The memory of the movement immigrants and in the homeless movement. And women will play an active role in the Three waves of Mexican feminism European Marches against Unemployment, Job-precariousness and Exclusion, which will begin in April and cumulate in an Amsterdam rally during the Inter-Governmental Conference which will decide the future direction of EU integration.
Many of these women; feminists, trade unionists, researchers, community activists and political militants, will come to the Hearings on Women's Rights on 14-15 March.
The Hearings will embrace all areas of struggle, with the ambition of rebuilding broad, unitary initiatives to respond to the fascist threat and the Catholic fundamentalists, and to "put a spanner in the works" of all governmental and employer proposals which would reduce women's rights and recompense in the workplace.
The initiative for this event was born after the unprecedented success of the 25 November 1996 demonstration for women's rights (see "Women's movement re-surges", Maya Surduts, International Viewpoint #272, January 1996, p.5). According to Marie-Annick Vigan of Cahiers du féminisme*, "in à context of social regression, growing fundamentalisms and the renaissance of a reactionary moral order, the demonstration last November created a new dynamic in favour of women's rights. More than 100 organisations and associations signed an appeal to "take stock, together, of the situation women find themselves in today, and define, together, the objectives of our struggle and action."
"This is a tremendous challenge. We already know that women, as a whole, are underprivileged compared to men; that women are underpaid, overexploited, and underrepresented in the institutions, the political parties, the trade unions and so on. But things become much more interesting when you try to see what all this means in practice in a region, a town, a particular party... and when you then put all this information together, and compare all the solutions which are being proposed, at a local
The first wave of feminism in Mexico accompanied the revolution of 1910 to 1920. During the Mexican Revolution, the socialist governors of the Yucatan, Salvador Alvarado and Felipe Carrillo Puerto, organized feminist conventions and pushed women's rights. Working with feminists, Salvador Alvarado convened the first Feminist Congress in Mexico in 1916. Alvarado and Carrillo Puerto organized Feminist Leagues and reproduced Margaret Sanger's birth control pamphlets. They supported divorce, contraception, abortion, women's right to vote and hold public office. The first wave ended with the suppression of the revolution's left wing in the mid-1920s.
The second wave of feminism came in the 1930s. Radical women, nationalists and communists, organized peasants and workers. But the communists opposed the organization of an independent women's movement to fight for women's suffrage, so in 1934 Maria del Refugio Garcia established the Sole Front for Women's Rights to fight for women's suffrage. When Lazaro Cardenas was elected president, he encouraged the suffrage movement and even pushed a women's suffrage amendment to the Constitution which passed the Senate and was ratified by
However, when conservative general Juan Andreu Almazan announced he was running in 1940 for president against the ruling party, and created a "Feminine Idealist Party" to support his campaign, Cardenas and the leaders of the ruling party decided to kill the women's vote. Not until nearly 20 years later, in 1958, did women win the vote.
The third wave of Mexican feminism came in the late 1960s and early 70s. The Tatelolco massacre of 1968, President Luis Echeverria's call for a democratic opening, and the example of the U.S. feminist movement led Mexican women to organize. Mexican feminist organizations grew among university students and protessional women and middle class women. In the 1970s the Mexican feminist movement took up the issues of the right to contraception and abortion, and the controversial question of lesbianism.
Separate from the three waves of Mexican feminism have been the Mexican women's organizations, which did not identify with and often rejected the feminist movement. Women in Mexico have often organized in the neighborhoods to get basic services such as running water, sewer systems, and electricity. Many ot these women were the activists of the Urban Popular Movement of the 1970s and 1980s. The First National Meeting of Women of the Urban Popular Movement was held in 1983.
In 1982 Rosario Ibarra de Piedra became the first woman candidate for president in Mexico as the socialist and feminist candidate of the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT, Mexican section of the Fourth International). Today, Rosario is a congresswoman for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and closely associated with Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Since January 1, 1994 and the EZLN-led uprising in Chiapas, many women throughout Mexico have organized in support of the EZLN or of women or communities in Chiapas * Source: MLNA
March 1997 #286 33
* reviews What Women Want By Patricia Ireland Reviewed by Shirley Pashlok What Women Want, an autobiography by Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), is an easily readable introduction to feminist ideas. As Ireland relates her experiences growing up in the 1950s, the reader can't help but see how women are socialized to accept sexual discrimination as the norm. Without lecturing or going into debates on feminist theory, Ireland makes her points through a series of personal vignettes. She vividly describes the dead-end low-paying jobs she and other women of her generation were forced into. Lest anyone think this is simply an historic account, later chapters give evidence of women's continuing job segregation and wage discrimination.
It was as a stewardess (as flight attendants were then called) at Pan Am that Ireland first came into contact with NOW. Her husband, a student at the time, needed extensive dental surgery. Ireland was shocked when the insurance company denied him coverage as her spouse. At first, she thought this was some type of clerical error. However, her supervisor explained to her that it was no mistake: Pan Am's "family" insurance benefits only applied to male employees and their spouses. Ireland explained that although she hadn't been politically active, the civil rights and antiar movements had influenced her, giving her the confidence to act. So, she called Dade County (Florida) NOW. A NOW volunteer explained that what Pan Am was doing wasn't just morally wrong; it was also illegal. She explained what steps Ireland needed to take to solve her problem. Growing awareness