Anna Nieto-Gómez Quotes

In the middle class, the employment issue is social mobility, it's promotion, tenure. Women with Ph.D's don't want to be secretaries. The issue for the Chicana is just employment. "Give me a job. Give me a good-paying job. Let me have access to training." Again, pure class difference.

As minority women, the Chicanas have had to fight racism, sexism, and sexual racism. Racism oppresses the Chicana as a member of a Spanish speaking, culturally different, non-Anglo group in a society that values only one culture, and only one race as superior over all, the Anglo-Saxon race. The Chicana encounters sexism in a society that associates social and economic power, authority and superiority with male dominance and male control.

Here's the double standard: "If I have a meeting, you stay at the house and take care of the kids. If you have a meeting, have it at the house and take care of the kids at the same time." Male privilege is, "Let's fight for equal pay for me, and maybe later on for you." Male privilege sometimes makes the Chicano movement just like a male liberation movement.

the Chicana feminist has been cautioned to wait and fight her cause at a later time for fear of dividing the Chicano movement. Also it has been recommended that she melt into the melting pot of femaleness rather than divide the women's movement.

Because culture is a remnant which mirrors people's accumulative economic adaptations in history, the social-psychological roles of Mexican men and women are the products of the economic and class conditions of 300 years of oppression.

Differences between the philosophies of the "loyalists" and the "femenistas" have indeed been controversial ones. The loyalists do not recognize sexism as a legitimate issue in the Chicano movement. Femenistas see sexism as an integrated part of the Chicana's struggle in conjunction with her fight against racism.

It is therefore the philosophy of the Femenistas that in order for a movement to truly fight for justice for all its people (both men and women) must it also, from the beginning, identify and fight the economic oppression delivered through sexism as well as through racism. It is the double responsibility for both Chicanas and Chicanos to become politicized to the economic implications of sexism-sexist racism; otherwise, the issues of employment, welfare, and education as they pertain to the Chicana are not known and therefore ignored and not resolved.

The Chicana feminist culture is still in development. There are stories of "men's work" yet to tell: of men creating a cultural forum to challenge male roles. It is the story of the democratic challenge to the authoritarian values that depend on the sexual inequality of women and violence.

In order to establish themselves as a legitimate interest group or groups, the Chicana femenista has continually had to justify, clarify, and educate people in the political and philosophical issues of the Chicana woman. This has not been easy. They have acted at the cost of being called "vendidas" (sell-outs) among their own group, the Chicanos. At the same time the femenistas have had to pressure the women's movement with little or no solid backing from the Chicano movement. From 1968-1971 feminism was rejected by the Chicano movement as irrelevant and Anglo-inspired.

The popular image of Mexican woman is as somber-clad, long-suffering females praying in dimly-lit colonial churches. Church teachings have directed women to identify with the emotional suffering of the pure, passive bystander: the Virgin Mary.

When was the last time you heard Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan talk about welfare rights?

Articles from Chicana print media and the development and publication of oral histories played a vital role in the development of the Chicana studies curriculum. The Chicana press included Francisca Flores's Regeneración, a magazine published in Los Angeles; Chicana newspapers such as Hijas de Cuauhtémoc and Pepita Martinez's El Grito del Norte from New Mexico; and journals such as Encuentro Femenil, a Chicana feminist journal from Long Beach, and San Francisco's Dorinda Moreno's La Mestiza. In addition, there were special edition community newspapers from all parts of the nation.

In providing adequate health programs, Anglo women contend with the cruel prejudice doctors have towards women patients. Chicanas must also contend with doctor's racism, insensitivity to the Chicano culture and the lack of bilingual medical staff.

Harassment of femenistas forced many Chicanas to suppress their convictions. The term "women's libber," a stigmatizing label, was used as a social label assigned to those who spoke out for women's rights in the Chicano movement.

Oral history was an important method because it created a body of knowledge about different types of Chicanas. Oral histories of Chicana leaders and their organizations illustrated the diverse political ideas Chicanas had about social change.