Hispanic Women in Education

Introduction

The most recent data indicate that about 20% more Hispanic women than their male counterparts have attained college degrees (Harris, 2005). It’s no wonder more Hispanic women than men currently occupy senior positions in both public and private sectors within the United States. For example, majority of the most recent appointments among the Hispanic ethnic groups, in both the public sectors and corporate world were dominated by Hispanic women (Hispanic Outlook, 2009).

One would ask how they have managed to successfully achieve this height in education and career, considering the amount of challenges they have gone through in the past and even presently. In reality, they face the challenges of being women, and worst of all, being women from minority race in the United States. Moreover, Hispanics are known to harbor very strong ethnocentric belief against women. That is, women always have their duty designated in homes and not beyond. Those who go against this are considered disrespectful to the society and men.

Until recently, one would have to be keen and search more for Hispanic woman working outside their homes or even for any involved in public debate on issues affecting society. Gender-based discrimination coupled with traditional notion that Hispanics less capable as far as education and career choices are concerned was rampant. These among many challenges give a clear indication of how education has helped Hispanics women overcome many societal obstacles that come with such stereotypical beliefs.

This paper seeks to explore the importance of education to Hispanic women and how it relates to their career choices. In other words, it will explore how challenges that they face in their lifetime as minority groups and well as by being women has played to their disadvantage. However, success in education has played to their advantage over their male counterparts, leading to overall success in their overall career endeavors over that last few years.

The Gender-Based Barriers and Culture

There has been significant increase in the number of women in the academic field and other careers in the United States and elsewhere. The number of women in the employment has increased by 5% for the last three decades, whereas those in the management position have increased by about 20% (Johnson, 2006). Although these are encouraging figures to present some hope, the gap is still significantly big; hence affect the overall goal of gender balance.

This impact was particularly big for the Hispanic women, who faced double sword of being women and minority race at the same time in the past. That is, Hispanics faced more challenges because they needed to overcome both gender and racial tags to succeed. In fact, the long held cultural orientation among Hispanics is that their women should remain docile even if they decide to pursue higher academic goals (Johnson, 2006). It is explicitly stated that they should never attempt to forsake tradition even if they climb both academic and career ladder.

However, despite these barriers, Hispanic women have managed to prevail and succeed in defining their academic and career paths. The most important belief that has driven this success is that increased quality education for the Hispanic women can empower them and at the same time help define their career course. The successful efforts in the rocky academic ladder are attributed to the increased involvement of the social capital in the United States and at the community levels, supported by the government initiatives. Paradoxically, many people attribute the success to the Hispanic women role models who have motivated the younger girls to reinforce their academic ambitions further.

For example, studies show that over 80% of teachers of both elementary and high school are women, hence acting as role model to many Hispanic girls (Harris, 2005). This subsequently motivates them to pursue higher academic careers to match or surpass their teachers’ achievements. Others on the other hand have highlighted the role played by family and cultural structures within the Hispanics. It is believed that Latino mothers are more keen and strict on their daughters’ overall growth, especially on behavioral responsibilities, more than they do to their sons. This kind of strictness covertly help the girls pursue their career goals as they are restricted from bad influence they may be exposed to sue to the low class environment they live in.

Even though one may be critical of the figures as not satisfactory, it is significant to point out the fact that they have a substantial impact on their overall education and career uptake. These successes have helped Hispanic women shake off the stereotypes and forge ahead with their education and career development in the long term basis. With education, they have managed to overcome the traditional belief rampant in their culture that women belonged to homes and that their only best managed role was home management or rather management of domestic issues.

Racial Barriers, Education and Careers Development

Studies have shown that school experiences influence people’s career and educational choices as adults and their confidence in learning. For instance, Young (1990, cited in Hearn, 1992) did a study on the impact of racism in 1980s racial segregation in American schools. He found out that many of the students from minority communities did not have positive memories about their experience in school, particularly with specific school teachers.

Bad school experiences discouraged these minority children from returning to schools. It’s therefore obvious that Hispanic women faced a lot of pressure by being women and at the same time carrying the tag of Hispanic. It therefore followed that for them to excel, they needed support from all directions especially from outside the immediate family in order to excel in schools and colleges.

Rockhill (1993, cited in Bez & Fitzgerald, 1997), in her study of Hispanic women, draws a point at which women’s literacy or language ability is suddenly seen as ‘enough education’ by their partners; and men who have encouraged their wives to develop functional skills, enabling them to deal with household management, become alarmed and withdraw their support later if the women resort to pursue careers outside the precincts of their homes. However, with persistence and hard work, they have managed to successfully penetrate higher careers in both public and private sectors.

