Women & Change Chapter 8

This chapter titled “Mexican Women’s Activism in New Mexico Colonias” by Rebecca Dolhinow accounted for the project of interviews that she did in Colonias along the border of New Mexico. The communities were Los Montes, Recuerdos and Valle de Vacas. In this chapter probably the most interesting topic was of gender roles in the households of Colonias. These women speak of how men are only there for protection, discipline, to financially provide for the family and that is it. If he chooses to do anything else when he comes home for work, that is up to him and is “recreational”. For the women who want to be activists there are challenges and struggles that come along due to gender relations in the home. It because of their specific roles in the home, women are supposed to be the ones who take care of the home and the children. The role of women is to take care of everything else so if she doesn’t everything can fall apart. It is said that “mothers make sure their families are fed and dressed and ready for another day” (132). I think that this ideology goes beyond the Colonia communities, but also can even be seen in American culture. Men traditionally known as the breadwinners, and even some couples adhere to those 1950’s traditional views were the husband brings home the bacon, and the wife waits for him to bring it home so that she can cook it and hand him a beer after his long day. Yes there are “Mr. Mom’s” the men who are stay-at-home dad’s but those are not really chosen situations. These situations may come up when a father is laid off, or the mother may make more money the husband. I am saying that fathers could choose to do so, but it not often times the case. I wonder when as a global society we will break from this typical family structuring (minus alternative families of single parents, same-sex partnerships etc.)

Women and Change Pg. 19-35

This chapter of Women and Change titled “The Unsettling, Gendered Consequences of Migration for Mexican Indigenous Women” by Elizabeth Maier speaks about how the traditionally gendered roles have been dramatically changed thanks to women entering the workforce/who have been working. In recent years since more and more women have been going to work, more and more families are moving away from patriarchal control, and through these changes women are finding empowerment, entitlement, and citizenship.
Migration which is often times hard creates a new type of network of these migrant workers who move to communities along the U.S.-Mexico Boarder. It is said that “migrant networks ease adaptation in unknown socioeconomic and cultural environments. They are cultural support systems wrapped around gender-based social diversions that orient recent arrivals as to how to satisfy basic needs, administer natural resources, and find employment, or contact coyotes for crossing the boarder” (23). This sounds like a self-serving kind of network where people who do migrate to different areas and would not otherwise know anyone or anything, it is set up for people to acquire what they may need without having to go to the government for it, or worse, starve. This kind of networking is not only just amongst migrant workers, but it is gendered.
The gendered networking helps the “new” and “progressive” women who are working with a different set of necessities than those created for migrant workers. These women not only have to worry about basic needs, or finding jobs, but they have their families to worry about. These women have created networks where solidarity is created first. Other women understand and sympathize with each other and understand although they may work and feel like “modern” women, they still have to care of their families, the home, etc.
For these women this gendered work can be helped in some ways and hindered in others. One woman recounted how she always asks her sons to help her out with house work by cleaning their rooms or making their beds, however they don’t which adds to the work that she has to do in the home after putting a full day outside of the home. I quickly scribbled as a side note asking the question if machismo will ever change as new generations come in that have been used to home where gendered roles are much more progressive? Really I want to know will these sons ever get off their lazy behinds and help their mothers.
Secondly, for the women who are doing gendered roles, it is lucky for those who can get their hands on modern convinces like cars or dishwashers, refrigerators, etc. because the workload is cut into half. I could see that possibly happening because it is said that gender is ever changing thanks to relocation, generation differences, but it takes time. It is said that
“…gender is particularly prone to readjustments and rearrangement. Newfound niches of female socioeconomic activity, together with the evolving demise of arranged marriages, second-generation access to sexual education and family planning, bilingual and trilingual proficiency, increased schooling for girls, and the emergence of some women professionals all suggest an ongoing blurring of the strict sexual divisions of hometown community life” (27).
In these women is an increased sense of entitlement. What kind of entitlement is the first question that came to my head. These younger women who work as maquiladoras are a new generation and “they have a better understanding of mestiza culture, exhibit greater participation in intercultural institutions, and display more complexity and determination in the formulation of chains” (30). These women understand where they still need to respect their culture and cultural expectations however, they have found that place where they are able to negotiate what they want, who they want to be and still have that respect for culture. These women are educated, they decide when they marry, but still be able to honor traditional values as much as possible without conflicting too much with their new set of traditions and values.