Examining the role of women and gender ideology during the pre-contact and colonial periods in Latin Pane fica, Marysa Navarro looks at both early indigenous societies and the Spanish and the Portuguese, who claimed the "New World." She notes the interaction of race and class factors and illustrates these dynamics through portraits of individual women, as well as through an examination of legal status and economic roles.Virginia Sanchez Korrol views the changing roles of women in Latin America and the Caribbean from the early decades of the 19th century to the present. She documents the part played by women in the struggles for national independence, their legal status in the new republics, and their quest for education. Shifts in women's roles in the 1880s to the 1930s accompanied broader societal transformations. Increasingly incorporated into the labor force, women emerged in numerous movements for social change. Sanchez Korrol shows how women, as political and social activists, continueto strive to eliminate double standards, exploitation, and inequality among classes and ethnicities.