Las Mujeres de Hispanoamérica

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Theda Perdue

Theda Perdue examines the roles and responsibilities of Cherokee women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time of intense cultural change. While building on the research of earlier historians, she develops a uniquely complex view of the effects of contact on Native gender relations, arguing that Cherokee conceptions of gender persisted long after contact. Maintaining traditional gender roles actually allowed Cherokee women and men to adapt to new circumstances and adopt new industries and practices. - Publisher.

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Barbara Mutch

When Cathleen Harrington leaves her home in Ireland in 1919 to travel to South Africa, she knows that she does not love the man she is to marry there -- her fiance Edward, whom she has not seen for five years. Isolated and estranged in a small town in the harsh Karoo desert, her only real companions are her diary and her housemaid, Miriam and later Miriam's daughter, Ada. When Ada is born, Cathleen recognizes in her someone she can love and respond to in a way that she cannot with her own family. Under Cathleen's tutelage, Ada grows into an accomplished pianist and a reader who cannot resist turning the pages of the diary, discovering the secrets Cathleen sought to hide. As they grow closer, Ada sees new possibilities in front of her -- a new horizon. But in one night, everything changes, and Cathleen comes home from a trip to find that Ada has disappeared, scorned by her own community. Cathleen must make a choice: should she conform to society, or search for the girl who has become closer to her than her own daughter?

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Elsbeth Locher-Scholten

"This book deals with the ambiguous relationship between Indonesian and European women and the colonial state in the former Netherlands Indies (or Dutch East Indies) between 1900 and 1942. How did women of different racial backgrounds relate to each other and to 'the colonial project'? How did the colonial state address women's issues? What were the constructions of gender which dominated the discourse on these issues?" "The content is based on new data from a variety of sources, such as censuses, colonial archives, rural labour reports, household manuals, children's fiction and Indonesian press surveys. An introductory essay combines the outcomes of the case studies and relates those to ongoing debates within the history of colonialism. The book thus provides the reader with new insights in the social dynamics of colonial society and politics in relation to gender."--Jacket.

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Caroline Sweetman

The UN Human Rights Conference in 1993 proclaimed that 'Women's rights are human rights'. This book in the Focus on Gender series explores issues of women's rights including the legal background and history of human rights legislation, the special human-rights problems of women in situations of conflict or as refugees, violence against women as a human-rights violation, women's rights as workers, the rights of disabled women, and the importance of providing information and training to enable women to claim their rights. Focusing on women's rights involves the recognition that, throughout the world, legal systems to guarantee rights have their roots in cultures which discriminate against women. Development and human rights are closely linked, and the empowerment of women to claim the human rights to which they are entitled will enable them to take full advantage of development processes.