The Organization of Labor Resources in Juárez Families: A Focus on Working Women's Households During Economic Restructuring

Abstract

In 1995, Mexico again slid into economic and social crisis without full recovery from the crisis of 1982. When the Mexican peso plunged in value right before Christmas 1994, many segments of the society that were affected had not regained the purchasing power of 1980. The broad outline of the Mexican government's program for responding to the most recent crisis is parallel to the prescriptions offered in the 1980s; indeed, the response represents prevailing mainstream neo‐liberal economic thinking — stabilization, structural adjustment, privatization, and so on. However, lacking a well developed social welfare system, the burdens of adaptation to adverse economic conditions fall primarily on women in households in the struggle to preserve individual well‐being. This paper, then, joins a growing body of work attempting to analyze the connection between micro‐level household conditions, including gender relations, and gendered macro‐level processes, such as ongoing economic liberalization in Mexico.