Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T21:36:11.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rural Women in Latin America: Directions for Future Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Lynne Phillips
Lynne Phillips*
Affiliation:
University of Windsor, Ontario
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The issue to be addressed in this article is the limited exploration thus far of how rural women in Latin America themselves define and interpret the world around them and what meaning, if any, they attach to key terms employed by researchers concerned with development issues. A review of the literature reveals that despite the great strides made in the last two decades in understanding Latin American women as rural producers, research to date has dealt with the questions of gender ideology and identity in an extremely limited way. Two potential directions for future research will be suggested here: a critical reassessment of some of the analytical categories that have been taken as givens, and a focus on the social-political construction of gender identity and experience from the point of view of rural women. To explore the possibilities of these suggestions, the phrase “division of labor by sex” will be analyzed in light of recent anthropological and feminist contributions to other (primarily non-Latin American) areas of the literature. A second point that will be discussed is how life stories, when collected self-critically, can reveal the potential tension between the active negotiation of meaning by analysts and by the rural women they interview. I will argue that these new directions in research are essential if scholars are to appreciate varying interpretations of development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , 1990 , pp. 89 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Juan Maiguashca, whose questions several years ago about some of these themes ultimately influenced the writing of this article. Thanks also to Linda Hubbel for her comments and to Deirdre Miental for encouraging me to go further in thinking about “new directions.” Last but not least, I would like to thank Carmen Diana Deere for her inspiration and support.

References

Alcoff, Linda 1988 “Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory.” Signs 13, no. 3: 405–36.Google Scholar
Anand, Anita 1985 Rethinking Women and Development: The Case for Feminism. Ottawa: CUSO.Google Scholar
Andreas, Carol 1985 When Women Rebel. Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill.Google Scholar
Archetti, Eduardo, and Stolen, Kristi Anne 1978 “Economía doméstica, estrategias herencia y acumulación de capital: la situación de la mujer en el norte de Santa Fe, Argentina.” América Indígena 38, no. 2: 383–403.Google Scholar
Arizpe, Lourdes, and Aranda, Josefina 1986 “Women Workers in the Strawberry Agribusiness in Mexico.” In LEACOCK AND SAFA 1986, 174–93.Google Scholar
Arriagada, Irma, and Noordam, Johanna 1982 “Las mujeres rurales latinoamericanas y la división del trabajo.” In LEON 1982, 39–53.Google Scholar
Barrios De Chungara, Domitila 1978 Let Me Speak! New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Beezley, William, and Ewell, Judith, EDS. 1987 The Human Tradition in Latin America: The Twentieth Century. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources.Google Scholar
Bell, Diane 1983 Daughters of the Dreaming. North Sydney: George Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Beneria, Lourdes, and Roldan, Marta 1987 The Crossroads of Gender and Class. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Beneria, Lourdes, and Sen, Gita 1982 “Acumulación, reproducción y el papel de la mujer en el desarrollo económico: una revisión a Boserup.” In LEON 1982, 23–38.Google Scholar
Berlin, Margalit 1986 “Migrant Female Labor in the Venezuelan Garment Industry.” In NASH AND SAFA 1986, 260–77.Google Scholar
Bertaux, D., ED. 1981 Biography and Society: The Life History Approach in the Social Sciences. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Boserup, Esther 1970 Woman's Role in Economic Development. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Bourguignon, Erika, ed. 1980 A World of Women: Anthropological Studies of Women in Societies of the World. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Bourque, Susan, and Warren, Kay 1981 Women of the Andes. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Bunster, Ximena, and Chaney, Elsa 1985 Sellers and Servants: Working Women in Lima. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Burgos-Debray, Elisabeth, ed. 1984 I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Buvinic, Mayra 1980 “Una estrategia para la mujer en el Ecuador.” Mimeo, Agency for International Development, Quito.Google Scholar
Camargo, A., Da Rocha Lima, V., and Hippolito, L. 1985 “The Life History Approach in Latin America.” Life Stories, no. 1: 41–53.Google Scholar
Campo, Esteban 1980 “La mujer ecuatoriana: aspectos de su incorporación al proceso de desarrollo.” CONADE mimeo, Quito.Google Scholar
Chaney, Elsa 1987 “Women's Components in Integrated Rural Development Projects.” In DEERE AND LEON 1987.Google Scholar
