Silent Looms

In her book Silent Looms: Women and Production in a Guatemalan Town Tracy Bachrach Ehlers captures the paradox of gender relations in a society that accords power and authority to men yet leaves the major burden of child care and economic maintenance of the family to women. Most monographs on Maya populations have either ignored women's contributions to the indigenous economy or when they have included women's work have ignored the contradiction between patriarchal ideology and observed behavior that is increasingly sharpened by the political and economic transformations taking place.