This book presents an overview of the varied experiences of women in colonial Spanish and Portuguese America. Beginning with the cultures that would produce the Latin American world, the book traces the effects of conquest, colonization, and settlement on colonial women. The book also examines the expectations, responsibilities, and limitations facing women in their varied roles, stressing the ways in which race, social status, occupation, and space altered women's social and economic realities.

‘… provides a well-informed, wide-ranging account of the varied roles of women in the colonial societies of Spanish America and Brazil.’

John Fisher Source: The English Historical Review

‘This is a thoroughly researched yet approachable introductory survey of the female experience in Latin America from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries.’

Source: The British Bulletin

‘This solid, unpretentious study is jargon-free and presented in a clear, readable style … The Women of Colonial Latin America is a compact and entertaining analysis of what is perhaps an understudied topic in a neglected period. Both the general reader and the interested historian will derive much pleasure and benefit from it.’

Source: Bulletin of Spanish Studies