History of women in Puerto Rico
|
||||||||||
| Total population | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (1,940,618 (females)) | ||||||||||
| Languages | ||||||||||
| Spanish and English | ||||||||||
| Religion | ||||||||||
| Protestant, Roman Catholic | ||||||||||
| Related ethnic groups | ||||||||||
| Europeans, Africans, Taínos, Criollos, Mestizos, Mulattos | ||||||||||
.jpg)
The history of women in Puerto Rico traces back its roots to the Taíno, the inhabitants of the island before the arrival of Spaniards. During the Spanish colonization the cultures and customs of the Taíno, Spanish, African and women from non-Hispanic countries blended into what became the culture and customs of Puerto Rico. Many women in Puerto Rico were Spanish subjects and were already active participants in the labor movement and in the agricultural economy of the island.
After Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in 1898 as a result of the Spanish–American War, women once again played an integral role in Puerto Rican society by contributing to the establishment of the state university of Puerto Rico, women's suffrage, women's rights, civil rights, and to the military of the United States.
During the period of industrialization of the 1950s, women in Puerto Rico took jobs in the needle industry, working as seamstresses in garment factories. Many Puerto Rican families also migrated to the United States in the 1950s, which included women. Currently, women in Puerto Rico have become active in the political and social landscape in the continental United States in addition to their own homeland, with many of them involved in fields that were once limited to the male population, as well as gaining influential roles as leaders in their fields.
Puerto Rico was inhabited by the Taíno, one of the Arawak peoples of South America, before the arrival of Spaniards. Taíno women cooked, tended to the needs of the family, their farms and harvested crops. According to "Ivonne Figueroa", editor of the "El Boriuca: cultural magazine, women who were mothers carried their babies on their backs on a padded board that was secured to the baby's forehead. Women did not dedicate themselves solely to cooking and the art of motherhood; many were also talented artists and made pots, grills, and griddles from river clay by rolling the clay into rope and then layering it to form or shape. Taíno women also carved drawings (petroglyphs) into stone or wood. According to an observation made by doctor Diego Alvarez Chanca, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage:
...
Wikipedia