Gender Roles

Gender roles

Although the gender inequality in Mexico has been diminishing through history it is still an issue that needs to be addressed. In order to fully understand the current situation one must first understand what set of norms each gender is held to. Women are expected to follow the teachings of the Virgin Mary, following her example of how a women should act such as holding yourself right and not questioning male authority. Women were expected to stay home and do the housework as well as take care of the children. Women were held to a double standard to men and in many places still are, despite all the progress we’ve made on this topic over the years. Males however, are held to the values of machismo which is about how males need to assert their dominance and act in a manner that is quote on quote “active” meaning openly speaking about their opinions, risk taking, fighting for the affections of women, and other actions that are considered manly. In this philosophy, men are expected to be flirting with multiple women however, women are not allowed to flirt with men but, instead are expected to be devoted to one man alone. These gender roles go much farther than just this double standard though, in the Hispanic tradition women are seen as mothers rather than wives. For further explanation, women identify themselves when they first meet someone as a mother like it is all they are instead of an individual who has thoughts and responsibilities. There is also a lot of gender based violence occurring in Mexico. Currently, 1,258 girls have disappeared and at least 448 murdered in just one small part of the country called Edomex. There has been numerous femicides occurring throughout this nation including in the sunshine state Quintana Roo, of Mexico where in the past month there have been brutal killings of women. This gender based violence has to stop! Due to this male superiority complex women have been greatly disadvantaged because of this they have not been able to enjoy the liberties males are entitled to. Although, it would be completely wrong to say Mexico’s hasn’t made progress because, there have been dramatic changes towards a women’s role in economy such as women obtaining the right to vote in 1947, and ever since women have been obtaining greater roles in both the economy and general society. In 1990 women accounted for 31 percent of the “economically active” population, also during this period the women work force shifted away from working at home due to the economic crisis of 1980s. In this period women had no choice but to go out and get jobs in order to help support the family. In the mid-1990s, 70 percent of women were employed in the tertiary sector of the economy, although they were not paid equal to men, we can see this was still a big step for women. Yet, although we have made such good progress in this topic, it still holds a lot of weight today especially with the recent femicides that have been occurring. It is clear that gender rights as well as gender roles are not anywhere near desirable. Thus begs the question, what exactly does Mexico plan in order to stop this unjust treatment/views of women? The answer being, taking action by teaching the Mexican people that women actually do contribute to society and hoping that foreign influence such as that of the Americans who Mexico has close relations to via NAFTA will help teach this. As for a solution for the recent femicides, emergency measures are being implemented to fix this issue as well as police awareness of the issue so they know how to combat/stop it. However, these solutions were just recently implemented so, in order to see if they are an access we will need to wait sometime to construct a valid evaluation. But, even if this does solve, it will take a while to achieve a desirable level of equality thus there are sadly no immediate fixes but, hopefully overtime we can create an equality between the genders in all forms.