Latin American Women

In: Journal of Latin American studies, Volume 12, Issue 1, p. 169-184

Abstract

The initial interest in womens studies arose in the sixties from a desire to rectify the fact that women, whether as actors or subjects, had been ignored in the evolution of knowledge. It soon became clear, however, that this had been more than a fault of omission for, because of lack of information, women had often been misunderstood and misrepresented. Several modernisation studies, for example, have concentrated on interviewing men and yet produced generalisations about levels of modernisation for the population as a whole. Joseph Kahi in TheMeasurement of Modernismmade numerous statements about modernisation in Brazil and Mexico and its relationship to institutions in society, but his 1,300 interviews were all with men.1The few studies which do include women show that they lag behind men in educational achievement and social mobility.2This suggests that had Kahi included women in his samples his results might have been rather different.