Histories of Women’s Reproduction in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Transition from Colony to Independence (1810–Present Day)

The hierarchies and structures of power shaping the colonial period did not simply evaporate when Latin American countries gained independence beginning in the early nineteenth century. Instead, they continued to shape women’s reproductive lives in meaningful ways through the twentieth century. Evolving renditions of patriarchy continued to shape liberal states across independent Latin America, as editors Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux illustrate in Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America. Their study addresses women’s reproduction in chapters that also discuss the “modernization of patriarchy” in Latin America and the Caribbean.