To date, research on Mayan women and gender roles has focused on the Western

Highlands of Guatemala and communities of Mexico (Bossen 1984; Ehlers 1990, 1991;

Rosenbaum 1993; Recruz 1998), overlooking the isolated Mayan communities of the Oriente

(Eastern Highlands) of Guatemala. Research that does examine both Maya and Ladino women

has tended to concentrate on their differences based on the dichotomies created by Guatemalan

society and women's "place" within that society (Bossen 1984; Maynard 1963; Mitchell 1982;

Smith 1995). In order to locate women's position within Guatemalan society in the context of

capital expansion, Bossen and Ehlers (1984 and 1991) employed a comparative analysis of Maya

and Ladina women, using a Marxist approach to investigate women's status based on their

relation to production. Ladina women are not as essential to the survival of the household and

less valued than Maya women and findings show that capitalism further reduces women's status,

especially for Maya women.

 The impact of economic remittances on the local development of sending communities

illustrates the far-reaching effects of global capitalism and global restructuring. Money sent from

the United States to developing countries in the form of remittances has created rapid and

transformative effects for communities in the form of land purchases, home construction,

business formation, and public works projects (Cohen 2004; Durrand et al. 1996; Massey 1987;

Massey and Parrado 1998; Massey et al. 1994; Orozco 2002). Earlier research, which studied

how development impacts Guatemalan communities, illustrates how capitalist expansion in the

form of market integration and export agriculture proved detrimental to women's status (Bossen

1984; Ehlers 1990, 1991; Katz 1995); however, migration research suggests that migration-

driven economic changes improve women's position (Grimes 1998). In countries where the male

head-of-household migrates first, researchers theorized that women would become the primary