Guatemalan women

Women in eastern Guatemala face everyday fear and injustice that constitute forms of violence that are NOT directly related to the widespread political violence, drug trade and gang-related violence, and killing of women in Guatemala.

This was the argument of Arizona State University’s Cecilia Menjivar (pictured above), who made a presentation at this weekend’s American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Las Vegas. Guatemalans generally accept these forms of violence – they are “normalized.”

Professor Menjivar gave three examples of these forms of violence:
-A women tried to give birth to her third child in secret, because she was afraid her alcoholic husband would leave her if she gave birth to a third girl. The woman was relieved when the baby turned out be a boy.
-A woman described it as “torture” when she had no beans to feed her children.
-Women with semi-professional jobs reported how their husbands – sometimes cooperating with other family members – sharply regulated their ability to go out – timing their trips between work and home and forbidding them from spending the night at their parents’ house – ostensibly to protect their wives’ – and their families’ – reputations. This points – at least potentially – to the power of gossip as a means of keeping an eye on women and restricting their movement.

Menjivar studied Ladina women in an eastern Guatemalan town she did not name for five years. The results were included in a book published this past spring: Enduring Violence: Ladina Women’s Lives in Guatemala (pictured below. More information is available at: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520267671

- Perry