p1934 -
Gender and Economic Development: Women, Consumption, and the Mexican Miracle
Nichole Sanders
Lynchburg College
The “Mexican Miracle,” a period between roughly 1940 and 1970, has been characterized by historians and political scientists alike as remarkable both for its political stability, under the aegis of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and it enviable growth rates of almost 6% per annum. Scholars in the 1960s and early 1970s saw the economic growth and political dominance of the PRI as a success story. Later historians have problematized the manner in which this political stability and economic growth was achieved. Historians have just now begun to look at the role gender has played in creating this economic “miracle.”
This paper will examine the economic models and development theories championed by both Mexican economists as well as international banks and development agencies to argue that that these models were gendered in ways that contemporary economists rarely acknowledged, and that this lack of acknowledgement had implications for the way Mexico’s economy developed and subsequently crashed by 1980. This paper will build on the work of historians like Julio Moreno and Susan Gauss to show how models like Import Substitution Industrialization were predicated on women’s consumption. I will also look at women’s magazines to showcase what types of consumption were privileged by this model and what that meant for future economic development.