Battles for Belonging: Women Journalists, Political Culture, and the Paradoxes of Inclusion in Colombia, 1943-1970(Social Movements in the Americas)

Battles for Belonging: Women Journalists, Political Culture, and the Paradoxes of Inclusion in Colombia, 1943-1970 examines women journalists who conceived of their publications as political interventions in mid-twentieth-century Colombia. These journalists committed to shaping justice and opportunity for women in society through writing while battling within the publishing realm to also transform and professionalize the practice of journalism in their own terms. By analyzing the contentious narratives of gender and class these women crafted as well as their conflicting efforts to maintain their stature in the printing and public worlds, it reveals the ongoing negotiations involved within their disputes over inclusion and democracy in a country still finding its way to equality, peace, and stability between the 1940s and 1960s. This book challenges oversimplified portrayals of struggles for power that either glorify or vilify these historical processes by erasing the complexity of the political and social actors involved in them. It stresses the importance of women, but not to the expense of a balanced critique of their historical reality, actions, and endeavors. This is a history of paradoxical political manifestations and a redefinition of power struggles as multidirectional, intersectional, non-monolithic historical processes, from the viewpoint of women.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. Asserting Visibility: Women’s Interventions and Challenges to the Press World, 1943-1970 Chapter 2. Contesting the Rules of Journalism: Satirical Storytelling, Civic–minded Writing, and Image Making in Women’s Periodicals, 1943–1970 Chapter 3. New Work Opportunities and the Politics of Intra-class Difference in Agitación Femenina and Mireya, 1940s Chapter 4. Making a Class of Professional Women in Mundo Femenino, Verdad, and Mujer, 1950s–1960s Chapter 5. For a Different View of Middle Classness: Cosmopolitan National Identity in Mujer, 1961-1970

About the Author :
Sandra Sánchez López is associate professor in the School of Arts and Humanities at Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.

Review :
Battles of Belonging contributes to the historiography of women’s struggles and journalism in Latin America. For Colombia specialists, it offers an important revalorization of the women’s press and how it broadened the public sphere. It will also appeal to a broader audience interested in histories of gender, democracy, and the press. Immersed in women’s periodicals, personal archives, and interviews, Sánchez López offers a fascinating history of how women, in carving out journalistic spaces for themselves, transformed the public sphere in Colombia. With increased educational levels and growing workforce participation, women entered a male-dominated environment that remained largely concerned with partisan schisms. Through their persistence, women journalists established networks across the country, expanding women’s sphere, while at the same time shoring up a version of middle-class identity that portrayed itself as indispensable to Colombian society and development.