Although Chicanas have played an equally significant role in the shaping of the Chicano experience, traditionally they have been relegated to a substandard position. They have been ignored, their accomplishments have gone unrecognized and their needs have been neglected. Their role has been rigidly defined as passive. The Chicana's effort and work in the movement is generally obscured because women are not accepted as community leaders either by Chicanos or the Anglo establishment. This existing, myopic attitude does not prove that women are not able and willing to participate, nor does it prove that women are not experienced and knowledgeable in organizational, tactical and strategical aspects of a people's movement. Anglo society has transmitted through its many institutions, oppressive attitudes toward minorities. Chicanas are doubly discriminated against as members of an ethnic-cultural minority and as women. They are also cast into the position of being a minority with the ranks of American women. If Chicanas jump from their own oppression into that of Anglo women without first reaching an understanding of themselves and their unique needs and without demanding Chicano participation in this understanding, she will once again find herself the peon of a strict patronage system imposed by the oppressed Anglo female. But if this understanding is reached together with the Chicano, then and only then, can Mexican Americans confront and challenge Anglo racism and oppression. (Author/NQ)