Feminismo en Mexico: Ayer y hoy (review)

Feminismo en México: Ayer y hoy. By Eli Bartra, Anna M. Fernández Poncela, and Ana Lau. Colección Molinos de Viento, no. 13. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2000. Plates. Illustrations. Tables. Bibliography. 94 pp. Paper.

This collection of three short, incisively written essays by feminist activists is a critical assessment of the successes and failures of Mexican feminism over the past 30 years. The first two articles analyze the various phases that feminist theory and the women's movement have passed through, while the third evaluates Mexican society's views on feminism based on data collected from the national census and student interviews. Although the three authors have different ideological perspectives, they agree that feminism has profoundly influenced and continues to influence Mexican society today.

Ana Lau's essay, "El nuevo movimiento feminista mexicano a fines del milenio," outlines the impact of feminist theory and practice on the fields of knowledge, political discourse, and social practices. The social movement's objective, she argues, has been to transform and revolutionize gender relations, achieve a condition of equality between the genders, and democratize society. She divides the development of Mexican feminism into three stages. The period of organization, establishment, and struggle lasted from 1970 to 1982. In 1970 urban women of the middle-class university milieu, who had been marginalized within political and countercultural movements, began to question women's lack of opportunity in the decision-making process at all levels of Mexican society. Other feminist liberation groups, influenced by the disturbances of the 1960s, organized into consciousness-raising groups around the theme, "lo personal es político." Feminists concentrated on the female condition: maternity, the double workday, and sexuality. The 1980s is considered a period of stagnation and takeoff. In the midst of economic crisis, two trends emerged. Certain individual feminists associated themselves with neoliberal financial agencies or public institutions to press for gender equality. Other more militant members became involved with the issues of health, cooperativism, communication, and training in the popular barrios. During the last decade, with the deterioration of the socioecononomic condition of both women and Native Americans as a consequence of neoliberalism, underlying feminist principles have been more and more embraced in an informal way at all levels of society, but particularly by the state.

Eli Bartra's essay, "Tres décadas de neofeminismo en México," first makes a distinction between the old equal rights feminism and the new wave feminism of the 1970s, where liberation of the entire body becomes paramount. This new movement focused on the decriminalization of abortion, vindication of female sexuality, and the end of violent sexual abuse. The second important characteristic of the 1970s was the emphasis that the liberation movement placed on autonomy from political parties and unions. Both Lau and Bartra see the eighties as a period of conflict between popular feminism and individual feminism. As feminism became more institutionalized in 1990s, it came to be represented by "professional feminists" and divergent voices spread throughout the media, government, culture, and academia. Contemporary feminism is dominated by the theme of diversity, but Bartra is critical of postmodern, postcolonial, and postfeminist currents that have de-emphasized gender oppression.

The final essay by Anna M. Fernández Poncela, "Feminismo y opinión pública hoy: Apuntes para una reflexión," is based upon a statistical analysis of several questions taken from a 1996 national survey on participation and political culture and two 1995-56 university surveys. Nearly 44 percent of the general public and 39 percent of the students had a favorable impression of feminism. Those who held a poor impression were most frequently older males with lower levels of education and PRI ties. Although the largest number of respondents in both surveys said that they were not feminists, approximately one-third avowed that they were. Perhaps the most interesting section of this article discusses students' perceptions of feminism. In many cases, they perceive it...