Gender and Sociopolitical Change in Twentieth-Century Latin America
I N recent years gender has emerged as a subject of historical inquiry. It is a complex term, one not susceptible to a single, facile definition. In a pathbreaking article, Joan Scott offered a multifaceted explanation of gender. In the first part of her definition, she viewed it as "a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes." This element, in turn, rests on four others: "symbolic representations" of these differences; "normative concepts" interpreting these symbols; institutions that help determine the social relations between men and women; and the ways in which people subjectively create their own identities. Scott tied this first part of her explanation to another that is "interrelated but must be analytically distinct" that gender also is "a primary way of signifying relationships of power." She perceptively noted that "this part of the definition might seem to belong in the normative section of the argument, yet it does not, for concepts of power, though they may build on gender, are not always literally about gender itself"' Seen in this light, gendered rhetoric and policies can symbolize and express important facets of the desired political