Set against the backdrop of the tumultuous late-colonial and early-republican periods in Quito (1765-1830), this study examines womens legal, economic, and social status in order to gauge the relationship between the increasingly centralized power of the Bourbon kingship and the local operation of social authority. The customary judicial practice, Black argues, played a fundamental role in limiting gender domination and prevented the full realization of a legal, economic, or social patriarchy in colonial Quito, Ecuador.