Gendered (im)mobility: Rooted women and waiting Penelopes

In rural Mexico, as in many other locations worldwide, women’s mobility is depicted as less natural or more problematic than men’s. Simultaneously, women are perceived as less mobile than their male peers. Does this mean that they move less? Where are these images derived from? Using ethnographic data, this article explores the social construction of (im)mobility in the context of a small village in central Mexico. Mobility and immobility are socially constructed and imbued with different meanings according to gender. Such differences rely on the fact that the borders are not equally significant for men and women. Borders become meaningful partly due to the reasons of border crossing, which are, in this ethnographic case, different according to gender.