Latin Women and Vocational Empowerment

Latin Women and Vocational Empowerment Issues

Women have achieved great strides in modern societies, especially when compared with the historical role of females in ancient societies, and even in relatively modern-era societies. One of the most important aspects of female empowerment relates to the incorporation of females into the modern workforce. The greatest documented increase in female empowerment in this area was in American society immediately after the Second World War, mainly by virtue of the extent to which female labor was required during the war effort to replace the positions vacated by males involved in overseas military conflict. That conflict was, in retrospect, a watershed event in the progress of females during the 20th century.

In Hispanic societies, specific social and cultural attitudes, beliefs, and values have always played important roles in shaping male-female relationships and the position of women in society. In the United States, the other most significant factors responsible for female social and especially vocational empowerment since World War Two were the introduction of oral contraception for birth control and the evolution of reproductive rights and autonomy after the legalization of abortion in 1973.

Generally, Hispanic women have progressed at a slower rate, largely because prevailing cultural attitudes and beliefs contradict the increasing independence of women from men. In that regard, the interplay between two competing components is especially important: specifically, the concepts of machismo and familism within Hispanic societies and communities.

Statistical Data

This research provides some background on family life in the Hispanic world, drawing mainly on the research done in a few key countries such as Mexico and Colombia, and with special focus on how the struggle for economic survival affects that life. It has been reported that 40% of families in Latin America have insufficient income for essential needs, and that another 28% can be categorized as "working poor" (David, 1987). In 1980, 41% of the population was under fourteen. Population growth in the Western Hemisphere, and Latin America in particular, has exceeded that of the Old World for some time (Stycos, 1968). With this trend continuing, poverty is the way of life for most Hispanic children.

Drawing on census data, Elsa M. Chaney (1984) gives the following snapshot: In looking at twenty different countries, the most common minimum age for marriage for females is fourteen. Colombia and Mexico have declared eighteen for both sexes, but the others range from twelve to sixteen for females, and fourteen to sixteen for males. Other research indicates that the average age of marriage for women is about eighteen, and that these young brides will give birth to an average of more than five children in the course of their married lives (Balakrishnan, 1976).

Marriage and Social Status in Latin Communities

Chaney also points out that childrearing is still the highest social status available to women. Because of the costs involved, many of the poor cannot afford to marry, and legal divorce is usually difficult to attain. Thirty percent of households are headed by females (similar to the United States), and the typical household has 3.5 to 5.3 members. Among the lower classes consensual unions may significantly outnumber formal marriages. For instance, among poor blacks in Venezuela, 57% of couples are not married, in spite of the influence of Catholicism.

Furthermore, these families tend to be matrifocal (mother-centered) and characterized by early motherhood, migration, and poverty (Pollak-Eltz, 1975). Despite the fact that the mother is primarily responsible for fulfilling all of the needs of the children in the family, the father is the final decision-maker, even where he is regularly absent from the family. This pattern also holds true in Mexico where traditional patriarchal values and social norms make it much more difficult for women to support themselves independently (Chant, 1993).

When the Spaniards came to the Americas, they worked hard to impose their family ideals on the indigenous populations. That ideal was a patriarchal, monogamous, nuclear family (Munoz, 1983). Before this pressure, there had been significant variety among local peoples, including polygamy, cousin marriages, extended clans, and the more familiar patriarchal power and strict separation of tasks by gender (Boremanse, 1983).

One of the most important factors in understanding the Hispanic Family is migration. Males often migrate to the United States or other places in search of work in order to support their families (Weist, 1983). In some respects, this allows the family to live better; in others, it puts tremendous strains on marital relationships. As in many other cultures, there are very strong biases and socially accepted gender-based expectations and behavioral norms within Hispanic communities in relation to extramarital sexual relations (Schaefer, 2006). Generally, married men are expected to support their families but not necessarily to be sexually monogamous, even in marriage.

Married men frequently entertain girlfriends and, as in many other cultures, these transgressions are frequently condoned, at least tacitly, by society. Moreover, it is not particularly rare for married men to father children out of wedlock and even to support two different families simultaneously. Naturally, the additional factor of long-term separation and geographical distance in connection with the pursuit of work by married males only greatly exacerbates this tendency.

Meanwhile, the same social mores and norms that are very forgiving about male infidelity in marriage are much less forgiving when it comes to female infidelity, regardless of circumstances (Schaefer, 2006). Wives rarely have affairs, because if their infidelities are discovered, they risk being severely beaten by their husbands or being abandoned by them entirely. As is often the case across different cultures, promiscuous and unfaithful males routinely escape any significant negative social consequences of their transgressions; conversely, females known to engage in similar behavior typically suffer by virtue of having their reputations damaged throughout their communities and are subjected to intense shaming from which males are almost entirely exempt. Furthermore, in some Latin cultures contraceptives are withheld from married women, even when the family is experiencing great difficulty supporting the children they already have. This is not a result of strict religious convictions but is a reflection of concerns among males that any form of birth control could tempt married women to have extramarital affairs (Haffner, 1992).

