ABSTRACT
Popular women's organizations, then, represent a struggle operating at many levels, crossing many false divisions set up in the Western philosophical tradition between "private" and "public". Challenges to power relations give meaning to and stem from the making of a collective identity. This chapter shows how power relations are manifested in the everyday sphere and how women have chosen to organize around their reproductive activities in collective neighborhood-based organizations. It is through the collectivization of reproductive work, at the neighborhood level, that women have become further politicized on issues pertaining to gender identity and subjectivity. The move toward autonomy has been key in shaping feminist frameworks and political strategies. The emergence of grass-roots women's organizations in Latin America has been analyzed in various terms, stemming from several points of departure. The struggle of women, then, is not only a struggle to address their reproductive work and gender/class relations.
