When the threat of political revolution lurked behind the shadows of the Spanish colonial state in Puerto Rico, one of the earliest casualties of anti-independence persecution in San Juan was a woman - Maria de las Mercedes Barbudo. But as the 19th century advanced, economic and urban changes weakened patriarchal structures and provided spaces of autonomy for sanjuaneras. Women in San Juan locates the historical roots of women's contributions to urban modernization, showing how women reacted to and shaped the effort to transform San Juan into a modern, progressive city. Elite and professional women fought to limit the impact of economic changes on their lives from within the city, while poor women and women of color created survival strategies in their newly formed extramural barrios once they had been relocated as part of the state's modernizing agenda. Beneficence afforded elite women opportunities to support their class-based privilege and leisure while serving as a control mechanism to police poor women. The author moves beyond the standard focus on rural and agricultural issues to explore issues of Puerto Rican urban social history.

In 1915, Puerto Rican activist Luisa Capetillo was arrested for wearing men's trousers in public. This act of rebellion was the result of a lifelong devotion to socialist and feminist thought. And this zeal runs throughout her brilliant essays: in the challenges to big business, in her strident campaigning for the legalization of divorce, in the championing of 'free love'. At once a sharp critique and a celebration of world politics, A Nation of Women embraces humanism and envisions a world in which economic and social structures can be broken down, allowing both the worker and the woman to be free.