Gender Inequality In Mexican Culture

When you think of Mexico, you think of the fun and lively fiestas, the vibrant and beautiful colors on Folkloric dresses, and the delicious dishes. You do not associate Mexico with the word feminism. Why would you? Mexican-American people already have to deal with the micro-aggressive insults, invalidations, assaults and inequality from outside of the culture. But there is inequality inside this nation and their beliefs that many do not see. The Mexican culture is a very “macho” one and a very sexist one at that. It is clear that social inequality exists in this culture through the sociological feminism theory. The Feminist Theory is the “theoretical approach that looks at gender inequalities in society and the way that gender structures the …show more content…
You have the Spanish language itself as a sexist model that we, unfortunately, cannot change. To give you a brief Spanish lesson, every word in Spanish is categorized either as masculine or feminine. In addition, you need to be able to identify between the two in order to conjugate the word properly to make the sentence sound better. For example, most words that end with the letter “a,” are feminine, and words that end with “o” or “e,” are considered masculine. So, if you have the word “estudiante,” which is the word for “student,” you would add “el” or “la” in front of the word to describe the student as male or female. If you have a group of female students, then then word is changed to “las estudiantes,” and “los estudiantes,” for a group of male students. However, if there is a group of students that are both female and male, the masculine triumphs the feminine conjugation, and it would be “los estudiantes.” This is done with every word in Spanish. Even if there were a group of female students with ONE male student among them, the masculine form would still be dominant, even if the majority says otherwise. This is one of the prime examples I use when I try to explain to someone else I know that is Mexican, that our culture is sexist; is and every time I get, “wow, you’re right, I never thought of that before.” The reason they would have never thought of that is because we are taught to learn that mean are superior in this culture and it breaks an unwritten law. If …show more content…
For example, you have the belief that women are supposed to serve men their food. If you come over for a thanksgiving dinner at my home, and my aunts and grandmother are there, you can expect to never get up to fill your own plate with food and all of my female cousins and I are to help with this process. I was always told that a woman is to serve their husband their food because they have the notion that a man works harder than the wife does and the least a woman can do is cook them a nice dinner and serve them their food. I remembered I had dinner at my in-laws’ house and was scolded by his mother when she asked me why I did not serve her son his plate, and I told her, “He can serve himself? He’s not handicapped.” I realize that I could not be this way when it came to a traditional Mexican home, so I am constantly aware about when I had to serve my boyfriend or even my father their food, which was normally during fun, big family gatherings like Thanksgiving, birthday parties, or Christmas. Another tradition that we have not put into thought, was that who pays for the wedding? In Mexico, it is the father of the bride who pays for the wedding expenses (sometimes with the help of padrinos, godparents). This is because the father of the bride is the man she depends on before she depends on her husband. It is somewhat like, “hey you no longer have to depend on me, you’ll be