Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico is an empirically rich history of women's political organizing during a critical stage of regime consolidation. Rebutting the image of Mexican women as conservative and antirevolutionary, Jocelyn Olcott shows women activists challenging prevailing beliefs about the masculine foundations of citizenship. Piecing together material from national and regional archives, popular journalism, and oral histories, Olcott examines how women inhabited the conventionally manly role of citizen by weaving together its quotidian and formal traditions, drawing strategies from local political struggles and competing gender ideologies.

Olcott demonstrates an extraordinary grasp of the complexity of postrevolutionary Mexican politics, exploring the goals and outcomes of women's organizing in Mexico City and the port city of Acapulco as well as in three rural locations: the southeastern state of Yucatan, the central state of Michoacan, and the northern region of the Comarca Lagunera. Combining the strengths of national and regional approaches, this comparative perspective sets in relief the specificities of citizenship as a lived experience.

A history of women's political organizing and state formation in Mexico before and during the populist regime of Cardenas, challenging assumptions that all Mexican women were conservative and anti-revolutionary

About the Author

Jocelyn Olcott is the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of History at Duke University.

Reviews
"Jocelyn Olcott's book combines impressive original research, lucid exposition, and keen insight. Three valuable case studies offer broad comparative analysis informed by telling details, examples, and anecdotes. Above all, the book successfully blends innovative women's history with big, old, unresolved questions about popular mobilization, state-building, and the rise and fall of Cardenismo."-Alan Knight, author of The Mexican Revolution
"This book is extraordinarily important as a work of feminist political history. It's a breathtakingly ambitious tour of Mexican women's movements and feminist politics that will stand as a model for future histories of Latin American feminism and state formation."-Heidi Tinsman, author of Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1973
"This book is a valuable addition to the growing literature gendering Mexico's revolution. Its depth and theoretical grounding raise important comparisons for scholars of history and politics throughout the Americas." -- Ann S. Blum * Gender & History *



Book Information
ISBN 9780822336655
Author Jocelyn H. Olcott
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 490g