Latin American Feminist Movements

Paper Summary:

This paper briefly discusses the rise and growth of feminist movements in Latin America. It shows how these movements were linked to other socialist movements of the 1960's and how they gain strength. It explains how the feminist movements argued for rights for women just as other socialist movements were demanding equal and civil rights for many population groups.

From the Paper:

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The women's movement of Latin America is a comparatively young one. It's seeds were planted in the 1950s and 1960s when socialist revolutionary fervor swept through much of the world. In the face of poverty, inequality and oppression, people's movements rose up in every corner of the Latin world. And in much the same fashion as Civil Rights, Women's Rights and anti-Vietnam sentiments in the United States coalesced into a unified counter-culture movement by the 1960s, broad social revolution proved to be opportune for politically inclined women in Latin America. In these early days of women's liberation, female guerilla combatants and revolutionaries had to contend with all the same concerns as their male counterparts (i.e. dictatorial central governments, unequal distribution of wealth, federal corruption, etc.). But this was compounded by the threat of sexually motivated violence, social subjugation and the general gamut of gender oriented prejudices. (Winn, 397). As such, women's struggles to gain freedom from oppression extended beyond simple political discontent."

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