[Changes in the status of women]. / Cambios en la situacion de la mujer.

PIP: Fundamental changes have occurred during the 20th century in the status of women in Latin America, as elsewhere. The first stage entailed the struggle for basic citizens' rights (voting and holding office), concluded between 1929 (in Ecuador) and 1962 (in Paraguay). The second stage began around 1945 with broadening of property, employment, and other civil rights of women. This phase has not yet ended in several Latin American countries where husbands still have authority over their wives in different spheres of life. The third stage, still underway, began in the 1970s with the appearance of feminism and of women's organizations in different sectors of society. The changes did not appear simultaneously or coherently in all countries. They were stimulated in some cases by outside forces, including, at different times, the Inter-American Commission of Women, various UN organizations, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank. Since midcentury, there has been an increase in the average life expectancy of Latin American women from 53.5 to 71.4 years, increases in female rates of school enrollment to near parity at all levels to those of males, a decline in the total fertility rate from 5.9 to 3.1, and significant increases in female economic activity. Beginning in the 1970s, other limitations on the freedom and equality of women became part of the public debate in various countries. Questions such as the failure of husbands to perform an equitable share of domestic work, gender wage differentials, sexual harassment, and domestic violence began to prompt changes in laws and norms, creation of service agencies and government offices for women, design of specific public policies, and other measures. It must be noted that Latin American societies are structured on three great sources of social inequality: gender, class, and ethnicity. Laws and norms are applied to very different realities and produce different effects. Middle- and upper-class women have enjoyed the greatest apparent improvements in status. Changes have been slow in filtering to the more impoverished societal sectors.^ieng

[Changes in the status of women]. / Cambios en la condicion de las mujeres.

PIP: Information from a diversity of sources indicates that the roles and status of women underwent changes of unsuspected magnitude in the 1980s. Trends observed in different social realms at different time periods appear to have converged, leading to redefinition of the activities and life courses of large sectors of the Mexican female population. The life expectancy of Mexican women is 71 years, the average age at marriage is 21 years, and the average family size is 3.8 children. Women migrate to other areas of Mexico and other countries. Their illiteracy rate declined by 9.5% between 1970 and 1980 to 20.1% over age 15, or 7.8% for women aged 15-19. In 1986, an estimated 15.3% of women aged 15-49 were illiterate, 26.9% had incomplete primary, 19.7% had complete primary, and 38.1% had secondary or higher. Educational statistics demonstrate strong and increasing female enrollments. The trend to greater female employment continued in the 1980s, with married women and mothers moving into the work force in great numbers. Increased job opportunities and declining family incomes were among factors encouraging female employment. Women continued to perform most of the domestic work, however. Reduced social spending and subsidies for basic goods led to a return to households of responsibilities and expenditures previously covered by the government. Women appear to have massively penetrated traditional male spheres of society, raising questions about the reactions of males and the completion of functions previously assumed by women.^ieng