Women's lives in colonial Quito ... - Google Books - 0 views
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Michelle Seidman on 21 Apr 10Gaudermann, Kimberly 2003 Women's Lives in Colonia Quito: Gender, Law, and Economy in Spanish America. Texas: University of Texas Press. "Women's Lives in Colonial Quito: Gender, Law and Economy in Spanish America" by Kimberly Gaudermann provides a very important historical perspective to my paper. This book discusses how domestic violence was handled in Quito, Ecuador in the seventeenth century. Women who reported instances of domestic abuse were able to charge their husband and bring him to court. The state empowered women through giving them the ability to punish their husbands if he hit them or mishandled their money or dowry property. The state's incentive in doing this was to control the money and property involved in marriages and to ensure that no one person had more power than the state and was able to 'play' them in anyway. This book is an extremely important aspect to my paper in answering the question of why domestic violence is not created as a problem in Latin America because it shows that domestic violence was not always ignored. Rather, during the seventeenth century the state was very involved in trying to prevent domestic violence and any man who committed this crime was punished. However this is not true today where domestic abuse is created as a cultural norm and the government does not do much to enforce prevention on this matter. I think this book is important because it creates another part to my paper that is not only historic but also develops questions for why the ideas toward domestic violence have changed in Latin America and how that affects women.