The women of Zacatepec: a reality hidden by migration

Abstract

The impulses of globalization impact some economic improvements, the cultural pattern, as well as negatively on global marginalizations, for example, the reduction of employment opportunities in many corners of the Mexican countryside, throwing out as a necessity of the system - and of gender - the male (and now also female) migration of our compatriots to different points of the country and the United States. In contrast to what is generally believed regarding the conditions of those who remain, there are domestic groups that instead of adapting to the sporadic income of the migrants prefer to adapt their organization to the measure of their possibilities, in other words: depending on the resources available, the people who remain at the head of the domestic group weave different survival strategies, depending on the area, levels of education, even the groups to which they belong. The strategies are reflected in the gender stratification that has been developed in their spaces. A concrete example of this social transformation are the women of Santa María Zacatepec, Mpio. of Juan C. Bonilla, Puebla, who take charge of their survival and that of the entire domestic group when the men emigrate from this population. This is explained when the main support of the domestic unit and the entire population comes from the formal insertion of women in the labor market (generally in the elaboration of partitions), in addition, when entering this new reality without the figure of the male provider/repressor, they enter into a process of awareness that puts them in front of a new feminine figure, that is, in a rethinking of their identity, which, in the words of the most educated, marks the beginnings of a process of empowerment.