican population did not have access to health services.
Those with access to drinking water decreased from 86.8% in 1994 to 83.7% in 1996, and
those who had sewage service dropped from 70.2% in 1994 to 67.1% in 1996 (Casasbuenas,
Heredia, & Purcell, 1997, 5).
The decrease in subsistence farming along with reforms in the agricultural sector, the
decline of the value of the peso and rising food prices have gravely impacted rural women's
abilities to feed themselves and their children, resulting in a general decrease in
disadvantaged women's health. In rural areas, the consumption of nutritious food has
dropped (Casasbuenas, Heredia, & Purcell, 1997, 5) and as Patrick Cuninghame and
Carolina Ballesteros Corona (1998, 5) reveal, despite their surroundings of rich natural
resources, 87% of indigenous school age children and 100% of indigenous women over the
age of 10 suffer from malnutrition, with symptoms including stunted growth and increased
vulnerability to illness.
55

According to the Mexican government, basic-grain production has fallen since
NAFTA was implemented. Production of the ten principal basic-grain crops fell
13.3% between 1994 and 1995. This is due to several factors: major reductions
in credit; increased prices for inputs and severe drought in the North of the
county (Anderson et. al, 1996, 3).
Cuts in food subsidies have created a nutritional crisis for disadvantaged Mexican families
and cuts in health care provisions and the declining quality of health care have negatively
influenced rates of morbidity and mortality for poor Mexican women.
Rural poor women's decreased access to affordable quality health care, combined
with fewer educational opportunities, translates into amplified hardship. Moreover, these
social problems make it almost impossible for women to develop the social capital needed to
improve their conditions. These changes in rural women's positions and conditions point to
the further marginalization of the rural population.
Reduced Social Spending in Urban Areas
Evidently, reduced government spending in urban areas has produced similar issues
to those existing in rural areas. Pre-existing social problems faced by poor urban women are
exacerbated by cuts to social spending. Rather than providing health and education services
to the public, the Mexican state has implemented limited poverty reduction efforts that
'target' the poorest of the poor, denying many remaining segments of the population needed
benefits (SAPRIN, 1998, 3). Kopinak reveals that (1995, 5) "the minimum wage set by the
federal government in Mexico buys only about a quarter of the basic necessities that are
essential for a typical worker's family, and therefore, the average household has to have a
combined income of at least four minimum wages just to survive." Cecilia, an urban woman
protesting for social justice expressed her skepticism about impending reforms in the early
1990s.

56

The majority of the poor people of the capital, and the rest of the country haven't
heard anything to convince us that the free-trade treaty will help us overcome the
economic crisis now facing our country. In many of the communities there are
no services. There aren't any schools. Now more than ever, women have large
families to support on their own. We have to leave our families at home to go
out to work, in order to eat. Even our children have to go out and work: selling
Chicklets, cleaning car windows. Well to say that with NAFT A our situation is
going to improve, we simply don't see it that way. For a few government
functionaries things will improve, it will be better for them, yes, but not for us
(quoted in Saxberg, 1993, 9).
Urban women have fared better than rural women during periods of economic reform
in terms of their abilities to access education. Social Watch (an international network of
citizens' organizations struggling to eradicate poverty and the causes of poverty) holds
governments, the UN system and international organizations accountable for the fulfillment
of national, regional and international commitments to eradicate poverty. Constantino
Casasbuenas, Carlos Heredia, and Mary Purcell (1995, 6), members of Social Watch,
highlight the importance of recognizing the variance of education levels according to
region, sex and social class, yet, caution that accurate statistics accounting for these
differences are in short supply. What has been documented includes the higher rate of
education in urban areas than in rural areas for both men and women. In 1995, people in the
Federal District (Mexico City) had an average of 9 years of education while people in
Chiapas had 4.2 years. However, in the urban context impoverished female students rarely
attain the required minimum 6 years of schooling. One reason disadvantaged urban women
and girls have less education than men is because their participation in the informal
economy is needed to assist with household survival and further, because girls replace their
economically active mothers in the home. Reductions in educational opportunities due to
government cuts along with cultural resistance of the formal education system further
contribute to the unequal education levels of poor Mexican men and women and in turn,

57

women's subordinate positions in the social system are not improved by cuts in government
spending.
Moreover, according to critics of the Mexican education system, an inadequate
school curriculum poses additional problems to the quality and quantity of education
Mexicans receive

(Tatto et. al, 2001: Weinberger, 2001: Flores & Lankshear, 2000).

According to Gloria Hernandez Flores and Colin Lankshear (2000, 243), the general
Mexican school curriculum under the free-market system addresses "decontextualized skills
of encoding and decoding, without reference to who the learners are in a group, what they
do, or where they come from" and workplace adult literacy programs, common in northern
countries (Canada and the United States), are non-existent in Mexico. Those girls who do go
to school must wade through a flood of hidden curriculum, sexist pedagogy, and the political
androcentrism that thrives in this strongly patriarchal society, increasingly invested with
capitalist values (Gaskell & Willinsky, 1995, 3). In addition, the new neo-liberal economy
envisioned by the Mexican government requires highly skilled workers of which Mexico is
lacking. Those living in Mexico City over the age of 25 have completed an average of 9
years of education; the corresponding U.S and Canadian average for those 25 years and over
is 12.3 years of education (Flores & Lankshear, 2000, 242). Thus, cuts to education under
neo-liberal economic restructuring, not only serve to perpetuate the social subordination of
poor Mexican women by reducing their access to opportunities and subsequent benefits, but
also the cuts are counterproductive in the broader scheme of neo-liberal restructuring,
considering education is essential for creating skilled workforce of which at least half should
be women.

58

As the poor concentrate in urban areas, living conditions in urban slums steadily
decrease. Consequently illnesses associated with poverty increase (SAPRIN, 1998, 3).
Privatization of medical services along with reductions in public provisions, make medical
care available only to those who can afford the high costs. After the most recent round of
restructuring in the mid 1990s, general health care provisions were restricted to the most
basic services such as vaccinations and family

lann n ~ however, family planning does not

include abortion, which is illegal in Mexico resulting in abortion being the fourth leading
cause of maternal mortality (Casasbuenas, Heredia, & Purcell, 1997, 5). Furthermore, as
SAPRIN (2001, 19) reports,
[a]mongst adolescent mothers, more complications arising from pregnancy take
place. Adolescent family planning has not been considered despite the 20
million people in this group, forming 22% of the population. One fourth of
pregnancies, the majority of which are unwanted, are from this group, and the
incidence of [illegal] abortions and child-mother deaths is more present in
adolescents than in any other group.
This generally points to how disadvantaged urban women's social positions are adversely
impacted due to the lack of control over reproduction and the absence of legal mechanisms
through which the choice to bare children would be available. In turn, disadvantaged urban
women who must bare unwanted children experience harsher daily conditions under the
financial burden of their social roles as mothers.
Unbelievably, although abortion is illegal, coerced sterilization is not (Shields, 1995,
5). Many urban maquiladora workers are now persuaded to attend plant-run medical clinics
managed by hired doctors. The purpose for these private doctors is to prevent on-the-job
accidents or job-related illnesses from being reported to the federal health care system and
thus, protecting the corporations from having to pay their workers compensation. However,
these doctors have been known to go beyond the call of duty and tell workers to seek

