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Zheng Yi Sao: Piracy and Performance

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From her probable origins on a floating brothel in Canton, Zheng Yi Sao became one of the most formidable figures in East Asian piracy, commanding around 70,000 pirates at the peak of her power.[1] Due to a number of factors, including a general scholarly neglect of East Asian piracy in China and the emphasis placed on her husbands, Zheng Yi and Chang Pao,[2] Zheng Yi Sao has only recently become a topic of significant interest. Though women’s participation in piracy was by no means rare in her time, Zheng Yi Sao is an especially fascinating figure because she was able to weave through social conventions and amass a remarkable level of influence not just relative to other women but relative to other pirates in a society that at least nominally emphasized Confucian views of female domesticity.[3] This article traces how Zheng Yi Sao adapted contemporary roles available to women as a strategy for advancement and argues that her ability to do so enabled her to shift the balance of power for herself throughout her life.

Piracy is inherently performative, as projecting either an extremely violent image or markers of gentility and statehood allowed pirates to retain power through reputation. Recent developments in gender studies and anthropology also recognize performativity as intrinsic to gender, acknowledging that participation in certain gendered roles, institutions, and norms constitute a “performance” of one’s gender and the expectations associated with it.[4] Zheng Yi Sao’s performance of gender is interesting as it intersects with what initially appears to be a conflicting performance of piracy. As a woman in Confucian society, she gained power partly from marriage and widowhood, while simultaneously leading an organization known for employing terror tactics and extreme brutality. This is not to say that Zheng Yi Sao’s participation in gendered forms was always strategic but it was undeniably a strong influence. She was a masterful leader who wound her way in and out of social convention, selectively choosing when to obey gendered expectations and when to ignore them. Thus, she offers a unique glimpse into how her gender performance intersects with the performative nature of piracy and how that ultimately played a role in her success.

On The Margins

Personal details about Zheng Yi Sao are scarce. She was born in Canton around 1775 and was likely trafficked into sex work.[5] Scholar Nathan Kwan has argued that South China in particular lent itself to female involvement in piracy because it was a place where many marginalized groups resided outside mainstream Han culture.[6] This gave women the opportunity to break out of conventional norms and pushed people of all genders to turn to piracy under economic and political strain. Following the Opium War and the incursion of foreign powers into the region, economic deprivation and political upheaval deeply impacted the South China coast and pressured coastal communities. Women often worked on ships or in jobs related to maritime life, or were sex trafficked and worked on floating brothels called “flower boats.” [7] Given the context in which Zheng Yi Sao lived and worked and the significant presence of minority groups in southern coastal communities, perhaps the best way to understand this figure is as a person on the margins.

Saucer with an image of a Chinese junk near a fort anoniem, c. 1775 - c. 1799.
Saucer with an image of a Chinese junk near a fort anoniem, c. 1775 – c. 1799. Source: Rijksmuseum.

These origins provide a point of departure for understanding how Zheng Yi Sao entered into the world of piracy and highlight how her gender may have played a key role in facilitating that entry. It was Zheng Yi Sao’s connection to maritime life as a sex worker that shaped and gendered her interaction with piracy.[8] Crucially, unlike some of the other moments in her career where Zheng Yi Sao participated in gendered arrangements to gain power, this was likely not a choice, given the widespread prevalence of sex trafficking in the region. Simply because sex work was important to her entrance to piracy does not mean that the work was inherently empowering. Zheng Yi Sao met Zheng Yi through this work. Though embellished European accounts offer speculative and hypersexualized depictions of their meeting that provide little factual value, it is clear that Zheng Yi Sao’s role as a sex worker brought her into frequent contact with pirates, ultimately resulting in her marriage to Zheng Yi in 1801.[9]

Marriage and Widowhood

Though Zheng Yi Sao may not have chosen to be a sex worker, her transition from this role to a wife exemplifies how active participation in marriage, a gendered institution, provided her an escape from sex work and a foundation from which to build influence in the maritime world. Zheng Yi held significant power among pirates operating in Tây Sơn Vietnam. From 1792 to 1802, the Tây Sơn rulers made the Vietnamese Coast a hotspot for Chinese piracy. Because of political tensions in Vietnam, groups of pirates were typically able to secure sponsorship as privateers and their activities flourished. However, piracy in the region collapsed alongside Tây Sơn rule in 1802, at which point pirate activities shifted to the Chinese coast.[10] Zheng Yi Sao and her husband led the new, smaller pirate gangs, still reeling from the collapse of pirate activities, forming seven fleets commanded by leaders loyal to the family, thus establishing their Guangdong Confederation as the dominant Chinese pirate group.[11]

Dish with a standing woman
Dish with a standing woman. Source: Rijksmuseum

At this point, we can begin to understand how the merging of piratical leadership with the gendered “wife” role—regarded as essentially subservient in Confucian China—became an advantage for Zheng Yi Sao. Charlie Harris argues, for example, that due to limited paths for women’s upward mobility, Zheng Yi Sao’s marriage to Zheng Yi was likely a deliberate exercise of agency, not merely an “extension of her status as a second-class citizen.” [12] He emphasizes that although Zheng Yi Sao participated in a patriarchal marriage, she was never Zheng Yi’s “accessory [but] rather… his business partner.” [13] Once married, Zheng Yi Sao used her position as Zheng Yi’s wife to actively participate in efforts to gain power and influence over the maritime world. Dian Murray, the foremost scholar of Zheng Yi Sao, describes her as a true partner to her husband in the consolidation process:

Cheng I [another name for Zheng Yi], aided by his wife, met the crisis [in Vietnam] by leading the pirates to re-establish their power across the border in China…While [Zheng Yi] was the unifier and patriarch, his wife was consolidator and organizer.[14]

By 1804, the Guangdong Confederation numbered 400 ships that were home to 70,000 pirates.[15] In a sense, Zheng Yi Sao’s ability to access power through working with her husband on the consolidation of gangs was not unheard of: elite Chinese women did, on multiple occasions throughout Chinese history, gain influence through their marriages or their sons. These still remained “extraordinary cases where ambitious and socially well-connected women were able, as a direct result of their marriages, to manoeuver their way to power within the male-dominated official bureaucracy.” [16] Yet Zheng Yi Sao’s was far from elite, and non-elite women who succeeded in gaining a degree of power usually only exercised that influence “within their homes.” [17] She therefore wielded the power obtained from her marriage with unconventional strength and independence as a woman from a marginal background, turning her marriage into a political opportunity.

Part of Map of Asia
The World of Zheng Yi Sao. Part of a map of Asia, Gilliam van der Gouwen. Source: Rijksmuseum

Even after her first husband’s death in 1807, Zheng Yi Sao continued to push the conventional pathways to power for Chinese women, leveraging gendered positions as a foundation for dominance. Widowhood offered Zheng Yi Sao a window of opportunity to seize control of the organization she and her husband had built.[18] The crucial component of Zheng Yi Sao’s takeover of the Guangdong Confederation lay in her relational power. Upon her husband’s death, Zheng Yi Sao began to “create and intensify the personal relationships that would legitimize her in the eyes of her followers” and “carefully [balance] the factions around her, building on the loyalties owed to her husband and making herself indispensable to each.” [19] The explicit use of her relationship to Zheng Yi paired with her own strategic abilities yet again demonstrates how Zheng Yi Sao integrated gender into her strategy for ascent, using marital status and diplomacy in tandem.

Zheng Yi Sao’s second marriage presents another revealing case study of her ability to simultaneously use and break marital norms to solidify her influence. By marrying her adoptive son Chang Pao and strategically installing him as leader of the powerful Red Fleet, she “ultimately secured her position at the top of the pirate hierarchy,”  while departing from marital norms by breaking the taboos around incest and the remarriage of widows.[20] Following her retirement, her relationship to Chang Pao would once again prove a taboo-breaking method of gaining status when she claimed the benefits of his military title, despite laws against remarried widows claiming the titles of their second husbands.[21] This marriage seems to have been an explicitly strategic choice, since Zheng Yi Sao’s decision to initiate a sexual relationship with Chang Pao came after she installed him as the Red Fleet commander.[22] Scholars who have studied this relationship concur that Chang Pao became a conduit through which Zheng Yi Sao could exert influence over the Confederation. Both Laura Duncombe and Charlie Harris, for example, cite the establishment of harsh legal codes on the Confederation’s ships as a crucial element in Zheng Yi Sao’s consolidation of power. These were codes she implemented through Chang Pao, using his leadership position to legitimate them.[23] In fact, Zheng Yi Sao’s leadership was so effective that marriage to Zheng Yi Sao clearly provided her husband with upward mobility, turning the contemporary relationship between marriage and political power on its head.[24]

Power, Codified

Zheng Yi Sao was undoubtedly the driving force behind the Confederation’s success. The establishment of protection rackets, investment in on-land enterprises, an aggressive military structure, and the power to negotiate with Chinese officials all demonstrate the professionalization of the Confederation under her leadership.[25]  She was responsible for the financial affairs of the Confederation and set up the tax offices and protection rackets that allowed it to shift into a state-like entity.[26] This professionalizing process allowed Zheng Yi Sao to transform a confederation based on interpersonal relationships into a structured entity with a bureaucracy that kept her in power. As Dian Murray explains, “Although [Zheng Yi Sao] used her marriage as an access to power, her own abilities maintained it thereafter.” [27] Zheng Yi Sao’s ability to convert power which she gained through interpersonal, gendered relationships into formal control of the Guangdong Confederation is a clear example of how she turned combinations of feminine forms with piratical work into tangible power.