The main complexity emerges from the fact that Hispanic girls had the poorest foundation of education in terms of accomplishments of the elementary and secondary school achievements. But this is not the case Hispanics joining colleges and universities. Studies have shown that Latinos who join college and universities are more prepared unlike when they joined secondary high school. At the elementary and secondary school levels, curriculum is designed to merge the whole group of students as one, with grave assumption that ones a student managed to go through elementary school, they would perform equally.

In the early years of their university and college education, Hispanics were associated with high school dropouts. However, with some women successfully went through the systems and even achieved higher status in their careers, the young women got encouraged to follow suit and manage their careers beyond the expectations of the majority. This phenomenon shows how education of Hispanic girls has bore fruit in ensuring the trend of academic hunger among them continues, with encouragement from their families and society as a whole.

Racial, Gender Barriers and Leadership

The other concept is based on career choices as far as Hispanic women are concerned. The stereotypes’ view was that Hispanic women are unable to lead. Despite the fact that they were the majority teachers in elementary and secondary schools in the past three decades, Hispanic women never got the chance to lead the respective schools. School headships were dominated by white teachers. Subsequently, they got disenfranchised from the mainstream systems and networks of information in schools that would allow them to reinforce their leadership ability. In other words, they were denied access to information on leadership issues, despite the knowledge that this is the only way they would express themselves they would get to the position of leadership.

There was also the general belief that women could not lead. The notion that women, particularly Hispanics did not have leadership skills to take such challenging roles like principalships of schools were so much entrenched that it became apparent they would be sidelined. The general belief why women are treated differently is that they are never aggressive and at worse, lack leadership qualities.

However, the recent developments have changed the notion, albeit to the benefits of the Hispanic women. Due to educational excellence, these women have managed not only to lead in schools, but break in public limelight and dominate even certain sectors both in public and private sectors.

These women are now considered able candidates for leadership roles in wider sectors of the economy. Moreover, due to their good disciplinary records reinforced by their strict mothers and family backgrounds, Hispanic women have been considered better academic leaders than any other race. It also informs the idea behind recent surge of Hispanic women in high profile academic leadership appointments in the United States

The successes in Hispanic women’s career is a clear manifestation of their attempts to build their careers as school administrators since they manage to withstand both the minority tag as well as gender specific challenges. Basically, Hispanic women aspiring for leadership positions within the United States had to be twice as good as their white counterparts. The young ambitious Hispanic women are evidently faced with double jeopardy on the basis of gender and race.

It is thus observable that Hispanic women find themselves to be members of the devalued brackets of race and gender. However, this kind of devaluation has presented them with a new dimension of aspiration, as they strive for higher educational achievements than their white counterparts. In fact, there are many Hispanic women with PhD degrees than any other ethnic group in the United States. It therefore informs the decision for senior appointments in the academic leadership positions. Furthermore, the people’s ability to lead relies on the confidence gained from experience and knowledge from the subject that their leader is more qualified to carry out the specific tasks assigned. In other words, a leader should be able to build the confidence of his or her subjects by being competent.

The Change of Attitude in Education and Careers

Traditionally, career choices for the Hispanic women were limited. Hispanic women were only known for lower careers, more so in the education sectors. Researches suggest that high school curriculum; class rank (GPA), as well as test scores have a strong correlation in identifying the students approach to a particular career intention or ambition (Hearn, 1992). It follows that when Hispanics women chose their careers, they were made to believe that certain careers, particularly the technical ones, did not belong to them. The disadvantage was that the tests were focused on student’s ability in certain subjects such as math, English, social science, and computer science.

But during these times, these technical subjects did not provide better option for the Hispanic women as they believed they belonged to some other people and not them. It is the self-discrimination that limited their ability to excel in the specific courses like medicine and Engineering. Furthermore, America’s ‘pyramid’ format of higher education is believed to create a dangerous gap between the established cultures and the minority groups, thus limiting the minority’s ability to pursue lucrative careers.

So far the attitude of the Hispanic women has changed, thanks to the efforts made by the individual students with the support from pioneering students, parents and the government. It can also be explained by the theories of career development as applied by various scholars in the overall success of minority students, notably Hispanic women. Basically, there are two major traditions that have been identified in study of careers, the counseling psychology and organizational behavior perspectives (Fry, 2002).

The counseling psychology puts a lot of emphasis on the process by which people make and implement career decisions, focusing on vocational outcomes from individual’s perspective. The organizational behavior perspective, on the other hand, emphasize on the study of the interaction between the persons and the work situation, focusing on the outcomes that are of more interest to the organization than to the individual such as working climate, productivity, absenteeism, and turnover (Fry, 2002).