59

sterilization surgeries (Shields, 1995, 5). Therefore, government cuts to health spending hurt
urban female maquiladora workers by reducing their access to affordable and reliable
healthcare, despite their exposure to highly hazardous environments in their workplaces.
Health hazards are a major problem for pregnant women working in the urban
industrial sector. For example, one study (Denman, 1990, cited in Kopinak, 1995, 6) found
that birth weights of maquila worker's babies were below internationally accepted standards
significantly more often than in infants of women working in the service and commercial
sectors. These findings were attributed to the fact that maquiladora working conditions are
harsh, with workers exposed to toxins, long working days, and rigid physical postures.
Moreover, Mary Tong, an activist with the San Diego based Support Committee for
Maquiladora Workers exposes that "if managers find out a worker is pregnant, they do

forced speed-ups with no breaks, assign the worker to lifting heavy weights or working on
heavy machinery that she doesn't know how to operate or physically can't operate and do
other outrageous things to force her to quit so they won't have to pay maternity leave"
(Shields, 995, 4). Tong further reports that one pregnant Mexican woman working in a
Japanese owned maquiladora was assigned to work in the soldering room with no
ventilation. However, determined to keep her job, she did not quit. Her baby was born with
anencephaly (born without a brain) for which the mother felt responsible (Shields, 1995, 4).
Company doctors often diagnose complications during pregnancy and delivery, and
problems of babies born to maquila workers as resulting from poor diets (Shields, 1995, 5).
Cuts to social spending associated with economic reforms and the transition of medical
services from the state to employers have thus posed numerous problems for women in
urban areas as employees, mothers and medical patients. The workplace gender hierarchy

60

places urban Mexican female maquiladora workers in low social positions leading to greater
suffering of health problems. Government cuts, thus further reduce the physical conditions
under which women work and live in urban Mexico.
Conclusion

This chapter discusses the impacts of recent economic restructuring in Mexico on
disadvantaged Mexican rural and urban women. Policy reforms involving trade
liberalization, state deregulation and privatization as well as reduced government spending
have been seen to lead to many negative impacts on women's economic, political, and social
positions and conditions. I note that the subordinate position of women in Mexican culture
has implications for their accessibility to resources and the intermingling of capitalism and
patriarchy cause many disadvantaged women to shoulder greater burdens. Furthermore,
changes in poor Mexican women's positions resulting from gender blind policy reforms
have grave implications for their abilities to control and maintain adequate conditions.
Greater international economic competition led by neo-liberal principles of development, as
exemplified by Mexico's economic restructuring, pose further challenges to disadvantaged
Mexican women's already arduous lives as existing social ills increase.
However, Mexican women have developed ways of not only coping with hardship
but also of improving their circumstances by organizing in grassroots groups and
community development networks. Women's grassroots organizations are increasingly
being formed by and for Mexican women with the, sometimes implicit and sometimes
explicit, intentions of increasing women's economic, political and social stability.
Challenging the unequal conceptualizations of gender and supporting women in the power
struggles they engage in as they work toward claiming personal autonomy in the face of

61

powerful, wealth accumulation-oriented forces IS fostered through women's solidarity.
These forms of group organization can be
considered an alternative strategy for development encompassing goals for greater gender,
class and geographical equality, as explored in Chapter Three.

62

CHAPTER THREE:
MEXICAN WOMEN'S GRASSROOTS RESPONSES TO ECONOMIC REFORMS

The reforms ushered in by structural adjustment policies (SAPs) and the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have not gone unchallenged by Mexican
women. Chapter Three examines how disadvantaged Mexican women respond to the
alterations in the urban and rural economic, political, social environments caused by
economic restructuring and neo-liberal policies. I look at a number of women's grassroots
organizations in Mexico that perform economic, political and social activities in response to
the increased hardship poor Mexican women have endured since the implementation of the
reforms discussed in Chapter Two. Women's mobilization into grassroots organizations is a
strategic response to poverty and hardship. The activities of grassroots organizations
(GROs) are often performed as survival strategies and include different levels of
participation. Survival strategies are in part based on individual actions and behavior,
however, they also depend on networks between individuals and households, and on forms
of group solidarity. Women's networks can transcend their initial purpose of survival and
become mechanisms for women's empowerment (Johnson, 1992, 150).
This investigation utilizes the gender and development (GAD) tool 'strategies for
transformation' to analyze how the activities of women's GROs open a space wherein the
potential for change emerges. As explained in Chapter One, this tool elucidates how
women's survival strategies challenge the limitations imposed on them by gender
subordination, as well as class and geographical inequalities. Strategies for transformation
refer to the ways women may become empowered through their active participation in the
development of collective survival strategies, which in turn challenges their subordinate

63

positions and creates dynamic social change in women's lives. Therefore, grassroots
strategies for survival hold the potential to empower women and transform structures of
inequality, including women's subordinate positions, at the same time as improving their
material conditions.
The following discussion is organized into three sections: economic grassroots
activities, political grassroots activities, and social grassroots activities. I draw on examples
from studies examining both urban and rural Mexican women's experiences in grassroots
groups. The concerns of Mexican women's GROs vary according to the specific conditions
different women must contend with in their daily lives. These subjectively complex
conditions include women's productive and reproductive activities, their political rights and
freedoms involving issues of reproduction, violence, access to public provisions, as well as
issues concerning health, education and well-being. By identifying different types of GROs
(economic, political, social), their strategies for empowerment, along with successes and
obstacles they encounter, a clear vision emerges of how Mexican women's GROs operate in
response to the direct and indirect impacts of economic restructuring.

Economic Grassroots Activities
The neo-liberal economic model of reform embraced by the Mexican government in
the past has not only accentuated existing gender inequalities, but has also prompted
impoverished Mexican women to respond by developing alternative economic activities
providing them with the means for meeting their needs (Barndt, 1999, 211). Poor women in
Mexico often work together in mutual aid organizations or solidarity groups in order to meet
their economic needs along with the needs of their families and their communities. For

64

example, they save in small merry-go-round clubs, they market produce co-operatively, they
build roads and schools, and they help each other out in times of need (Snyder, 1995, 49).
The trust, management, and organization skills women develop in grassroots groups makes
them key players in efforts to overcome poverty. Indeed, such groups are critical to human
survival throughout Mexico.
Through the mobilization of their productive capacities, women are becoming active
agents in the economy and managers of finances, creating an environment where capitalism
and patriarchy interact in ways that both aid and challenge women in various roles (Schild,
2000, 25). For example, Ayala Emmett (1998, 512) notes the changes in gendered power
resulting from "sweeping economic and technological changes in the east coast of Mexico
[where] remote and isolated villages are instantly being connected through newly
constructed roads." The emergence of the international market economy in remote regions
along with the participation of women in what Emmett ( 1998, 513) calls "penny capitalism,"
where women' s collectives produce consumer products for the tourist market, reveal shifting
divisions of gender and labor allowing women to discover and claim economic autonomy.
In this section I discuss Tad Mutserbaugh's (1999) study of rural Mexican women's
responses to unequal gender divisions of labor within a male-dominated agricultural co-op
project in Santa Cruz. The Santa Cruz women mobilized into an economic type of grassroots
organization of their own, signifying the development of survival strategies containing the
potential for transformation. The women of rural Santa Cruz in Mutserbaugh' s study not
only improved their positions within the local economic system, but also improved their
material conditions through their economic grassroots activities.

65

In 1987, the men of Santa Cruz, a village in the state of Oaxaca, organized a farm coop in response to increased migration, loss of land and the rising cost of seeds and other
agricultural necessities (Mutserbaugh, 1999, 49). After the economic reforms implemented
in the early 1990s, women's labor was sought out by men in the co-op to supplement the
loss of male labor due to migration. Even though women worked in the co-op fields, grew
subsistence crops, and performed most of the household duties, they were excluded from
making decisions about the operation of the co-op. This power, as well as the majority of the
profits from the crops, remained in the hands of male co-op members (1999, 48).
Furthermore, in addition to working longer hours for only 50-75% of the men's wages for
performing much of the same work and being excluded from decision-making processes on
the basis of gender, women's reproductive activities were incompatible with the productive
activities they were being asked to perform, thus contributing to their increased experiences
of hardship (1999, 51). For instance, one woman told Mutserbaugh "during the planting
season I had to walk an hour and a half to the field and plant corn. I was eight months
pregnant at the time and was afraid of falling" (1999, 49).
The women responded by organizing their own economic co-op production project, a
bakery. This economic co-op type of grassroots organization concentrates on the economic
rewards of women's productive activities and is characterized by women's responses to
gender specific hardship as they develop their own definitions of gender compatible
economic activities. In 1994, with financial backing from the men's co-op, the women built
a community oven and began baking bread for profit (1999, 52). Soon after, the men's co-op
opened decision-making power to the women, and the women became solely responsible for
the bakery activities and profits.

66

Although the women' s co-op became a success, it was only because the women were
able to overcome a number of obstacles. As Mutserbaugh explains, in the beginning none of
the women had previous practice in large scale baking activities, thus the women had to
overcome the obstacle of inexperience. The initial problems faced by the Santa Cruz
women's co-op included a lack of knowledge of the demand for bread in the local markets,
baking techniques, and the costs involved with acquiring the supplies needed. The women
overcame these impediments by incorporating their first-hand-knowledge of local,
predominantly female- run, markets and made use of community and family networks to sell
the bread, thereby avoiding surpluses and credit sales (1999, 52).
One obstacle not discussed by Mutserbaugh is the additional time required to
organize the women' s group, as well as work in the bakery and still carry out work in the
home. The time obstacle has also been noted by Janet Townsend (1999). Townsend (1999,
81) relays how Carmen, a woman involved with a similar organization in rural Sonora
explained how
taking part [in the organization] is a double burden. For me, it means a double
work day, because I have to rush to leave tortillas to eat in the house, to take the
smallest boy, leave the others, take them to leave them in a friend's charge, and
then in the afternoon come back tired from a meeting and so on.
Other barriers faced by women in Carmen's organization included harassment from male
members of their mix-gender organization, criticism from other women for being too
aggressive and for being out of the home, and not least of all physical abuse from resistant
patriarchs (1999, 81). However, despite these obstacles, Citlali, an indigenous woman from
Oaxaca also involved with a grassroots community organization that began as a male

67

organization, conveys how women m her group become empowered through their
participation.
We have the power of being there, having a say in the mixed organizations, with
all the obstacles we face. But little by little - we are there, you see, and in
positions where decisions are made. Well, before, there were no women's
sections and now there are, as we go working our way up mixed organizations. I
agree that at the moment when we come out to get organized a woman's struggle
started .... all this has given us power, you see, in institutions (Townsend, 1999,
73).
In sum, there are a number of ways the Santa Cruz women became not only

economically empowered but also personally empowered through their economic grassroots
activities with the bakery (Mutserbaugh, 1999, 47). Changes in the women's social positions
within the village indicate the potential for transformation that involvement with the GRO
presents. The women of Santa Cruz developed strategies that guided a shift in gender power
relations, thus transforming women's positions within the local economic system. This was
accomplished by collectively resisting the unequal burdens imposed on them by broader
impacts of economic restructuring. Secondly, they defined the type of work they wanted to
perform which permitted them to combine productive and reproductive tasks. Thus, as
Mutserbaugh (1999, 47) states, the Santa Cruz women renegotiated the meaning of their
productive and reproductive roles.
The most important result of women's entry into co-op production is the
reconstitution of village roles. Women have strengthened and altered the
character of extrahousehold networks and have gained a direct voice in a village
level organization, challenging the patriarchal democratic structure of village
decision-making (1999, 52).
The rural women of Santa Cruz became empowered through their semi-independent
grassroots activities by reformulating gender relations while contributing to household
survival through gender specific productive activities.

68

Through the development of survival strategies that aid women' s economic
conditions, the potential for transformation arises as daily conditions improve with increased
income. The potentiality of empowerment is thus led by transformations in women' s
material conditions, which positively influence women's positions. Although the women's
productive activities were necessary for economic survival in light of the negative impacts
of economic restructuring, the women resisted the unequal gender division of labor and
sought survival strategies that were both more equitably organized and more conducive to
their specific gender needs. Therefore, despite being faced with obstacles like inexperience
and financial impediments, they became empowered through their independent efforts and
creative initiatives. The Santa Cruz example of rural Mexican women's organized economic
responses to changing economic circumstances clearly shows how women's grassroots
organizations can hold the capacity to implement positive social change to gender relations
while improving women's economic positions and conditions.

Political Grassroots Activities

When women come together to collectively express their needs in the public arena
they take on overtly political roles. Changes in Mexico' s political climate due to state
deregulation and the subsequent dismantling of legal and political institutions reducing the
state's ability to form policies have provoked women to organize and develop gender,
geographic and class specific political agendas (Schild, 2000, 25). Their gender makes
women the managers of the processes of social reproduction and thus the managers of
poverty, revealing, in turn, the political nature of poverty (Bennett, 1995, 77). Consequently,
women are the primary participants in urban neighborhood-based struggles for better public

69

services and political rights (Bennett, 1995, 77). However, women's lack of political
equality means their needs are inadequately represented and addressed within formal
political institutions. As a result, protest and direct action have become the most common
vehicles of expression for poor urban Mexican women (1995, 78).
The following examples of Mexican women's political GRO activities provide a
starting point from which to further understand how and why disadvantaged Mexican
women mobilize in response to political issues. Through their varied forms of mobilization,
women attain and claim the power to express their needs and in the process, make those
needs political. The presence of women's political GROs creates inroads of gender
awareness in androcentric Mexican political institutions. By extension, these GROs are
valuable sources of empowerment in the sense that the strategies developed by their
members hold the potential for transformation by revealing the political nature of women's
subordinate positions and conditions.
Throughout the

implementation of structural

adjustments

and

economic

restructuring, women's groups have claimed spaces in town squares where they voice
opposition to proposed economic changes and existing social conditions. Kelly Saxburg
(1993) has written about such women's groups along with the settings where urban women
express their political agendas. These political activities can be understood as the practicing
of survival strategies aimed at transforming aspects of the political system in order to
instigate changes in women's positions and conditions. Similarily, Cuninghame and Corona
(1998) discuss other politically motivated women's groups such as the Tepoztlan Unity
Committee (CUT) who relay their political protests against state deregulation and
privatization. Not least of all, women's grassroots political organizations like Alternativas

