Marta Lamas


Marta Lamas Encabo is a Mexican anthropologist and political science professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and lecturer at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. She is one of Mexico's leading feminists and has written many books aimed at reducing discrimination by opening public discourse on feminism, gender, prostitution and abortion. Since 1990, Lamas has edited one of Latin America's most important feminist journals, Debate Feminista. In 2005, she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Early life

Marta Lamas was born in 1947 in Mexico City to Argentine parents. She studied ethnology at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia and then completed a master's degree in anthropology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Journalistic endeavors

In 1976, she founded a feminist magazine, Fem, and in 1987, she co-founded the first feminist newspaper supplement in Mexico for the newspaper La Jornada: Doble Jornada. In 1990, she founded Debate Feminista a publication aimed at connecting academic feminist theory with the practices of activists in the women’s movement. The publication is a springboard for discussing ideas within the movement to evaluate how they can be brought to the public. Debate has become one of the most important journals in Latin America, because it also prints men's articles. She was a founding member of La Jornada and is a contributing columnist to the magazine Proceso and the Spanish newspaper El País and serves as an editorialist for the newspapers El Processo and Diario Monitor.
Lamas has written numerous books and is a prolific feminist writer.

Activism

In 1990, she founded the Sociedad Mexicana Pro Derechos de la Mujer,, which is an organization in which more privileged women can invest in women who have less opportunities. The group sponsors cooperatives and micro-enterprises and offers support centers and work groups which address problems women face, including human rights issues. The organization has expanded to have chapters in 24 of the 31 Mexican states.
In 1992 Lamas co-founded the Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida'' to "disseminate information on abortion and reproductive and sexual health and rights from the bioethical, social and legal perspectives to lawmakers and the press". One of the objectives of the group was to change the discussion from whether one was for or against abortion and instead focus on who should decide. Lamas indicated this was a pivotal change in progress in the abortion debate in Mexico.
After 38 years of work by the feminist movement, driven by Ms. Lamas, in 2007 the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation decriminalized in Mexico City abortions which occur by 12 weeks of gestation. GIRE lawyers assisted in drafting legislation and in coordinating defense of the law when lawsuits alleged it was unconstitutional. Marta Lamas testified during the Supreme Court trial.

Educator

Lamas is a political science professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and lecturer at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México
In 2000 she founded the Instituto de Liderazgo Simone de Beauvoir, as a feminist organization of civil society with the goal of training social leaders. Its stated mission is one "of contributing to the construction of a democratic society of rights and freedoms, through knowledge, innovation and the training of leadership with social commitment and gender and intercultural perspective."

Selected works

Books:
Articles: