Joe Foweraker
University of Essex
These theses are drawn from the theoretical and comparative literature on women's mobilization in Latin America. Their objective is to stimulate discussion of the role of women in political life in Mexico.
1. Women's mobilization is new in form and degree
In Mexico, mobilization is evident in the growth of urban social movements and of union movements in unions with a female majority. This increasing mobilization occurred during a period of very rapid political and electoral reforms, and may have hastened these reforms.
2. Women's mobilization is different from feminist movements
Women's mobilization is driven by the struggle for economic survival and family integrity. Feminist movements, on the other hand, are the political struggle for women's liberation from multiple forms of gendered oppression. Nonetheless, the mutual influence of the two experiences may be important, especially to the leadership of grass-roots movements.
3. Women's mobilization is rooted in traditional female roles
Women's traditional roles as wives and mothers stimulate and legitimate their social protests and political participation. These roles determine their preoccupation with economic survival and community defense, and shape their demands. The struggle for social survival defines the political agenda of women's organizations and creates their mass base. However, it is debatable whether women's mobilization deliberately eschews political goals. The presumption is that this mobilization is not proactive, but reactive to state and market pressures.
4. Feminism is successful in extending women's political agendas
The theorists tell us that feminism is the only modern social movement to make universal moral and legal claims in the Enlightenment tradition. It is therefore the only such movement to be unequivocally `on the offensive.' There is no doubt that this impetus has succeeded in placing new "strategic gender" issues on the political agenda domestic violence, sexual aggression, lack of reproductive control, clandestine abortion, discrimination and harassment in the work place, and economic dependence.
5. Women's mobilization is mainly led by men
Even where women are the majority presence, as in many urban movements and in some unions, the majority of the leadership tends to be male. In political parties, women's issues are still relegated to poor second place, behind class struggle or male-dominated party platforms. Unions have proved even more recalcitrant, with women confined to women's sections, and little headway has been achieved in securing equal rights for women workers.
6. Women's mobilization creates new political identities
Social networks and social movement struggles transform individual identities. Movements are the schools where women learn to know themselves as political actors, not political objects. But new identities also mean a new politics, since it is alleged that women's talk and women's networking are different for the male domain of political parties and unions.
7. Women's mobilization changes the division between public and private
As a corollary to theses nos. 3&6, it is alleged that women's mobilization shifts the boundary lines between the private and public worlds, and between the spheres of reproduction and production. Women's private or domestic concerns may have radical implications once they are extended into the public sphere, and since the division between what is private and what is public is often state chartered and state sanctioned, they may impinge on the political system.
8. Women's mobilization targets the agencies and apparatuses of the state
Women's mobilization seeks the kind of material resources that secure family survival, and the state is often the main guarantor of their provision. Also, women's material struggles will inevitably be bound by legal and institutional constraints. Lastly, the massive presence of the state in Mexican society means that new political identities are "constituted at the political level" in large degree, and therefore in recurrent and intimate interaction with the state.
9. Women's mobilization expands citizenship
Women's mobilization is understood as an integral part of a more general struggle for rights, and women's demands are increasingly stated in terms of rights. In Mexico, women's mobilization plays a key part in the board struggle for civil and political rights, outside and inside the electoral arena.
10. Women's mobilization extends political representation
In Mexico, it might be argued that women's mobilization achieves greater autonomy for women's organizations, and that such autonomy is a condition of effective representation in a corporatist and clientelist system. But it is clear that neither more mobilization nor more participation necessarily leads to more effective representation. The present renewed combination of economic crisis and austerity policies will probably mean that the bulk of women's mobilization will again be oriented to material demands and the defense of basic living conditions on the urban periphery.