Susie-Shannon PORTER

In 1917 Mexico produced a new constitution, one that guaranteed unprecedented rights for working women and mothers. Article 123, section A, fraction V, guarantees: obligatory maternity leave at full salary for six weeks before delivery and six weeks after it; and, upon return to work, two extra breaks per day, of half an hour each, to nurse the newborn child. And yet today studies find that women with children are 40% less likely to be employed and will earn 36% less than fathers. (Mexico is not unique: in the United States, for example, mothers earn 58 for every dollar earned by fathers.) Such factors contribute to the stagnation of women’s workforce participation (40-45% of women over the age of 15) and, perhaps more importantly, occupational segregation and a 34.4% wage gap. The present study examines the history of women’s struggle for respect of their constitutional right to protection against pregnancy and maternity discrimination. The study begins with the struggles of individual women against unjustified firing for becoming pregnant and the sexual harassment that accompanied pregnancy discrimination during the 1920s. As women’s collective consciousness increased, they contributed to growing public conversations about pregnancy and maternity discrimination, took their grievances to courts and to the streets, and contributed to legislation to bolster the protection of women’s rights in the face of pregnancy discrimination and sexual discrimination in the workplace.

Susie S. Porter was born and raised in California, United States. Porter received her B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley and her PhD at the University of California, San Diego. Professor of History and Gender Studies at the University of Utah, Porter is the author of two award-winning books: Workingwomen in Mexico City (University of Arizona Press, 2003); and, From Angel to Office Worker (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). Spanish-language versions of both books were published by El Colegio de Michoacán press (2008 and 2020, respectively). Porter is co-editor of two volumes: Orden social e identidad de género. México siglos XIX y XX, with María Teresa Fernández Aceves and Carmen Ramos Escandón (CIESAS/ Universidad de Guadalajara, 2006); and, Género en la encrucijada de la historia social y cultural, with María Teresa Fernández Aceves (CIESAS/ El Colegio de Michoacán, 2015). She was designated Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at the University of Utah (2019) and Presidential Societal Impact Scholar (2022). Porter serves as a country-conditions expert for asylum cases, was a founders of the Westside Leadership Institute (Spanish-language version) and works as an organizer with the Salt Lake City Latine community.

PORTER, Susie. From Angel to Office Worker: Middle-Class Identity and Female Consciousness in Mexico, 1890-1950, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.

PORTER, Susie. Workingwomen in Mexico City: public discourses and material conditions, 1879-1931, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003.

PORTER, Susie. “Gender, race, and the evolution of middle-class identity in the Mexico City press, 1820-1900,” in The Latin American Middle Classes, Claudia Stern, Mario Barbosa Cruz, and Ricardo López, eds. Routledge Press, 2022, pp. 82-99.

PORTER, Susie. “Hacia una historia del acoso sexual en el ámbito laboral, ciudad de México, 1920-1950,” Korpus21, vol. 2, no. 4, 2022, pp. 117-132.

PORTER, Susie. “National Politics, Intimate Labor: The Work to Sustain Middle-Class Households in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma,” in Latin American History at the Movies, second edition, Donald F. Steven ed., Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Books, 2022, pp. 213- 233.