"Worthy Wives and Mothers": State-Sponsored Women's Organizing in Postrevolutionary Mexico

Abstract

During the mid-1930s, as the postrevolutionary Mexican government embarked on its modernization project, women mobilized for rights ranging from suffrage to religious freedom. In an effort to control and direct women's organizing energies, the regime established a network of official women's leagues, which policymakers hoped would attract women away from both left- and right-wing movements. Although these leagues sought to circumscribe women's activism, they also created an organizing infrastructure that women instrumentalized. This article examines women's leagues as both an explicitly gendered instance of state formation and a historical case study in women's organizing.