Women and markets: a problem in the assessment of sexual inequality
Peasant marketplaces have enjoyed a reputation as institutions that free women from the sexual discrimination and sexual inequality found in other social contexts. Mintz (1971) argues that market work places a premium on intelligence and decisiveness instead of heavy manual labor, and therefore that market trade tends to be dominated by women. Boserup (1970) has demonstrated that the portion of women in trade is higher than in other occupations in less developed economies. In Bolivia, market women are both geographically and socially mobile, using their trade activities to finance either urban residence or multiple residences (Buechler 1976). Waterbury's (1968) account of the strength of the Oaxacan market union (many of whose members were women) indicates that marketers could depose high government officials and influence policy decisions on a state level. In Haiti, Bolivia, or Mesoamerica, middlewomen appear to have attained an independence and equality which, Mintz (1971) suggests, our own society might emulate. He (Mintz 1971:268) concludes: MWho is more modern, more western, more developed: a barefoot and illiterate Yoruba market woman who daily risks her security and her capital in vigorous individual competition with others like herself; or a Smith College graduate who spends her days ferrying her husband to the Westport railroad station and her children to ballet classes?" Anthropologists with a less optimistic view of markets as arenas of feminine achievement have seldom directly compared men and women in a marketing context. Bossen's (1984) study of women's work in Guatemala unites storekeepers and market vendors in a common category of "commercial occupations." Bossen (1984:78, 358) notes that the must successful stores are those run co-operatively by both spouses, with individual women enjoying less success. Only one male in her study ran his business as an individual, making it difficult for her to isolate sex as opposed to the number of persons involved in the venture as a factor in success. Babb's (1985) study of petty commercial ventures in Huaraz, Peru, stresses the predominance of women in a sphere that she regards as dependent on uneven capitalist development and offering little autonomy to individual vendors. The primary interest in Babb's article is the marginality of the petty commercial sector in the development process, not issues of sexual disparity within that sector. While both these studies present a picture considerably less optimistic than does Mintz, their findings do not directly contradict his suggestions that marketing opens opportunities to women unavailable in other sectors of the economy. This article presents data from an urban Guatemalan marketplace that contradicts an image of market-based sexual equality. Most women sell goods that carry the highest risks, the lowest profits, and the least potential for amassing wealth. While Guatemalan market women are probably more
“Hard Working, Orderly Little Women”: Mayan Vendors and Marketplace Struggles in Early-Twentieth-Century Guatemala
During the first half of the twentieth century, Guatemala was dominated by two of Latin America's most repressive regimes: first that of Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898-1920) and then that of General Jorge Ubico (1931-44). Though the marketplace was one venue through which these dictators sought to impose their modernization programs of progress and order, criminal records abound with Mayan women disobeying market regulations and more generally disrupting the peace. Beyond putting the women's livelihoods at stake, these conflicts were also struggles over ethnic, gender, and state power. As such, marketplaces were critical both to elite efforts to mold the economy, society, and politics to their ideals and to Mayan efforts to carve out spaces of autonomy. At the same time, some Mayan women used the very institutions and laws that criminalized vendors' behavior to press for their own rights. Even though the state's structures were based on patriarchal and racist notions of authority, they offered Mayan women considerable space to contest male, ladino, and elite power.
Frank Must Marry Money: Men, Women, and Property in Trollope's Novels
There is a continuing debate about the extent to which women in the 19th century were involved in economic life. The paper uses a reading of a number of novels by the English author Anthony Trollop...