Gender Roles and Social Change: A Mexican Case Study

Abstract

way. They may also refuse to participate in development programs if they feel the programs will undermine their relationships with their children. For example, reviewing Cornell University's development efforts in Vicos, Peru, Babb (1980:21, 30) found that many women refused to send their children to school because they saw education destroying traditional family unity. Bourque and Warren's (1981a, 1981b) work on development planning in Peru adds support to Babb's assertion, for they show that the rural women with whom they worked resisted changes that they believed threatened the women's access to vital resources. It therefore seems apparent that women are inherently neither more nor less conservative than men but instead will respond to social change initiatives based in part on how they perceive these initiatives will affect their instrumental ties to their children, and their children's ties to them. In concluding I must stress that while women may be more receptive than men to change programs that deal explicitly with children's needs, it is not correct to assume that the direction development policy should take lies in the continued segregation within development agencies of women's interests and concerns as mothers. As Papanek's (1977, 1981) writings have compellingly shown, the present emphasis in development planning on isolated programs and projects for women impedes their integration into broader development processes by sustaining the institutional and conceptual barriers that exist. While women's and men's differential relationship to societal structures and power bases does require that specific means be established to deal with their particular situations, women's projects alone cannot overcome the underlying obstacles. Gender-based economic and social asymmetry characterizes life throughout rural Mesoamerica, and women's and men's political interests often diverge as a result. Men typically seek to maintain economic and social dominance in part by monopolizing the political system and by designating themselves as guardians of the traditional community and its collective interests. Yet their hegemonic goals may force men to subordinate their family's interests to those of the community as those interests are defined by those in control. Women often have less interest than men in seeing the traditional community endure, for they are secondary to them both economically and socially. Also exeluded from formal political roles, they must further their own goals informally This content downloaded from 157.55.39.159 on Sun, 18 Sep 2016 06:28:49 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Gender Roles and Social Change 103 by manipulating interpersonal ties. Within such constraints women place a priority on building strong relationships with their children, which they hope will ultimately be reciprocal. They do so not only for affective reasons but also in an effort to insure their own future economic well being. Under these circumstances conflicts between family and community interests will be resolved by women in favor of their children when they have opportunities to act on their own behalf. Development planners and others concerned with social change processes should recognize that when women are denied access to their society's valued resources, their ties to their children will serve vital instrumental roles.

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