Gender

Abstract

In Latin American cities low-income women work, not only in their homes and in the factories, but also in their neighbourhood communities. Along with men and children they are involved in residential level mobilization and struggle over issues of collective consumption. The inadequate provision by the state of housing and local services over past decades has resulted increasingly in open confrontation as ordinary people organize themselves to acquire land through invasion, or put direct pressure on the state to allocate resources for the basic infrastructure required for survival.