Women in the Mexican Revolution Term Paper

Female Revolutionaries on the political battleground provided women with power and respect in terms of their mental skills as well.

As seen above, women were able to operate on the basis of their accepted roles as caregivers and teachers in order to assume new, more unorthodox tasks for the purpose of the Revolution. The most radical and prominent departure from the traditional role of the Mexican woman was that of the female soldier. In contrast to the soldadera, the women joining the columnas volantes (flying columns), tended to masculinize themselves, completely departing from their traditional roles as women (Goetze). Known as soldados rasos (privates), they not only dressed like men, and endured the hardships of the battle field along with their male counterparts; they also acted like men. These women rode horses like men, endured long marches and fought with weapons. They also had the opportunity to distinguish themselves on the battle field and become military leaders. It was possible for a soldadera to join these ranks and give up her former feminine duties in favor of joining the men in battle. While the female soldiers generally emerged from higher social classes than the soldaderas, social class played a less important role in the Revolution than social change. Women often interchanged their roles between intellectual, soldadera, and female soldier to fill the needs as they saw them.

In conclusion, it is clear from the above that women played a very prominent and important role during the turbulent years of the Mexican Revolution. Even the Catholic groups in their counter-revolutionary effort made an impact in terms of the views and roles of women. Each woman in each group contributed a particular physical or mental strength to the ultimate effect of the revolution.In considering these various roles, a particular progression emerges in terms of the reinvention of women and their paradigms in Mexican society. The soldadera, for example, represents women reinventing themselves from the basis of their most traditionally imposed roles as housekeepers. From here, they earned respect not only as cooks and companions, but also as capable of enduring extreme physical hardship. This served as a basis for the acceptance of the extremely radical departure from femininity as manifested by the female soldiers. Having proved their capability as soldaderas it is possible that the stage was set for the acceptance not only as equals, but even as leaders, of female military personnel. The women who battled in the political arena on an intellectual level provided the most important basis for future efforts by women in Mexican society. While the physical hardship and duties of women in their military capacity therefore placed them on a level where physical weakness could no longer be ascribed to them, the political and counter-revolutionary movements provided women with respect in non-military life as well. In this way, women have undeniably reinvented themselves and forced the patriarchal regime and culture of their world to change for the better. This applies not only to Mexican women, but to all oppressed sectors of the society of the time.

Sources

Baxman, Cindy. "Border Revolution." May 15, 1998. http://history.acusd.edu/gen/projects/border/page01.html

Goetze, Diane. "Revolutionary Women: From Soldaderas to Commandandas." March 11, 1997. http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~geneve/zapwomen/goetze/enterpaper.html

Jandura, Tereza. "Women in the Mexican Revolution." 2006. http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/mcbride/ws200/mex-jand.htm.....