70

Pacificias offering services to women in the community, such as shelters for battered

women and information regarding their rights serve a political purpose in the increasingly
deregulated Mexican political system.
One way urban women's groups claim political power is by using their collective
voice in public to protest the poor conditions they endure. In an article about the anticipated
implementation of reforms involved with NAFTA, Saxberg (1993, 8) describes the zocolo,
the central market square in Mexican cities often used by women's groups as a site for
political expression. Saxberg (1993, 8) relays how Mexican women
find the zocolo the perfect place in which to criticize the government, complain
about the economy and protest injustice. They do it with passion and practice,
rarely intimidated by the surrounding environment of powerful institutions such
as the Catholic Church, government bureaucracy, and the offices of the PRI.
In the process of interviewing people in the zoco/os collecting Mexican's thoughts on

the implementation ofNAFTA, Saxberg came across a group of women protesting the living
conditions and human rights abuses in Mexican prisons. This group consisted of "the wives,
sisters, and mothers of men who have been incarcerated for reasons they do not consider
criminal such as protesting against the destruction of squatter communities" (1993, 8).
Cecilia, one of the protesters, explained the issues identified by her group.
We are housewives, seamstresses, laundresses, maquiladora workers, we earn
less than minimum wage, we rarely have time for our children. Drug addiction
and abandonment are all part of the social problems that we have to face. Never
has the Mexican government dealt with these problems. They jail people, torture
them, then say they need to construct more jails to combat delinquency. That is
not the solution. The solution is to provide us with sources of employment and
pay us adequate wages, provide us with proper education, housing and the rest of
those necessities because that is what is lacking (Saxberg, 1993, 9).
The political activities Cecilia and her group involve themselves in can be seen as fostering
empowerment because they identify issues relevant to their own gender. In addition they

71

also recognize the injustice and inadequacy of the broader political system, which does not
outwardly acknowledge how women are impacted by the absence of men in terms of their
material conditions as they have to work harder and shoulder a greater share of the burdens.
The political strategy of protest also serves to adjust the position of women in the political
system as their presence and visibility in public spaces challenges their exclusion from
formal politics. Moreover, the action of expressing their discontent with their circumstances
presents the potential for empowerment as their involvement provides them with
opportunities to build self-confidence and group solidarity. Unfortunately, many of the
problems identified by Cecilia and her group increase with the implementation of neo-liberal
reforms.
Issues like inadequate public services typify the concentration of urban Mexican
women's political GRO activities. The struggle for clean drinking water is a burden for
many Mexican women. Water problems are paramount in squatter settlements and urban
shantytowns as Vivienne Bennett (1995, 78) notes, poor women on the periphery often "live
in homes with no running water, but water is an essential element in their daily lives. They
need water to cook, clean, wash clothing, and bathe children." Water in Mexico comes
under federal jurisdiction, and thus on the local level the federal government is the ultimate
decision maker regarding water policy. Only, the federal government resides in exclusionary
buildings located in Mexico City, far removed from rural women in the south and the urban
women in the north (Bennett, 1995, 78). State deregulation, however, has detached much of
the federal governments' control over water accessibility. Private development has now
become a deciding force in who has access to water and who does not.

72

~

----

Tepoztlan Unity Committee (CUT), an urban women's grassroots organization
formed in 1995, grew out of urban women's concerns over private commercial development.

El Tepozteco is the name of a mega-project, which was to consist of luxury homes and
hotels, a shopping center, a business park, an artificial lake, and an 18-hole golf course. El

Tepozteco had been the target of fierce community resistance. The women of CUT, along
with other members of the community, objected to the environmental implications of the
project (which would drastically reduce the already limited water supply to the surrounding
neighbourhoods) and the undemocratic (and possibly illegal) manner in which the
communal lands were obtained. Protests typically drew thousands of residents all organizing
around similar culture, class and geographic lines (Interhemispheric Resource Center, 1996,
24). The women of CUT developed a political type of organization wherein they could
utilize their power of numbers to communicate common concerns. By August of 1995,
events had escalated to the point where CUT members "took control of a small town near
Mexico City to stop developers from building a golf course on sacred ground and depriving
the community of its water resources" (Cuninghame & Corona, 1998, 19). The Tepoztlan
villagers took over the town hall and unseated municipal council members who had voted
for the project to commence in a secret meeting just days before. The result of this pursuit
was the relocation of the urban development project (Interhemispheric Resource Center,
1996, 24). Overtly political actions taken by the women of CUT served to protect the
community' s water supply while showing how political resistance to unjust processes of
development can be a viable strategy of survival used to preserve and improve their
common community conditions. Furthermore, the assertiveness shown by the women
indicates their sense of power and ability to create change in local politics despite their

73

exclusion from formal decision-making processes. In turn, this indicates the potential for
transformation present in political GRO activities.
The community mobilization seen in the CUT organization is quite different from
grassroots organizations that mobilize around issues of women's rights. Groups representing
women's rights offer services to individual women and often do not receive enthusiastic
support from community members (Varas, 1998, 610). However, female run organizations
such as women's shelters appreciate the diverse circumstances of women's lives and strive to
create avenues of choice wherein potential for transformation exists. Shelters for abused
women offer assistance by creating options for women who otherwise may have few choices
in situations of mistreatment. Women living in poverty often become dependent on male
income earners. Gender relations involving dependency decrease equality between women
and men, placing women and their children in vulnerable circumstances. Furthermore, in
Mexico domestic violence is viewed as a private issue, and a man who beats his wife is seen,
by the legal system, to be acting within his marriage rights (Varas, 1998, 610). The
Alternativas Pacificias GRO, located in the city of Monterrey, provides a shelter for battered

women and their children and also implements sensitization campaigns about domestic
violence for television and radio (Osted, 2000, 2). The organization is set up by and for
women suffering from impoverished circumstances and who often experience high rates of
domestic violence and high rates of fertility. Alternativas Pacificias is an example of an
urban organization promoting peaceful alternatives to solving family conflicts while
working to increase awareness of women's lives. By doing so, this GRO engages in a
political fight against domestic violence and the patriarchal bias present within the state
legal system. The activities involving mainstreaming women's knowledge, as well as

74

consciousness-raising activities, are direct strategies for empowering women and, therefore
are essential in the development process.
Mexican women's groups do not necessarily have to be organized around a specific
issue in order to actively approach a particular issue. For instance Isabel, a member of a
GRO that grew out of women's experiences of political exclusion from a male run rural
community in Oaxaca, explains
[l]ast year one of the male members had beaten his wife. She was pregnant, so
the case went to the organization. Then we had to step in and as a result the man
has stopped beating her. Besides everyone talked about what had a ene~ even
in other communities, and they say, 'Look out!' because women don't stand for
beatings anymore (Townsend, 1999, 92).
Furthermore, as seen in the above example, the sharing of women's experiences with one
another made domestic violence, formerly seen as natural "not seem so normal to them
anymore" (Townsend, 1999, 92).
As mentioned in Chapter Two, the Mexican government often covertly enforces

political conformity through force and repression. Therefore, Mexican women's political
grassroots organizations face systematic barriers to the full expression and attainment of
their gender specific political agendas. Despite the threat of violence and retaliation from the
government, Mexican women still formulate strategies to express their concerns in relation
to their subordinate positions and disadvantaged material conditions. Maria Delores
Villagomez (1999, 212) relays that the process of assuming political roles allows women to
become "collective 'subjects': no longer 'objects,' but rather protagonists in their lives and
interveners in their social context. It transforms their positions within the community, their
relationships with other community members as well as with community authorities."
Women in GROs, therefore, actively take part in the negotiation of positions of power

75

~

through their roles as political agents, while creating positive changes in their material
conditions such as increased access to land and housing, water and sewage services, public
and private safety, and other areas of infrastructure and well-being.
Furthermore, as Margaret Snyder (1995, 6) more generally notes, politically
empowered women' s groups are now becoming "directly involved in the making of policies
and development planning through training projects and gender sensitization programs that
encourage the recognition of women's real, lived, experiences of poverty and their responses
.to such experiences." Thus, not only do grassroots organizations act as vehicles for the
transmission of women's concerns, but they also serve to influence new frameworks for
gender sensitive institutions, investing public politics with an explicit gender factor. From
these new possibilities the potential for transformation emerges in the spaces where women
mobilize to express their political concerns, shifting their positions within the political
system.

