Battles for Belonging

This book examines the ongoing negotiations involved within women’s disputes over inclusion and democracy from the 1940s through the 1960s in Colombia.

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Battles for Belonging: Women Journalists, Political Culture, and the Paradoxes of Inclusion in Colombia, 1943-1968 examines women journalists who conceived of their publications as political interventions in mid-twentieth-century Colombia. These journalists committed to shaping justice and opportunity for women in society through writing while battling within the publishing realm to also transform and professionalize the practice of journalism in their own terms. By analyzing the contentious narratives of gender and class these women crafted as well as their conflicting efforts to maintain their stature in the printing and public worlds, it reveals the ongoing negotiations involved within their disputes over inclusion and democracy in a country still finding its way to equality, peace, and stability between the 1940s and 1960s. This book challenges oversimplified portrayals of struggles for power that either glorify or vilify these historical processes by erasing the complexity of the political and social actors involved in them. It stresses the importance of women, but not to the expense of a balanced critique of their historical reality, actions, and endeavors. This is a history of complicated political manifestations and a redefinition of power struggles as multidirectional, intersectional, non-monolithic historical processes.