Coastal scene
Coastal scene. Source: Rijksmuseum

Of course, the switch from relational to formal power did not entirely remove the influence of gender on Zheng Yi Sao’s career. Most notably, she continued to use Chang Pao to influence the Confederation. It is difficult to render a complete account of how her gender performance interfaced with the period of her life in which Zheng Yi Sao reached peak power, but two interesting issues emerge that can be explored in relation to gender: the treatment of women in her legal codes and the relationship between her gender and the violence of the organization she led.[28]

The legal codes Zheng Yi Sao implemented for the Confederation are interesting in many ways. Some scholars interpret their emphasis on fair division of plunder and protection for women as evidence of an ideological egalitarianism.[29] Notably, the codes also reveal Zheng Yi Sao’s belief that regulated romantic and sexual relationships were intrinsically linked to the smooth functioning of the Confederation. A rose-colored view might see the rules mandating capital punishment for rape and requiring men to remain faithful to captives as proto-feminism. However, provisions calling for the execution of participants in consensual extramarital sex show that these regulations were primarily aimed at keeping order on the ship by controlling personal relationships, reflecting a belief that unregulated romantic and sexual dynamics threatened stability.[30] As Laura Duncombe writes, Zheng Yi Sao “viewed sex as a distraction that kept men from focusing on their jobs.” [31]

The codes, though structured, reflect the violent nature of the Confederation that extended beyond life on deck. Charlie Harris summarizes the violence that formed the core of Zheng Yi Sao’s piratical reputation:

To proactively cultivate a violent mystique, the pirates would drink an explosive combination of wine and gunpowder before sailing into battle… When the pirates captured naval vessels, they would execute even those who had surrendered – apparently by chopping them into small pieces, which would then be thrown overboard. On occasion, they would preface this by nailing their victims’ feet to the decks of their ship. Unsurprisingly, the pirates’ vicious reputation preceded them across the South China Coast.[32]

These practices were not mere rumor or superstition among a terrified Chinese coastal population. Writings from European mariners and merchants captured by the confederation give us a firsthand account of the group’s highly theatrical violence, including disembowelment and consumption of human hearts.[33] The extreme contrast between what would have been expected of Zheng Yi Sao as a woman versus how she operated as a pirate leader served to make her reputation all the more frightening. Dian Murray notes that Zheng Yi Sao “perhaps playing on male fear of her ‘mysterious potency,’ forced government officials to come to terms with her in effecting a settlement.” [34] If this held true for Zheng Yi Sao’s surrender, it was certainly the case for her preceding career. Under her command, the Guangdong Confederation terrorized the coast, besting Chinese, British, and Portuguese ships and even traveling further into mainland China via rivers.[35] Zheng Yi Sao planned and perhaps fought in attacks, cultivating a vicious image made all the more mystical and terrifying by its incongruence with traditional images of Confucian femininity. Zheng Yi Sao’s performance of piratical violence as a woman and her role as “commander-in-chief of the confederation” who “overpower[ed] the provincial navy and challenge[ed] fortresses on land” was a way to assert both reputational and tangible dominance. Her actions were so formidable that Chinese admirals feared venturing to sea..[36]

Surrender and Retirement

Zheng Yi Sao brought both her violent reputation and a deliberate emphasis on her identity as a woman to surrender negotiations, further merging feminine gender performance with piracy and the accompanying reputation for gratuitous, performative violence. Of all the glimpses into Zheng Yi Sao’s career, her surrender offers perhaps the clearest evidence that she knew how to manipulate situations to her advantage through the conscious performance of femininity. Surrender negotiations with the Chinese government began after factionalism threatened the Confederation’s stability, but quickly reached a stalemate when the government refused to let the Confederation members retain their wealth and ships. Both Chang Pao and Zheng Yi Sao insisted on keeping a smaller fleet of 80 ships with 5,000 crew members, plus 40 ships for salt trading.[37] Zheng Yi Sao broke this deadlock by going to the governor-general in Canton unarmed with a number of wives and children in the confederation on April 8, 1810.[38] Taking a step away from her husband and the male officials who worked under her, she presented a feminine image when reopening negotiations. Duncombe suggests that arriving unarmed was a way of “[letting] her powerful track record speak for her,” [39] while Kwan believes Zheng Yi Sao thought that Chinese officials may “panic” if they saw an armed fleet arrive with her.[40] The use of her femininity is not the only reason for Zheng Yi Sao’s successful surrender; the mere threat of her return to piracy ultimately forced the hand of Chinese officials into giving her what she wanted.[41] Yet her choice to meet the governor with women and children after the failure of Chang Pao’s negotiations in February 1810 is perhaps evidence that she approached surrender as not just a pirate but a woman and a wife, securing a position for her husband in the military while surrendering on terms that were highly favorable to members of the confederation in general.

Just as she had gained power through marriage, so too did Zheng Yi Sao set up a successful life after piracy in part through marriage, negotiating a high-ranking military position for Chang Pao and using her status as an official’s wife to claim its benefits.[42] Following Chang Pao’s death in 1822, Zheng Yi Sao continued to use her status as a widow and mother to seek advancement. In 1840, she used her marriage to Chang Pao to charge an official with embezzlement from her long-deceased husband. Additionally, she used her role as a mother to her and Chang Pao’s son (born 1811) to “raise [him] to be a better official than his father.”[43]

Zheng Yi Sao continued using gender roles as a survival tactic until her death in 1844, at age 69. After Chang Pao’s death, stories suggest she ran either a gambling house or a brothel, a lucrative job for women seeking economic prosperity.[44] Perhaps the most remarkable signal of Zheng Yi Sao’s successful career is that she died of old age and not from the dangers of piracy, an accomplishment that may well have been affected by the tactics she used in surrendering, among which her April 8, 1810 performance of gender, discussed above, stands out.

Any investigation of Zheng Yi Sao raises more questions than answers. Fully understanding how she used gender as a strategy for advancement would require speculation about her inner thoughts. There is far too much we may never know about her, including her real name (Zheng Yi Sao translates to “wife of Zheng Yi”). However, she remains a fascinating figure, not least because she was able to transform her gender into a strategic advantage by merging wifehood with power, femininity with violence, and performance with strategy. 

Zheng Yi Sao was not a feminist figure, nor do I suggest that she was a proponent of women’s empowerment.[45] She was a proponent of her own empowerment, able to turn her identity as a woman to her advantage. Zheng Yi Sao’s path to power was not, at its foundation, an abnormal route for a Chinese woman of the period to take. However, Zheng Yi Sao’s ability to use gender as a springboard and a tool to build and maintain the powerful organization she led, an organization that was truly astounding in scale and effectiveness within the history of East Asian piracy, was exceptional and merits careful attention. Zheng Yi Sao negotiated piratical leadership as a woman and as a person on the margins through a mix of preexisting social channels available to her while pushing and breaking the boundaries of gender, thus creating new points of access to power and solidifying her legacy as a markedly powerful and subversive leader.

Maya Jan Mackey is a senior at the University of Texas at Austin pursuing a BA in Plan II Honors, history, and government. She is currently completing her thesis on the Attica Prison Uprising. While completing her undergraduate degree, she has been involved in research on American social movements, gender and politics, the social impact of conspiracy theories, and the history of race. She looks forward to attending law school in pursuit of studying Constitutional and civil rights law.

Acknowledgements: This article originates in Dr. Adam Clulow’s undergraduate seminar on the history of East Asian piracy

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

[1] One significant exception is the work of the Dian Murray. Murray, Dian. “One Woman’s Rise to Power: Cheng I’s Wife and the Pirates,” Historical Reflections, Vol. 8, No. 3(1981), 148, www.jstor.org/stable/41298765

[2] Duncombe, Laura S. “The Most Successful Pirate of All Time,” in Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled The Seven Seas (Chicago: Chicago Review Press Incorporated, 2017), 180-181.

[3] Murray, Dian. “Cheng I Sao in Fact and Fiction,” in Bold in Her Breeches: Woman Pirates Across the Ages, ed. Jo Stanley (Elmhurst: Pandora Publishing House, 1995), 206.

[4] See, for example, Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).

[5] Murray, “Fact and Fiction,” 209-210.

[6] Kwan, Nathan. “In the Business of Piracy: Entrepreneurial Women Among Chinese Pirates in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” in Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century, eds. Jennifer Aston & Catherine Bishop (Camden: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 199-201. See also MacKay, Joseph, “Pirate Nations in Maritime Societies,” Social Science History, vol. 37, no. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), www.jstor.org/stable/24 573942 for a discussion of the Guangdong Confederation as an escape society that was explicitly anti-state in nature and how this may have arisen from the marginal society Zheng Yi Sao came from.

[7] Kwan, “Business of Piracy,” 199-201.

[8] Kwan, “Business of Piracy,” 197.

[9] Harris, Charlie. “Ching Shih and the Pirates of the South China Coats: Shifting Alliances, Strategy, and Reputational Racketeering at the Start of the 19th Century,” in Global History of Capitalism Project Case Studies, ed. Christopher McKenna (Oxford: Oxford Centre for Global History, 2021), 4.

[10] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 149.  

[11] Murray, “Fact and Fiction,” 210.

[12] Harris, “Ching Shih and the Pirates,” 8.

[13] Harris, “Ching Shih and the Pirates,” 8.

[14]  Murray, “Rise to Power,” 149.

[15] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 147-148.

[16] Kwan, “Business of Piracy,” 199-201.

[17] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 148.

[18] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 150.

[19] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 150.

[20] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 150.

[21] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 159.

[22] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 151.

[23] It is worth noting that there is some debate as to the degree to which Chang Pao himself created these legal codes, yet the admittedly limited scholarship there is on his relationship with Zheng Yi Sao tends to take the position that she exerted a significant amount of influence on him and therefore played a significant role in the formation of these codes. Though sources may attribute these codes to either one of the couple, Zheng Yi Sao’s influence is present. For more on this debate, see Duncombe, “Most Successful Pirate,” 178-179.

[24] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 159.

[25] Harris, “Ching Shih and the Pirates,” 10.

[26] Murray, “Fact and Fiction,” 210-211.

[27] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 160.