Social Grassroots Activities
Identifying social GROs as a specific type of GRO is a precarious endeavor in that
both economic GROs and political GROs also encompass activities involving social
interaction. However, the social activities of women's grassroots organizations, such as the
sharing of existing knowledge, can serve to raise women's collective awareness of gender
specific issues like health, education, and well-being. The social side of disadvantaged rural
and urban Mexican women's mobilization entails consciousness-raising as a form of
education and, thus a grassroots response to cuts in government spending on education and
public health arising from processes of structural adjustment and restructuring. The process

76

of women coming together, talking, and sharing with each other and learning to think of
themselves as a part of something larger brings out an awareness that can potentially inspire
actions leading to greater social change. Indeed, as Catalina, a grassroots advisor from rural
Hidalgo located in Mexico's central highlands, imparts
[f]or women to analyze their everyday reality and act for change, they must be
aware. By this we mean ... that we must know our own potential in a society
where everything is against us ... and to change that, we have to change ourselves
and the society around us. I think this is the most important undertaking. The
material side is of course important, even essential, but we believe that it must
be tackled with practices which allow us to work both on women' s practical
needs to get them interested and involved, while at the same time the activities
lead to analysis of their lives and of how society works, in relation to them, and
to us as women (Townsend, 1999, 98).
With greater awareness of their surroundings, women gain the ability to define their role in
the general movement of those surroundings and to take part in developing socially
transformative strategies that respond to changes in the social system such as reduced access
to resources due to cuts in government expenditures. In turn women actively participate in
reshaping their positions within the social system.
Both Townsend (1999) and Villagomez (1999) have written about Mexican women's
social GRO activities in response to cuts in state spending. Townsend's more abstract
discussion of rural Mexican women's GROs is framed in terms of different types of 'power'
and ways power is claimed, attained and harnessed by women who become instruments of
their own social 'empowerment. ' Townsend (1999) draws examples from numerous GROs
including the one previously mentioned, the rural Hidalgo grassroots group located in
Mexico's central highlands. Villagomez (1999), on the other hand, specifically examines
basic survival activities of urban women in grassroots groups who pool their resources,
skills and time together to more efficiently perform reproductive labor like, providing the

77

essential elements of food and clothing for themselves and their families, an activity made
more difficult since the removal of government food subsidies. Villagomez uses the
Empresa Social urban women's grassroots organization located in Irapuato to exemplifY the

survival strategies developed to improve the material conditions of members of the
community. Although these are examples of Mexican women's social GROs, they also
illustrate the coalescence of economic, political and social factors in the activities of
disadvantaged Mexican women's groups.
The participation and mobilization of women into networks organized on the
grounds of social issues affecting them from day to day represents a certain social cohesion,
opening up a space wherein the potential for social transformation emerges. Development of
a collective conscience is also known as popular education. According to Townsend this is
what occurs when women 'get together.' Townsend (1999, 77-78) relays that Mexican
[l]ow income women, rural and urban, often lead an isolated social
existence ... One outcome of women's isolation and hardship is a tendency to
blame the family's hardships and socio-economic problems on oneself or one's
husband. The chance to break out of daily routine, to sit down on a regular basis
with other women and community members with similar burdens helps women
recognize that they are not alone, that their problems are shared and that, upon
further analysis, the root causes go beyond individual fault or responsibility.
This relieves women of a tremendous burden and allows them to move slowly
from an individual to a collective perspective.
I would like to note that I am not suggesting that popular education is a replacement of
formal education in schools. Rather, the development of a collective perspective can lead to
the mobilization of women to rally together in order to raise awareness of the need for
formal education. However, as mentioned in Chapter Two, there are many fundamental
problems with formal education in Mexico, not least of all is the male bias present in
Mexican classrooms. This poses a paradox for Mexican women in terms of education.

78

Disadvantaged rural women in Mexico find working with other women in grassroots
groups educational in that they attain hands on training. Yet, Townsend imparts that while
disadvantaged rural women from Oaxaca, members of a small community GRO, consider
practical experience an invaluable form of education, like the women's economic co-op
bakery in Santa Cruz previously discussed, they face the obstacles of inexperience and selfdoubt. Located in the hot humid lands of the Isthmus ofTehuantepec, the Oaxacan women's
GRO collectively perform many of the essential community tasks ranging from food
production to health care (Townsend, 1999, 9). Few of the members have traveled far
beyond their village, yet some of those who have, have brought back new skills and
information, allowing women to organize to better their positions and conditions in their
community. New information regarding literacy, health issues and women's rights thus
become available to the women. However, with the new knowledge comes the trouble of
managing that knowledge. For example, Citlali, of the Oaxaca organization relays that
[w]e may understand clearly what's needed, but maybe we sometimes need
education, information, training on how to do it. Maybe we are great believers in
changing the world and changing the conditions of women's lives, but it's very
difficult to get those tools. I mean, a way of doing it that's right or will work, in
the sense that it is suited to the place, to the kinds of women, and also takes into
account our own education, our own awareness; even that is important
(Townsend, 1999, 120).
Citlali' s sentiments illustrate the paradox of formal and informal education for rural women
in Mexico. Development of a suitable discourse may open the way for women to create
social change, but without the combination of personal experience, and exposure to such
ideas, social transformation can take a very long time, if at all. Furthermore, when market
forces quickly reach previously isolated areas, change can become all too encompassing and
women are forced to seek immediate strategies that are both responsive and fulfilling.
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Although exposed to greater forces of change, this is exactly what the urban women of
Irapuato did when cuts in government spending removed the funding that allowed them to
run a community kitchen providing for poor women and their families.
Empresa Social is an urban women's grassroots organization located in Irapuato

formed in 1996. The women of Empresa Social's concerns stem from the growing food
crisis in Mexico (Villagomez, 1999, 213). This group of women responded to food shortages
and cuts to food subsidies by organizing a community kitchen pooling their resources, skills
and time to provide more food and care for themselves and their families. As Villagomez
(1999, 213) imparts, the benefits of the collective cooking strategy include reduced costs, a
better quality of food, and a more balanced diet, all of which pertain to improvements in
women's conditions. Furthermore, it freed up time for the women by reducing the time they
spent cooking from two to four hours a day, to that same amount of time per week.
Empresa Social means social business, which is what the women of this grassroots

group made their communal kitchen into. Villagomez (1999, 215) explains that "Empresas
Sociales are economic units managed by poor people with the goal of maximizing the
capital investment in order to generate some social value. Empresas Sociales are better
understood as forms of social commitment than as legal business entities." The first year
Empresa Social ran the kitchen they received enough government funding to feed up to 80

people in the community; however, government cuts meant they had to find alternative
sources of funding to keep the kitchen operating. The solution the women arrived at was to
produce an extra amount of food while cooking for the community to be sold in order to
raise funds to keep the kitchen running.

