History of Women in El Salvador

Affluent Of A 20th Century Current

Abstract

History of Women is a field of research and production of historical knowledge that has been institutionalized and consolidated since the 1970s in Latin American, Anglo-Saxon and European latitudes. In El Salvador, the stabilization of this historiographic field is a work in progress. Based on a documentary review of texts from other geographic coordinates, and on the hemerographic analysis of studies that address the experience of Salvadoran women from a historiographic perspective, this article shows that local production in this field has grown in recent years. This is despite the challenge that the category of gender has implied for the Salvadoran fields of History and Social Sciences. Local production on and from women addresses diverse topics, oriented to the rescue of notable figures, to the analysis of their participation in sociopolitical movements and mobilizations, and to the study of their contributions in areas such as political participation, civil war, education, work, and violence. However, the problematization of their life circumstances, framed within the field of women’s history, is a recent issue. This article aims to contribute to the consolidation of the field of women’s history in El Salvador, and to emphasize its importance for the writing of national history. The innovation of research questions on the lives and circumstances of women implies analyzing the power and gen- der relations that construct us, to produce historiographies that offer readings of the past as tools to understand the present.