Gender Roles In Migrant Communities

Communities consist of active social forces that shape gender roles and determine the fluidity for renegotiation them. Migrant communities from Latin America faced the challenge of bringing with them the gender norms set by their home community and attempted to replicate them in the receiving countries. The receiving community unleashed its conventions on the arriving migrants and shaped the gender roles and determined the change most fitting to the new circumstances. The migration process for Latinos coming to the United States influenced the gender roles in migrant communities by allowing for the transplanting of traditional roles that manifested themselves in participation in community activism, responsibility of the home, and economic …show more content…
Again, we see how the traditional roles of their home communities were been altered but not altogether forgotten. For example, MLEA, as a response to the lack of sexual education among the Latinas in Chicago, began to provide education on birth control and reproduction health; however, they were never open advocators for a woman’s right to an abortion (256). This was due to certain restrictions that contradicted their faith believes that would also not allow them to advocate for divorce or anything that violated the ideals of female chastity and virginity. (Fernandez, 258). Although the action taken by the women in MLEA was significant in challenging gender norms, their intersectionality as faith adherents and advocators for the traditional family minimize the level of radicalism they …show more content…
The traditional gender norms influenced this economic contribution of Puerto Rican women in Philadelphia in two aspects. The first is the extent to which women could contribute to the household income. As discussed previously, women were responsibility for carryout domestic duties. Despite the added work with paid unemployment, the primary responsibility remain the home, thus limiting the extent of their contribution (Whalen, 165). Secondly, the traditional gender norms also influenced the paid employment that would be available to them the Puerto Rican women. Many of them started off as domestics, a job only women took, under the state-sponsored contract labor programs (Whalen, 151). Few of them remained in these jobs for long, as they joined other industries that were traditionally considered women’s work (Whalen, 145). The garment industry and other manufacturing jobs were among those many Puerto Rican women joined. The types of jobs Puerto Rican women in Philadelphia performed were a reflection of the gender division of labor that was happing across the country as women were attempting to joined the work