Rural women in Latin America: directions for future research

Abstract

Addresses the limited exploration thus far of how rural women in Latin America themselves define and interpret the world around them and what meaning, if any, they attach to key terms employed by researchers concerned with development issues. A review of the literature reveals that despite the great strides made in the last two decades in understanding Latin American women as rural producers, research to date has dealt with the questions of gender ideology and identity in an extremely limited way. The phrase "division of labor by sex' is analyzed in light of recent anthropological and feminist contributions to other (primarily non-Latin American) areas of the literature. Also argues that life stories, when collected self-critically, can reveal the potential tension between the active negotiation of meaning by analysts and by the rural women they interview. -from Author