Latin American Gender Roles

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In Chapter 12 “Latin America and the Caribbean” the issue of Cultural barriers in politics was brought to my attention. The region Latina America has been identified by machismo and has created a region dominated by patriarchal behavior.. The terms machismo and marianismo describe the set of ideal attributes of males and females that has developed in the region. This structure is usually associated with conservative values, where men suppress women into their “traditional gender roles”. In Latin America, gender roles and societal expectations of men and women have been shaped largely by cultural-specific values and beliefs. This region has been impacted by the economic and social change that has caused a decrease of the gender gap in some …show more content…
The male ideal is supposed to be arrogant, sexually aggressive when it relates to men and female. They are also supposed to have large families. In result of women staying at home the man will connect more with his manliness. The women counterpart, marianismo, portrays the female as the selfless mother- morally superior and spiritually strong but submissive to men and therefore dependent and timid. The women are required get their identities from their males in their lives, such as husbands, fathers and sons. In addition, to getting their identity from them they are suppose to get fulliment as the counterparts of these males, being represented as their daughters, wives and mothers. Much Latin Americans trust that the greater or lesser extent of these ideal traditional roles and attitudes reflect the biological nature of man and women. These ideas of gender roles have excluded women from any form of participation in the political …show more content…
Approximately one in three women in Latin America and the Caribbean has been a victim of sexual, physical, or psychological violence at the hands of intimate partners, according to survey data collected by the Pan American Health Organization in 2006. Since the 1990s, a majority of the countries in Latin America have taken some action to outlaw violence against women. However, conservative courts often choose not to rule for women, especially in cases of domestic violence. The region’s women and their allies have given a name to the worst crime of violence against women: femicide. A femicide is defined as the murder of women by men because they are women.
Women reproductive rights are a key indication of women’s rights. In most of the region, largely because of the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, abortions are a crime. Only in Cuba is abortion legal on demand and in a few other countries it is permitted for extreme circumstances. In the most recent abridgement of women’s rights, Nicaragua last year outlawed abortion without exception, including saving the life of the mother, the only exception formerly allowed. If women in the Latina American don’t even have the right to have control over their bodies what do they have a right to
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