Are Gender roles still prominent in Mexican culture
Addy Bonilla
March 9, 2025
Writing for the Social Science
I interviewed Jane on a Monday after our psychology class, it was around 10:50am. We walked together having small talk about random things while finding an empty classroom. The room was quiet and pretty small compared to other rooms at the college. We dim the lights, so the room won’t be so bright, and we started the interview. Gender roles and misogyny are a big part of Hispanic culture. I want to find out if it’s still such a prominent part of my subject’s culture and if she feels like it affects her or her culture in a negative way.
My subject didn’t want her real name to be used so I’ll use the pseudonym, Jane. Jane is 17 years old turning 18 in less than 3 weeks. She is a senior in high school taking college courses like me, we are both part of the same high school and early college program. Jane is Mexican American; she was born and raised in Manhattan, New York. She is around 5 feet tall. She has medium length black hair with brown highlights. She has tanish skin that is not too pale or too tan. She’s a calm spoken person; she is very nice and is really easy to get along with. She jokes a lot. so, she speaks very lighthearted. She is both extroverted and introverted. She likes to go out and have fun instead of staying home being a homebody. She is a confident person who doesn’t care what others think of her. She’s not a loud person.
When walking into the interview l expected her family to play into gender roles, so I was surprised to hear that wasn’t the case. It was unexpected for me because most of my Mexican friends have struggled with a lot of misogyny where family members force gender roles onto them. Hearing that she has a different experience from that was shocking to me. Jane explained that her family weren’t into that lifestyle, instead they helped each other out and were very involved. She explains that she never felt any pressure from her family to fit into a certain role. Things like a woman being the one who should be cooking or cleaning aren’t forced upon her or her mother. She says her dad is a cook, both her mother and father cook and the same with the cleaning. And how her family has a more modern way of living compared to most people in their culture. In my culture, as a Dominican it’s similar, there are misogyny and expected gender roles. But it’s less strict compared to Mexican culture. There are parts where the man is in charge of the household and provides and many have both parents doing both. It definitely depends on the household. I was also raised with no gender roles so in that sense we had a similar experience.
Jane finds that there are dangers in gender roles. She explained how it can cause abuse in the marriage especially since the woman would be too scared to leave the relationship since they were thought to always listen to the man even when wrong. She explained how women might stay in the relationship and endure the abuse because they were thought to believe it’s normal and ok and that it’s a way for the man to express themselves through violence. The patterns of abuse would continue because the woman feels too afraid to leave or doesn’t have a way on how to escape that toxic environment. Because Mexican culture pushes gender roles onto families there is a less chance for them to go against it and let the abuse occur more without questioning since they believe it’s ok. She explains that she has seen things where men come home and tell the woman things like “serve me food” or make orders without saying simple words like “please” or “thank you”. She says, “It makes me uncomfortable”. She mentioned that she has seen a few uncomfortable situations that she does not feel comfortable sharing. In my culture, abuse in marriage is frowned upon. The women are told mostly to leave that relationship right away if it gets to the extremes. I personally never seen in my family or within my culture the use of demands from a man to a woman like Jane has seen.
Instead of gender roles, Jane focuses on age restrictions. She expresses how she has a lot more restrictives compared to her brothers. She explains the rules that she needs to follow are not really a gender thing but more of an age thing. She explains how she’s not allowed out until a certain time or her parents ask a lot of questions on where she is or who she is with compared to her brothers. They don’t really ask them who they are with or where they are. She explains how not only age affects going out at certain times but gender as well as how women are more targeted at night compared to men. In Mexican culture parents are always more lenient with their sons compared to daughters but in her case it’s different. In my culture daughters are more protected because they are considered physically weaker compared to men. But when speaking about siblings and rules gender and age both play into the rules parents have for their children. I understand where she is coming from when speaking about age restrictions, but it is not something I relate to because I’m an only child.
In conclusion gender roles affect Jane’s culture in a negative way. Mexican culture still has traditional roles with gender which still causes a lot of problems today. My subject Jane isn’t personally affected by it as much since her family doesn’t comply with them, but she still has a strong opinion on misogyny and gender roles being destroyed for relationships and families. Gender roles can affect women especially in a negative light and causes bigger issues that are harder to resolve. She believes that everything should be equal and there shouldn’t be any hierarchy between the two genders. Jane believes that there are changes that can be done to fix the problem with misogyny in Mexican culture with better communication, being more involved with helping each other and not leaving everything to one person.
Commentary
When doing the interview with Jane I agreed with a lot of what she said. I felt like there were things she wasn’t so open about saying. It felt like she was defensive when explaining her experience or talking about her family. She always added “but my family isn’t like that the”, it felt like she was being careful when speaking about her family because she didn’t want them to be seen as misogynist or have those types of views. She did not agree with gender roles which I was not surprised about. I did come in with a stereotype thinking her family was gonna be very involved with gender roles which turned out to not be true. Hearing Jane’s side of her story gave me a new perspective that not everyone lives through the stereotypes of their culture. It was refreshing to see her family break away from that mindset and just live their own way away from most people from her culture.
At first when coming into the interview I could tell she was nervous but as the interview went on, she got more comfortable. I think adding in the beginning that she didn’t have to answer all the questions made her loosen up and not so tense. She was fidgeting a bit when speaking, checking her phone. So, I tried making things quick without cutting the interview short. She gave good answers on her opinions on gender roles. We both agreed that having such intense relationships and such harsh expectations can cause bigger issues along the way. I will say I did not expect us to have as many similarities as we did so there wasn’t much comparison. Like the biggest difference that we had was that she has siblings, and I didn’t hear how her restrictions compared to her brothers was interesting to hear. I will say I expected her to speak more about her experiences, but I can tell she was holding back more but gave the best she could with what she was comfortable saying.