This differential has undoubtedly been a feature of human societies since long before even the earliest recorded history. While female infidelity no longer justifies murder in most modern societies, that is not the case in some others, most notably in some of the wealthiest nations in the Persian Gulf area. In Latin communities, contemporary civil law protects females from such reprisals; on the other hand, social mores and the persistence of so-called "traditional" patriarchal social rules still operate to make life much more difficult for women than for men in this as well as in myriad other situations.

Poverty and the Social Status of Women

Impoverishment breeds ignorance. One illustrative example of this principle in connection with female empowerment (or lack thereof) is in the area of reproductive health. In Mexico, anesthesia is often avoided in childbirth, because many uneducated Mexicans believe that the mother must endure pain in order to be a "real" mother. This belief has absolutely nothing to do with the various benefits and risks associated with natural childbirth; instead, it is related to the biblical idea that women must bring forth children in sorrow (Haffner, 1992).

In fact, a related belief attributes miscarriages and other medical complications associated with birthing to susto, which means a "terrible fright." Even when their health is in grave danger, some Mexican women will avoid birth control, because they have absorbed cultural beliefs that their main purpose in life is to reproduce. Having children is considered proof of the husbands' virility (Haffner, 1992).

In other subcultures, such as the black Caribs of Guatemala (Gonzalez, 1983), women change companions fairly frequently in search of economic support. They have also discovered that they can provide for themselves as well as their migrating menfolk can, and as a result, are less likely to look up to males as leaders than they used to. To a large degree, female dependence on males is perpetuated by social values rather than dictated by any objective principles or human biology (Henslin, 2002).

The Carib culture is only one of many examples throughout the world of the ability of women to provide for themselves and their families without relying on male companionship. This is equally evident throughout modern Western societies, (such as in the United States, in particular), where the emergence of equal rights and opportunities available to women have substantially eliminated many of the traditional manifestations of social and economic dependence on men (Henslin, 2002).

Marital Quality

What, then, is the typical Latin American family like? Some research (Ingoldsby, 1980) indicates that psychological intimacy is not as highly valued as it is in the United States. In comparing couples from the United States and Colombia, it was found that high satisfaction marriages in the United States were correlated with a high level of emotional expressiveness between spouses. Specifically, other differences in interests and personality were determined to be significantly less important in that regard than the quantity and quality of emotional intimacy between marital partners (Ingoldsby, 1980).

By contrast, this was not found to be true for the Colombian couples. Instead, their level of relationship satisfaction was predicted by having a similar level of expressiveness between spouses, irrespective of whether the level was high, medium, or low (Ingoldsby, 1980). Likewise, Colombian women and men were determined to be are equally likely to say what they feel and to express themselves at the same level as North American males. In the United States, female spouses are typically significantly more expressive as a group than are their male counterparts (Ingoldsby, 1980).

In a significant recent paper, Bailey (2006) focuses on biotechnological discoveries in birth control methods that offered women greater power to choose the timing of childbearing. This power may have translated into higher investments in education and increased labor force participation of women. In an excellent paper, among other things, Goldin (1995) focused on technological International Research Journal of Finance and Economics - Issue 21 (2008) 136 advancements in the realm of household technologies (like micro-wave oven, dishwasher, vacuum cleaners etc.) that freed up ample amount of time for the women to concentrate on economically gainful activities or human capital accumulation.

That concept has been illustrated throughout the United States as the result of two specific advances that increased female independence and autonomy in the 20th century (Macionis, 2003). First, the introduction of oral contraception and its approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1960, and second, the subsequent landmark Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade that struck down state laws prohibiting abortion in the U.S. In 1973. Prior to that decision, the majority of American states prohibited elective abortion (Macionis, 2003).

As a result, unplanned pregnancy was the principal obstacle that prevented American women from achieving social and economic equality. This was especially true with respect to women living in relative poverty, because in many cases, the costs associated with interstate travel to one of the few American states that permitted elective abortion was prohibitive (Macionis, 2003). Meanwhile, women of relative economic means and/or whose families had the benefit of social connections were routinely able to obtain the diagnosis of "medical necessity" from complicit family physicians that enabled them to seek abortion procedures within their home states legally.

According to most sociologists and historians, it was precisely this reason that the availability of oral contraception and the legalization of elective abortion that enabled women to substantially reduce the social and economic inequality between men and women that had existed for centuries prior to the last half of the 20th century in the U.S. While much focus is often directed to the importance of employment patterns necessitated by wartime production efforts during the World War Two era, without liberation from the burden of unplanned pregnancy that enabled American women to exploit the social and economic potential of their increasing involvement in the American workforce thereafter (Healey, 2003; Macionis, 2003).

