Mexico is geographically the United States' closest non-English speaking neighbor. As trade barriers fall to NAFTA, it becomes necessary to examine closely the lifestyles of this nation which promises to become a close business partner. There are many attributes of Mexican life compatible with the American lifestyle, but in one key area the two countries differ greatly: the status of women in society, in the family, and in the workplace. An examination of the lifestyles of Mexican women will reveal a status quo much lower than that enjoyed by women in the United States. It is a status resulting from an acute discrepancy in gender relations.
The root cause for this discrepancy in gender status lies in the basic social structure of Mexico. Mexico is rigidly hierarchic in social, family and organizational orientation. Moreover, this hierarchy has taken on a particularly patriarchal coloring. Mexicans, as with most Iberian-influenced cultures, pride themselves on maintaining a certain purity of "tradition," a religious and social tradition that emphasizes the compartmentalization of women into a lower strata of opportunity and being than men.
The hierarchial nature of Mexican society stems from the colonial period, when Spain conquered the Aztec civilization and then cruelly enslaved other indigenous peoples. Dominated by the patriarchal Roman Catholic Church, the conquistadors imposed a vertical structure upon the region that differentiated Mexicans along racial and national lines: at the bottom, Indians, then the mixed-blood mestizos, ruled over by Mexican-born creoles of pure European stock - all topped by Spanish-born overlords. There was a repeated "defeat" of anyone of Mexican origin - from which a peculiar form of sexism emerged:
It seems that the greater the need to recapture masculine dignity because of social, economic and political defeat, the greater the curse on the female members of the group (Gonza...