Reflective Statement : Female Gender Roles

1. Why did Cato object to repealing the Oppian law? What was the basis of his objections?

In colonial Latin America, one aspect of life that was constantly under attack and had to be guarded at all costs was the ideal of one's Honour. Women in colonial Latin America had to especially be on their guard to protect their honour, as an unanswered attack to their honour could ruin a family's honour. But if a woman's honour was attacked there were ways for her to protect it. The honour women possessed at the time was said to be not as important as the honour of a man, but it is, in fact, more important then the man's. By using Richard Boyer's document Catarina Maria Complains That Juan Teioa Forcibly Deflowered Her and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera's document Scandal at the Church: Jose de Alfaro Accuses Dona Theresa Bravo and Others of

During the Spanish ruling, the Spanish mentality of conquest is that the role of women is to be a housewife and take care of the children while men’s role is to be the provider, worker, and protector of the family. Women were not given the right to work, own property, or attain jobs, without the permission of their spouse. The purpose of life for a woman is to marry and establish an alliance, ultimately creating a peaceful situation at home. Catalina vows to go against deeply ingrained gender norms; implanted in every society lives distinct gender roles for both men and women, with that there are specific ways that those roles can be violated or subverted. Catalina attempts to threaten the social order, as she asserts her power by dressing up as a man as it allows her better opportunities than appearing as a woman. Catalina's gender presentation of herself as a stereotypical male, being abrasive and quick to anger when anyone challenges her masculinity, demonstrates the minimal opportunities for women in Spanish society. Erauso assertion that the “nun’s habit becomes useless and I threw it away, I cut my hair and threw it away” demonstrates that the trappings of womanhood are not working for her. By becoming a man, Catalina succeeds more, due to the fact that men were granted better opportunities such as the right to join the armada where she sets sail for Spain, or the right to go to Madrid and meet with the King, or the right to gamble in Charcas.

In this session, I will discuss the gender roles in my family. The definition of gender role is the degree to which a person adopts the gender-specific behaviors ascribed by his or her culture (Matsumoto, D. R., & Juang 2013, 156). For example, traditional gender roles recommend that males are aggressive, angry, and unemotional. It goes further and explains that the male should leave the home every day to make a living and be the main wage earner. The traditional gender role for the female purpose is to stay at home and care for the children. It explains that the female is to be nurturing, caring, and emotional (Matsumoto, D. R., & Juang 2013, 156). These traditional roles for female and male are the opposite of one another. It is believed that the culture is likely to influence our perception about gender role in a family. In my family, my parents utilize the traditional gender role. Growing up, my father went to work every day and my mother stayed home with me and my sister. I believe my parents were influence by their parents and their culture to be traditional gender role parents. My father explained to me that they chose traditional parenting role because both sides of the family utilized traditional parenting gender roles. I believe my parents felt pressure to obtain the gender roles of the mother staying home with the children while the father worked. However, when my younger sister was old enough to go to school, my mother started to work. It was believed that when

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the way women have been represented and characterized gives us an idea of how the female gender are treated differently from the male gender as well as children in Latin America during the 1950s. The husbands were given all the authority, also known as machismo, whereas women weren’t allowed to take charge of anything, and were portrayed as weak and impotent.

“Women's history led to the historical study of gender. Gender includes the behavior, manners, morals, speech, and emotions expected of men and women because of their sex. Historians of gender have analyzed many characteristics of "masculine" and "feminine" behavior in relation to social stereotypes and economic power. The historians' studies have provided a means to understand a wide range of social behavior—from attitudes about sex to economic inequality—in terms of social conventions of gender” (Partner 1). This is a common factor in the novel “The Brief Life of Oscar Wao” by Diaz, he shows how the Dominican culture views their women and how they aren't always respected.

Ron Burgundy: "I'm a man who discovered the wheel, and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am. You're just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a 1/3 the size of us...It's science."

