Protestant Women and Political Activism in Mexico, 1900-1955

FAIN: FT-270371-20

Kathleen Mary McIntyre
University of Rhode Island (Kingston, RI 02881-1967)

Research leading to a book on the political life of Protestant women in Mexico during and after the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1955.

My project examines how Protestant women conceptualized citizenship after the 1910 Mexican Revolution. I explore the interrelated themes of educational reform, sports culture, temperance, suffrage, and transnational women’s rights, as well as relations between Protestant and Catholic women. Through suffrage clubs, civic education, pan-Americanism, and temperance organizations, women contested the view that political activism was inappropriate to their sex or religion. Protestants tapped into ideas about revolutionary citizenship as they ran schools, planned evangelization events, and influenced government policy. Using their shifting relationship with the state to drive feminist issues, they carved out new roles within their families, churches, political parties and transnational organizations. Bridging the fields of women’s studies, religious studies, and history, this is the first historical work to focus on Protestant women and state formation in post-revolutionary Mexico.