Contact: Carmen Ramos Chandler,
(818) 677-2130
carmen.chandler@ csun.edu

Professor's Book Explores the Political Impact
of Los Angeles' Mexican American Women

Cal State Northridge professor Mary S. Pardo's new book, Mexican American Women Activists, takes a look at women from two different Los Angeles neighborhoods and how they changed their communities.

"These women, for me, really broke the stereotype that people hold about women who are working class, live on the east side of Los Angeles, and maybe have less than or only a high school education," said Pardo, who has taught Chicano/Chicana Studies at Northridge for 20 years. "The image was that that type of woman is not an active political player. But the women I met were-they changed their neighborhoods."

In Mexican American Women Activists, Pardo focuses on women in two contiguous but very different communities-the working-class, inner-city neighborhood of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles and the racially mixed middle-class suburb of Monterey Park-and sheds light on how class, gender and ethnic concerns all factor into the issue of urban change.

Pardo said her book grew out of her Ph.D. dissertation.

"I wanted to do something contemporary and urban, and show a positive and empowering story," she said. "One day I saw an announcement of a meeting of mothers in East Los Angeles. Once I heard these women, I knew this was the story I wanted to tell."

Pardo spent a decade following her subjects, monitoring their progress in changing their communities.

"On a every-day basis, women are key to the quality of life to neighborhoods, whether its in the inner-city or the suburbs," she said