Whether group or individual career choices, the success of the individual Hispanic women has been largely linked to the successful efforts by the pioneer students from the same ethnic group. Furthermore, it’s the white collar jobs that early students, particularly women from Hispanic community, found too much appealing and worth pursuing in their lifetime. Additionally, the change of attitude is largely associated with the increased benefits that came with technical courses.

Career development is considered to be a continuous series of undertakings that exposes dynamism and more importantly, involve the interaction of many psychological and sociological factors (Fry, 2002). In other words, it is considered a series of vocational stages that makes people grow, explore, establish, maintain, and decline certain courses; hence provide the framework of specific career-related tasks including behaviors and attitude, to be mastered (Fry, 2002).

Career development also include the concept of career maturity- one’s ability to meet the demands of vocational tasks appropriate to one’s age or life situation; the implementation of the self-concept in the development of vocational identity; career patterns, or the occupational level and sequencing of jobs; and role saliency- the relative importance of the worker, students, sportsman, homemaker roles for individuals (Ntiri, 2001; Fry, 2002). These intertwining factors have defined Hispanic women’s success and developed them into what one would call a competitive position as far as career development is concerned.

On this basis, it is important to note that there is a significant impact of race, ethnicity and gender in the process of career development. The career paths Hispanic women take have changed with time as they get to learn more on the availability of good careers and the ultimate achievement. Moreover, there’s minimal difference in career strategies or career expectations of Hispanic women and non-Hispanic White women in colleges and universities.

Studies have revealed that there’s more gender than ethnic differences in the career aspirations and expectations among Hispanics, African Americans, and White college and university students. Hispanic Women College and university students do not differ from their White American counterparts in career development attitudes, career decision-making skills or vocational congruence (Mccrink, 2002).

Moreover, Hispanic adolescents find school and career goals salient issues (Mccrink, 2002). Hispanic girls view the way they are perceived with a lot of motivation, as they try to prove the negative perception that they are unable to reach the heights of academic achievements their white counterparts have managed to achieve. They express their feelings of the societal view with a lot of pride and ambitions, especially when they see their older sisters’ successes. This could have helped them implement their self-concept in a vocational identity; the self-concepts became a task in itself that required an endless struggle.

Educational Success & Mentoring

The contemporary leadership experts have acknowledged and emphasized the value of mentoring as a way of creating effective leadership (Johnson, 2006). In his study of the minority ethnic groups and their educational success, Dyer (2005) conducted a study and established that for a long time Hispanics and African Americans did not have access to basic systems for support, and that they relied on mentoring to help them cope with the challenges they faced.

In fact, he states that mentoring did not just benefit the mentored but also helped the mentors themselves. It must be noted that the value and potential of mentoring has become part of developing professionalism among young and upcoming professionalism. It has become popular at present and will most probably present a legitimate activity in the process of career development (p. 15). Even though there are variations in the definitions and structure of proper mentoring, it can be based on some concepts related to coaching activities, providing guidance, and sponsorships (p.17).

Hispanic women have immensely benefited from mentoring services from their senior female counterparts who have excelled in their careers. This kind of service began in the 1980s when many female teachers from the Hispanic community began to realize their importance in developing a just community within their ethnic people. Their active involvement in educational programs, although at lower levels, helped them build careers of young ones who later decided to emulate them and even set their own goals and aspirations. Many researchers and observers have concurred that educational culture and administration have been traditionally a preserve for white, male hegemony and that mentoring is always a tool applied to help minority cultural groups (Delgado-Gaitan, 1992).

The entry of Hispanic women in leadership position has brought a new dimension as they are still largely considered completely new in the field and most of all, different from the rest. The change that they bring into the leadership in many sectors is attributed to the high academic achievements they have traditionally yearned for. It’s noted that one of the best ways to ensure these leaders prosper in their careers is through provision of proper mentoring program. again, it must be realized that successful mentoring is not a one off event but a continuous process where experienced members of an organization come together to give support to the younger members to enhance their effectiveness in the running of institutions and organizations.

According to Mccrink (2002), a mentor doesn’t have to be an older person who has expressed preparedness in the process of answering the inherent questions, but any other senior member of an organization or similar organization who has enough experience to share with the young. Moreover, mentoring creates a good mental disposition (Mccrink, 2002).

The Value of Education and Group Support

Studies have shown that Hispanics like place a lot of value in group issues, especially that which involve family and community matters. In other words, they value community activities more than their white counterparts (Super, 1957; Rodriguez, Johnson & Combs, 2001). This kind of sharing necessary information with other stakeholders and readiness to participate as a group in an effort to improve the performance of the students has been reflected in the education sector and career development of their young ones (Rodriguez, et al., 2001).

