The Emergence of the Modern Mexican Woman is the first book in English on women's participation in the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) and the Mexican women's rights movement during this thirty-year period. The work is based on extensive research at libraries in Mexico and the United States and on the author's personal interviews with some of the few women alive today who participated in the revolution and with family members and friends of those who are deceased.
Shirlene Soto completes the history of the Mexican Revolution by introducing readers to the heroic women who risked their lives in a long and difficult struggle to attain freedom and equality. Revolutionary women set into play an irresistible momentum that culminated eventually in the attainment of suffrage for all Mexican women. In 1974, Mexico adopted the equivalent of the proposed U.S. Equal Rights Amendment. That same year the Civil Code was revised to give Mexican women equal rights and obligations in marriage and divorce. In 1975, Mexico assumed an international leadership role in women's rights by hosting the United Nations An~o Internacional de la Mujer (International Women's Year) meeting in Mexico City.
Despite these significant gains, serious socioeconomic inequalities persist in Mexico today and are waiting to be addressed by a new set of leaders among the ranks of Mexican women. The courageous revolutionary women who laid the groundwork for the emergence of the modern Mexican woman left a rich cultural heritage that challenges her to persevere in the struggle for equality.
