Dissident Women Chapter 5

This chapter titled “Indgenous Women’s Activism in Oaxaca and Chipas” by Lynn M. Stephen explores the complexity for indigenous women’s struggles where they are trying to gain access, power, and leadership roles in their own communities, but they are still faced with their own home life of “traditional” values which says that these women are not entitiled to such rights. These women are moving to change these gender roles by contributing to the Zapatista movement. Stephen argues that in order for these women to obtain some of the power that they are looking for there has to be
“…a combination of women’s local, ethnic-based skills and leadership knowledge and their experience in new forms of local and regional organizational permits them to broaden their participation in local politics and create more egalitarian gender relations of power” (158).
A piece that I thought was very interesting was an original ejido law which was unchanged until 1971 only let women to use their rights if they were “…mothers or widows maintaining their families. Single men over twenty-one or younger who lacked guardians could be given land, but women could not” (159). I felt this was interesting because it’s another way for the government to oppress women’s rights. I could only imagine if this law never existed of how many women would actually have been able to acquire land. I think it should be changed anyway because many women do work as if they were single mothers although they are married because they do so much for the family inside and outside of the home. But change is coming for these women because “traditional” roles are being challenged thanks to women organizing and trying to work along side the men by producing free-trade coffee. It’s a long road but these women are trying their hardest to find a niche in these roles and change them from the inside out.