A New World Engendered: Intersections. The Making of the Iberian Transatlantic Empires – XVI to XIX Centuries

Abstract

This article approaches the intersections developed under the colonial Spanish empire among gender relations, feminine sexuality concepts, family honor and State regulation. The way the multiple moral, social, juridical and religious norms in relation to sexuality and relations between women and men interacted with the social/political inequalities in the Iberian colonial experience will be analyzed. The New World provides a particularly clear example of the dynamic intersections between contemporary ideas and ideals about sex/gender and race/ethnicity and social class that became manifest on the new identification systems, classification and social discrimination forged in the consolidation of the Iberian American colonial society. It also becomes an example of the consequences that the sexual morality and the prevailing gender stereotypes have had in all the aspects of women’s lives.