"Explain the role of men and women in the country. Be sure to explain if there have been changes in these roles over time."
In the past, Mexican gender roles have been heavily defined by “Machismo”, which is essentially the specifically Latin American sense of masculinity and patriarchy. Men in Mexico have been expected to portray the role of the authority figures and “breadwinners” in Mexican society, and have been encouraged to display “Macho” characteristics such as strength, promiscuity, and aggression while Mexican women have been expected to embody the opposite characteristics, and be obedient to / dependent on their husbands while being maternal “mothers” towards their children. Men are expected to work and support the family while women are expected to act as homemakers.
While the role of men in Mexico has pretty much remained the same, the role of women has been changing in the past fifty years of Mexico’s recent history. For example, women in Mexico gained the right to vote / run for election in 1953 and are now becoming more involved in Mexico’s political and social movements. Similarly, in the past, Mexican women were rarely found working outside of their homes, and if they were, they were only farmhands or craftspeople. However, in modern Mexico women are able to earn their degrees and have careers like teaching, nursing, merchants, or domestic workers. However, while women are able to work alongside men on a more diverse set of jobs, there is still a great deal of discrimination and harassment in the workplace and it is not uncommon for women to earn wages that are significantly lower than men’s. However, as women continue to become a bigger part of the modern Mexican workforce, organizations, trade unions, and social movements are beginning to form in the hopes of improving conditions for themselves and for other women.
An alarming realization one comes to when attempting to understand gender roles in Mexico is the continuous danger women face while trying to go about their daily lives. For example, an extreme, but still relevant, example is the series of Juarez murders, a name which describes the brutal murders and continuous disappearances of more than 400 women in Juarez since 1993. Many times the women were kidnapped, tortured, and killed; many women remain missing and most cases remain unsolved. No one knows why these women died, nor who was responsible. While this is obviously a severe and extreme case, unfortunately women in Mexico continue to face similar dangers to this day. Hopefully someday soon they will feel safe enough to go about their days without having something to fear because of their gender.
Mexico. (2009, August). Retrieved from http://worldsavvy.org/monitor/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=649&Itemid=1119
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