THE BALANCE OF POWER: GENDER RELATIONS AND WOMEN'S ACTION AT A MEXICAN SECONDARY SCHOOL'

L Formal schooling, of course, has long been thought to positively influence the possibilities for women's development and emancipation. The acquisition of literacy, general knowledge, job credentials, and the like allow women to exercise gream control over their lives and pursue aspirations beyond the domestic arena. Thus, the extension of public I schooling to greater numbers of young women in Mexico, along with the I forceful presence of numerous female schoolteachers, is usually considered an unquestionably salutary prospect for women's i empowerment (see Vaughan, 1994). Yet studies ofwomen and schooling I in Euro-American contexts have examined how schools can, ironically. I serve to reproduce rather than transform limited identities and possibilities for women. Schools can act to reproduce oppressive gender relations ' either through messages of the curriculum and teacher discourse (Kelly andNihlen, 1982; Valli, 1986; Orenstein 1994), or through the play ofpeer culture made possible by the site of the school (Holland and Eisenhar