Uruguay's 15 - member contingent in Sydney will include only three women, in part because
machismo permeates South America and society dictates the choices women make.
23 As Jones and Jonathan D. Katz have convincingly argued, silence emerged as Cage's primary means of countering the fervently expressive, highly individualistic
machismo associated with Abstract Expressionism.24 It was a construct that gave him room to act independently as an artist in a world dominated by the abstract expressionist paradigm and to create space for himself as a gay man in the atmosphere of homophobia that
permeated postwar American culture.