Women

Congress’s failure to implement the women’s suffrage amendment at the end of the Cardenas administration caused women’s organizations to shift their attention to other goals, such as providing for child care, the establishment of cooperatives for indigenous women, guaranteeing maternity leave, and passing legislation to protect domestic servants. The United Front for Women’s Rights (FUPDM) changed its name to the Women’s Committee for the Defense of the Nation and turned its attention to organizing women to support the war effort.190

Having lost their organizational momentum during the war, women were unable to regain it after the war. This was in part due to Mexico being essentially a one-party state in which the PRI absorbed many politically active women and channeled them into positions in the official bureaucracy.191

During his 1946 presidential campaign, Miguel Aleman promised to grant the vote to women in municipal elections. To avoid a conservative backlash, he offset this tepid step forward by including in his platform a statement that declared that women were “by tradition immemorial incomparable mothers, abnegated and industrious wives, loyal sisters, and chaste daughters.” Aleman justified granting women the right to vote in municipal elections by declaring, “Women understand municipal problems exceptionally well, since these problems concern schools, public health, the prices of basic commodities such as water and milk, and other matters relating to the well-being of the home and family.”192

Aleman made good on his campaign promise. In 1947, Article 115 the constitution was amended to read: “In municipal elections, women shall have the same rights to participate as men, including the right to cast a vote and to be a candidate.”

Even though women’s organizations lost momentum during the 1940s, the suffrage issue was not forgotten. In 1952, suffragist Amalia Caballero de Castillo Ledon interviewed PRI presidential candidate Adolfo Ruiz Cortines. He promised her that if she could gather the signatures of half a million women (out of a population of 30 million), he would grant women the right to vote. She launched a successful petition drive, and Ruiz Cortines pushed though an amendment to Article 34 of the constitution. That article was revised to state that both men and women (los varonesy las mujeres) had the right to vote in national elections.

Ruiz Cortines’s decision to grant women the vote was not triggered by a massive groundswell in favor of women’s suffrage. Rather, changes in Mexican society paved the way for the enfranchisement of women. By the 1950s, the PRI was so well entrenched that it no longer needed to worry about the supposed pro-Catholic tendency of women voters. Instead, the ruling party regarded women as an enormous voting block it could co-opt. As Mexico urbanized and industrialized, values changed. Women were attending the university in greater numbers, providing ready examples of individuals qualified to assume public office. Finally, there was a generational shift among the political elite. From 1920 through the Avila Camacho administration (1940—1946), the political elite was based on revolutionary ties—the ultimate good-old-boy network, no girls allowed. Only when that generation retired did the path open for women’s suffrage.193

In the 1958 presidential election, 7,845,400 votes were cast. This was more than twice the total cast in 1952, reflecting not only population increase but also the enfranchisement of women. Contrary to the predictions made by opponents of women suffrage, there was not a marked increase in the vote for the PAN. By and large, women voted for the PRI, just as men did. In response to the enfranchisement of women, official party organizations began to devote increased attention to women’s interests.194

During the 1950s and 1960s, women gradually made their presence felt at the top levels of government. In 1961, Maria Cristina Salmoran de Tamayo became the first woman to sit on the

Figure 21.3 Woman voting for the first time, 1958 Source: Reproduced courtesy of Archivo General de la Nacion

Supreme Court. During the 1967—1970 term, there were twelve women serving in the Chamber of Deputies. Often women who served in top posts were kin or lovers of powerful men. These women reflected the racial and social hierarchy of Mexico in that they appeared very European, came from families with high socioeconomic status, and were not overly concerned with the plight of Mexican women of lower status. In Congress, their voting patterns were similar to those of males.195

Even though women failed to have a major impact on the political system in the 1950s and 1960s, they did reshape the Mexican labor force. As Mexico urbanized and industrialized, the percentage of women in the labor force increased from 7.4 in 1940 to 19.0 in 1970. In 1970, within the highly urbanized Federal District, women comprised 29.7 percent of the workforce, while in more traditional Zacatecas they comprised only 9.1 percent. Women’s participation in the labor force also varied by age. Only 17 percent of those aged forty to forty-four were in the labor force, while 25 percent of those aged twenty to twenty-four were. Many of those joining the labor force had migrated from rural areas. Women migrants, drawn by jobs in education, commerce, and domestic service, outnumbered men, as was the case throughout Latin America.196

Generally women found employment in jobs that were an extension of their traditional roles in the home. They worked as domestics (cleaning and cooking) and in food service (cooking), the garment industry (sewing), hospitals (caring for the sick), and schools (caring for children). In 1970,

69.6 percent of the 2.5 million women in the formal labor force worked in the service sector. Of these, 488,344 were domestics.197