Latin America, the most advanced of the underdeveloped regions of the world, is a perfect showcase for exploring the contradictions that come into play when the historical construction of gender clashes with economic practice. The history of modern Latin America shows that economic development can actually work to the detriment of women. The most important obstacle to women's liberation in the region is social class, not the "glass ceiling" that is said to keep professional women out of corporate offices. It is the "sticky floor" that binds working-class women to a futile existence. Twice at Kent State University, Ohio, first in 1996 and again in 1998, the author has taught an upper division colloquium that asks students to contemplate the interconnection of gender and social class in shaping women's response to underdevelopment in Latin America. The participants were required to peruse oral testimonies dealing with women from Mexico, Central America, Brazil and Cuba collected by historians, anthropologists, and sociologists in order to grasp the role of women in capitalist and socialist societies. In this article, the author describes this class where students learn from first-hand sources the experience of working women struggling with the economic and political challenges of the twentieth century while they sought to shake off social roles mired in the colonial epoch. (Contains 12 notes.)