This article was originally published in Luchadoras. Read it here.
The masculine narrative of history has insisted on downplaying the role of women in the student movement of ’68, although there is research that takes account of the machismo that prevailed within the movement. Gender inequality was evident in the allocation of the care roles, that fell to women and in cooking and cleaning the shared spaces which also fell to women. But testimonies gathered by Luchadores, through interviews with militants, show a greater level of diversity in the tasks women carried out. The participation of women in the student movement helped them develop organisational knowledge that would from part of the emergence of the feminist movement that was just about to explode.
According to Gabriela Cano, the 1968 student movement was the prelude to the flourishing second wave of Mexican feminism. Ana Lau Jaiven arrived in Mexico in 1970 and formed the first feminist groups: Women in Solidarity Action (MAS, 1971), National Women’s Movement (MNM, 1973), Women’s Liberation Movement (MLM, 1974), The Revolt Collective (1975), Mexican Feminist Movement (MFM, 1976), Women’s Collective (1976) and Feminist Struggle (1978).