Latin American culture is usually stereotyped as Hispanic culture simply because of the Spanish association with each other. One major concept that dignifies this culture is honor. The concept of honor is very important in Latin America. Any decision and behavior of each individual becomes based largely on the pleasing of the family. The women become pressured with containing their honor. The women also get pressured into purity; mainly because it shows they have respect for themselves and their family. Expectation involving women revolve around retaining their virginity and purity longer than a male. Theoretically, women have their ‘own’ honor; but in reality their honor depicts on the whole family. Which explains the reasoning behind why losing the honor shames everyone. The biggest action that could take away a woman’s honor would be premarital sex. Containing your virginity until marriage shall bring virtuous honor to one’s

In this reading the author talks about the Latina experience in the US and the cultural differences. She said that her religion and culture created vagueness about her womanhood. Womanhood was a subject not spoken about often, making it difficult for her to get out of her comfort zone, seek guidance, and in some cases talk about it. After the event with her classmate she understood why they are many pregnant teens. Their own culture and religion had made the subject of womanhood a taboo, by not letting them know the reality of love and the different ways to protect themselves during sex. This had also caused them to be ashamed and scared to talk about the subject.

Women in Latin America were expected to adhere to extreme cultural and social traditions and there were few women who managed to escape the burden of upholding these ridiculous duties, as clearly shown in “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”. First, Latin American women were expected to uphold their honor, as well as their family's honor, through maintaining virtue and purity; secondly, women were expected to be submissive to their parents and especially their husbands; and lastly, women were expected to remain excellent homemakers.

Woman are more confused than ever trying to balance their traditional values with their curiosity about sexual freedom, which “Ought to be a decade of freedom and exploration”(Bell 26). These traditional values are ancient and sometimes badly demonstrated by the parents or guardians of those confused women. Claudia, introduced in the beginning of the text, shares her fears of devastating her Mexican Catholic family with her desire of sexual freedom, but she also is caught in a contradiction when she mentions that she does not want to end up like her mother. “… She had witnessed her mother sacrifice her own dreams and adventurous spirit to be a wife and parent.” (Bell

Women have restricted opportunities to develop a personal identity and thrive in another space than the private one in which they are expected to take care of domestic matters. This appears clearly in the documentary The Blossoms of Fire as women from Juchitán are criticized in a magazine for having too much power. Women are expected to obey men, not to give orders to them. Their perceived independence in Juchitán thus appears as strange. Indeed, in Mexico, there is a clear dichotomy between “La Madonna” and “La Malinche”. Women can only fit in these two categories. Understanding the specificity of their situation in Juchitán means understanding this cultural dichotomy first. “La Madonna” embodies the perfect wife: she has many children, takes care of her husband and her home, she is the exclusive property of her husband and thus receives complete cultural approval. As for “La Malinche”, she is described as a whore: she is marginalized because she is sexually active outside of the realm of marriage. Her name is a reference to an enslaved indigenous child who was given to Hernán Cortés. She was his translator, advisor as well as mistress during his conquest of the Aztecs. She had a child with him. She became a scapegoat for the conquest. In both cases, women are not perceived as multi-layered people. They are either “good” or “bad”. In that perspective, it seems that

Real Lives of Most Men." He says to a friend of his "This must be a

Men and women are different. How different depends on what stereotype one chooses to believe. Although it has been argued that some stereotypes are positive, they are never beneficial. Society creates gender stereotypes and perpetuates them through societal institutions. In this paper the roles of gender will be analyzed regarding education, public policy, and the workplace. How education shapes gender, the gender norms in government, the law, policies, and the role of gender in the workplace will be discussed.

When a child is born, it does not know anything about the world. As it gets older, the child learns morals and values from the people around it. One concept children learn is the role of gender in their lives. Young boys and girls are given different messages about what they are and are not supposed do in social situations, causing them to act and dress differently from one another. Gender is not something tangible that happens; it is something perceived by American society. Only by teaching children that there is no difference between men and women can the world have true gender neutrality.