Gender Roles In Mexico

Growing up, I moved around from place to place. From the suburbs of New Jersey, to the tranquility of the Dominican Republic, to the wilderness of the city. I learned from each of these vastly different places the importance to respect and embrace different personalities, cultures, and lifestyles. I lived in the Dominican Republic from the 3th grade to my sophomore year of high school and there are many things I learned whiles living there. The Dominican Republic is still a very conservative country in many aspects. One of the aspects that I was influenced the most, was DR’s gender roles. As a girl I was expected to act and think a certain way. I couldn’t dye my hair, or paint my nails, or wear makeup before the age of sixteen because if I

* Gender Roles in Puerto Rico have become more progressive in recent years, however the topical gender roles are traditional. Boys are boys and girls are girls. Recently a new governor was elected, Gloria Ruiz Kuilan,a reporter from " El Nuevo Dia" characterizes the recent outcry from LGBT community that wished to challenge the typical traditional ideas of the school system. Even still, the overall consensus in schools are that gender roles are more conservative.

In several cultures, women are seen as archetypes more than men. The proposition of women are instantly idealized and glorified and instantaneously ignore the true complexity of a woman. Countless of these superficial images can be seen across various cultures where the societies within these cultures define what it means to be a female and what type of behavior is and isn’t acceptable within those parameters. The persistent restatement of these stories throughout these generations reinforces the gender system. Women who step out of the norm in these societies are then held punishable for their actions. Alicia Gaspar de Alba pinpoints the three archetypal roles that are given to the women in the Mexican and Chicana cultures. These are,

Why are Chicana women given a gender role? Ever since I was a little girl I was always given the talk “you cannot go out, nor have a boyfriend.” I asked myself that question. Why can’t I go out with my friends nor have a boyfriend? I would always get upset. I would ask my parents that question and their response would always be “you’re too young to go out and it’s really dangerous for you outside.” So I understood by then, but when I was 16-years old I wanted to go out with my friends. My parents gave me the same excuse and I told them, “Why am I treated differently than my brother, why can he go out at an early age and have fun and not me and the same response. So since then, I understood, in our society as Chicana women we are being treated unequally. Chicanas don’t get to do things that men have the opportunity to do because they are men and we are women. There are tons of gender bias roles placed upon the Chicana women as a Chicana woman ever since Before the Common Era Chicanas also had family expectations, According to The Bible, we have been given the stereotypical role that brown Chicana women have to get married at an early age and obey our husbands. Chicana women in society are given the unfair and unrealistic expectations that are only suppose to be housewives and servants, nothing more.

Christianity is widely known to be the most popular religion in the world, so it’s not unreasonable to believe that it plays a major role in Latino societies. Latinos, immigrants to the United States and their descendants in particular, practice various denominations of Christianity and modify them to suit their own needs and personal morals. One practice that most Latino communities have in common is the role that women play in the religious upbringing of their children. Latina women are generally relegated to the role of child rearing, but, as they raise their children they continue to practice their faith and in turn their children imitate them and develop a mental association between their families and their faiths. Two separate Spanish

Ecuadorian children become very excited to receive another opportunity to learn and support their peers. Children in Ecuador have more freedom than those that I have grown up to know. For example, they have permission to leave school grounds whenever and they may choose to not come back. Occasionally, teachers will send children home or out from school grounds to find an object or to bring their parent or sibling back with them (“Being a Kid in Ecuador”). Though parents are fully capable, they usually send their children off to the market to bring back groceries, so that when they are older they are able to do that on their own. Another way kids show their independence is through visiting the nearby river to go for a swim, usually inviting

Depending on the situation, if a task is viewed as more masculine, then the males of the family, when they come of age, are expected to complete them. On the other hand, if the task is viewed as more feminine, then the women in the households are expected to undertake those chores. The actions required in the family vary from household chores to providing for everyone. The most often talked about gender role in the Hispanic culture is the male in the family being the

How has gender inequality affected women in Latin American countries? Gender inequality has affected the women of Latin America in a multitude of ways, but it can be argued that the division of gender equality is extremely prominent when analyzing reproductive rights and health care access. Compared to countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, Latin America is far behind in terms of civil rights and reproductive rights. The lack of rights is not in question; women’s barrier to reproductive health can be seen through anecdotes and statistics. The question thus becomes, is there a definite answer to why these rights are absent? Factors concerning the absence of reproductive rights include cultural norms and religion, but the one that plays the biggest role remains the lack of female political leaders in Latin American countries. What exactly is it that is keeping Latin America behind other countries in terms of being progressive regarding reproductive rights? Women’s political absence in Latin America has shaped reproductive rights and health care services immensely.

