This thesis investigates music in Mexico City, with an emphasis on women's relationship to Romanticism, education, consumption, domestic music-making and public performance. During the first decades after independence in 1821, Mexicans began the process of constructing an identity, which musically speaking meant an expansion of the secular musical world. Such construction involved the development of internal activity alongside a conditional receptivity to external influence in the form of the visits of Italian opera companies such as those of Manuel García and Max Maretzek, and travelling virtuosi such as pianist virtuoso Henri Herz, who brought new repertoire and performance practices to Mexican theatres and homes. As consumers and as musicians, women were at the centre of such developments. In Mexico, both European music and that of local musicians was disseminated by means of ladies' journals and imported and locally-printed sheet music by foreign and Mexican composers, in order to supply a growing home market for amateurs. Abundant surviving repertoire for the home, the widespread availability of musical instruction as revealed through advertisements, and witness accounts of soirées and concerts in the theatre reveal a budding musical world that has hitherto been overlooked and which occurred during a period generally deemed of little importance in Mexican musical history. By investigating a key period in the social-cultural history of Mexican music, this thesis crafts a narrative of intersections between the musical life of Mexican women and the incipient construction of a musical-cultural identity.

Since the transitions to democracy in Latin America, women in the region have undergone major changes in their roles in society. From traditionally only present in the home to participating in collective action efforts, and finally participating at increasing numbers in governments, women have made incredible strides in the Latin American region. Latin American countries have successfully advocated for the inclusion of women in government, but few studies in academia focus on determining whether their inclusion has made a difference in government processes or in society. Borrowing from the literature positing that women are behaviorally different from men as well as their identification with motherhood and as wives in their collective action efforts in Latin America, I argue that women have different concerns from men both outside and inside of the public sphere and therefore make a difference in government with regards to policy priorities and government budget allocations. Studying 18 Latin American countries, I find that there is a gender gap in public opinion, which demonstrates that women are more concerned with social welfare matters than men. I also find that female concerns are carried into their behavior once in government as observed by female legislators’ heightened support for social welfare policies. Furthermore, I find that women in legislatures affect government behavior differently from their male counterparts as observed with female legislators’ positive effects on the allocation of the budget towards social welfare areas.