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Aside from the initial financial obstacles, some of the women involved in the
organization had to overcome personal obstacles like Teresa who explains the resistance her
husband showed to her involvement in social GRO activities.
At the beginning, I had to get permission from my husband to go to the group
meetings; but now I see that I've had a very rich experience, and my husband,
too has changed his ways. Before when I was just learning .. . he wouldn't let me
go to the collective, he abused me (I never told the other women about this ... I
wanted to keep going even with the suffering) .. .But when my husband began to
see the results of the project, then he changed .. . Now my husband helps
me ... I'm working with a group of young girls. I'm teaching them .. . it's great to
be able to learn and to teach (Villagomez, 1999, 214).
Overcoming the obstacle of subordination and unequal household relations through her
persistence allowed Teresa to transform her household relations along with gaining new
knowledge and confidence. Moreover, Teresa was able to realize the potential for
transformation as she resisted her husband's domination, in tum challenging her subordinate
position within the family institution. But most importantly, Teresa's perseverance provided
her with the opportunity to pass her skills on to other women. Out of this transmission may
come a better future for the girls in Teresa's community. Their experiences make up a
process of empowerment by gaining skills that enable them to participate more actively in
their public sphere (Villagomez, 1999, 212). This type of social transmission is symbolic of
the potential for change, which arises when women organize in grassroots groups.
The presence of other urban grassroots organizations such as Grupo de Informacion
en Reproducion Eleginda (GIRE), which utilizes civil society networks to promote
community development, also offers urban women alternative strategies of meeting their
social and personal needs. GIRE, which formed in response to the decreasing quality of
Mexico's health-care system focuses on activities like generating, systematizing, and
disseminating information on the sexual and reproductive rights of people in Mexico
81

through workshops and forums. By emphasizing the importance of literacy, job training, and
women' s health awareness this urban women' s group helps facilitate social justice and
political power for women by approaching gender specific issues from a perspective that
puts women in the center of discussions involving reproduction and sexuality (Osted, 2000,
2). Besides helping to inform women about sexual health, GIRE also provides
consciousness-raising activities for policy makers, civil servants, politicians and social
organizations, the health sector, the legal profession and young people (Osted, 2000, 2).
Although not equipped with medical supplies or healthcare professionals, organizations like
GIRE provide a very important service to urban women; unfortunately, the medical
resources are both in severe need and severe shortage due to cuts in government spending
and the privatization of medical services.
The activities of urban and rural women's social GROs in their response to the direct
and indirect impacts of structural adjustments and economic restructuring show how the
search for survival strategies arising from gender conditions leads women to organize
around common needs and interests. Furthermore, when women mobilize in order to work
toward common goals the potential of transforming their social positions and conditions
emerges. Challenging unequal relations within the household allows women in grassroots
groups to transcend the boundaries between the public and the private, between inside the
house and outside (Townsend, 1999, 62). For women in the economic, political and social
GROs I have discussed, formulating a collective social conscience tilled and fertilized the
ground, making whole groups of women prepared to cultivate new seeds of gender specific
knowledge and experience.

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Conclusion

This analysis has shown how disadvantaged Mexican women involved with
economic, political and social GRO activities respond to the increased hardships imposed on
them by structural adjustments and economic restructuring. Disadvantaged Mexican
women's mobilization into GROs can be seen as an alternative form of local development
through which the potential for economic, political, and social transformation emerges,
further fostering positive changes in urban and rural poor Mexican women's positions and
conditions. Examples of women's GRO activities in Chapter Three illustrate how both rural
and urban women' s positions and material conditions change due to their involvement in
women's networks and organizations. In many cases the women's persistence creates
change both inside and outside of their homes. Throughout Chapter Three I have noticed a
number of common features emerging from the concentration on the potential for
transformation. I dedicate the remainder of this conclusion to a brief analysis of three
common features I have observed in the GROs just discussed.
First, I have noticed how individual women discover common interests and needs
that create value for collective solidarity. Rural and urban women's subjective contexts of
gender, class and geographical positions influence their reasons for joining grassroots group,
however it is the need to improve material conditions that dictate the collective's raison
d'etre. Moreover, economic reform causing decreases in state provisions like economic
support and adequate public services motivate disadvantaged urban and rural Mexican
women to find alternatives after realizing that any change in their situations has to come
from their own actions. Although external forces leading economic restructuring influence
their choices, it is the internal gender specific factors that determine how women organize

83

themselves in order to create compatible forms of economic, political, and social survival
strategies. Through this process of realization Mexican women open doors to new realms of
possibility.
Secondly, by participating in GROs, Mexican women politically challenge the
economic and socio-political structures that maintain and perpetuate gender subordination,
along with unequal social dimensions that determine gender specific experiences of poverty.
By politicizing circumstances of, for instance, violence in both the public and private

spheres, a growing social awareness may emerge. This awareness can lead to changes in
people's thinking and, from there, to changes in behavior, ultimately leading to the
transformation of cultural beliefs and practices. In the case of domestic violence, women
may learn how their silence perpetuates abuse. However, sharing with others and even
confronting their abusers may instigate the renegotiation of gender relations wherein the
support of other women gives abuse victims the courage and confidence to challenge
unequal circumstances. Furthermore, the influence of the educational activities of women's
political GROs can eventually reach a broad enough audience to create change in the
policies regarding public provisions, political rights and especially domestic violence in
Mexico; a long overdue necessity.
A third common factor I have seen in the examples discussed in Chapter Three is the
dissemination and sharing of skills, resources, knowledge and time that goes on between
women in Mexican GROs. I think the collective identity that may develop between women
is perhaps one of the most imPQrtant aspects of the mobilization of women into groups.
Formation of a collective identity is an important step in the empowerment process. It arises
from sharing common problems, inspiring the women to approach those problems from a

84

different perspective because of the collective nature of the burdens (Johnson, 1992, 167).
This is not to suggest that internal strife does not exist, nor that every GRO is homogeneous.
Indeed, a major obstacle for any self-proclaimed group is the ability to maintain cohesion in
the face of persistent economic, political and social opposition, both directly and indirectly.
However, when groups do cultivate the ability and energy to carry out collective activities,
eventually leading to the attainment of predetermined goals and as a response to their selfdefined needs, a subsequent collective identity emerges. To clarify, I consider the collective
identity as coming from individual changes in consciousness, the subjective, disaggregated,
heterogeneous experiences of individual women. It is the commonality and sharing of those
experiences that leads to a collective identity.
From recognizing these common facets of Mexican women's GROs it becomes
apparent that they hold the potential to create economic, political and social change for not
only those women involved in the organizations but also for their families and communities.
Furthermore, it becomes evident that the process of empowerment is, itself, a process of
development. Many of the examples discussed above give evidence of women becoming
aware of gender subordination and of developing ways to change unequal gender relations
involving both productive and reproductive gender relations. It is this ability to think of
alternatives that opens new conceptual and tangible spaces for disadvantaged urban and
rural Mexican women.

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CONCLUSION
In this project I have shown that over the past twenty years the impacts of structural

adjustment policies and economic restructuring on disadvantaged urban and rural Mexican
women have negatively impacted their material conditions. Disadvantaged rural and urban
Mexican women have experienced the impacts of economic restructuring through reduced
wages, the informalization of labor, political marginalization, and reduced access to
resources such as education, healthcare and food. These negative impacts are, in part, due to
women's subordinate positions within economic, political and social institutions throughout
the country. The implementation of reform policies such as trade liberalization, state
deregulation and privatization, along with cuts in government spending contribute to the
acceleration and modification of pre-existing trends which prevent disadvantaged Mexican
women from fulfilling their potential abilities to access the opportunities and resources
needed to improve their positions and conditions. Furthermore, as shown in Chapter Two,
utilizing the gender and development (GAD) framework throughout this project has allowed
me to reveal how capitalism and patriarchy, systems maintaining and perpetuating class and
gender inequalities, prevail within neo-liberal processes of economic restructuring as seen in
Mexico.
In Chapter Three I examined how women' s grassroots organizations create new

