Latin Women, Machismo, and Vocational Empowerment

Introduction: Female Empowerment in Historical Context

Women have achieved great strides in modern societies, especially when compared with the historical role of females in ancient societies and even in relatively recent historical eras. One of the most important aspects of female empowerment relates to the incorporation of women into the modern workforce. The greatest documented increase in female empowerment in this area occurred 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 fill the positions vacated by men involved in overseas military conflict. That conflict was, in retrospect, a watershed event in the progress of women 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 following 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 on Latin American Family Life

This paper provides background on family life in the Hispanic world, drawing mainly on research conducted in key countries such as Mexico and Colombia, with special focus on how the struggle for economic survival affects family 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 years of age. 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) provides the following snapshot: across twenty different countries, the most common minimum age for marriage for females is fourteen. Colombia and Mexico have set eighteen as the minimum for both sexes, but other countries 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 approximately eighteen, and that these young brides will give birth to an average of more than five children over the course of their married lives (Balakrishnan, 1976).

Chaney also points out that childrearing remains the highest social status available to women in many Latin communities. 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 — a figure similar to that in the United States — and the typical household has between 3.5 and 5.3 members. Among the lower classes, consensual unions may significantly outnumber formal marriages. For instance, among poor Black communities in Venezuela, 57% of couples are not married, despite the widespread influence of Catholicism.

Marriage and Social Status in Latin Communities

Furthermore, these families tend to be matrifocal — that is, mother-centered — and are characterized by early motherhood, migration, and poverty (Pollak-Eltz, 1975). Despite the fact that the mother is primarily responsible for fulfilling all of the children's needs, the father remains the final decision-maker, even when he is regularly absent from the home. 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 to impose their family ideals on the indigenous populations. That ideal was a patriarchal, monogamous, nuclear family (Munoz, 1983). Prior to this pressure, there had been significant variety among local peoples, including polygamy, cousin marriages, extended clans, and more familiar patriarchal power structures with 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 regions 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 places tremendous strain on marital relationships. As in many other cultures, there are strong biases and socially accepted gender-based expectations within Hispanic communities regarding extramarital sexual relations (Schaefer, 2006). Generally, married men are expected to support their families but are not necessarily held to a standard of sexual monogamy, even within marriage.

Married men frequently maintain girlfriends, and as in many other cultures, such transgressions are often condoned — at least tacitly — by society. Moreover, it is not uncommon for married men to father children outside of wedlock and even to support two different families simultaneously. The additional factor of long-term separation and geographical distance resulting from the pursuit of work by married men only greatly exacerbates this tendency.

Meanwhile, the same social mores and norms that are permissive of male infidelity are far less forgiving when it comes to female infidelity, regardless of circumstances (Schaefer, 2006). Wives rarely have affairs because, if their infidelity is discovered, they risk being severely beaten by their husbands or abandoned entirely. As is often the case across different cultures, unfaithful males routinely escape significant negative social consequences, while females known to engage in similar behavior suffer lasting reputational damage throughout their communities and are subjected to intense public shaming from which males are almost entirely exempt. Furthermore, in some Latin cultures contraceptives are withheld from married women, even when the family is already experiencing great difficulty supporting existing children. This is not primarily the result of strict religious convictions, but rather reflects concerns among men that any form of birth control could tempt married women to have extramarital affairs (Haffner, 1992).

This double standard has undoubtedly been a feature of human societies since long before the earliest recorded history. While female infidelity no longer legally justifies murder in most modern societies, that is not the case in some others — most notably in certain wealthy nations in the Persian Gulf region. In Latin communities, contemporary civil law protects women from such reprisals; however, social mores and the persistence of so-called "traditional" patriarchal rules still operate to make life considerably more difficult for women than for men in this and many other situations.

Marital Quality and Reproductive Autonomy

A related belief attributes miscarriages and other medical complications associated with childbirth to susto, meaning a "terrible fright." Even when their health is in grave danger, some Mexican women avoid birth control because they have absorbed cultural beliefs that their main purpose in life is to reproduce. Having children is also considered proof of the husband's 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 male companions, and as a result are less likely to regard males as leaders than they once were. To a large degree, female dependence on males is perpetuated by social values rather than dictated by any objective principles or biological necessity (Henslin, 2002).

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

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, 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 Colombian couples. Instead, their level of relationship satisfaction was predicted by having a similar level of expressiveness between spouses, irrespective of whether that level was high, medium, or low (Ingoldsby, 1980). Likewise, Colombian women and men were found to be equally likely 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 their male counterparts (Ingoldsby, 1980).

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 among women. Goldin (1995) focused on technological advancements in household technologies — such as the microwave oven, dishwasher, and vacuum cleaner — that freed up considerable time for women to concentrate on economically productive activities and 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. Second, the subsequent landmark Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade, which struck down state laws prohibiting abortion in the United States 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 preventing American women from achieving social and economic equality. This was especially true for women living in relative poverty, because in many cases the costs associated with interstate travel to one of the few states that permitted elective abortion were prohibitive (Macionis, 2003). Meanwhile, women of relative economic means — or whose families had social connections — were routinely able to obtain a diagnosis of "medical necessity" from complicit family physicians, enabling them to legally seek abortion procedures within their home states.

According to most sociologists and historians, it was precisely 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 persisted for centuries prior to the latter half of the 20th century in the United States. While much focus is often directed at the importance of employment patterns necessitated by wartime production during the World War Two era, women also required liberation from the burden of unplanned pregnancy in order to fully exploit the social and economic potential of their increasing involvement in the American workforce (Healey, 2003; Macionis, 2003).

Moreover, as Bradbury and Katz (2005) noted, even highly educated women with young children today typically withdraw from the labor market for longer than is strictly medically necessary, mainly as a result of the difficulty of balancing the responsibilities of motherhood and full-time employment. This includes many women who had already established a career track they never intended to abandon after a brief departure surrounding 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 a very significant direct predictor of successful acquisition of social and economic equality for poor women. In that regard, the comparative lack of reproductive autonomy among Latin women elsewhere — even when resulting from prevailing social mores rather than formal legislation — still limits their upward mobility and their ability to achieve social independence from men in Latin communities.

Conclusion

A comprehensive review of the available literature suggests that various aspects of Latin culture determine the specific effects of fertility on female labor force participation and work hours. Although estimates of the causal relationship between fertility and female labor supply are mixed, it is clear that every additional child within a family affects the work decisions and work hours of mothers on average.