The status of women in Mexico has changed significantly over time. Until the twentieth century, Mexico was an overwhelmingly rural country, with rural women 's status defined within the context of the family and local community.
With urbanization beginning in the sixteenth century, following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire , cities have provided economic and social opportunities not possible within rural villages. Roman Catholicism in Mexico has shaped societal attitudes about women's social role, emphasizing the role of women as nurturers of the family, with the Virgin Mary as a model.
Marianismo has been an ideal, with women's role as being within the family under the authority of men. In the twentieth century, Mexican women made great strides towards a more equal legal and social status. In women in Mexico were granted the right to vote in national elections.
Urban women in Mexico worked in factories, the earliest being the tobacco factories set up in major Mexican cities as part of the lucrative tobacco monopoly. Women ran a variety of enterprises in the colonial era, with the widows of elite businessmen continuing to run the family business. In the prehispanic and colonial periods, non-elite women were small-scale sellers in markets.
In the late nineteenth century, as Mexico allowed foreign investment in industrial enterprises, women found increased opportunities to work outside the home. Women can now be seen working in factories, portable food carts, and owning their own business. Mexican women face discrimination and at times harassment from the men exercising machismo against them.
