A look at Hispanic and Latina women’s experiences
Sol Garcia | THE RIDER
During her undergraduate career, Yaritza Marin, a public affairs graduate student, chose to critique the “show me your papers” law as part of an assignment for a class but her professor rejected her idea.
“Before I could finish my sentence, in the middle of class, it was shut down,” Marin said.
Two conversations later, a Hispanic male student brought up a similar policy and received the “OK” to critique it, according to Marin.
“After that instance, my view of the class, kind of, just shattered,” she said. “I wasn’t really there anymore.”
Marin saw the incident as devaluing her work compared to her male classmates, and this was not her only experience with barriers based on her gender or even ethnicity. For Hispanic women, barriers can be found in schools and households, said Marin, who received her bachelor’s degree in Mexican American Studies in 2019.
In addition to classes and homework, Hispanic female students are also expected to complete chores and take care of siblings, becoming a second mother in a household, according to Marin.
“That’s not always something that Hispanic males have to deal with,” she said. “That’s an added barrier to everything else that’s [happening] on campus.”
Marin is not alone in this experience.
Mayra Avila, a UTRGV history lecturer, said Hispanic women are expected to take care of children, their homes and husbands. Avila’s areas of expertise include women in Latin America, Mexican-American rights and immigration and labor, according to her UTRGV faculty profile.
Avila said she, like many other Hispanic women, was raised with these expectations.
“You’re supposed to learn how to cook, how to clean,” the history lecturer said. “You’re supposed to get married, have children and some of us break that mold sometimes.”
Many of these expectations most likely stem from patriarchal ideas of family and gender roles, according to Avila.
“You have the family member that’s, like, ‘Mija, when are you going to get married? Mija, when are you planning on having children?’ versus asking your daughter, ‘Mija, when are you going to finish your degree?’ or, ‘What is your plan for college?’” she said.
Avila has met many women of different ethnicities who have encountered barriers in the workforce.
After receiving her master’s in history and going into the job market, Avila said she received tips for interviews from colleagues, such as, “Take off your wedding ring,” “Don’t bring up your husband,” and “Don’t bring up your children.”
When Avila told her colleagues she did not have children, they told her to not speak of anything of that nature during the interview.
Her colleagues’ advice came from their past experiences where, according to them, the interviewers believed, “If her husband doesn’t want her to move there, they’re not going to move then.”
Avila said many female professors she has met keep the fact that they have children a secret to prevent their management skills from being questioned.
“I just rather not say that I have children to my colleagues, so it’s never a question whether I can juggle different things or if I have time,” one of these women said to Avila.
To help foster a more accepting and positive environment for Hispanic women, institutions should have opportunities, such as internship programs and Q&A workshops, where students can ask professors how they balance work and family, as well as their overall experience in their field, Avila said.
“We need those programs, even if it’s just, like, a mixer or a panel,” she said.
Women and men also need to communicate about balancing their work and home lives, whether it’s between spouses or colleagues.
“The only way that we can actually do it [is by] having an open conversation instead of making it seem like there’s something wrong with women who are balancing children, a family and work, because there’s nothing wrong with that,” she said. “They’re super women. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Additionally, those who are in leadership positions need to help guide and mentor new generations of Latinas, said Trini Yunes, director of Human Resources at UTRGV.
“Those of us who … are in the leadership of [an] organization, [need to] encourage, mentor and help our new generations, our newer Latinas [who] are learning and coming into the professional field, by providing professional development,” Yunes said.
She said organizations and industries, specifically those dominated by men, need to foster better communication while also giving women opportunities.
“Sometimes, opportunities are not given to women or Latinas because … there’s a lot of misconceptions about how we are, who we are and how we work,” the HR director said.
In order to shine in a leadership role, Latina women have to put the effort that men are putting in and continue to get informed, Yunes said.
“Come prepared to the table so you can have a very informed discussion on what you’re going to propose, so you can go ahead and defend your proposal with how things need to be done and how things have to change,” she said.
Yunes added Latino men need to respect women and view them as equals and that teaching starts from home.
“We need to continue to educate our children, our Latino men at home, so that they know that … our generations are no longer the ‘macho man’ at home,” she said.
In an email sent to The Rider, Yunes said in this fiscal year, 58% of UTRGV staff members are women, and 87% of them are Latinas.
“We are more than half out there, and men have to give us the same level of respect,” she said.
During the start of her career, Yunes said she experienced her own barriers within her family.
“It was very difficult to have my dad, for example, understand that I could be someone in a role of a leadership level where I would have men as my equals,” she said.
These are issues that have been happening for centuries, Yunes said.
“Things are getting better for all of us, for all Latinas, but we’re not there yet,” she said. “The challenges are still there.”
