Teresa Healy here examines resistance within Mexican society during a period of sustained crisis at the regional and national level, as well as at the level of world order. She analyzes how working class men organized to fight for the recognition of their citizenship rights, how they defended those rights when faced with repression and economic restructuring and how they contested the terms of globalization as it wrested from them their masculine identity of 'worker-fathers'. Healy also demonstrates how these men battled employers and masculinized political power at every level within the state to maintain their livelihoods and resist the feminization of their work and their own identities. These were gendered struggles against globalizations as they were experienced and carried out by men. The volume uncovers the limits and possibilities of working class men and women in transforming the conditions in which they live and work, and highlights the diversity and rich political history of social movements in Mexico.
Gendered Struggles against Globalisation in Mexico
Biography
Dr Teresa Healy, Canadian Labour Congress, Canada
'...an innovating contribution to the literature on globalization. It successfully combines explanation of the broader political and economic factors in Mexico’s recent history with case studies of workers’ struggles at critical points in the introduction of change. The underlying theme is the erosion of traditional social relations without replacing them by an alternative sense of social cohesion.' Robert Cox, York University, Canada 'Healy gives us a new interpretation of workers’ struggles in twentieth-century Mexico. Using a gender analysis that focuses on hierarchies of masculinities to understand male workers’ resistance to union leaders, employers and the state, her approach is layered, provocative and fresh. This book is a must-read for students of Mexican history, labor, gender studies, and globalization.' Maria Lorena Cook, Cornell University, USA '...an important contribution to a critical understanding of restructuring in the auto industry in Mexico. Healy has created a new tool for feminist analysis by demonstrating how conflicts over history between different hierarchies of men served to undermine democracy in workers’ organizations and community groups, so that restructuring occurred at their expense. It is refreshing to observe this process in the voices and experiences of workers themselves.' Kathryn Kopinak, University of Western Ontario, Canada 'Teresa Healy's pioneering study...is a pivotal work because it investigates and seeks to explain the feminized nature of so much industrial production in the country - particularly on its northern border - in the era of NAFTA and free trade. In so doing, it exposes the truly cynical nature of capitalist restructuring in Mexico behind such anodyne slogans as commercial "liberalization"...it is an eye-opening introduction to the little-examined links between gender and economic change.' Latin American Review of Books 'The book's contribution to labour studies is that it offers three
