From Domestic women to caregivers of the nation: state imaginaries of posrevolutionary Mexico

Abstract

In this article, I make the case that women have been represented as subjects attached to the domestic sphere and as caregivers of the nation. This history of representation has been persistent throughout colonial history, the independent period of the Mexican Republic, and even transcended the revolutionary period. Here I analyze and discuss existing sociological and historical literature on ideas about women, family and nation. I argue that ideas of “good” women were first supported by colonial institutions, and later by state institutions. Ever since the colonial era, images of domestic women and, afterwards, of caregivers of the nation, have recreated sexist, racist and classist logics. I then argue that the same images of women have subsequently served modern state institutions as biopolitics to establish which groups did and did not conform to the idealized nation.