'From simple typist:' Women, public sector employment, and feminism in Mexico, 1920-1950

While scholars of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) have focused on peasants and factory workers, the social programming aimed at those groups led to the creation of yet another—office workers.  The expansion of paperwork, and the labor required to study, count, inspect, license, communicate, and file required specialization and the division of labor, and feminization of the work force.  Occupational segregation meant that women worked in low-wage jobs and had fewer opportunities for professionalization, especially prior to the 1930s.  Nevertheless, women who had begun working in government offices in the 1920s advanced to positions of some standing by the 1930s.  The collective experiences of a generation empowered women to mobilize around the issues of equal pay for equal work, respect for seniority in hiring and promotion, and safeguards for female autonomy and dignity inside and outside the work place.   

This essay examines the professional trajectory of Otilia Zambrano who “from simple typist,” as she declared rose to the position of Head of the National History Museum.  In 1939 she entered into a dispute over that position.  The conflict, and Zambrano’s work trajectory more generally, demonstrate how some women negotiated gender discrimination at work.  While historians have identified education and the Mexican Revolution as the primary source of the women’s movement, the essay tells a story less often told---how women’s work place experiences gave life to modern day Mexican feminism.  Zambrano’s story demonstrates how one woman’s acquisition of technical skills, literacy, and cultural capital, combined to inform her political action.