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.

Strong Women Stories Ch. 7 & 8

In chapter seven titled “She no Speaks and Other Colonial Constructs of ‘The Traditional Woman’” by Dawn Martin-Hill speaks of the challenges native and indigenous women face such as physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual abuses women face in their communities and how traditional values and beliefs push them to assume traditional roles and remain silent to these abuses. There was a story the author recalled where a woman’s daughter was raped and the woman wanted to go the authorities so the man could be punished. However, she was “approached by the local Peacekeepers and told not to go to the police” (107). These women who are in situations like this are faced with a sort of catch-22 or a double-edged sword. These women automatically want to go to the authorities and have the person punished and this shows were western thought/protocol has been embedded and influences their culture. The Peacekeepers want to teacher the perpetrator rather than punish and that doesn’t seem to be enough. For the women who know that it isn’t enough they are forced to keep silent (She No Speaks) or be seen in their communities as “Villianous Women” who are there to meddle, manipulate others, and are immoral beings. It becomes a hard for these women and now I see why so many of those traditional roles of native/indigenous women are seen even in Hollywood to be docile and silent. My question is can we recover and re-define these roles? Can tradition be slightly modified and women find their own rights within respects to their communities? Just a few thoughts.

Chapter 8 was titled “Approaching the Fourth Mountain: Native Women and The Ageing Process” by Bonita Lawrence captures the lives of native women and the changes in which they endure from going through the ageing process. I think for many of these women it is hard to negotiate what they feel. These women may feel like they are in their 30’s on the inside but are in fact older. Lawrence says that “we enter our forties are carrying massive burdens. Responsibilities for children, families and communities…” (123).
Possibly the most interesting section in this chapter to me was the chapter about older women and their sexuality. These women are finding as they get older they have less of a desire for sex and they say “ I still have a mouth down there, you know, and it wants to be fed….but you can’t live on sausage all your life” (124). Lawrence says that for women their denial of men sexually is a type of power because these women do not seek to be whole or completed through men sexually. They find completeness in themselves whilst the men go and find younger women to complete themselves sexually. I think many women feel like that and the feeling is beyond communities and ethnic groups.