Changing economic roles of women in two rural Mexican communities
Young, K.
Sociologia Ruralis 18(2/3): 197-216
1978
ISSN/ISBN: 0038-0199 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9523.1978.tb00249.xDocument Number: 296092
In this paper the effects of the incorporation of two small Mexican communities into the national economy are analyzed with particular emphasis being given to women's position. The two communities were almost identical in political and social structure and in economic activities in the 19th century; in both women were weavers providing cloth both for domestic needs and for the market. With the collapse of cotton cloth production and the introduction of coffee cultivation into only one of the two villages, their history diverges. The changes are outlined as are the differences. By the 1970s, although roles for women have diversified to a greater degree in one community than the other (the principles underlying the difference being increasing economic stratification) the effect on certain categories of women in both communities is similar. In one case the poorer women of the community increasingly have to maintain their families through wage labouring because their husbands' wages are too low to permit survival; in the other young girls are sent out of the community to the urban areas to work as domestic servants for very low wages, with no legal rights to social benefits. In addition to the benefits the export sector gains from the use of women's labour; certain domestic capitalists also benefit by being able to pay low wages to men in agricultural, construction and other part-time service activities, because they and their families are maintained to some degree by the subsistence sector, largely dependent on women's unremunerated labour.