Learning from poor single women’s autonomous households in Mexico in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

ABSTRACT What is the ability of poor single women today to maintain an economically autonomous household? In the context of gender power relations, the literature often employs the concept of de-familialisation, which is the degree to which a woman is able to maintain an autonomous household without having to depend on a male breadwinner. Scholars argue that current welfare reforms deliberately aim at re-establishing the family as the primary source of economic security and encourage a traditional model of gender relations where women have to be dependent on male breadwinners. By reinstating the nuclear family as the primary source of economic security and a comprehensive alternative to the welfare state, women’s ability for agency and resistance becomes narrower and heavily limited by their inferior gender and class positions. Today, studies clearly indicate the problematic condition of poor women. It seems that without a massive reform in the labour market as well as welfare state expansion, de-familialisation among poor women will become almost impossible. In the current article, we explore the possibility that low-income women, whose common survival strategies are very limited, nonetheless could engage in alternative ways of providing for themselves and their children. We ask to learn from the experience of poor Mexican women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries about the ability of de-familialisation. Drawing on historical data, we argue that the formation of alternative household arrangements – sisterhoods – women-only households, enabled women to develop new family models and to maintain an extended household headed by women, without the need to depend on a male breadwinner. By learning from history, this article offers insights that may enhance poor women’s economic and social conditions today, and suggests that women’s joint power can resist traditional patterns of gender relations, even in times when conservative values are reemphasized.