"Puerto Rican Women and Work: Bridges in Transnational Labor" is the only comprehensive study of the role of Puerto Rican women workers in the evolution of a transnational labor force in the twentieth century. This book examines Puerto Rican women workers, both in Puerto Rico and on the U.S. mainland. It contains a range of information--historical, ethnographic, and statistical. The contributors provide insights into the effects of migration and unionization on women's work, taking into account U.S. colonialism and globalization of capitalism throughout the century as well as the impact of Operation Bootstrap. The essays are arranged in chronological order to reveal the evolutionary nature of women's work and the fluctuations in migration, technology, and the economy. This one-of-a-kind collection will be a valuable resource for those interested in women's studies, ethnic studies, and Puerto Rican and Latino studies, as well as labor studies.

A comprehensive collection of interdisciplinary essays that traces the historical connections between women, work, and the different stages of capitalism in Puerto Rico

A survey of the topics in gender and history of Puerto Rican women. Organized chronologically and covering the 19th and 20th centuries, it deal with issues of slavery, emancipation, wage work, women and politics, women's suffrage, industrialization, migration and Puerto Rican women in New York.

In this revised and expanded second edition of The Puerto Rican Woman, Acosta-Belen has collected the most current interdisciplinary studies covering a variety of perspectives on the status of the Puerto Rican woman.

Sterilization remains one of the most popular forms of fertility control in the world, but it has received little acknowledgment for decreasing birthrates on account of its dubious use as a means of population control, especially in developing countries. In Matters of Choice, Iris Lopez presents a comprehensive analysis of the dichotomous views that have portrayed sterilization either as part of a coercive program of population control or as a means of voluntary, even liberating, fertility control by individual women. Drawing upon her twenty-five years of research on sterilized Puerto Rican women from five different families in Brooklyn, Lopez untangles the interplay between how women make fertility decisions and their social, economic, cultural, and historical constraints. Weaving together the voices of these women, she covers the history of sterilization and eugenics, societal pressures to have fewer children, a lack of adequate health care, patterns of gender inequality, and misinformation provided by doctors and family members. Lopez makes a stirring case for a model of reproductive freedom, taking readers beyond victim/agent debates to consider a broader definition of reproductive rights within a feminist anthropological context.

The postwar migration of Puerto Rican men and women to Chicago brought thousands of their children into city schools. These children's classroom experience continued the colonial project begun in their homeland, where American ideologies had dominated Puerto Rican education since the island became a US territory. Mirelsie Velázquez tells how Chicago's Puerto Ricans pursued their educational needs in a society that constantly reminded them of their status as second-class citizens. Communities organized a media culture that addressed their concerns while creating and affirming Puerto Rican identities. Education also offered women the only venue to exercise power, and they parlayed their positions to take lead roles in activist and political circles. In time, a politicized Puerto Rican community gave voice to a previously silenced group--and highlighted that colonialism does not end when immigrants live among their colonizers. A perceptive look at big-city community building, Puerto Rican Chicago reveals the links between justice in education and a people's claim to space in their new home.

The groundbreaking feminist and socialist writings of Puerto Rican author and activist Luisa Capetillo A Penguin Classic In 1915, Puerto Rican activist Luisa Capetillo was arrested and acquitted for being the first woman to wear men's trousers publicly. While this act of gender-nonconforming rebellion elevated her to feminist icon status in modern pop culture, it also overshadowed the significant contributions she made to the women's movement and anarchist labor movements of the early twentieth century--both in her native Puerto Rico and in the migrant labor belt in the eastern United States. With the volume A Nation of Women, Capetillo's socialist and feminist activism is given the spotlight it deserves with its inclusion of the first English translation of Capetillo's landmark Mi opinión sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer. Originally published in Spanish in 1911, Mi opinión is considered by many to be the first feminist treatise in Puerto Rico and one of the first in Latin America and the Caribbean. In concise prose, Capetillo advocates a workers' revolution, forcefully demanding an end to the exploitation and subordination of workers and women. Her essays challenge big business in favor of socialism, call for legalizing divorce and the acceptance of "free love" in relationships, and cover topics such as sexuality, mental and physical health, hygiene, spirituality, and nutrition. At once a sharp critique and a celebration of the gathering fervor of world politics, A Nation of Women embraces the humanistic thinking of the early twentieth century and envisions a world in which economic and social structures can be broken down, allowing both the worker and the woman to be free.