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House, Street, Collective: Revolutionary Geographies and Gender Transformation in Nicaragua, 1979–99

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Rosario Montoya
Rosario Montoya*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado, Boulder
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Abstract

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This article examines gender struggles surrounding two women's collectives in a Sandinista village as a way to illuminate microprocesses of gender transformation during the Sandinista period and its aftermath. It argues for an analytical approach sensitive to the specificity of gender relations in particular contexts and the ways these were affected by state policies. It demonstrates that men's opposition to women's participation was enabled by ambiguities in Sandinista gender ideology that allowed men to interpret the meanings of revolutionary masculinity in their own terms. By examining these ambiguities, the article shows that, while the revolution failed to dismantle structures of gender inequality, as critics have pointed out, its incorporation of women as class and national subjects into the nation-building project could destabilize local patriarchies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , 2003 , pp. 61 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

This article was written with support from a Charlotte Newcombe dissertation-writing fellowship, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation; a resident fellowship from the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Notre Dame University; and a Carley J. Hunt post-doctoral fellowship, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. The following institutions supported the fieldwork on which this paper is based: Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan. I also wish to thank LARR's anonymous reviewers and colleagues who commented on the manuscript at its various stages: Lessie Jo Frazier, Bridget Hayden, Janise Hurtig, Karen Kampwirth, Barry Lyons, Ellen Moodie, Roger Rouse, Michael Schroeder and Bilinda Straight. All proper names of respondents have been changed.

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