Women in traditional Left parties in the twentieth century understood Double Militancia as the interrelated, twofold struggle against gender and class-based oppression.
Across Latin American countries, women participated in organizations, parties, and movements for national liberation from foreign imperialism alongside men, but they commonly experienced gender discrimination within these spaces.
[2] Double Militancia calls attention to the specificity of women's experiences under capitalism, and the presence of male prejudice in revolutionary organizations.
[1] Double Militancia was developed out of mass women's participation and leadership in movements for National liberation, which were taking place throughout Latin America.
Throughout the 20th centuries, movements in Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua successfully overthrew previous regimes in an attempt to create new political, social and economic orders.
[5] In some of Latin America, women did not just participate in guerrilla groups––they were the ones who organized them: taking up arms, and dying in combat to achieve their political goals.
[3] In the popular text, Guerrilla Warfare, Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara wrote that women did have a place in the revolution, but he framed this primarily as that of a support role to men.
AMES was founded in 1978 in the political context of general oppression and economic inequality, as peasants became landless, and urban workers suffered from unemployment and unprecedentedly poor working conditions.
They called out the double burden of women carrying out familial and reproductive responsibilities on top of their political participation––a labor-intensive gendered role that remained passively accepted in general society and left movements.
[5] Women participated actively in political struggle during the fight for national liberation in Peru in the late 1970s prior to the election of a civilian president in 1980.
[2] This led many women in the left parties and organizations fighting for national liberation to reject the gendered oppression and inequity present in the movement.
[2] Women who had Double militancia perspectives within existing parties for national liberation often advocated for more female participation at decision-making levels.