Origins and Consolidation of Research on Women in Mexico (1970-1990)

Abstract

Introduction. This article analyzes the origins of research on women in Mexico based on popular publications and the role played by organized militant feminists, as well as its consolidation thanks to the writings of academic women in scientific journals. Objective: To analyze the origins of research on women in Mexico in the seventies, as well as its consolidation process in the eighties, as a specific field of knowledge production in the social sciences.  Methogology. A qualitative analysis is made of popular publications in the seventies and academic journals available on the web in the eighties; it identifies when women begin to write about the subject, first through categories such as family, marriage, and soon with the clear enunciation of this newly discovered research subject, woman, women, the core of this work. Results and contributions. It is identified that the women’s movement is crucial in such origins, which is observed in popular publications (magazines, bulletins and newspapers); in turn, the consolidation occurs in the academy through the promotion of institutional processes, in particular the publications of women in scientific journals that account for the diversity of possible studies on this historically invisible subject: women, and its potentialities as a field knowledge production specific. In the 1990s, this research gained strength from a gender perspective and, today, it is being revitalized again as feminist research precisely in the context of a new boom in the movements of young women in Latina America.