With some families divided about the social and cultural differences of gender roles, some San Jose State Latinx community members have challenged what the notion personally means to them.
When asked about gender roles within the Latinx community, Elisa Aquino, SJSU’s Chicanx/Latinx Student Success Center program coordinator, stressed the importance of questioning these responsibilities.
Aquino said Latinx women are usually expected to be caregivers in their families, meaning they don’t typically pursue higher education. But Aquino said the statistics are changing among younger generations.
“Looking at the amount of women-identified people who are enrolled at San Jose State and seeing the really large number . . . it’s a little bit higher than male-identified folks,” Aquino said in a Zoom call. “In our current times, that is kind of becoming the new norm. Women are entering the workforce and they are entering formal higher education.”
Out of 33,270 students enrolled at SJSU this spring, 16,934 are female and 16,062 are male, according to San Jose State’s Institutional Research department webpage.
Meanwhile the SJSU graduation rate among Latinx students was 52% for women and 45% for men in 2017, according to DATA USA, a collective platform that stores and analyzes government data.
Aquino, who graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in Latin American and Latino studies and sociology, said she’s inspired to work with undergraduate students and help them break gender roles in their communities.
Within Latinx culture, masculinity or “machismo,” revolves around the assumption that men are superior and women are expected to serve or defer their authority to their male partner, according to a July 14, 2003 National Institutes of Health article.
Machismo also refers to having strong or aggressive masculine pride.
This results in defined gender roles and gender expectations that are often reinforced throughout childhood and adolescence, according to the same article.
Mechanical engineering junior Paul Ayuso said because everything he’s done in life is influenced by his father, he values the responsibility of being a provider.
“If I am not providing for you, I don’t feel as much as a man as I should be,” Ayuso said. “I got to take care of you.”
Ayuso is the oldest of four brothers and was taught from a young age about what it means to be a man.
“Growing up, I feel like my relationship with my dad was very similar to a stereotypical Mexican household,” Ayuso said in a Zoom call. “I saw my dad as the provider. He has to do his best to make sure we get to eat and have a roof over our heads, so growing up, that’s how I viewed relationships.”
Ayuso also said he learned emotions were something to suppress because he rarely saw his dad express them.
He said he was raised thinking “being a man” meant masking his emotions because they’re seen as weakness.
“Every time I would be upset and feel like crying, I would be mad at myself that I am allowing myself to cry,” Ayuso said.
He said he plans to maintain the machismo role in his family by being the provider in the future, but he wants to encourage gender equality between himself and his partner.
“I am making changes. I do want to grow up and hopefully have a family and make sure they can be comfortable with themselves emotionally and not have the pressure of gender roles,” Ayuso said.
Economics junior Angel Cervantes said he was raised by his mother and grandmothers and didn’t experience a restrictive male gender role.
“A lot of times, I didn’t really have a male figure in my life,” Cervantes said in a Zoom call. “My entire life I was raised by women so I was always told to be more in touch with [my] emotions.”
He said he received many snarky comments from his friends growing up because he didn’t play into the machismo role, but he’s proud of how he was raised.
“I am just surrounded by beautiful women, powerful women and it is very empowering,” Cervantes said.
Psychology senior Alejandra Jauregui said part of being educated means seeing people as equal and “that we can all do the same thing.”
Jauregui said she’s seen female family members serve their partners and she doesn't like it, especially because her parents have always practiced gender equality with her.
“We are for women,” Jauregui said.
She said she’s passionate about gender equality because although she didn’t encounter enforced gender roles, she doesn’t want anyone to continue experiencing them.
“Times are really changing,” Jauregui said. “You go to work and I go to work too. We have children, they are our children so we need to work together.”
