dealing with mainstream institutions (Daisey & Jose-Kampfner, 2002; Suarez-Orozco, 1989).
However, Hispanic American middle school girls also have to contend with conflicting messages from the home and school about their roles in society. In the gender-biased Hispanic culture, these young girls are prepared to take on the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood from an early age. Thus, Hispanic American girls are basically discouraged from taking an active interest in their school work. In contrast, schools convey the message that students should work hard in order to pursue a career in the future (Canedy, 2001). As a result of these conflicting pressures, Hispanic American girls who conform to their traditional culture have a low self-image as they are placed in low-track classes. Their poor academic performance then in turn reinforces the stereotypical conception of Hispanic American girls as being unmotivated and lazy students who are unable to succeed academically. This self-fulfilling prophecy thus further undermines the Hispanic American female students' self-esteem (Zambrana & Zoppi, 2002).
The negative self-perceptions of Hispanic American middle school girls are captured in a study conducted by Daisey and Jose-Kampfner (2002). For this study, Hispanic American middle school students were asked to illustrate their conception of a Hispanic American woman at work. Ninety-eight percent of the drawings depicted stereotypical conceptions of a woman at the workplace: 72 percent showed women working in factories or other type of domestic work; 18 percent portrayed women as clerks; and eight percent illustrated women as teachers. In addition, the illustrations of the women also conformed to the male conceptions of the ideal women who had shapely bodies, long beautiful hair and heavy make-up. The Hispanic American middle school girls' limited conceptions of their future and their career options thus illuminated th...