Moreover, as Bradbury & Katz (2005) noted much more recently than the immediate post World War Two era, today, even highly educated women with young children typically withdraw from the labor market much longer than strictly necessitated by medical concerns, mainly as a result of the great difficulties of balancing the responsibilities of motherhood and fulltime employment. This includes many women who had already established a career track that they never intended to abandon after a short departure immediately preceding and following their delivery dates (Bradbury & Katz, 2005).

This issue has been of crucial importance to Latin women living in the United States simply because Hispanics have been disproportionately represented within poor communities. Reproductive autonomy is obviously a very significant direct predictor of the successful acquisition of social and economic equality for poor women. In that regard, the comparative unavailability of autonomous rights of Latin women elsewhere (even if the result of prevailing social mores rather than formal legislation) still limits their upward mobility and their ability to achieve social independence from men in Latin communities.

Employment of Women

Changing social attitudes to female employment also provides good incentives for the women to enter the labor force (Rindfuss, Brewster, & Kavee, 1996). This is very important since social attitudes are not only important determinants of how women are likely to be treated in the professional fields but also reflect on how they are likely to be treated in their homes. Inflationary situations may adversely affect labor force participation of women. Fertility and education levels are also found have substantial impact on women's labor force participation decisions (see Devaney, 1983).

This pattern appears similar to the one that prevailed in the pre-industrial United States, where the marital focus was on agreement between spouses and task completion. Even shortly before the outbreak of World War Two, women were extremely under-represented in the American workforce (Healey, 2003; Henslin, 2002). During the first two decades of the postwar era, the numbers of women in the American workforce continued to increase, as did the age of women at first marriage, and divorce rates (Healey, 2003; Macionis, 2003). As more women in Latin America enter the labor force, it may be that marriages will shift from traditional to more companionate, as has occurred in the United States, where the emphasis is on emotional sharing.

A factor of migration is another element connected to choice and ability gained by women to enter the labor force. The tremendous increased participation of women in the American labor force was well documented, including by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to which, labor force participation of women increased from approximately 30% in 1948 to approximately 60% in 2005 (Hotchkiss, 2006). In other words, labor force participation of women has more or less doubled in a span of less than six decades.

Increased labor force participation of women has also been observed in international contexts, both in general, as well as with respect to married women in particular (Psacharopoulos & Zannatos, 1989; Blau & Kahn, 2005). The reasons for this great expansion in labor force participation of women have formed the body of a large and vibrant literature in economics, sociology, and demography. Important contributions come out every now and then and researchers often offer novel and interesting explanations for this extremely interesting topic.

Reproductive Autonomy and Female Empowerment

Statistical analyses show that, over the last four decades, labor market participation rates of women significantly increased, while fertility declined throughout the world. In principle, this relates directly to the choices that a woman can make and reduces the most significant choice to that between fertility and labor participation for Hispanic women. Labor force participation of women has also steadily increased market wages. One direct consequence observed in connection with that phenomenon is that increasing market wages can lead to a reduction in women's interest in devoting their lives and their efforts during their most productive years in household maintenance. Furthermore, the available evidence strongly suggests that fertility and reproductive control and family situations (like cultural origin traits) often have an adverse impact on the labor force participation of women.

These conclusions are the result of modeling labor force participation decisions of women under various scenarios, (like flexible intra-household sharing rules, varying degrees of gender inequality etc.) Although estimates of the causal relationship between fertility and female labor supply are mixed, the evidence suggests how much every additional child within a family affects work decisions and the average hours worked by mothers.

In that regard, statistical analysis shows that a decreasing trend in fertility corresponds directly to an increasing trend in female labor force participation throughout the world over the last four decades. Empirical studies using very different specifications and estimation techniques all indicate that fertility has distinctly negative effect on maternal labor supply simply because childbearing responsibilities invariably fall on women and women still have lower wage rates than men on average.

This negative relationship between fertility and female labor supply is explained by social, economic, and technical forces that affect fertility and female labor supply, including an increase in the value of women's time due to an increase in education levels of women, expensive childcare, and substitutes for children. Likewise, emphasis on quality instead of quantity of children; an increase in employment opportunities for women; changes in social norms towards supporting women working outside their home; and technical progress in birth control all contribute to the issues affecting the economic opportunities available to women, particularly in comparison to their male counterparts (Healey, 2003).

The available economic and demographic literature discusses two different effects of having an additional child in a household on maternal labor force participation. The specialization effect, named by Becker (1985), argued that an increase in family size would lead women to spend more time and energy on supplying child services because childbearing mostly falls on women. Meanwhile, men are likely to spend more energy and time in the labor market due to the higher return of labor on the labor market and the relationship between the size of the family and the importance of increased earning. Thus, women are less likely to participate in the labor market activities in response to an increase in family size while men are more likely to work additional hours as a result of the same variable (i.e. family size).