understanding of the gender issues of development concerning disadvantaged women in
Mexico. As Amy Lind (2000, 173) explains of grassroots groups in Ecuador, the very
existence of women's community groups presents a contestation to neo-liberal development.
Lind (2000, 173) relays,
as they construct local political and economic strategies in the midst of
adjustment measures, they are contributing to an ongoing renegotiation of the
86

social contract between states and citizens, to challenging the cultural center of
development, and to inventing new urban [and rural] cultural and political
identities - thus responding proactively, rather than merely reactively, to the
broader process of economic restructuring.
In Mexico, women's survival strategies countering the impacts of economic restructuring

represent poor Mexican women's struggles to fmd space to live as agents in their own right.
As seen in Chapter Three, poor Mexican women from different geographical areas discover
ways to mobilize, responding to fewer jobs, lower wages, less political representation, and
decreasing government services by organizing gender-centered projects. Women's GRO
activities that create economic, political and social rewards represent women's strategic
responses to the decrease of rewarding opportunities within the new free-market system
created by the implementation of neo-liberal development policies. Moreover, women's
grassroots organizations in Mexico are seen to foster empowerment and contain the potential
for transformation, in turn opening spaces wherein women can strive to improve their
positions and conditions with other women who share similar circumstances. Furthermore,
through their greater involvement in the community and through improvements in their
positions and conditions, disadvantaged women challenge unequal power structures.
This project critically challenges the dominant neo-liberal model of development
drawing out its weaknesses and limitations and suggests an alternative path beginning with a
bottom up- approach involving women's grassroots organizations. With alternatives in
mind, the significance of this study lies in the realization that despite the potential of
women's grassroots organizations for providing opportunities to disadvantaged women, it is
readily apparent from examining the gender impacts of economic restructuring along with
women's grassroots responses to those impacts, that women's groups cannot alone reduce
existing dynamics of poverty and suffering which are exacerbated by economic reforms.
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Women's empowerment through grassroots activities can help provide economic, political
and social avenues down which women may find more opportunities and resources,
however, the Mexican state is a major institutional apparatus shaping the fate of Mexicans.
The findings of this research project share some similar features with findings on the
impacts of, and responses to, globalization in other countries. Common trends such as
increases in the number of poor, geographical inequalities, unemployment, migration and
urbanization have been reported for countries which have also adopted SAPs (Feldman,
1992: Kerr, 1994). The neo-liberal reform policies causing these trends include trade
liberalization, deregulation, and decreased government spending. Evidently, there is a
significant amount of overlap in the impacts of the economic, political and social structures
associated with reform policies. For instance in Mexico, the social reforms in the form of
cuts to government spending show that the reduction in education, healthcare, and access to
resources is compounded by economic and political changes leading to reduced wages, the
informalization of female labor, reforms to the agricultural sector and the land distribution
system. As a result women are being pushed back into the private sphere, which is adversely
impacting their social position, in addition to the substandard conditions they must endure
because of reduced accessibility to resources.
Shelley Feldman (1998, 27) reveals how the development of a capitalistic market in
South East Asian countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh was accomplished
by developing export-processing zones comparable to the one that exists on the Mexico/US
border. The neo-liberal trade liberalization strategy promoting the growth of export
processing zones or free trade areas, operates through a common approach wherein women
are viewed as a cheap source of labor. Thus, in Mexico as well as in other developing

88

countries, economic reform relies heavily upon the availability of women's labor.
Furthermore, deregulation by the state in Mexico has led to new forms of regulation by
corporations of women's bodies, as has been reported for Eastern European countries by
Jacqui True (2000, 90). However, the form that it has taken in Mexico such as corporation
housing and monitoring of pregnancy differs from the Eastern European regulation of
women's social and political positions by focusing on the traditional household, the family
and women's primary care-giving roles. In addition, privatization of land, decreased
subsistence production and increased use of casual agriculture labour has occurred in
Mexico, as in many countries throughout Africa, however, the political resistance shown by
both male and female Zapatistas in their fight to retain land is distinctive of Mexico
(Summerfield & Aslanbeigui, 1998, 337).
Through my research on Mexican women's responses to changes caused by
restructuring, I discovered that disadvantaged rural and urban Mexican women have
experienced the impacts of economic restructuring through reduced wages, the
informalization of labor, political marginalization, and reduced access to resources such as
education, healthcare and food. Disadvantaged Mexican women have responded to these
impacts by mobilizing into women's grassroots organizations. Women become involved in
grassroots activities such as income generation programs, protests and community service
programs as strategies for survival. In countries with larger rural populations the survival
strategies women develop often remain grounded within the home (Beneria & Feldman,
1992). The proliferation of homework in many developing nations is evidence of this sort of
home-based survival strategy, which allows women to earn an income and take care of the
household. In Chile women's rights as workers coincide with their struggle for social justice

89

as do many of the maquiladora networks in Mexico (Schild, 2000, 26). In areas of the
Philippines, where the cottage industry or home based work is prevalent, women are
responding to economic reforms by attempting to unite as a particular group in order to
promote their rights as workers (Snyder, 1994, 150). Improved regulation of women's rights
in the informal sector is intended to reduce what Veronica Schild (2000) identifies as the
common thread between home based workers around the globe, women as the working poor.
Disadvantaged urban and rural women in Mexico are thus contending with similar impacts
of economic reforms as are women in other parts of the world, however, different trends in
migration and in the development of survival strategies make their responses and struggles
unique. In this sense, Mexican women's GROs have responded to the impacts of economic
restructuring differently than those in countries such as the Philippines and Chile by not only
by developing their labor and community networks but also by utilizing various techniques
that bridge the gaps between economics, politics and society.
In the past, corruption and nepotism within the Mexican government in relation to

international affairs and national economic management have shown the state's limited
concern for the well-being of all Mexican citizens. The implementation and subsequent
impacts of economic reform policies like trade liberalization, state deregulation and
privatization, and cuts in government spending arising from structural adjustment policies
and economic reforms such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have
not been as thoroughly analyzed as need be in order to prevent more negative impacts on
disadvantaged urban and rural Mexican women (particularly within the context of the
emerging global system). Hence, it is essential that gender issues be recognized by national
institutions and represented by marginalized groups now, in the earlier stages of global

90

restructuring, and before the full implementation of the economic plan for the Free Trade
Area of the Americas (FTAA) proposed to be complete by 2005.
Under the FTAA, NAFTAs policies of neo-liberal economic restructuring would
spread to an additional 31 Latin American and Caribbean nations, no doubt accompanied by
numerous structural adjustment policies. The effects on government regulation would be
distressing to say the least, as governments would be "paying to regulate," (Climan, 2002,
12). As Katz (2002, 29) imparts
[t]he U.S. plan to create the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) as a
hemisphere-wide successor to, and expansion of the North America Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) is a strategic project aimed at consolidating U.S.
supremacy in the region by means of increased U.S. exports, more investment
controls and sophisticated financial-flow monitoring methods. The 500 U.S.
companies with the closest links to Latin America are pushing for fast
implementation of the FTAA. They want the new pact to be modeled on
NAFTA and on World Trade Organization (WTO) provisions on commerce, and
to incorporate the types of financial discipline imposed by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF).
The consequences of fast-tracking trade liberalization in Mexico over the past decade are
only beginning to be revealed and understood. The sentiments of early dissidents of NAFT A
were not acknowledged until their predictions began to materialize in the form of economic,
political and social suffering. If this reoccurs, the proliferation of social fragmentation and
unrest already present in many areas of Central and South America, will lead to more
suffering and, as seen in this project, women are liable to shoulder the additional burdens
caused by gender biased development policies that are not simply unrepresentative of poor
women's needs and interests but that actually augment their burdens.
I would like to outline some suggestions for more equitable approaches to
development and specifically to policy planning and implementation for the Mexican state
and for civil society. I consider it critical that national state led economic, political and
91

