REVISITING A REPOPULATED VILLAGE - A STEP BACKWARDS IN THE CHANGING STATUS OF WOMEN

The lives of women in repopulated villages in El Salvador were first e xamined by the author in 1991. An attempt was made to understand the c hanges that were occurring which did not fit expectations and explanat ions of the situation of women in the developing world (Julia, 1994). Despite the war and the conditions of extreme poverty in the communiti es in which they lived, these women had made more progress in their st ruggle for equality than many women from the so-called developed world . By late 1993, after nearly a decade during which the military govern ment of El Salvador waged war against its domestic opposition, the pea ce treaty between the two sociopolitical groups was signed. What shoul d have been an act of peace, however, has had a strange impact: a blat ant relapse into patriarchy and oppression for women in the repopulate d villages. This paper describes and analyzes postwar changes in the s tatus of women in these villages.