Chevalier, Jacques 1982 Civilization and the Stolen Gift: Capital, Kin, and Cult in Eastern Peru. Toronto: University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Collins, Jane 1986 “The Household and Relations of Production in Southern Peru.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, no. 28: 651–71.Google Scholar
Deere, Carmen Diana 1976 “Rural Women's Subsistence in the Capitalist Periphery.” Review of Radical Political Economics 8, no. 1: 9–17.Google Scholar
Deere, Carmen Diana 1977 “Changing Social Relations of Production and Peruvian Women's Work.” Latin American Perspectives 4, nos. 1–2:48–64.Google Scholar
Deere, Carmen Diana, and Leon, Magdalena 1980 “Planteamientos teóricos y metodológicos para el estudio de la mujer rural y el proceso de desarrollo del capitalismo.” In LEON 1980, 1–28.Google Scholar
Deere, Carmen Diana, and Leon, Magdalena 1982 “Producción campesina, proletarización y la división sexual del trabajo en la zona andina.” In LEON 1982, 115–32.Google Scholar
Deere, Carmen Diana, and Leon, Magdalena, EDS. 1987 Rural Women and State Policy: Feminist Perspectives on Latin American Agricultural Development. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.Google Scholar
Draper, Elaine 1985 “Women's Work and Development in Latin America.” Studies in Comparative International Development 20, no. 1: 3–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernandez-Kelly, Maria Patricia 1983 For We Are Sold, I and My People: Women and Industry in Mexico's Frontier. Albany: State University of New York.Google Scholar
Flax, Jane 1987 “Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory.” Signs 12, no. 4: 621–43.Google Scholar
Flora, Cornelia Butler 1987 “Income Generation Projects for Rural Women.” In DEERE AND LEON 1987, 212–38.Google Scholar
Graciarena, Jorge 1975 “Notas sobre el problema de la desigualidad sexual en sociedades de clase.” In CEPAL, Mujeres en América Latina: apuntes para una discusión. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura.Google Scholar
Godelier, Maurice 1986 The Mental and the Material: Thought, Economy, and Society. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Gudeman, Stephen 1986 Economics as Culture: Models and Metaphors of Livelihood. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Hale, Sylvia 1988 “Male Culture and Purdah for Women: The Social Construction of What Women Think Women Think.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 25, no. 2: 276–98.Google Scholar
Harris, Olivia 1978 “Complementarity and Conflict: An Andean View of Women and Men.” In Sex and Age as Principles of Social Differentiation, edited by LaFontaine, J. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Olivia 1980 “The Power of Signs: Gender, Culture, and the Wild in the Bolivian Andes.” In Nature, Culture, and Gender, edited by MacCormack, Carol and Strathern, Marilyn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jacquette, Jane 1983 “The Impact of Modernization on Women in Agriculture.” Paper presented at the conference “Mulher, Agricultura e Modernização no Meio Rural Latinoamericano,” São Paulo.Google Scholar
Keesing, Roger 1985 “Kwaio Women Speak: The Micropolitics of Autobiography in a Solomon Island Society.” American Anthropologist 87, no. 1: 27–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingston, Maxine Hong 1977 The Woman Warrior. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Leacock, Eleanor, and Safa, Helen, EDS. 1986 Women's Work. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey.Google Scholar
Leon, Magdalena, ed. 1980 Mujer y capitalismo agrario. Bogotá: Asociación Colombiana para el Estudio de la Población.Google Scholar
Leon, Magdalena, ed. 1982 Trabajadoras del agro. Bogotá: ACEP.Google Scholar
Lewis, Oscar, Lewis, Ruth, and Rigdon, Susan 1977 Four Women Living the Revolution: An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba. Urbana: University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Long, Norman, ed. 1984 Family and Work in Rural Society. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Luzuriaga, Carlos 1980 Situación de la mujer en el Ecuador. Quito: Gráficas San Pablo.Google Scholar
Mallon, Florencia 1986 “Gender and Class in the Transition to Capitalism? Household and Mode of Production in Central Peru.” Latin American Perspectives 13, no. 1: 147–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mcdowell, Nancy 1984 “Complementarity: The Relationship between Female and Male in the East Sepik Village of Bun, Papua New Guinea.” In O'BRIEN AND TIFFANY 1984.Google Scholar
Mcfarland, Joan 1988 “The Construction of Women and Development Theory.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 25, no. 2: 299–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mies, Maria 1986 Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. London: Zed.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sydney 1960 Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Nash, June 1979 We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us. New York: Columbia University.Google Scholar
Nash, June 1986 “A Decade of Research on Women in Latin America.” In NASH AND SAFA 1986, 3–21.Google Scholar
Nash, June, and Safa, Helen, EDS. 1986 Women and Change in Latin America. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey.Google Scholar
Navarro, Marysa 1979 “Research on Latin American Women.” Signs 5, no. 1.Google Scholar
O'BRIEN, DENISE 1984 “Women Never Hunt: The Portrayal of Women in Melanesian Ethnography.” In O'BRIEN AND TIFFANY 1984.Google Scholar
O'BRIEN, DENISE, and Tiffany, Sharon 1984 Rethinking Women's Roles: Perspectives from the Pacific. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patai, Daphne 1988 Brazilian Women Speak. New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, Lynne 1987 “From Precarista to Cooperativista: Tomasa Muñoz de León.” In BEEZLEY AND EWELL 1987, 181–94.Google Scholar
Phillips, Lynne 1989a “Gender Dynamics and Rural Household Strategies.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26, no. 2: 294–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Lynne 1989b “The Construction of Gender Identity in Coastal Ecuador: Implications for Women and Development.” Paper presented to the Department of Sociology, York University, 14 March.Google Scholar
Placencia, Maria Mercedes 1984 “Integración de la mujer a los procesos de desarrollo.” In Seminario sobre la participación de la mujer en la vida nacional. Quito: Productora de Publicaciones.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise 1986 “Fieldwork in Common Places.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, edited by Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Prieto, Mercedes 1985 “Notas sobre el movimiento de mujeres en el Ecuador.” Paper presented at the conference sponsored by CLACSO/CIUDAD, “Movimientos sociales frente a la crisis,” Quito.Google Scholar
Rabine, Leslie Wahl 1988 “A Feminist Politics of Non-Identity.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 1: 11–31.Google Scholar
Randall, Margaret 1978 Doris Tijerino: Inside the Nicaraguan Revolution. Vancouver, B.C.: New Star.Google Scholar
Ruiz, Vicki, and Tiano, Susan, EDS. 1987 Women on the U.S.-Mexico Border: Responses to Change. Boston: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Safa, Helen 1986 “Runaway Shops and Female Employment: The Search for Cheap Labor.” In LEACOCK AND SAFA 1986, 58–71.Google Scholar
Saffioti, Heleieth 1986 “Technological Change in Brazil: Its Effect on Men and Women in Two Firms.” In NASH AND SAFA 1986, 109–35.Google Scholar
Schmink, Marianne 1986 “Women and Urban Industrial Development in Brazil.” In NASH AND SAFA 1986, 136–64.Google Scholar
Scott, Joan 1988 “Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: Or, The Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 1: 33–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sexton, James 1981 Son of Tecun Uman: A Maya Indian Tells His Life Story. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
SISTREN 1987 Lionheart Gal: Life Stories of Jamaican Women. Toronto: Sister Vision.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakraworty 1988 In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stern, Steve 1985 “Latin America's Colonial History: Invitation to an Agenda.” Latin American Perspectives 12, no. 1: 3–16.Google Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn 1984 “Domesticity and the Denigration of Women.” In O'BRIEN AND TIFFANY 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn 1987a “An Awkward Relationship: The Case of Feminism and Anthropology.” Signs 12, no. 2: 276–92.Google Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn 1987b “Producing Difference: Connections and Disconnections in Two New Guinea Highland Kinship Systems.” In Gender and Kinship, edited by Collier, J. and Yanagisako, S. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn, ed. 1987 Dealing with Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael 1980 The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael 1987 Shamanism, Colonialism, and The Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Tiano, Susan 1986 “Women and Industrial Development.” LAR 21, no. 3: 157–70.Google Scholar
Tiffany, Sharon 1984 “Introduction: Feminist Perceptions in Anthropology.” In O'BRIEN AND TIFFANY 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallman, Sandra, ed. 1979 Social Anthropology of Work. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Weiner, Annette 1976 Women of Value, Men of Renown. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Whitten, Norman 1985 Sicuanga Runa: The Other Side of Development in Amazonian Ecuador. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Winn, Peter 1979 “Oral History and the Factory Study: New Approaches to Labor History.” LAR 14, no. 2: 130–40.Google Scholar
Young, Kate 1978 “Modes of Appropriation and the Sexual Division of Labour: A Case Study from Oaxaca, Mexico.” In Feminism and Materialism, edited by Kuhn, A. and Wolpe, A. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Young, Michael 1983 “‘Our Name Is Women; We Are Bought with Limesticks and Limepots’: An Analysis of an Autobiographical Narrative of a Kalauna Woman.” Man 18, no. 3: 478–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar