The Long March Of Feminism
“Much thinking on the left still relied on traditional definitions of public and private spheres, blinding it to the fact that the so-called private sphere was also a political space. And, because many on the left identified democracy exclusively as ‘bourgeois democracy,’ they overlooked the importance of women in the grassroots activism that was taking place outside traditional political organizations…. By the late 1970s, many Latin American women on the left had reached the conclusion that feminism was not another bourgeois deviation but had something powerful to contribute to revolutionary thinking.
A 1980 NACLA report entitled ‘Latin American Women: One Myth—Many Realities’ reflected this change. The report dealt with issues like abortion, women’s political participation and women in the work force. It criticized the fact that women had not been considered participants in history, noting that ‘until recently, the subject of women has not been considered sufficiently interesting to warrant categorical reference in Latin American history books.’ Yet, ‘prior NACLA work has done little to correct this tendency,’ reads the report’s editorial, acknowledging NACLA’s own sins of omission. ‘We, too, often fall into the common practice of generalizing male experience to cover all people instead of acknowledging that certain conditions affect women differently.’”