[28] A minor speculative point also emerges from the fact that at the time, running brothels was a heavily female profession that allowed women a way to enter the Chinese economy, as Nathan Kwan notes (“Business of Piracy,” 211). There is no evidence that Zheng Yi Sao led a brothel, but the possibility that her background in sex work influenced her financial management skills as well as her attitudes towards the capture, ransoming, and selling of women as part of the operations of the Guangdong Confederation. This point requires more evidence and analysis that will not be undertaken here, and we may never know the answer, but the possibility that Zheng Yi Sao’s sex work contributed more to her piratical career than just the opportunity to meet Zheng Yi is one with fascinating implications for the discussion of gender and piracy at hand.

[29] Both Joseph MacKay and Nathan Kwan seem to support ideological or egalitarian readings of the confederation. See MacKay, “Escape Societies,” 564-566; Kwan, “Business of Piracy,” 201.

[30] Duncombe, “Most Successful Pirate,” 178.

[31] Duncombe, “Most Successful Pirate,” 178.

[32] Harris, “Ching Shih and the Pirates,” 5.

[33] Murray, “Fact and Fiction,” 230.

[34] Murray, “Fact and Fiction,” 207.

[35] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 156-157; Harris, “Ching Shih and the Pirates,” 10.

[36] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 154-155.

[37] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 158.

[38] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 157-158.

[39] Duncombe, “Most Successful Pirate,” 179.

[40] Kwan, “Business of Piracy,” 196.

[41] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 158.

[42] Since she remarried to Chang Pao after the death of her first husband, Zheng Yi Sao should not have been able to access these benefits. We do not know the details of how she prevailed, but she was seemingly successful in her petition to the government to be able to use the title and accompanying privileges. Murray, “Rise to Power,” 159.

[43] Murray, “Rise to Power,” 159.

[44] Duncombe, “Most Successful Pirate,” 180; Kwan, “Business of Piracy,” 211.

[45] Duncombe, “Most Successful Pirate,” 178; Murray, “Fact and Fiction,” 230-231.

NEP Author Spotlight – Camila Ordorica

The success of Not Even Past is made possible by a remarkable group of faculty and graduate student writers. Not Even Past Author Spotlights are designed to celebrate our most prolific authors by bringing together all of their published content across the site together on a single page. The focus is especially on work published by UT graduate students. In this article, we highlight the many contributions made to the magazine made by Camila Ordorica, our incoming Associate Editor and Communications Director for academic year 2024-2025.

Camila Ordorica is a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American History at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studies the history of Mexico’s General Archive during the long nineteenth century (1790–1910). Her research bridges archival science with cultural, social, and material history, exploring how archives are written into history and their role within it. Camila’s passion for archival studies is rooted in her training as an archivist. She has previously worked at the Universidad Iberoamericana’s Acervos Históricos and the archives of Sine-Comunarr. Additionally, she has collaborated with UNAM ENES-Morelia, ‘17, Institute of Critical Studies’, and the International Federation of Public History on archival studies, practice, and digital scholarship training.

Camila earned her B.A. in History from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and later pursued an M.A. in Gender Studies from the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary. At the University of Texas at Austin, she has served as co-coordinator for the Lozano Long Centennial Conference, ‘Archiving Objects of Knowledge with Latin American Perspectives’ (2020 – 2021), and the ‘History Department’s Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality’ (2022–2023). Camila’s research has been supported by Conahcyt/Contex, the École nationale des Chartes, the Newberry Library, the W.M. Keck Foundation, and the Conference on Latin American History. Her writing is featured in Revista nexos, Letras Libres, el Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, Revista América, Historia Mexicana, Contributions to the History of Concepts, and Not Even Past.

Note: This bilingual article appears first in Spanish and then in English.

Por segunda vez en los 73 años desde su creación, UT Austin fue sede del XVI Encuentro de Historiadores Internacionales de México (octubre de 2022). Bajo la coordinación de un comité conjunto presidido por la Dra. Susie Porter de la Universidad de Utah, el Dr. Pablo Yankelevich de El Colegio de México y el Dr. Matthew Butler como organizador local de UT Austin, la conferencia se planificó como un diálogo sobre la relación binacional entre México y Estados Unidos—y más específicamente Texas—y sobre los archivos. ¿Cómo ha cambiado la escritura de la historia de México y de la frontera desde la última vez que se llevó a cabo este encuentro aquí, en 1958? Este artículo presenta una breve historia de los Encuentros de Historiadores Internacionales desde 1949 y ofrece algunas notas sobre cómo ha cambiado la escritura histórica sobre México y sus fronteras desde entonces

For the second time in the 73 years since its inception, UT Austin was the host the XVI Meeting of International Historians of Mexico (October 2022). Under the coordination of a joint committee chaired by Dr. Susie Porter of the University of Utah, Dr. Pablo Yankelevich of El Colegio de México, and Dr. Matthew Butler as UT-Austin’s local organizer, the conference was planned as a dialogue concerning the binational relationship between Mexico and the United States—and more specifically Texas—and about archives. How has the writing of Mexican and borderland history changed in the last time the meeting took place here, in 1958? This article presents a brief history of International Historians Meetings beginning in 1949 and gives some notes on how historical writing about Mexico and its borders has changed since then.

In honor of the centennial of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, the 2022 Lozano Long Conference focuses on archives with Latin American perspectives in order to better visualize the ethical and political implications of archival practices globally. The conference was held in February 2022 and the videos of all the presentation will be available soon. Thinking archivally in a time of COVID-19 has also given us an unexpected opportunity to re-imagine the international academic conference. This Not Even Past publication joins those by other graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin.  The series as a whole is designed to engage with the work of individual speakers as well as to present valuable resources that will supplement the conference’s recorded presentations. This new conference model, which will make online resources freely and permanently available, seeks to reach audiences beyond conference attendees in the hopes of decolonizing and democratizing access to the production of knowledge. The conference recordings and connected articles can be found here.

Between 1793 and 1794, the Jacobin Club, a leftist political organization led by Maximilien Robespierre held political power in France. Via this medium, the Jacobins, as they came to be known, enforced a radical understanding of the revolutionary values of the French Revolution through mass violence. This episode is known simply as “the Terror”. In 1794 the Jacobins were forced out office in an episode called the “Thermidorian Reaction”, after which everything seemed to show what the Terror was a thing of the past. In The Afterlives of Terror. Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France, Ronen Steinberg challenges this assumption and argues that this episode stretched beyond the years of its occurrence in the form of debates and practices aimed towards overcoming this modern form of national trauma.

In From Angel to Office Worker: Middle-Class Identity and Female Consciousness in Mexico, 1890-1950, Susie S. Porter explores the material conditions of working women in Mexico City from 1890 to 1950 and the formation of middle-class female identity. She examines how societal practices and debates shaped this identity, analyzing the Mexican women’s movement in the early twentieth century and its connection to global feminist movements. Porter’s work highlights how women negotiated their roles during and after the Revolution and organized to improve their working and living conditions.

Between 1793 and 1794, the Jacobin Club, a leftist political organization led by Maximilien Robespierre held political power in France. Via this medium, the Jacobins, as they came to be known, enforced a radical understanding of the revolutionary values of the French Revolution through mass violence. This episode is known simply as “the Terror”. In 1794 the Jacobins were forced out office in an episode called the “Thermidorian Reaction”, after which everything seemed to show what the Terror was a thing of the past. In The Afterlives of Terror. Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France, Ronen Steinberg challenges this assumption and argues that this episode stretched beyond the years of its occurrence in the form of debates and practices aimed towards overcoming this modern form of national trauma.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Motherhood, Patriotism and Enfranchisement: How Mexican Catholic Women Defined Womanhood in the Mid-Twentieth Century 

Banner image for Motherhood, Patriotism and Enfranchisement: How Mexican Catholic Women Defined Womanhood in the Mid-Twentieth Century

My thesis focused on tracing and analyzing the complicated political conversations within the women’s division of the Mexican Catholic Action, specifically regarding women’s suffrage from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. My work revealed a layered set of beliefs that defy these women’s simple classification into feminist or antifeminist categories. Their complex reconciliation of conservative views with more progressive ones is a trend that has also been found in the historiography of international Christian women’s organizations through various time periods.[1] In a relatively recent article, Mexican historian Pedro Espinoza Meléndez also identifies seemingly opposing currents of thought present in ACM women’s publications.[2] In this way, my research builds on new scholarship to suggest the need for frameworks that avoid the feminist/antifeminist binary we may be inclined to apply. We should especially be careful if Western interpretations of these terms are being used to explain phenomena in non-Western regions.

Mexican women did not obtain the right to vote in federal elections until 1953, although there were important antecedents to this final victory dating back at least to the Revolution. One of the reasons for this was the fear that they would infuse national politics with more conservative ideas. Some primary sources provide evidence not necessarily for the validity of these fears, but definitely for their existence and influence in the 1930s. For example, in a speech given at the first National Women’s Congress in 1936, activist Esther Chapa said that many believed “woman is influenced by the most conservative and reactionary currents, and can therefore tip the general politics of the country to the right.”[3]

It is significant also that Chapa declared this fear, rather than other, more overtly misogynistic ideas (which she also discussed) to be the excuse “that is most energetically used by certain enemies of women’s votes.”[4]  Of course, she vehemently denies that these concerns should be taken seriously. Based on other sources, historians have also generally agreed that the precarious political establishment at the time feared that women’s participation would derail them from a progressive political path.[5] For example, one of the first historians of women’s fight for suffrage in Mexico, Ward M. Morton from the University of Florida, cited the enfranchisement of Spanish women in 1933—which resulted on a rightward swing in Spanish politics—as one of the key causes for hesitation on the part of left-leaning or centrist Mexican officials in the 1930s.[6]

photo of Elvia Carrillo Puerto
Elvia Carrillo Puerto, one of the first women representatives in the country in 1923, alongside Beatriz Peniche Ponce and Raquel Dzib Cicero. Source: Wikimedia Commons

There is value in this explanation, but the extent to which these fears were founded is difficult to assert. What is clear, however, is that these ideas were significant at the time, and have permeated into the historiography. In my opinion, one way of getting closer to a nuanced view of the issue is to refrain from treating women as a monolithic group in Mexican society, especially in such a crucial moment of development for the nation’s democracy and larger political apparatus. Because the women of the Mexican Catholic Action promoted ideas from both the right and the left, the study of their beliefs is particularly useful in this endeavor.

When looking at Catholic women’s opinions on the vote, it is crucial to define the elements that made the struggle singularly complex in Mexico. First, due to the wording of the Mexican Constitution, women’s political rights always included two related, but distinct goals—the right to vote and the right to get elected. Inextricably connected, these were fought for and obtained simultaneously in Mexico, unlike in many other countries. This may appear to be a trivial difference. Its significance becomes clear, however, when remembering the previously-explained fear of a women-led hit to progressive political parties and policies. With both ballot boxes and federal offices opening up to women, these fears would have reasonably been amplified.

I should also note that due to their reputed conservatism, it was traditional, Catholic women—such as those in the Mexican Catholic Action—who were the most blamed for the potential setbacks that would come from women’s enfranchisement. As I will demonstrate, while they did hold some conservative ideas, these were paired with more left-leaning attitudes, eventually including unequivocal support for suffrage. The study of their point of view is therefore especially interesting and significant. Gendered conceptions of citizenship responsibilities further compounded the challenges women faced in the fight for political rights.[7]

Logo for Mexican Catholic Action.
Logo for Mexican Catholic Action.

At least three additional contextual factors must be explained prior to any exploration of Catholic women’s political views from the 1930s to the 1950s. The first is the emergence and promotion of Catholic social doctrine in Rome starting in the late 1800s. Generally speaking, Catholic social doctrine was the church’s ideological response to significant events such as industrialization, the rise of communism, and large-scale warfare, conceived largely to maintain relevance in the face of these and other global trends. Some of its principles included the right to own private property, a condemnation of communism as well as unfettered capitalism (a debate that would become especially relevant post-WWII), and the basic dignity of human beings. As will be detailed later, Mexican women actively interpreted Catholic social doctrine, using it as basis for their political goals, including obtaining the right to vote.

The second important background event is the Mexican Revolution. On the one hand, revolutionary characters and ideals—including the expansion of democracy—proved to be of extreme value for many post-Revolution political factions. Indeed, the party that would command the executive branch of government from 1929 to the year 2000, was the National Revolutionary Party (later named the Institutional Revolutionary Party). By the late 1940s, Catholic women would adduce revolutionary principles to explain why granting them political rights was in line with the perceived promises of the revolution.

photo of a scene from The Mexican Revolution.
The Mexican Revolution. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Third, we must understand the nature of church-state relations in Mexico. The Cristero War (1926-1929) brought the tensions between the church and the post-Revolutionary Mexican state to the battlefield. As the war ended, various Catholic lay organizations that had previously engaged with national politics merged to form The Mexican Catholic Action (ACM) in 1929, during the papacy of Pius XI. Although most members of the ACM were from the middle and upper classes, they also had growing peasants’ divisions and chapters across the country. Some historians have argued that the incorporation of many Catholic lay organizations translated into a general decrease in their political involvement, as Catholic Action groups worldwide were directly under clerical authority.[8] Other historians, such as Kristina Boylan, have found that female members—who were the majority—actually retained and fostered the political streak of earlier Catholic lay groups in Mexico.[9]

Catholic social doctrine, especially papal encyclicals associated with its theory, was widely discussed and promoted in ACM circles. Pope Leo XIII’s famous Rerum Novarum encyclical in 1891 is widely regarded as one of the founding documents of Catholic social doctrine.[10] In it, the church proposed it as a way to inter-class harmony, emphasizing Christian charity.[11] In the ACM, this particular encyclical and a few others were especially celebrated. For example, in a report from the co-secretary of the ACM’s central committee from June 25th, 1939, one of the forms outlined discussed plans for the formation of study circles for social education, in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the Rerum Novarum.[12] Later, Popes Pius XI and Pius XII cited and expanded its philosophy. Aside from his additions to Catholic social doctrine, Pope Pius XI actively encouraged the foundation of Catholic Action groups around the world.

photo of Pius XI, by Nicola Perscheid, circa 1922
Pius XI, by Nicola Perscheid, circa 1922. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Building on Boylan’s research on ACM women’s activism, I proposed that although the women of the Mexican Catholic Action enthusiastically followed the pope and were heavily influenced by Catholic social doctrine, they also actively interpreted, modified, and spread messages from Rome according to their interests. For example, while Rerum Novarum suggested that a woman was “by nature fitted for home-work” in order to raise children, the ACM adopted a wider interpretation of this role.[13] A 1938 article titled “Prepare Yourself for our Assembly,” meant to be read prior to that year’s national assembly of the young woman’s division, argued that all women have social duties, “whether it falls upon them to become mothers or…whether their maternity is purely spiritual.”[14]

By this perception, women should act as mothers towards their own children, but also to anyone who needs a mother, and towards the Mexican nation. Introducing a spiritual maternity into the lexicon reflects how these women managed to marry conservative political views, such as their opposition to divorce and critiques of certain media, with more liberal ones, like their support for suffrage and women’s ability to take up professional roles. The adoption of these seemingly adversary attitudes demonstrates that rather than passively obeying papal precepts, Catholic women actively shaped their meaning. Eventually, and especially as church-state relations became less combative, ideas such as these would become part of the basis for their support of suffrage.

The Mexican Revolution and the fervent patriotism that followed it also underpinned the ACM’s gradual embrace of enfranchisement. In 1947, women in Mexico finally received voting rights, albeit limited to local elections. That same year, the ACM disseminated a bulletin titled My Vote as a Mexican Catholic Woman. It was written by Emma Galán, who had served as president of the ACM’s young women’s division and had thus been part of the ACM’s Central Committee. In the publication, Galán devoted a whole section to “the aggrandizement of Mexico” and declared that voting was “a moral duty in the face of love for the Motherland.”[15] Invoking the Mexican Revolution, the document also reveals that women viewed enfranchisement as the achievement of its goals, supporting the expansion of suffrage to include voting in federal elections as well. To Galán, it was anti-revolutionary and anti-patriotic to abstain from voting or to oppose suffrage.

A column by Hermila Galindo published in a 1917 issue of the magazine Mujer Moderna (Modern Woman).
A column by Hermila Galindo published in a 1917 issue of the magazine Mujer Moderna (Modern Woman). In it, she announced her candidacy for localrepresentative. She also outlined her agenda, which included “defending the interests of [all] mothers,” “matrimonial hygiene,” and “procuring everything which would contribute to her dignity.” It was followed by a short editorial note clarifying that women did not have the right to vote in Mexico. Source: Wikimedia Commons {PD-US-expired}

Galán also offers that not voting was also anti-Catholic. The ACM first adopted this position around 1939, though initially, they didn’t explicitly include women.[16] Eventually, though, political circumstances led to women’s incorporation. The ACM was vocally against the secularization of schools, for example, and since education issues were traditionally viewed as part of women’s realm, they became assets in this political fight. Bringing women into the fold through the vote would, therefore, advance their political goals, goals that would at the same time bring about a Mexico that was in line with Catholic social doctrine. Beyond secularization in schools and other such concerns, there was a persistent belief that unfettered capitalism, and most especially communism, were preventing the ACM’s idealized, Catholic Mexico—one that reflected Catholic social doctrine as they saw it—from flourishing. In this way, giving pious women the right to vote was not against Catholic social doctrine, but a benefit to its spread.

The new version of the Mexican one thousand peso bill includes the image of three revolutionary figures: Carmen Serdán (left), Hermila Galindo (center), and Francisco I. Madero (right).
The new version of the Mexican one thousand peso bill includes the image of three revolutionary figures: Carmen Serdán (left), Hermila Galindo (center), and Francisco I. Madero (right). Serdán was known for her support of Madero, and her participation in the revolution as a writer and member of a revolutionary junta. Galindo was an early supporter of both divorce and suffrage, and served as Venustiano Carranza’s secretary for some time. According to historian Gabriela Cano, she even ran for office before she had that right explicitly in 1917, at least in part to protest this constitutional restriction. The bill has been in circulation since the end of 2020, as per the Mexican Central Bank. The photo was taken by one of the author’s family members.

Overall, I hope my investigation of Catholic women’s discourse surrounding suffrage contributes to the perspective that different groups of women throughout history have defined their role and purpose differently, drawing from multiple theories and doctrines. It is hard, therefore, to apply or even find a general rule that defines all women in a given time period. Instead of attempting to do so, I have carefully analyzed the views of a limited sample—those of the women in the Mexican Catholic Action, who themselves embody a complex intermingling of ideas. These women incorporated both national and international considerations—such as papal precepts, and the revolution’s legacy—into their political consciousness, and in doing so they were denoting the meaning of femininity. Their support for suffrage and women’s work outside the domestic sphere was accompanied by some conservative ideals, especially when it came to divorce, sexuality, and general impropriety, as Espinoza Meléndez found.[17]

They viewed the vote as an essential tool to bring about a very specific version of Mexico, one in which neither unfettered capitalism nor communism took root, as generally validated by Catholic social doctrine. In the context of the Cold War and the unstable post-revolutionary political landscape, these views had important implications. Needless to say, ACM activists’ vision of  Mexico was different than that imagined by other political groups. By recognizing these complexities, we can begin to understand and humanize historical subjects more fully. Considering a diversity of historical opinions, especially those expressed by women, can get us closer to answering questions that historians have asked for decades. I also suggest that the study and characterization of their brand of patriotism, as well as their views of modernity should continue to be researched.

Daniela Roscero Cervantes graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2023, receiving degrees in history and journalism. This article is based on her history thesis, Conservative “feminists”: Women’s Citizenship, Suffrage and Political Representation I Mexican Catholic Discourse, 1940-1953. She is currently enrolled at the University of Chicago to complete a master’s in social sciences with a concentration in history. Her research interests focus on modern Mexico, as well as the history of the borderlands, Mexican-Americans, and U.S.-Mexico relations.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Benson Latin American Library Rare Books collection, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, accessed December 7, 2023, Vatican.va.

Mexican Bulletins Collection. UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico.

Mexican Catholic Action Collection. Iberoamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico. Mexican Bulletins Collection. UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico.

Secondary Sources

Bard, Christine. “L’apotre Sociale et L’ange du Foyer: les Femmes et la C. F. T. C. a Travers Le Nord Social (1920-1936).” Le Mouvement Social no. 165, (1993): 23-41

Barry, Carolina and Enriqueta Tuñón Pablos. “Capítulo 9: Las Sufragistas Mexicanas y su Lucha por el Voto,” In Sufragio Femenino: Prácticas y Debates Políticos, Religiosos y Culturales En Argentina y América edited by Carolina Barry, 250-278. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, 2011.

Blasco Herranz, Inmaculada. “Citizenship and Female Catholic Militancy in 1920s Spain.” Gender & History 19, no. 3 (2007): 441-466.

Boylan, Kristina A. “Gendering the Faith and Altering the Nation: Mexican Catholic Women’s Activism 1917-1940.” In Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, edited by Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan, Gabriela Cano, 199-222. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2007.

Boyle, Joseph. “Rerum Novarum.” In Catholic Social Teaching: A Volume of Scholarly Essays, edited by Gerard V. Bradley and E. Christian Brugger, 69–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Cano, Gabriela. “Mexico: The Long Road to Women’s Suffrage.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Women’s Political Rights, edited by Susan Franceschet, Mona Lena Krook, Netina Tan, 115-127. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Ceballos Ramírez, Manuel. “Historia De Rerum Novarum en Mexico (1891).” In El Catolicismo Social: un tercero en discordia, Rerum Novarum, la “cuestión social” y la movilización de los católicos mexicanos (1891-1911). Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1987.

Dau Novelli, Cecilia. Società, chiesa e associazionismo femminile: l’Unione fra le donne cattoliche d’Italia (1902-1919). Rome: AVE, 1988.

Espinoza Meléndez, Pedro. “Antifeminismo y feminismo católico en México: La Unión Femenina Católica Mexicana y la revista Acción Femenina, 1933-1958.” Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios de Género de El Colegio de México 6, no. 6 (2020). http:// dx.doi.org/10.24201/eg.v6i0.381.

Morton, Ward M. Woman Suffrage in Mexico. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1962.

[1] Christine Bard, “L’apotre Sociale et L’ange du Foyer: les Femmes et la C. F. T. C. a Travers Le Nord Social (1920-1936),” Le Mouvement Social 165 (1993): 23-41.

Cecilia Dau Novelli, Società, chiesa e associazionismo femminile: l’Unione fra le donne cattoliche d’Italia (1902-1919) (AVE: 1988).

Inmaculada Blasco Herranz, “Citizenship and Female Catholic Militancy in 1920s Spain,” Gender & History Vol. 19, No. 3 (2007): 441-466.

[2] Pedro Espinoza Meléndez, “Antifeminismo y feminismo católico en México. La Unión Femenina Católica Mexicana y la revista Acción Femenina, 1933 – 1958.” Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios de Género de El Colegio de México 6, no. 6 (2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.24201/eg.v6i0.381.

[3] Esther Chapa, The right to vote for women, 1936, p.9, Benson Latin American Library Rare Books collection, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas.

[4] Esther Chapa, The right to vote for women, 1936, p.9, Benson Latin American Library Rare Books collection, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas.

[5] Carolina Barry and Enriqueta Tuñón Pablos, “Chapter 9: Mexican Suffragists and Their Fight to Obtain the Vote,” in Sufragio Femenino: Prácticas y Debates Políticos, Religiosos y Culturales En Argentina y América (Caseros, Argentina, Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, 2011), p. 261-265.

[6] Ward M. Morton, Woman Suffrage in Mexico (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1962), p. 21-25.

[7] Gabriela Cano, “Mexico: The Long Road to Women’s Suffrage,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Women’s Political Rights(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), p. 119.

[8] Manuel Ceballos Ramírez, “The Rerum Novarum Encyclical in Mexico (1891)” in El Catolicismo Social: un tercero en discordia, Rerum Novarum, la “cuestión social” y la movilización de los católicos mexicanos (1891-1911) (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1987), 51-67.

[9] Kristina A. Boylan, “Gendering the Faith and Altering the Nation: Mexican Catholic Women’s Activism 1917-1940,” in Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, ed. Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan, Gabriela Cano (North Carolina: Duke University press, 2007), 210-234.

[10] Joseph Boyle, “Rerum Novarum,” in Catholic Social Teaching: A Volume of Scholarly Essay, ed. Gerard V. Bradley and E. Christian Brigger, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 68-89.

[11] Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 22, 24, 30, 61, 63.

[12] Report of the co-secretary for June 25th 1939 Central Committee Meeting, 22 May 1939, 2.2.1.1 Sessions of the Central Committee 1930-1978 box 1, folder 2 1934-1939, Archivo ACM, Iberoamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico.

[13] Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 42.

[14] Anonymous, “Prepare Yourself for Our Assembly,” Juventud, September 1938, 16, Section 6-Publications, box 7, bound book starting 1938, Mexican Catholic Action Collection, Iberoamerican University Historical Archives, Iberoamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico.

[15] E. Emma Galán G., bulletin titled “My Vote as a Mexican Catholic Woman,” 13, 35 Mexican Bulletins Collection, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico.

[16] Notice number twenty-three from the Central Committee, ca. May 1939, 2.2.1.1 Sessions of the Central Committee 1930-1978 box 1, folder 2 1934-1939, Archivo ACM, Iberoamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico.

[17] Pedro Espinoza Meléndez, “Antifeminismo y feminismo católico en México. La Unión Femenina Católica Mexicana y la revista Acción Femenina, 1933 – 1958.” Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios de Género de El Colegio de México 6, no. 6 (2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.24201/eg.v6i0.381.

Banner image via Pexels – Photo by Luis Ariza: https://www.pexels.com/photo/mexican-flag-on-flagpole-13808918/

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Review of From Angel to Office Worker: Middle-Class Identity and Female Consciousness in Mexico, 1890-1950 (2018) by Susie S. Porter

banner image for Review of From Angel to Office Worker: Middle-Class Identity and Female Consciousness in Mexico, 1890-1950 (2018) by Susie S. Porter

In this fabulous book, historian Susie S. Porter examines the material conditions of working women between 1890 and 1950 and the consequent formation of middle-class female identity in Mexico City. To highlight the historical existence of this social class in Mexican society, the author focuses her attention on the ways that societal practices and debates helped construct it. Porter’s class-based analysis of the early twentieth century Mexican women’s movement considers and engages both with public debate over the role of women in society as well as with women’s rights activism. Furthermore, she frames her research as part of a broader transnational history of women and gender that accounts for the contextually differentiated development of the “feminization of bureaucracy”. Taking into consideration the global feminist movements, the author represents how women’s work and feminist movements played out at the turn of the century, how they engaged and negotiated their position during and after the Revolution, and how they organized to demand improvements in their working and living conditions.

book cover for From Angel to Office Worker cover features a woman with a 1920s bob sitting at a typewriter.

From Angel to Office Worker is a history of labor feminism. Porter’s primary contribution to this scholarship lies in her focus on the middle and working classes as a combined unit of analysis rather than as separate entities fighting different battles within the struggle for women’s rights. In doing so, she makes a case for the inclusion of the middle classes into labor studies as a whole. Porter’s study highlights the role of women’s schools and women’s later incorporation in the post-revolutionary bureaucratic system in office jobs, such as typists, archivists, and administrative secretaries. She later contends that their employment informed their activism. In constructing her argument in this way, Porter draws from a long line of feminist literature that asserts the importance of the written word (cultura escrita) in the political empowerment of women.

This, of course, links her research with female activism for the right to education, a history she traces in the implementation of schools for girls in the city, with a particular focus on the Miguel Lerdo de Tejada Commercial School for Young Ladies, inaugurated in 1903 under the governance of Porfirio Díaz. The importance Porter gives to commercial schools is an essential aspect of the book. She presents them as places of socialization where girls gained social and cultural through which they were able to find jobs and form networks of employed and educated women. These would become the nexus of feminist organized struggles.

One of the book’s most important contributions is the history Porter presents of the concept of feminism. As any sociopolitical concept, feminism has a conceptual history of its own that reflects how the concept has been used and defined depending on the historical, cultural, and social contexts it has been applied in. Thought the book, the author traces this conceptual history and in doing so explains the importance this has in the production of women’s history in Mexico. Hence, the book has a second function aside from studying the development of Mexican middle-class identity, namely tracing this concept’s incursion into Mexican society through its use and application to certain female-related practices. Susie Porter traces these practices through a meticulous analysis of the press. Her primary sources are mostly newspapers, both feminine and national ones. Media (film) is only consulted in the last chapter due to the study’s temporal focus. There is a book there waiting to be written.

Feminist march in Mexico City, circa 1940s
Feminist march in Mexico City, circa 1940s. Source: D.R. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México.

The book is divided in seven chronological chapters, each of which that trace the Mexican history of the concept of feminism and of middle-class identity formation in parallel. Although From Angel to Office Worker concludes before women won the right to vote in 1955, the last two chapters engage with the early stages of suffrage activism. The book begins by tracing the discursive and material conditions of class in Mexico at the turn of the century. Thus, the first chapter conceptualizes the author’s class-based analysis and contribution. From there, Porter engages with women’s education and their incursion into the workplace (Chapter 2-3). Changes in women’s employment led to a shift from teaching, the feminine profession per excellence, to working in the bureaucratic system (Chapter 4-6). In these three chapters, the author studies and analyzes the female organizations led by women, which pressured the government to take into consideration and to apply reforms for women in order to benefit for the revolutionary government. The author’s historical analysis is impressive since the history of Mexican feminisms is a highly understudied topic. Finally, the book finishes off with an analysis of Sarah Batiza Berkowitxz’s book Nosotras las taquígrafas, and its filmographic adaptation by Emilio Gómez Muriel which the author argues exemplify the general concerns and perceptions of female workforces at a pivotal moment when a backlash aimed at removing women from the bureaucratic workforce struck.

Today, organized feminist struggles are at the core of political mobilization in favor of social justice in Mexico. One need only skim the news to see the pressure both government and society are under to dramatically modify the power structures that have historically oppressed women and feminized bodies. From Angel to Office Worker demonstrates that organized feminisms and the struggles for women’s inclusion in the workplace and society in Mexico is a century-old battle that has gone through many different stages, of which the book analyzes only one. By taking up the book, the reader can be certain that they will deepen their knowledge on the fundamental role women have historically played in the consolidation and creation of history, citizenship, and society in Mexico. More importantly, the readers will be surprised to see Mexican revolutionary and postrevolutionary history in a completely different light, one which separates itself from its highly masculine characters, premises, and common places.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Five Sisters: Women Against The Tsar

This year, Not Even Past asked UT History faculty to tell us about a book that they love to teach. What makes it a great book for teaching history? What interesting and revealing questions does it raise? How do students respond to it?  This is the first article in what we hope will be a series on books we love to teach.

Why would anyone give up a life of the utmost leisure and privilege to become a revolutionary, isolated from society and hunted by the police? How does an individual choose to become a terrorist – to kill for an idea or an ideology? What country comes to mind when you think about these questions? It is probably not nineteenth-century Russia and you are probably not imagining women in these roles. Yet arguably, modern terrorism was born in the aristocratic manor houses of the Russian empire. This collection of translated memoirs takes us deep into the everyday lives of the girls who assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881.

book cover

I have taught this book almost every year since I began teaching in 1985, every time I teach my survey of Russian history from 1613 to 1917. These fascinating and accessible memoirs give us a highly detailed and deeply personal view of the decisions five revolutionary women made on the journeys they took to the revolutionary underground. Vera Figner (1852-1942) is especially thoughtful and reflective about her path from childhood innocence to growing awareness of social and economic inequality on her parents’ estate, to her desire to help the impoverished in her province, to her frustration with her own abilities and government obstacles for personal improvement and social-economic justice. In 1872, at age nineteen, Figner went to Zurich to study to be a doctor so that she could come back and have a greater impact at home serving the poor. But in Switzerland, she met radical thinkers and activists who cast doubt on her ideas about individual service and reform. When she and her friends returned to Russia, they decided that the only way to effect change was through revolution, and the only way to bring about a revolution –to spark a peasant uprising — was to assassinate the tsar. Figner was one of the chief agents of that plot, but instead of igniting revolution, the assassination ushered in a period of reaction and repression. Figner was eventually arrested but not executed, which gave her decades in prison to think about her life and write her revealing – and unapologetic — memoirs.

Vera Figner (sitting second to the right) and her family, 1915.
Vera Figner (sitting second to the right) and her family, 1915.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The moral ambiguities of the women’s ideas and actions fascinate my students year after year. Were these young women nothing more than spoiled rich kids with no sense of political realities, or were they dedicated realists, taking the only steps possible to transform people’s lives in a country where the government was indifferent to the suffering of ninety percent of the population? How did they understand the moral stakes of their choices? What did they hope to accomplish? How did their lives as revolutionary women compare to those of revolutionary men? And are they comparable to terrorists in the twentieth century and today? The students’ discussion of these questions changes, often dramatically, from year to year, reflecting current events and their current political concerns, which provides its own set of historical lessons, and has the added benefit of giving me a sense of the issues that matter to the succeeding generations of students in my classes.

Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar
Edited and translated by Barbara Alpern Engel and Clifford Rosenthal
Original publication: New York: Knopf/Random House 1975


You might also like:
Policing Art in Early Soviet Russia
Great Books on Women’s History: Asia
Eisenstein’s “Ivan the Terrible” in Stalin’s Russia

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The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Voting Rights Still Threatened 100 Years After the 19th Amendment

Bby Laurie Green

100 years ago, Congress approved the 19th Amendment, which prohibited the denial or limitation of voting rights “on account of sex.”

The agonizing, fourteen-month struggle by suffragists to get three-quarters of the states to ratify the Amendment, especially its dramatic culmination in the Tennessee statehouse, has garnered much attention. But it may come as a surprise that Texas, a state that has become notorious nationwide for passing some of the most restrictive voting legislation, ratified the Amendment in just 14 days.

Black and white image of women Register to Vote in Travis County, 1918
Women Register to Vote in Travis County, 1918. (via Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

To be sure, Texas’s speedy ratification of the 19th Amendment represents a beacon for women’s political power in the U.S., but a critical assessment of the process it took to win it tells us far more about today’s political atmosphere and cautions us to compare the marketing of voting rights laws with their actual implications.

In a one-party state like Texas, the primaries were the elections that mattered, and 1918 marked the first time women could participate — thanks, in part, to campaigning by thousands of members of the all-white Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA).

Not all women got the chance to vote, however. Despite efforts by Black activists, including suffragists, Texas’s all-white primary system trumped women’s newly won right nearly everywhere in the state. Even still, the support from TESA secured the election of a pro-suffrage governor, William Hobby, and convinced him to introduce an equal suffrage amendment to the Texas constitution.

Like today, however, reactions to heightened immigration from Mexico – largely by those fleeing the violence of the Mexican Revolution – influenced Texas’s equal suffrage movement. Believing the specter of adding Mexican-born women to voter rolls would alienate legislators who would otherwise back women’s suffrage, Governor Hobby proposed a two-part amendment that would extend full suffrage to women but reverse a policy allowing foreign-born residents to vote if they had petitioned for naturalization.

Tasked with getting voters to approve the amendment on May 24, 1919, TESA adhered to advice from national women’s suffrage leaders willing to alienate Mexican American and African American suffragists for another state win. “In the winning or losing of the Second Amendment on your ballot,” read a TESA leaflet addressed to the Men of Texas, “the State chooses between her women and the alien enemies within our gates as citizens.”

Image of a printed flyer saying, "Men of Texas: The women of Texas need your help on May 24th" issued by the Texas Equal Suffrage Association
Printed flyer saying, “Men of Texas: The women of Texas need your help on May 24th” issued by the Texas Equal Suffrage Association [FP E.4 B #26 (Folder 6)] via Austin History Center

While this tactic won the allegiance of many Texans, it lost them the election — not a total surprise because immigrant men on a pathway to citizenship still retained the right to vote.

Just eleven days later, Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the denial of voting rights on the basis of only sex. It took Hobby just two weeks to call a special session to approve the federal amendment’s simple language.

By 1921, Mexican-born women awaiting naturalization had lost their right to vote. In 1923, a restructured all-white primary law closed out even Black women who had managed to register earlier.

And again, on this 100th anniversary of Congress’s approval of women’s suffrage, voting rights are imperiled in Texas, this time by measures espoused as necessary to end voter fraud: the voter identification law already in place, threatened purges of voting rolls to eliminate non-citizens, and bills that nearly passed in this legislative session that would have classified registration mistakes as felonies.

In practice, these measures have targeted the same kinds of groups excluded from voting a century ago, such as the African American and immigrant women unable to reap the benefits of the 19th Amendment.

Photograph of women Congress members wearing white attend President Trump’s State of the Union address at the US Capitol on February 5, 2019
Women Congress members wearing white attend President Trump’s State of the Union address at the US Capitol on February 5, 2019. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images (via Slate)

Photos of congresswomen wearing white at the 2019 State of the Union address illustrate how that history of injustices may have inspired women to figure so prominently in movements for truly universal voting rights. Those sworn in for the first time this year include many who could not have joined major suffrage organizations in 1919. But as crucial as it has been and will be to gain further political power for women by voting them into office, we can’t isolate that from burning voting rights issues today, in which Texas, like then, is a leader in voting restriction.

Laurie B. Green is an associate professor of history and a faculty affiliate in the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Versions of this op-ed have been featured in The Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express News, Abilene Reporter News, Amarillo Globe News, and The El Paso Times. 


More by Laurie Green:
Women’s March, Like Many Before It, Struggles for Unity 
The Media Matters: Reflections on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Discovery of Hunger in the U.S.

You might also like:
Great Books on Women’s History: United States
Remembering the Tex-Son Strike: Legacies of Latina-led Labor Activism in San Antonio, Texas

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Remembering the Tex-Son Strike: Legacies of Latina-led Labor Activism in San Antonio, Texas

Banner image for the post Remembering the Tex-Son Strike: Legacies of Latina-Led Labor Activism in San Antonio, Texas

The year 2019 marks the 60th anniversary of the Tex-Son strike, a major labor battle waged in San Antonio, Texas from 1959 to 1963 by mostly Mexican, Mexican-American, and some Anglo women all of whom were active members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) Local 180. This strike is important for the history of Mexican Americans, women, and labor organization because it bridged the two other major moments for Mexican and Mexican American labor activism: the Pecan Shellers strike in San Antonio during the 1930s and the other Farah strike of the 1970s in El Paso. Little is known about labor activism strategies of marginalized women in the Southwest during the period in between these two infamous labor organizing efforts. The Tex-Son strike unveils what working women did to advocate for their needs on the garment factory floor during the Cold War period, especially in a historically anti-labor, anti-union state.

Black and white image of two women carrying picket signs, Tex-Son "On Strike" for Local 180, ILGWU, San Antonio, 1963
International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, Local 180 (San Antonio, TX) Records, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Two women on strike for Tex-Son Local 180, San Antonio, Texas, International Ladies Garment Workers Union (I. L. G. W. U.). 1963. UTA Libraries Digital Gallery, https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/img/10007779.

The Tex-Son strike was organized by the ILGWU, affiliated for most of its existence with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and then the AFL-CIO when the AFL merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1955. By the mid-1930s, most of the garment industry moved to the Southwest as the region offered a low-cost labor pool of Black and Latinx workers. This industry transition proved to be complicated for the ILGWU as the union sent Anglo men with little experience in Spanish-speaking communities to represent workers in the Southwest. Eventually, the ILGWU maintained a presence in large cities in Texas, including San Antonio.

San Antonio was home to one of the largest populations of ethnically Mexican people in the United States, which the garment industry exploited for some of the lowest wages in the country. Many working-class ethnically Mexican women in San Antonio were able to obtain positions in the defense industry during WWII, but afterwards were left with slim options besides factory jobs. Tex-Son, owned by brothers Harold and Emanuel Franzel, employed both Anglo and Mexican American women, but were actively outsourcing work to Tupelo, Mississippi where Black women made up a lucrative labor force. In response to an uptick in union membership among Tex-Son workers by the ILGWU, the Franzels produced anti-union literature and warned their workers against signing any union agreements in the fall of 1958, before the strike began. In response, the ILGWU Negotiating Committee sent demands to the Franzels which included better wages and benefits among others.

The work of Gregoria Montalbo was essential to building momentum for the strike. An organizer from Chicago, her main job was to explain to hopeful recruits about the benefits and necessity of a strike against Tex-Son. Montalbo’s role as the president of Local 180 was focused on recruitment prior to the strike as well as working to gain support from San Antonio’s clergy during the strike, appealing to the many workers who were members of Catholic congregations in the city. One of the most committed clergy supporters was Father Sherrill Smith who agreed with Local 180 that San Antonio needed unions in order to create a more equitable work environment for everyone. He played a key role on the picket line and going door to door to recruit more people to join the strike.

The Tex-Son strike was the first to use an ILGWU Chicana lead organizer, Sophie Gonzalez, who became the face of the Tex-Son strike. Gonzalez began union organizing in 1949 after her brother, a union organizer for the Amalgamated Meatcutters and Butchers of America Union, encouraged her to accept a position in the ILGWU. Her presence in local newspapers and on the picket line was an integral piece of the ILGWU’s strategy. She maintained a certain physical appearance that portrayed her respectability as a woman but remained fierce in her communication of worker’s demands to the media and locals.

The very first week of the strike was the most tumultuous in terms of physical altercations between the women and allies on strike, the women who continued to work throughout the strike, and the police. On February 26th and 27th, the women on strike, angered by scab workers being escorted in and out of the factory, began throwing eggs and rocks at strike breakers and getting in physical altercations. The police charged the strikers with rioting and drunkenness, however there was not sufficient evidence to prove that any of the strikers were inebriated while on the picket lines.

Black and white image of Helen Martinez and her four children in San Antonio, Texas
Helen Martinez and her four children with picket signs, San Antonio, Texas. 1959, George and Latane Lambert Papers, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, UTA Libraries Digital Gallery, https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/img/10002671. 

The ILGWU also engaged in a propaganda campaign to accompany the strike and boycott of Tex-Son goods. This campaign exploited the dominant ideology of the time about motherhood instead of on the women’s role as economic providers. In doing so, they produced materials such as reproducing checks given to Tex-Son employees next to pictures of their children, effectively communicating the inability to care for a family on such dismal paychecks. Even children participated by handing out balloons to other children entering surrounding department stores with “Don’t Buy Tex-Son Children’s Clothes,” imprinted on them. These tactics, however, were detrimental to the image of strikers as workers, not just mothers.

In the first year of the strike, the ILGWU women gained support from other local unions, such as the International Union of Brewery Workers, and other male supporters who assisted in picket line activities. However, the daily hardships that came along with picketing wore down many of the women who originally joined the strike. Many were forced to seek out other kinds of employment, especially after being blacklisted by Tex-Son, barring them from working at other garment factories. By September 1960, ILGWU strikers began to fear that their leadership was giving up on them, which eventually came to fruition when two months later, the small benefit checks from ILGWU stopped entirely and Gonzalez and other union leaders pulled out of the strike entirely.  After appeals from people like County Commissioner Albert Peña Jr., the AFL-CIO office in Washington, D.C. agreed to continue to fund the remaining 80 women on the picket line. However, morale was already low and a few women complained that Gonzalez’s absence hurt the propaganda strategy. Others, however, complained that her leadership style and charges of opportunism hurt the strike from the very beginning. Ultimately, the strike lost its fervor due to continued violence perpetrated on the women and general distrust and lack of enthusiasm and financial support. By the end of 1962 the ILGWU pulled out of San Antonio altogether. On January 24, 1963, only eleven women were left on the last day at the picket line.

Black and white image of brewer workers supporting Tex-Son strikes
International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, Local 180 (San Antonio, TX) Records, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Tex-Son strike, Local 180, San Antonio, Texas. 1963. UTA Libraries Digital Gallery, https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/img/10007781. 

The consequences of an unsuccessful strike were clearly visible;  after the ILGWU pulled out of San Antonio, unionism in the city remained practically absent. Many factories began to mock Tex-Son’s strategy of outsourcing work to the Deep South and across the U.S.-Mexico border. However, the Tex-Son strike is an important episode in the history of ethnically Mexican women’s Cold War era strategies to gaining labor rights for themselves. Blending public and private spheres by challenging the public to support their fight as mothers making ends meet for their families, the women presented locals with a new idea of women’s roles in the realm of labor. The Tex-Son strike also served as a primer of sorts for Texas Chicano Movement activism in the late 60s and early 70s that began to appeal to Chicanas’ racial and ethnic identity and oppression, rather than solely on gender identity and motherhood.

In addition to the historical importance, the strike also connects with current issues such as the recent Mississippi ICE raids at a poultry processing plant. Many observers suggest that the workers were targeted specifically because they successfully unionized and won a law suit against Koch Foods for $3.75 million over sexual harassment, national origin and race discrimination, and retaliation against Latinx workers. Although there are obvious differences between these two events, there are some salient congruencies. Both involved gendered discrimination and discrimination based on race and ethnicity. More obvious though, is the constant threats of violence that Latinx workers face then and today and their vulnerable position in exploitative labor relations. The Tex-Son strike and the unionization of the Mississippi poultry plant both ended in victory and defeat causing families to be uprooted and the loss of important sources of income. The immigrants detained by ICE are facing some of the most horrid conditions in detention and the women of the Tex-Son strike were beaten and chastised on the picket line. As different as the consequences of each are, the women involved share unsatisfactory and even dangerous work conditions alongside gender, ethnic, and national origin discrimination.

Sixty years after the beginning of the Tex-Son strike, Latinx people in the U.S. are still a major source of cheap labor and a punching bag for anti-union and anti-immigrant sentiments. Fortunately, strong labor activist roots for Latinx peoples of all nationalities and races still remain at the core of obtaining equitable working conditions. The Tex-Son strike of 1959, among others throughout the hemisphere, should be remembered as a foundation and lesson for labor activists today as anti-immigrant rhetoric is spewed from the highest bodies of government here and abroad.

This article draws on the following sources:

Lori Flores, “An Unladylike Strike Fashionably Clothed: Mexicana and Anglo Women Garment Workers Against Tex-Son, 1959-1963. Pacific Historical Review. 78, no. 3 (August 2009), 367-402.

Irene Ledesma, “Texas Newspapers and Chicana Workers’ Activism, 1919-1974. Western Historical Quarterly, 27, no. 3 (1995), 309-331

Vicki Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America. 10th Anniversary Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

More from Micaela Valadez:

City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas by Andrew M. Busch (2017)
Dreaming with the Ancestors: Black Seminole Women in Texas and Mexico by Shirley Boteler Mock (2010)

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The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan. By Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci (2018)

In her first book, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci enters a longstanding conversation surrounding twentieth-century eugenics projects. Contraceptive Diplomacy adopts a transpacific approach to reproductive politics, focusing on joint Japanese-American efforts to curb population growth and maintain strong national bodies. Takeuchi-Demirci grounds her analysis in two women central to the movement: Margaret Sanger and Ishimoto Shizue. As she traces Japanese-American relations and birth control activism throughout the century, Takeuchi-Demirci finds that state governments’ racial fears and desire for international dominance eclipsed Sanger’s and Shizue’s feminist goals. Rather than provide women more control over their own reproduction, Japan and the United States harnessed eugenics discourse to demonstrate their cultural and scientific advances and reduce “undesirable” populations.

Takeuchi-Demirci begins by highlighting Sanger’s trip to Japan following World War I. Already infamous in the United States for her birth control activism, Sanger’s decision to move her work abroad allowed her to escape the frustrations she experienced in her domestic efforts. The Japanese government saw in Sanger’s call a way to resolve a host of social problems by limiting the population, while an active women’s movement, well aware of her work, welcomed Sanger as a fellow woman dedicated to reproductive rights. Moving from the post World War I moment to the tense years leading up to the Second World War,  Takeuchi-Demirci shows that Sanger and Shizue maintained a connection throughout the conflict, albeit with tensions, and reframed birth control as a way to obtain international peace by balancing the world order. Anti-Japanese feelings in the United States ultimately inspired an immigration ban. Fearing “The Yellow Peril,” the U.S. government became concerned that Japanese migrants, who supposedly reproduced at alarming rates, would overrun the white population. The U.S. government also blamed Japan’s “aggressive” imperialism on Japanese women’s robust fecundity. Around the same time, Sanger began to temper her radicalism and joined forces with eugenicists interested in population control. Despite the fact that these men wanted to promote reproduction in white women while reducing it among non-white, Sanger nevertheless saw the alliance as an opportunity to promote birth control as a benefit for women.

In U.S. occupied Japan after World War II, caution about population control following the Nazi genocide did not prevent the U.S. from promoting birth control behind the scenes or from claiming that these efforts were indigenous-led. In particular, Takeuchi-Demirci argues, the United States hoped reducing the population and enhancing its quality would defend against communist infiltration. When birth rates did in fact decline, the U.S. envisioned replicating their approach throughout Asia. Takeuchi-Demirci shows how the Japanese continued these efforts and linked them to “New Japan,” the empire’s more modern, progressive successor.  Sanger participated in these activities by pushing to develop new birth control technologies using Eastern countries, and people, as a testing ground. Japan hesitantly accepted this offer, but insisted on leading the project to mitigate any Western exploitation. The Japanese eventually lost interest in the population control movement as birth rates continued to fall, to the distress of the United States, which remained intent on preventing communism’s spread through modified populations.