The second important effect is the home-intensive effect, as originally formulated by Lundberg & Rose (1999). According to this argument, more children increase the value of parents' time as an input of the home production. As a result of this phenomenon, more children in the family corresponds to decreasing tendency and probability of women either seeking work outside the household for the first time of returning to work, even where they had previously established a career track prior to childbirth (Healey, 2003). Individually, each of those phenomena predicts that the female labor force participation decreases in response to an increase in fertility; in combination, the effect is greatly magnified, and these theoretical predictions have been confirmed by empirical analyses (Lundberg & Rose, 1999).

Gender Roles and Cultural Expectations -- Familism and Machismo

Generally, a review of the available literature on Hispanic families reveals two specific factors contribute greatly to their character, especially with respect to issues of female empowerment in Hispanic societies. The first, called familism, refers to the cultural ideal; it describes a close, loving, and religious family. The second factor is known as machismo, which is a traditional attitude of males in many Hispanic (and other) cultures. In contemporary societies, machismo is substantially connected to poverty. While machismo was extremely prevalent in many cultures prior to the modern era, in contemporary societies, it is widely regarded as an abuse of patriarchy.

Machismo

From the perspective of female social liberation and social equality, machismo can be considered another negative factor in Latin American countries that is a significant barrier both within the family as well as in connection to the ability of women to become part of the national labor force. There are two principal characteristics that appear in the study of machismo. The first is aggressiveness. Every man who considers himself macho and wishes to portray that image must continually demonstrate that he is masculine, strong, and physically powerful (Healey, 2003).

Differences of opinion among males, challenges of any kind (whether verbal or physical) must be met with physical violence as a matter of honor preservation. The true macho man should never be afraid of anything, and he should also be capable of drinking great quantities of liquor without necessarily getting drunk. Machismo is also associated with very characteristic attitudes toward women. Specifically, a macho man can never allow his female partner to challenge his authority, even in private; however, challenges to his authority by a female in public is considered a tremendously emasculating insult that may typically result in physical abuse in retaliation as well as in the form of a deterrent against any future recurrence (Healey, 2003; Schmalleger, 2008).

At the same time, the macho man is highly territorial and protective of his female partner. This may seem to be contradictory until one examines the motivations more carefully. The protective impulse in this regard is not actually a function of protecting the female from harm or insult; rather it is an impulse to perceive any slight or inappropriate overture directed toward the female as an insult or challenge to the male's masculinity. In this context, the female is merely the subject matter over which the macho male must defend his honor against any suggestion or implication that is insulting to him.

The other major characteristic of machismo is hypersexuality (Ingoldsby 1991b). The impotent and homosexual are scoffed at by the macho male. Within cultures that recognize and value machismo, the culturally preferred goal for males is the continual conquest of women, notwithstanding the insult and harm it may cause to female companions and wives. To take advantage of a young woman sexually is cause for pride and prestige, not blame. In fact, some men will commit adultery just to prove to themselves that they can do it and to live up to cultural expectations among macho males.

With the exception of the wife and (perhaps) a steady mistress, long-term affectionate relationships should not exist for the macho male. Sexual conquests are to satisfy the macho male vanity. Indeed, it is merely a mechanism of advertising to others that a macho male is virile and desirable to women and that impulse and need for attention generates considerable bragging and storytelling among macho males. According to macho beliefs, a married man should have a mistress and should also pursue regular casual sexual encounters. His relationship with his wife is that of an aloof lord-protector. The woman loves, but the man conquers; to the macho psychology, this lack of emotion is itself part of the superiority of the male (Ingoldsby 1991b).

Paradoxically, most Latin women also believe in male superiority (Stycos 1955), and they want their men to be strong and to protect them. According to the dominant cultural stereotype, a man must protect his female relatives from other men because they should all be virgins when they marry. Knowing that other men are like himself, the macho man is pathologically jealous and, as a result, allows his wife very few liberties. In summary, machismo may be defined as: "The cult of virility, the chief characteristics of which are exaggerated aggressiveness and intransigence in male-to-male interpersonal relationships and arrogance and sexual aggression in male-to-female relations" (Stevens 1973, p. 315).

Familism

Familism places the well-being of the family ahead of individual interests and development. It includes many responsibilities and obligations to immediate family members and other kin, including godparents. Extended family often live in close proximity to each other, with many often sharing the same dwelling. It is common for adult children to supplement their parents' income. In many ways, the Hispanic family helps and supports its members to a degree far beyond that found in individualistically oriented Anglo families (Ingoldsby 1991b).