Mothers of The Plaza de Mayo - The Mothers' Movement and Other Social Movements

The Mothers' Movement and Other Social Movements

Furthermore, it maintained a sense of a feminist movement that is in contrast with some traditional understandings of the feminist movement in other countries. Some consider the feminist movement to represent the need for women to move into the roles of society traditionally occupied by men. The Mothers and Grandmothers, however, aided in the expansion of the feminist movement to embrace the values of motherhood. The traditional role of the woman in Argentina was in the household. She was the mother: the nurturer, the protector, the educator of the family and the children. As the Mothers came together in the Plaza de Mayo they were moving their role into the public eye. The women took responsibility for dealing with their grief by taking any actions they could. Women began to gain experience in organizing and political processes. However, the group was not interested in "challenging the gender system and the sexual division of labor, the … were committed to the preservation of life; and they demanded the right as "traditional" women to secure the survival of their families" (Arditti 80). As Rita Arditti says in her book: "In…, the Mothers were creating a new form of political participation, outside the traditional party structures and based on the values of love and caring. Motherhood allowed them to build a bond and shape a movement without men" (Arditti 80). Men were quietly involved in support of the movement. Their quiet support further allowed the women to move into the public arena. Through this process, the women "transformed themselves from ‘traditional’ women defined by their relationships with men (mothers, wives, daughters) into public protesters working on behalf of the whole society" (Arditti 97).

Not only did the Mothers and Grandmothers, somewhat inadvertently, participate in what some would call a feminist movement, the Mothers and Grandmothers also received support received from groups across the world fighting for social justice. This helped transform the actions of the Mothers and Grandmothers working to search for their lost family into a broader fight against human rights violations. In Rita Arditti's "Searching For Life" she quotes a woman, Nélida de Navajas: "One of the most beautiful things that came out of my work with the Grandmothers was learning that there was so much interest and solidarity from people in other parts of the world. It was an extraordinarily positive experience. We have had support from the women's movement, from the CHA, even the transsexual groups" (Arditti 93). The implications of the actions of the Mothers extend beyond the need for the Mothers to find their lost children. It has since been revealed that many of the children who were kidnapped that survived were given to and raised by military families within the government. The Mothers and Grandmothers were acting in response to their need to find their children. However, when the truth about the family history of these adopted children becomes public, many of these children were devastated that their past was not what they thought it was.