Gender roles in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

Gender roles existed in Mesoamerica, with a sexual division of labour meaning that women took on many domestic tasks including child-rearing and food preparation while only men were typically allowed to use weapons and assume positions of leadership. Both men and women farmed, but in some societies, women were not permitted to plough the fields because it was believed to symbolise men's role in the reproductive cycle.

Evidence also suggests the existence of gender ambiguity and fluidity in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations. Gender relations and functions also varied among Mesoamerican cultures and societies over time and depending on social status. Mesoamerica or Meso-America (Spanish: Mesoamérica) is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries. The stereotype that women play a minimal role in the family is far from accurate. Although women's roles in agriculture have been underestimated, if it were not for the contributions of women in agriculture, the family would not survive.

With the arrival of the Spanish and their subsequent viceregal rule starting in the 16th century, Mesoamerican gender relations could no longer be considered distinct cultural practices. Gender roles and gender relations instead became subject to the practices of Spanish viceregal rule and the caste system. However, despite suppression by Spanish colonialization, aspects of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican gender roles have survived in indigenous communities to this day.