Discussing Women's Empowerment - Sida

96
CITIZENSHIP AND WOMEN IN MEXICO • DOMÍNGUEZ
point of contact. In addition, there was the context of a hegemonic partysystem,
authoritarian and repressive, where autonomous organizations
had little margin for action. The economic crises of the 1980s and 1994,
the rebirth of the citizen movement in 1988, the Zapatista uprising in 1994
together with the Zapatista women’s rebellion against their life situation,
their Revolutionary laws against poverty and the oppression of tradition,
transformed this context. Women’s organizations and other social movements
became active and, as a result of these new conditions, diversity and
heterogeneity was overcome in the form of new alliances, new ‘nodal
points’. Even the contradiction institutionalization – autonomy seemed to
be temporarily overcome through the Parliament of Women (where all
kinds of women’s groups tried to press for changes to discriminatory
laws). 10 Finally, Diversa tried to take the political initiative to attain certain
goals of the feminist movements and to change the old political culture
into something more democratic and respectful of diversity.
The new situation made many of the women’s groups and women activists
in all kind of groups aim to transform the Mexican political culture
through participation – defined as a social practice that wants to exert an
influence over the distribution and control of resources, mediated by the
state. This participation is part of the reactivation of an active democracy
in which individual citizens or groups claim their rights and express
their responsibilities vis-à-vis the institutions represented by the nation
state. However, even non-participants are aware of many of the problems
the participants want to solve. Although sometimes lacking the same kind
of experience and information possessed by the participants, non-participants
reflect on these problems and even see participation as part of the
solution, as we shall see through the empirical material.
If we define political culture as a set of beliefs, values and attitudes,
norms and practices through which the citizens relate to the state, to political
institutions and to government authorities (Massolo 1994:31), we see
that women in Mexico are fighting against an authoritarian political culture
born from the legitimacy of the Mexican revolution, based on the be-
10. This is not the case of Chiapas, where the political conflicts have polarized positions even
among women groups. Those who collaborate with the government in any way, the so called
‘’institutionalists’, are totally rejected by those of the ’autonomous’ movements, who oppose any
collaboration with official institutions. This contradiction arose since the opportunities to participate
in government policies opened in the 90s. This has created serious divisions concerning
goals, risks and strategies. For the ‘institutionalists’ (those willing to work with official-state
agencies, the goal is the feminization of the state, while the autonomous (those reluctant to
cooperate with such official agencies) regard this option as unrealistic. They point out the risk
of co-optation and mediatization of the movement and argue that can lose its long term goals
of changing not only the policies, but also the rules and the style of making politics. This conflict
can be reflected in the ‘NGOization’ of the movement, that is to say, as more NGOs are created
from previous social movements. (Alvarez 1998)