Week 5: Women and Nation

The imagined roles of women were, practically, not that different in the struggles for Independence and the New Republics. They rest on the idea of “republican motherhood” that Chambers refers to in her article. During the civil wars for independence, women were asked to have very different practical roles in order to help the cause of republicanism and independence. This was not seen as necessarily ideological, but stemmed from the woman’s role as the protector of domesticity. Men were able to frame the supplementary, independence-driven actions of women as an extension of the domestic sphere. If the men were the legal and social powers in the households, and women therefore followed their lead, by doing tasks and activities that were very much outside of the traditional domestic realm, they were still acting solely in defense of the domestic sphere. This way, the men were able to force women back into their usual domestic roles after the New Republics were formed. Since they were back to a state of stability, women needed to return to their roles so that men could protect the stability of the nation — which women could easily disrupt if they were allowed to continue to participate in public spheres.

However, as we saw in the articles for Tuesday, the way that women assigned themselves roles, in a real and practical way, were not necessarily in line with domestic defense that men had “entrusted” women with. In the story of Vicenta Ochoa, women were able to use the guise of their sole role as mothers and wives, to enter the public sphere in a small, but meaningful way, and ultimately were the first, big proponents of the outlawing of capital punishment. Since a woman had the “special privilege” of reproduction, by giving expectant Vicenta the death penalty, the state was depriving her of serving the future of the state. Women were able to use this logic to advocate for a simple expression of their rights, which had not been legally or constitutionally established. Women across many social groups could participate in this exercise.

While the approach Manuela Sáenz took was less egalitarian in terms of the types of women who could participate, she was successful in framing a whole new role for women in the New Republic. That of an impartial confidant and mediator. Upper-class, more learned women could participate politically, but not in the public political sphere. This allowed women to work within the existing system, and advocate for themselves and causes, but without the male pretense of vying for a promotion or self-advancement.