Chicana Feminism

Abstract

Chicana feminism is a political consciousness, social movement, and intellectual project that flourished during the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States. As a political consciousness, Chicana feminism emerged when Chicana women began to question their positions in the Chicano movement and the patriarchal underpinnings of Chicano nationalism. For instance, Chicana women played pivotal roles in the student movement, helping to establish and develop Chicano organizations on college campuses, like the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán (MEChA). Movement and organizational leadership, however, was exclusively male and the movement philosophy of Chicanismo was expressed through culturally defined notions of masculinity like carnalismo (brotherhood), promoting the idea that Chicano cultural preservation required women's deference to male leadership and support of the traditional family. Chicana activists, therefore, wanted greater political presence in the broader Chicano movement and to be respected as real political actors. When they challenged the gendered structure of the movement and organizations, however, Chicana women were criticized as “traitors,” and “sell‐outs to white feminism,” largely by Chicano men and other Chicana women, often referred to as “loyalists,” who believed that race and ethnicity should be prioritized over gender in their community's struggle for liberation. These conflicts produced new political consciousnesses and identities, leading many Chicana women to form their own autonomous Chicana feminist movement.