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Traditional gender roles are fading in Latin American life, but they remain powerful. The most basic outlines of their history can be briefly recounted. Pre-Encounter indigenous traditions varied widely, of course, but it may be said that many of them subordinated women to men less than did the arriving Iberians of the 1500s. The Iberian patterns of gender were strongly patriarchal and placed an extremely high value on female (less on male) chastity. Over all, gender roles changed slowly in the 1800s, then began a more rapid transformation with steady urbanization in the 1900s. The rate of change has also been variable. Highly educated professionals in the region's cosmopolitan cities, for example, are sometimes just as far from traditional gender roles as are their European or U.S. counterparts. On the other hand, the attitude of male dominance, called machismo, remains potent, especially in the countryside and among the less educated. Women's movements in twentieth-century Latin America were inspired by U.S. and European examples but did not imitate them exactly.
Research topics for students interested in gender:
Research topics for students...
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