For the uninitiated the subject of moral reform appears to be a topic best suited for examining the traditional view of the Latin American woman: that of a female preoccupied with sin and salvation and with no interest in the world outside the home or increased rights for her sex. Closer investigation reveals, however, that moral reform movements often have indicated women's active presence and concern about the direction of a nation's social policies and customs. (Addams, 1912: 160-195; Davis, 1973; Smith-Rosenberg, 1971: 381-385, 562-564). Involvement in moral reform activities often but not always has meant that a woman considered herself a feminist and believed that the goals of these two movements were inextricably linked together. In order to explore these two hypotheses, this essay will focus on Paulina Luisi (1875-1950), an Uruguayan doctor whose lifelong dedication to moral reform and feminism earned her an international reputation as a fighter for one sexual moral standard and women's rights (Mapons, 1950; Scarone, 1937: 284-289). Examining her extensive writings and many projects provides an excellent insight into two movements which claimed the loyalty of numerous women activists, both bourgeois and socialist, in Latin America, Europe, and the United States (Addams, 1912; Chataway, 1962; Lloyd, 1971; Luisi, 1948). Given the Latin American context and the time period, Luisi can be seen as a major figure in the international feminist and moral reform movements.

A somewhat neglected though thoroughly promising area for the analysis of changing women's roles lies in the matter of health and health care systems within any society. This is nowhere more the case than in the instance of contemporary Cuban health care and the part that women in that society play in the health care systems as deflners of health care problems, recipients of care, and as those who deliver care to others. Both women's roles and health care in contemporary Cuba have dramatically altered over the past decade, thus yielding doubly rich insights, which reciprocally illuminate both issues.

There has been much discussion of the role of the church in social change in Latin America (Considine, 1964; D'Antonio and Pike, 1964; Haddox, 1965; Houtart and Pin, 1965; Jimenez, 1967; Lalive, 1968; Silvert, 1967; Willems, 1967). Recent arguments contrast a view that the church is integral and innovative in the development process (Vallier, 1970) with the view that the church is reactive and survival oriented, thus incapable of playing a leadership role in the process of social change (Mutchler, 1971). Both of these arguments specify the church as an instrumental force, interacting with other bureaucracies both internal and external to the country, in the process of development. The incursion of non-Catholic churches into Latin America is seen as important in influencing the established church as an actor in the change process, as well as serving as an initiator—or retarder—of change.

It has been noted (Tanner, 1970: 23) that

And so it is in analyzing the women's movement in Latin America that one cannot tolerate any “disabilities” of women on the basis of sex, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the culture which creates them.

As de observes, “Latin countries… keep women in subjection less by the rigor of the laws than by the severity of custom.” Upon examination, one finds that Latin American culture is by nature deeply rooted in sexism and male chauvinism and is maintained by institutions such as the church and the patriarchal governments.

Colombian women have only recently entered the political arena on a formal basis—they first exercised the right to vote in 1957. Their activity as voters, party workers, and public officials is a by-product of the National Front governing agreement to alternate Conservative and Liberal presidents and to maintain party parity in public office. Since the April 1974 election initiated the official demise of the National Front, we propose to examine the role of women in the political life of this period.

Colombia is well suited for such a study. Appealing to women to exercise their voting rights, the principal political parties established internal organizations to mobilize their electoral support. Public discussion of the inferior status of women in Colombian society encouraged two of the three presidential candidates to orient themselves to women voters in the 1974 campaign. One candidate was a woman, while another promised reform of divorce and discriminatory laws.

In this concluding paragraph of a paper on Brazilian women, Blachman (1972) charts two major areas of significance to those interested in the study of women—the ideological dimension and the institutional reality. At the same time we are reminded that the link between the two, a dialectic of structures and values, may still be the most confounding and frustrating obstacle to an analysis of women in society and, for our interests here, women in politics. (For an excellent overview of the material on women in Latin America, see Pescatello, 1972.)

Brazilian women have never been foreign to work. Prior to the beginning of the industrialization process, women were very active. The activities performed by women vary so much between different societies that it is not possible to assign or categorize any one activity as exclusively feminine. One of the principal characteristics of the development process of a society is the progressive isolation of those activities which are necessary for the production of goods and services from other activities. This is a consequence of the introduction of technological changes which make inevitable a separation in space and time of activities related to special production. The activity identified as work starts to develop more and more at specific places, in specific time intervals, and under specific contractual conditions. As the growing technical specialization made it necessary to make a separation between house and work, women were assigned house activities. In this sense it can be said that the introduction of the machine came to reinforce the concept that women's principal function was the administration of the house and the education of the children.

The recent literature on women in Latin America as yet forms a minute part of a necessary revision aimed at achieving a balanced and multidimensional view of the Ibero-American reality, past and present. Men, as the traditional transmitters of culture in society, have conveyed what they knew, understood, and judged to be important. Since women's activities differed considerably from those of men, they were regarded as insignificant and unworthy of mention. Scholars have further perpetuated the patriarchal and sexist assumptions of their own societies or those they have studied. As a fesult, more than four and a half centuries of history and all of the important ongoing processes of modernization, urbanization, professionalization, and even propagation seem to have occurred without the participation or even the presence of women. It was simply assumed that what was said of men held equally true for women. Hence the conception of reality perpetrated by social scientists and historians was that perceived by a dominant male group, who represented a partial construct as if it were a more complex whole.