social protocol include gender considerations as central elements of policy formation in
order for any kind of macro restructuring to be equitable and sustainable in its impacts on
Mexican society. This can only be accomplished by mainstreaming both disadvantaged
Mexican women's self-defined issues into the major economic, political, and social
institutions so they may be central actors in changing national and global economies. To a
certain extent, the Mexican government under Zedillo and now Fox, have made attempts to
follow through on declarations of commitment to gender equity as seen with the
implementation of the National Programs for Women 1995-2000 (PRONAM) and the
subsequent creation of the National Commission of Women (CONMUJER) which is raising
public awareness of domestic violence and beginning to advocate abortion rights (Katz &
Correia, 2001, 293). However, these programs are necessary in conjunction with inclusive
gender impact assessments and analyses of the changes in social support systems such as the
National Program of Solidarity (PRONASOL) and the Program for Health Education and
Nutrition (PROGRESA).
I suggest that assessments of poor Mexican women's responses to the impacts of
changing economic, social and political environments through participatory development
could provide a doorway through which further in-depth analysis of globalization, economic
restructuring and development can be approached. As outlined in Chapter Two, neo-liberal
development policies involving trade liberalization impact women's labor force participation
and their abilities to access resources necessary for maintaining adequate material conditions
within the economic system. The absence of gender considerations in the implementation of
trade liberalization policies implicates disadvantaged women's economic positions.
Therefore, gender needs assessments should be conducted prior to the planning and

92

implementation of trade liberalization policies. Likewise, state deregulation and
privatization policies should not be undertaken before a gender impact assessment is
conducted in order to anticipate negative impacts and to adjust those areas of the policies
which are seen as being potentially hazardous to disadvantaged women's conditions and
positions. As such disadvantaged women should be closely involved in the entire process.
This requires a firm commitment to increasing the number of women in the political system.
Policies involving cuts to government spending are perhaps the most important when
considering implications of state led reforms on disadvantaged women. Health and
education are essential aspects of women's well-being and are certainly important when
considering where to begin poverty reduction efforts. As seen in the third section of Chapter
Two, women and girls in Mexico suffer from inequalities in education. Proposed policies
calling for reduced government spending should thus acknowledge the high costs of
privatized education that further remove opportunities from women and girls in order to
adjust such negative impacts. The benefits of educating females far outweigh the
implications of not. There is great need for more funding for education, especially adult
education, which as previously mentioned, is not offered by employers. Having said that, the
material being taught in schools must also take gender differences into consideration.
In terms of health care, reform policies must recognize women's unique needs and

unequal access to social resources. The taboo of abortion in Mexico is a deplorable injustice
to Mexican women and the limited social support available shows the shameful lack of
concern for women's reproductive rights. Thus, finding viable alternatives to the loss of
government spending on health care should be a priority for government and development

93

agencies who should work together to alleviate the increased suffering caused by the rolling
back of the state.
These policy suggestions for the state grate against the grain of the neo-liberal
methods of economic restructuring and as the Fox administration works to compromise
between the past and the present, Mexico continues to implement biased reform policies.
This is indicative of the amount of work it will take to accomplish the sort of change I am
advocating. However, the presence and growth of civil society working to find alternatives
to neo-liberal development is also indicative of peoples' willingness to put forth the effort
and optimism that may make equitable development possible. Disappointingly, the Mexican
state led by Fox is not likely to pursue more equitable development as is evidenced by their
commitment to implementing the FTAA. This is to say that at the present moment, the
governments' role in promoting equality between men and women in the economic, political
and social arenas of Mexican life are far from becoming a reality.
My policy suggestions to civil society groups such as the Structural Adjustment
Participatory Review International Network (SAPRIN) and Social Watch, include working
closely with grassroots organizations and keeping close contact with other international civil
society organizations, as their networks of information put pressure on the state to be
accountable for its actions. Also, women's grassroots organizations should play a key role in
the development of economic, political and social policy. In the long-run women will
determine whether reform policies succeed or fail. It would be preferable if grassroots
organizations could be involved in the planning rather than the clean up of restructuring.
Recognition of the value and potential of women's grassroots organizations in the
development process is essential. Through their ability to empower women, GRO activities

94

possess the potential to transform economic, political and social forces guiding unequal
development. Thus, GROs provide disadvantaged women with the opportunity to mobilize
for empowerment, in turn leading to the creation of gender sensitive development strategies
including equitable policies.
In light of the broad array of complex variables involved with economic
restructuring, globalization and development, I would like to identify a number of areas in
need of further exploration. First and foremost, I place myself as a researcher in the specific
context of being a white-western-educated-feminist with biases and a particular perspective,
which all contribute to how I have interpreted the secondary resources used to complete this
study. I have utilized the GAD analytical framework to guide this analysis, which has
allowed me to examine a broad scope. In some ways this has been difficult because in
looking at the macro as well as the micro aspects of economic restructuring and the
gendered impacts there are gaps that emerge and that cannot be assessed through secondary
research. Moreover, because I have a limited knowledge of the Spanish language and due to
my use of secondary research methodology, I was limited to sources written in English and
was not able to tap into the vast amount of information on Mexico written in Spanish.
Therefore, conducting field research in order to collect empirical data must be included as an
essential element of any future research. Fieldwork that incorporates participatory research
methodology could reveal how disadvantaged rural and urban Mexican women challenge
the unequal structures of power. Moreover, I have examined geographic location as a
significant factor contributing to the impacts of economic restructuring instead of identifying
specific impacts on different racial groups. In future research, race could be taken as the
foremost line of inquiry in relation to geographical location rather than the reverse.

95

Additional areas of inquiry could include the significance of age, physical ability, ethnicity,
language, and not least of all the role of religion in the lives of disadvantaged Mexican
women. The examination of these variables could further explain the different impacts of
SAPs on various demographic groups. Also, a class comparison of men and women could
reveal a deeper level of gender discrepancies. Thus, future work on the impacts of economic
reforms on disadvantaged women would benefit from additional qualitative information
retrieved from fieldwork and participatory action research in addition to learning the
Spanish language for increased understanding and communication.
In the process of researching and writing this project I have learned the necessity of

reconceptualizing development to be more aware of the root causes of women's
subordination resulting from the interaction of patriarchy and capitalism. Also, I have come
to appreciate the potential of women as individuals and as members of grassroots
organizations to become empowered through grassroots activities such as income generation
programs, protests and community service programs. The ultimate lesson learned in the
process of writing this project, however, is the need to analytically consider micro and
macro factors of gender, class and geography along with the, often unquestioned,
organization of economic, political and social systems. The unequal organization of
economic, political and social institutions must be continually challenged in order to reveal
new ways of creating a more level playing field.
Women's grassroots organizations play an extremely important role in this time of
global transformation. However, women's GRO activities cannot replace state institutions.
Therefore, a symbiotic partnership between the state, women's grassroots groups and other
groups representing civil society, must become an important goal of development in order to

96

prevent further marginalization and perpetuation of patriarchy. Furthermore, women's
GROs can work with larger international non-governmental organizations in order to
develop networks that can provide strong links leading to greater opportunities for
economic, political and social improvement. In tum, non-governmental organizations
committed to poverty reduction and equitable development may better assist in development
activities through their relationship with grassroots groups.

97

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