This is an ambitious and wide-ranging social and cultural history of gender relations among indigenous peoples of New Spain, from the Spanish conquest through the first half of the eighteenth century. In this expansive account, Lisa Sousa focuses on four native groups in highland Mexico - the Nahua, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe - and traces cross-cultural similarities and differences in the roles and status attributed to women in prehispanic and colonial Mesoamerica.