Coming from a diverse background, of Mexican and Central American culture, I can contribute my traditional Latin culture, and perspective of gender equality to the NC State community. I can contribute experiences varying from the tedious preparation of traditional cuisines, such as pupusas and enchiladas, to the different dialects of Spanish I've been exposed to throughout my life. The traditional gender roles within the Hispanic culture, is another aspect that I can inform the community about. The men in the family are seen as superior beings and the provider of money for the family. The women are depicted, as caretakers of the home and family, are more sheltered, and submissive to "male superiority."

In 2013, Latinos accounted for only 4.9% of the roles in the top 100 films of the year. From the beginning, Hollywood had always been dominated by white men and women. However, as time progressed there was a very slight change in cultural and ethnic diversity. Though it is more likely now than ever to find a Latino or Latina in a Hollywood film, their roles are often small, stereotypical, and almost entirely unimportant. As if it wasn’t hard enough to get any role in any Hollywood film regardless of ethnicity, Latinos have to endure playing a harshly demeaning role. Latino men are often cast as comedic relief and play gardeners, janitors, or thugs. Latino women are often cast as maids or mistresses. Aside from this, when women are cast as mistresses they are often submissive to their white male partners, meaning that not only are these roles ethnically demeaning, but also sexist. Along with Latino female sexualisation, though, Latino men are also heavily sexualized. Both Latino women and men have to deal with the exploitation of their culture for stereotypical roles in a movie. However, these are only some of the vicious patterns that attribute to the everlasting ethnic misrepresentation in the biggest part of mass media, Hollywood.

Throughout history, women have been regarded as of lesser value than men particularly in the public sphere. This is the result of gender stratification. Gender stratification refers to the issue of sexism, “or the belief that one sex is superior to the other” (Carl et al., 2012, p. 78). The theory that men are superior to women is essential to sexism. Sexism has always had negative consequences for women. It has caused some women to avoid pursuing successful careers typically described as “masculine”—perhaps to avoid the social impression that they are less desirable as spouses or mothers, or even less “feminine.”

The relationship between the gender roles reflected in telenovelas and the the role of women in Latin American countries is a matter of parallelism. This is because as Judith Butler, the author of the book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, emphasized that it is “impossible to separate out ‘gender’ from the political and cultural intersections in which it is invariably produced and maintained”. Gender is undeniably socially constructed, and is a product of the values deemed important by that society being constantly reenacted and reinforced. In that sense, telenovelas are also another medium through which beliefs in gender can be relayed to the audience, forming what is called the “imaginable domain of gender” as they either perpetuate or go against ideal hegemony (Beard 2003).

I can also feel the rigid gender roles and norms in the Mexican American culture. In Movimientos de rebeldia y las culturas que traicionan, Anzaldua mentions that the Mexican culture barely accepts deviant behaviors. Their culture expects women to be commitment to men and if they are not, they are labeled as a selfish. Women are valued as a wife and mother, and “women are made to feel total failures if they don’t marry and have children.” Because of fear of being unaccepted and abandoned by their own culture, “some conform to the values of the culture, push the unacceptable parts into the shadows.” The Mexican women fight for women’s rights in their mother culture first, before they fight against the racism or sexism in white dominant culture.

The film All About My Mother (1999) is a Spanish drama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar in Barcelona. Self parody is the way Almodóvar approaches his films yet this film in particular is sincere and heartfelt. One character that is confident about her sexuality and provides us a vivid example of her identity is Agrado. She calls herself La Agrado because she always tries to make people lives agreeable. Agrado plays an important role in the movie because she portrays the perfect example of not only a prostitute but a transsexual as well. Transsexualism is defined as,

Gender roles became so complex in the twentieth century due how society has changed what men and women should be like. Men take being strong and independent as a God given right to them, while females on the other hand have had to work their way up in order to be titled independently strong. From growing up to early adulthood I faced the conflict of constantly worrying about how society wants me shape myself as a dependent and self-confident which was the complete opposite of me.