Ishimoto Shizuko in 1922 (via Wiki Commons)

Contraceptive Diplomacy travels uncharted territory by investigating transpacific attempts to bolster state power through a combination of birth control and eugenics. Takeuchi-Demirci’s work reminds us that U.S. eugenics projects did not exist in isolation, but on the world stage during a century fraught with international conflict. In working together to promote population control, Japan and the United States actually competed to demonstrate their cultural and scientific superiority. Feminist-led initiatives became, as Takeuchi-Demirci calls it, “a tool for patriarchal control and world domination” (210). Born in an anti-imperialist and socialist climate during the first World War, birth control traveled in imperialistic ways to facilitate international diplomacy. Takeuchi-Demirci shows the different ways discourses can be manipulated to serve dominant desires, and how even those who initially resisted this co-option, such as Sanger, become complicit. While the argument that eugenics served state goals is not particularly new, Takeuchi-Demirci does shed light on previously ignored Japanese-American projects. Her work makes this scholarly oversight appear all the more glaring given Sanger’s extensive involvement with the Japanese government and women’s groups.

Not all of Takeuchi-Demirci’s goals are achieved, however. Her stated intention to trace her narrative through Sanger and Schizue does not materialize; in fact, Schizue seems confined to the first few chapters, before disappearing as Sanger steals the show. While the women’s understated presence may make sense in light of the state’s tightening control over birth control, Sanger’s continued appearance seems to privilege the Western activist. Nevertheless, Takeuchi-Demirci’s has produced a fine book, as well as a relevant one. Her epilogue notes continuing twenty-first century eugenics projects and renewed fears about non-white reproduction outstripping that of whites (one thinks, for example, of United States anxiety over supposed Mexican “anchor babies.”) Contraceptive Diplomacy will appeal to a wide variety of readers, including those interested in international relations, twentieth-century United States or Japanese history, gender history, and the history of medicine.

Kellianne King is a graduate student pursuing a dual-title in History and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. Her areas of interest include nineteenth and twentieth century United States history as well as the history of medicine and psychiatry.

Notes from the Field
The “Knock Knock Who Is There” Moment for Japan
Racing the Enemy

Confucian Patriarchy and the Allure of Communism in China

By Alan Roberts

Former flag of the communist part of China (via Wikipedia)

Despite a growing tolerance for socialism, “communism” is still a dirty word for most Americans.  Many point to Stalin’s Gulag, the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, and the repressive Kim dynasty in Korea as they preface the question how could communism ever appeal to anyone?  For each country, there are myriad answers to that question, but it is useful to consider the historical situation in each nation before they embraced communism.

In China, for instance, there were political, economic, and nationalistic reasons for the popularity of communism, but interestingly, Chairman Mao Zedong’s movement found broad popular support in part because of his explicit efforts to enforce gender equality.  It was he, after all, who proclaimed that “women hold up half the sky.”[1]  Compared with China’s Confucian patriarchal system that had oppressed women for so long, many saw this as a welcome change.  Nevertheless, part of what makes patriarchy so insidious is its ability to trick whole generations of people—including women—into propagating an oppressive system rather than overthrowing it.

Judith Bennett’s History Matters analyzes patriarchy in a medieval European context, but her theoretical claims could also be applied to pre-communist Chinese society in general, and Confucianism in particular.  Bennett points out that it is problematic to broadly assume that men alone are the perpetrators of patriarchy and that women are their passive victims.  While the institution of patriarchy certainly privileges the masculine over the feminine, Bennett also states that patriarchy has harmed individual men just as it has benefitted individual women.  Indeed, certain women have not only benefited from it, but have also served as active “agents of patriarchy.”[2]

Portrait of Confucius, painted by Wu Daozi, 685-7 58 (via Wikipedia)

Confucius lived circa 500 BCE, but it was not until the Han Dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE) that Confucianism became the official state ideology.  Since then, Confucianism was not simply a “main character” in Chinese society but also the stage, set, and scenery upon which the play of Chinese daily life unfolded.  Central to Confucian philosophy is the doctrine of filial piety.  This principle teaches that universal harmony is maintained when everyone shows proper respect to their elders because the organization of the family is a microcosm patterned after the organization of the state.  A filial son honors his father, but filial piety also articulates the rules of conduct between friends, elder and younger brothers, husbands and wives, subjects and emperors.  In this way, society is hierarchically structured with men ruling over women and the old ruling over the young, all the way from the lowliest peasant granddaughter to the imperial Son of Heaven.

At the apex of the Confucian philosophical pantheon sits Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi.  Writing almost four-hundred years after the fact, the Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang (79-8 BCE) compiled a biography of 125 women who each exemplified Han feminine virtues.  One of these women was the mother of Mencius, who, according to Liu, taught her son that a woman’s duties are to cook the five grains, heat the wine, look after her parents-in-law, make clothes, and that is all!  This means that a woman’s duty is not to control or to take charge.  Instead she must follow the ‘three submissions.’  When she is young, she must submit to her parents.  After her marriage, she must submit to her husband.  When she is widowed, she must submit to her son.  These are the rules of propriety.[3]

It is worth pointing out that although this quote is attributed to the mother of Mencius, it was actually written centuries later by a man whose intention was to reinforce the patriarchal order by projecting stereotypical female attitudes into the mouth of an authoritative woman whose own gravitas is enhanced by the respected tradition surrounding her son.  However, Liu Xiang laid the foundation for others to buttress the Confucian patriarchy.

Photo of He Zhen (via Wikipedia)

Almost a hundred years after Liu Xiang, Ban Zhao, China’s first female historian, wrote a book titled Admonitions for Women.  Her work condemns spousal abuse, but this text would certainly qualify Ban Zhao as one of Bennett’s “agents of patriarchy”:

On the third day after the birth of a girl…lay the baby below the bed [to] plainly indicate that she [is] lowly and humble and should regard it as a prime duty to submit to others…give her a spindle with which to play [signifying] that she should accustom herself to labor and consider it a prime duty to be industrious.  Let a woman modestly yield to others; let her put others first, herself last.  Should she do something good, let her not mention it; should she do something bad, let her not deny it.  Let her bear contempt; let her even endure when others speak or do evil to her.  Always let her seem to tremble and to fear.[4]

A thousand years later, Confucian patriarchy would intersect gender and class by adding foot binding to its repertoire of female suppression.  While women of the upper class suffered the debilitating pain and immobility of having bound feet, women of the lower classes without bound feet suffered socially from diminished marriage prospects and public humiliation.  However, prior to the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, bowing to society’s unrealistic beauty standards, all classes of Chinese women were binding their feet. Roughly half of all Chinese women had bound feet, although the percentage rose significantly among the upper classes.  Although many Chinese emperors and administrators tried to outlaw the practice, only the communists were successful at doing so because of their superior organizational tactics and relentless campaigning.[5]

In 1907, an expatriated Chinese woman named He Zhen published a series of articles on feminism and equal rights.  Although she preceded the Chinese Communist Party by over a decade, and although she was not widely read by the Chinese public, her essays did influence a number of important social agitators whose movements helped bring the Communist Party to power.  She begins her essay, “Women’s Revenge,” by outlining the patriarchal injustices that Chinese women have suffered.  She then asks “how did this poison fill the entire world?  It can be traced to the doctrines of Ban Zhao.”  She continues by labelling Ban a traitor to her sex, a dupe of Confucian misogyny, and a willing agent of patriarchy.[6]  He’s intention, however, is not simply to lay the axe at the root of patriarchal Confucianism, but to actively promote communism as the treatment for China’s nineteenth and twentieth century social ills.

In another essay, He declares that starvation is the strongest tool of sexual oppression in Chinese society.  By controlling the food (i.e. the products of labor), men control the labor of women.  He argues that just so they can eat, women generally fall into one of three categories: either they are slaves to their husbands; they work in factories for slave wages; or else they become prostitutes and enslave themselves to their pimps.  He proclaims that the problem for Confucian women is that they are dependent on others, and “as long as you depend on others, you cannot be free.  I have a good idea that will exempt you from relying on others while still finding food naturally.  How?  By practicing communism.”  Whether or not a twenty-first century Westerner agrees with He’s assessment, it should at least be understandable why so many oppressed Chinese women agreed with Mao and He that because women hold up half the sky, “if we only unite together, with [communism] we can naturally have a good future.  As we say colloquially, ‘the good times are coming.’”[7]

(Alan Roberts is an alumnus of the Defense Language Institute’s Chinese language program.  He is currently a graduate student in history at Utah State University where he is writing his Master’s thesis on performative elements of gender in Chinese Communist propaganda.)

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/world/asia/holding-up-half-the-sky.html?_r=0

[2] Judith Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 59.

[3] Xiang Liu, “Women’s Virtues and Vices,” in Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, 2nd Ed, ed. Patricia Buckley Ebrey (New York: The Free Press, 1981, 1993), 73.

[4] Zhao Ban, “Admonitions for Women,” in Sources of Chinese Tradition Volume 1, ed. Wm. Theodore De Bary and Irene Bloom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 821, 822.

[5] Louisa Lim, “Painful Memories for China’s Footbinding Survivors,” National Public Radio, March 19, 2007, accessed May 2, 2018, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8966942.

[6] Zhen He, “Women’s Revenge,” in Sources of Chinese Tradition Volume 2, ed. Wm. Theodore De Bary and Richard Lufrano (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 394.

[7] Zhen He, “What Women Should Know About Communism,” in Sources of Chinese Tradition Volume 2, ed. Wm. Theodore De Bary and Richard Lufrano (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 390-2.

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