“Modest wise women”: Science in Porfirian women’s periodicals

During the Porfiriato (1876–1911), a group of self-appointed feminists took a leap from private to public writing, establishing, for the first time in Mexico, women-led periodical publications. This group sought to initiate a tradition of women intellectuals that justified and legitimized their ambition to access scientific education and professional careers. Matilde Montoya, the first woman to qualify in Mexico as a physician and surgeon, became an important symbol for the consolidation of this tradition. Directors, editors, and writers of these periodicals used a variety of literary genres that made content accessible to wider audiences and secured their publication. These efforts sought to shift social conventions that prevented women from pursuing careers in science, notably encouraging women to change their own self-perceptions. The female networks of intellectual exchange that were established through these periodicals further strengthened the incipient community of professional women. In this article I study five Porfirian women’s periodicals as sites of intervention and documents of practice. Previous research using these sources has focused on gender and literary history, yet this new outlook allows us to rethink the legacy of these Porfirian women within the context of history of science.