Teresita de Barbieri

Teresita de Barbieri García (Montevideo, October 2, 1937 – Mexico City, January 21, 2018), was an Uruguayan feminist sociologist, academic, and researcher based in Mexico. A researcher in social sciences and gender studies, she was a pioneer in research on the condition of women in Latin America from the Institute of Social Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). A socialist militant, she survived the 1973 Chilean coup d'état and went into exile in Mexico where she developed her research career. A sociologist at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), she researched the daily life of women, the Latin American feminist movement, reproductive health, secularism and, in particular, population and development. She wrote articles for various newspapers and magazines, including Fem magazine and the "La Doble Jornada supplement" of La Jornada newspaper, as well as for Cimacnoticias (CIMAC).

Early life and education
Martha Teresita de Barbieri García was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. While her parents and siblings lived in Colonia, she lived at her grandmother's house in the capital between the ages of two and six because of her health problems with tuberculosis. At the age of six, she returned with her parents to Colonia where she completed her elementary school studies. She began her university education at the University of the Republic (UDELAR). Her first studies were in Law and Art History. At the age of 21, she entered the School of Social Work from which she graduated as a Social Worker. She also began to be politically active in socialism. She traveled several times to Cuba, in 1959, during the Cuban Revolution.

She came to sociology through a seminar in the Faculty of Humanities on sociological research. In 1968, she moved to Santiago de Chile to begin a Master's in Sociology at FLACSO. In 1972, she published her master's thesis entitled: El acceso de la mujer a las carreras y ocupaciones tecnológicas de nivel medio (Santiago de Chile, 1972).

Career and research
Among her first research work on women was a UNESCO project in Chile to evaluate a secondary education program for women: she chose schools for girls in Valparaíso, Talca, and Valdivia. Then she discovered – Barbieri explained in an interview at CIMAC – that there was almost no bibliography "that had to do with women or the female sex"; she reflected on the fact that women had to assume all the work of domestic burden, child care, and so forth. She resided in Chile during the government of Salvador Allende and, after the coup d'état, she went to Buenos Aires, and a month later, she traveled with her family to Mexico, where she settled in 1973.

In Mexico, she initiated contact with feminist movement leaders such as Lourdes Arizpe, Marta Lamas, Antonieta Rascón, and Carmen Lugo. In 1979, Barbieri began to contribute to Fem, a feminist magazine founded by Alaíde Foppa in 1976.

On the occasion of International Women's Year (1975), Barbieri produced a document requested by United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) on the social participation of women in Latin America. Together with the document prepared by Barbieri, four or five other documents were published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica under the title: Mujeres en América Latina. Aportes para una discusión (1975).

After being a research assistant in the Social Development Division of ECLAC, she began working with Raúl Benítez Zenteno at UNAM's Institute of Social Research in the areas of Sociology of Population and Demography. She was a professor at UNAM for more than 33 years. In addition to ECLAC, she was a consultant for other international organizations such as the ILO and UNICEF.

Research on the gender category
Barbieri's research includes theoretical and methodological questions on gender, in which she analyzed and systematized knowledge on social differentiation based on the social constructions that organize and determine human beings as sexed beings.

Barbieri's commitment to study these systems of social action and the meaning of action in relation to sexuality and reproduction was of a category, she said, that leaves open the possibility of the existence of different forms of relationship between women and men, between the feminine and the masculine. She also pointed out that gender problems are present in all of society and that, therefore, it is the responsibility of men and women deputies to introduce gender problems in all issues and in all areas of the Chamber of Deputies. She recommended to the legislators "not to make the language of gender vindication a heavy language that, after using it so much, repeating it and always being with the same thing, becomes boring, tiresome and generates rejection". In her document entitled Relaciones de Género en el Trabajo Parlamentario, she stated it was necessary to use imagination, to consult a thesaurus, to try to lighten and change the language.

Barbieri's research covered a variety of areas, including peasant and working women, domestic work and daily life, population policies, reproductive and health rights, gender, spheres and spheres of action. Her most recent work focused on women's participation in the state sphere.

Awards and honours

 * 2006. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Recognition awarded by UNAM
 * 2012. Honored by UNAM's Institute of Social Researchfor "sowing the foundations of gender studies in Mexico" in the framework of International Women's Day.
 * Recognition by FLACSO in Chile as an "illustrious personage".

Books

 * El acceso de las mujeres a las carreras y ocupaciones tecnológicas de nivel medio. Santiago, ELAS-Unesco. (1972)
 * Las unidades agrícolas industriales para la mujer campesina en México Geneva, International Labor Organization (1983).

Articles

 * "La mujer obrera chilena: una aproximación a su studio". With Lucía Ribeiro, Cuadernos de la realidad nacional, 16, (1973), pp. 167-201.
 * "El trabajo doméstico entre obreras y esposas de obreros". México, UNAM-Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Mimeo, (1980).
 * "Políticas de población y la mujer: antecedentes para su estudio", Revista mexicana de sociología, vol. 45, (1983), no. 1, pp. 293-308.
 * "Las mujeres, menos madres: control de la natalidad: ¿control de la mujer?", Nueva Sociedad, 75, (1985), pp. 105-113.
 * "Sobre la categoría de género: una introducción teórico-metodológica", Debates en Sociología, 18, (1993), pp. 145-169.
 * "Geschlechterverhältnis zwischen Modernisierung und Krise", with Marianne Braig, Mexiko heute. Frankfurt, Vervuert, (1996), pp. 388-408.
 * "Los ámbitos de acción de las mujeres", Narda Henríquez (ed.). Encrucijadas del saber: los estudios de género en las ciencias sociales. Lima, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, (1996), pp. 107-132.
 * "Los ámbitos de acción de las mujeres", Marianne Braig, Ursula Ferdinand, Martha Zapata (eds.). Begegnungen und Einmischungen: Festschrift für Renate Rott zum 60. Geburstag. Stuttgart, Heinz, (1997), pp. 213-233.
 * "Cambio sociodemográfico, políticas de población y derechos reproductivos en México", Adriana Ortiz-Ortega (comp.). Derechos reproductivos de las mujeres: un debate sobre justicia social en México. México, Edamex, (1999), pp. 101-145.
 * "Una mirada desde el género a las comisiones legislativas", Revista Cimacnoticias, 9, no. 29 (2003)
 * "Más de tres décadas de los estudios de género en América Latina", Revista Mexicana de Sociología, 66. (October, 2004): pp. 197-214
 * "Público, doméstico y privado en la Cámara de Diputados.", Imágenes de la familia en el cambio de siglo: universo familiar y procesos demográficos contemporáneos, coordinated by Marina Ariza & Orlandina de Oliveira. México: UNAM-Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, 2004.