Sex and gender as raw political material: Local women negotiate globalization

In Mexico and around the world women face globalization processes and changing economies that they have little power to refuse. Yet, like other groups on the margins, women confront globalization and make local uses of it. Sex and gender are deeply implicated in globalization and are the raw political material in struggles for and against parity for women. In this introduction to the special volume of Sex Roles on Maya women's negotiating globalization, I discuss local ways that women draw on sex and gender to encounter economic transformations, to expand parity in the public and the domestic spheres, and to create a "we" solidarity across class and ethnic differences.