TY - BOOK AU - Gauderman,Kimberly TI - Women's Lives in Colonial Quito: Gender, Law, and Economy in Spanish America SN - 9780292797598 AV - HQ1560.Q58 G38 2003eb U1 - 305.4/09866/13 21 PY - 2021///] CY - Austin : PB - University of Texas Press, KW - Women KW - Ecuador KW - Quito KW - Economic conditions KW - History KW - Women's rights KW - HISTORY / General KW - bisacsh N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; PREFACE Nothing Stays the Same: One City, Two Women --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction: Putting Women in Their Place --; CHAPTER 1 Ambiguous Authority, Contingent Relations: The Nature of Power in Seventeenth-Century Spanish America --; CHAPTER 2 Married Women and Property Rights --; CHAPTER 3 Women and the Criminal Justice System --; CHAPTER 4 Women as Entrepreneurs --; CHAPTER 5 Indigenous Market Women --; CHAPTER 6 Conclusion --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index; restricted access N2 - What did it mean to be a woman in colonial Spanish America? Given the many advances in women's rights since the nineteenth century, we might assume that colonial women had few rights and were fully subordinated to male authority in the family and in society—but we'd be wrong. In this provocative study, Kimberly Gauderman undermines the long-accepted patriarchal model of colonial society by uncovering the active participation of indigenous, mestiza, and Spanish women of all social classes in many aspects of civil life in seventeenth-century Quito. Gauderman draws on records of criminal and civil proceedings, notarial records, and city council records to reveal women's use of legal and extra-legal means to achieve personal and economic goals; their often successful attempts to confront men's physical violence, adultery, lack of financial support, and broken promises of marriage; women's control over property; and their participation in the local, interregional, and international economies. This research clearly demonstrates that authority in colonial society was less hierarchical and more decentralized than the patriarchal model suggests, which gave women substantial control over economic and social resources UR - https://doi.org/10.7560/705555 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780292797598 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780292797598/original ER -