According to ……… Rodriguez, et al. (2001), sharing information is one of the best approaches to help minority groups focus on professional growth. Mccrink (2002) agree that information sharing has benefited many organizations and assisted leaders grow professionally, learn better leadership skills and acquire problem solving skills, dialogue and debate on the best way forward for academic achievements. Groups support and sharing, however, is only possible where there is adequate understanding of individual needs and care (Mccrink, 2002).

At the same time, group development and sharing can only be possible where members of the groups share certain basic goals and understanding as far as their interests are concerned (Mccrink, 2002). From this form of reasoning, it is logical to understand that people’s understanding can only be reinforced by similar educational goals. The goals do bring the Hispanic women together because they understand each other as far as benefits of education are concerned.

The achievements of the Hispanic women and their increased number have benefited women and specifically Hispanic women in their academic endeavors. Their achievements as part of the larger community have brought more unity, given their background as culturally group-oriented people.

The success of Hispanic women is also linked to the collaborative support in education they have received from across various sectors. Educational support has helped them interact with other members of the society, notably those who have achieved both academic and career success. Culturally, they rely on the moral support from members of the community who have achieved a lot in various fields. For example, Hispanic women in school leaderships are more willing to involve parents and other community members in the overall success of schools and students well being (Mccrink, 2002). They view such involvements as fundamental aspects of individual growth and success as well as building careers of young ones from their community.

Through group support in educational initiatives, Hispanic women who ascend to leadership position may get access to important forums to present issues. They are therefore recognized or rewarded within the range of their ability and not perception (Mccrink, 2002). Before their educational ability was realized, Hispanic women would not get similar recognition or rewards as with their white counterpart. They were viewed more in terms of race and gender inferiority.

However, with the help of group support and individual achievements, they are now able to interact with the powerful members of the society and acquire the knowledge of the unwritten rules and laws of working to succeed. They are able to understand the study of history, culture, beliefs, norms as well as values of the dominant culture. The Hispanic women are therefore able to recognize that their values and culture should not be dictated by those who do not share it or at worse do not respect them (Mccrink, 2002).

Education, Ethnic Identity Model, and Social Capital

Theory of Racial Identity Development fronted by William Cross states that once a minority group realizes their potential by coming off the banner of their racial identity, to strongly look for an opportunity to learn about the history and culture, with the support from other race counterparts, they will move into the next stage known as “internalization” which symbolizes a sense of security (von Bertalanffy, 1968). Notably, this kind of self-actualization can be best accomplished through education. Hispanic women have managed to achieve educational success and this has subsequently helped them develop their identity as highly intelligent people, contrary to the old belief from other ethnic communities.

Basically, self-actualization has helped Hispanic women reduce negative perception from within their ethnic groups and from other American society as a whole. Traditionally, the process of mentoring Hispanic women could be jeopardized by the perceived imposition of stereotypes that as women and more so from minority ethnic groups, they were inferior to their male counterparts and unable to excel academically and lead big institutions.

The social capital the Hispanic women have received is largely attributed to their successful educational development in last three decades. Buoyed by the ethnic identity that they are able to achieve the academic zenith just like their white counterparts, Hispanic women have been recognized within the United States as people with ability to bring change at family and larger societal levels within the United States. The social capital paradigm is derived from the constructed information that conceptual ideas and practical issues are particular ways of viewing certain reality among the community who have the opportunity to share the gained knowledge.

Conclusion

Despite going through one of the toughest challenges to achieve educational success, Hispanic women have managed to penetrate the mucky waters of academic world. High academic achievement was traditionally a preserve for the whites. But within the last three decades, they were able to develop their identity within the larger American community. The role of elite Hispanic women in spearheading the development of their ethnic identity is embedded on the historical aspect of their struggle.

For example, empirical studies show that highly achieving institutions had their performance linked to the performance of their respective leaders. Such leaders are able realistically set goals and plan some of the ways in which they could meet the set standards, evaluate as well as give the necessary support to their subordinates , involve community members in decision making, show right attitude, and equally adjust their concerns to the entire school population.

The stereotypes’ belief that Hispanic women, just like any other minority group have little ability to achieve the desired academic goals have been disapproved by the immense success this ethnic and gender groups has achieved so far. These women have gone through Gender-based discrimination coupled with traditional notion that Hispanics less capable in relation to educational and career success. The long struggle as a group and at individual level has however led to the success in education and career development in a more sustainable manner. It has also played to their advantage over their male counterparts, leading to overall success in their overall career endeavors in last three decades.

Through education as a social capital, Hispanic women have the mandate and ability to exercise a measurable and direct responsibility in charging their leadership duties and roles. Moreover, they are also known to have advantage in the administrative roles as they bring with them personal attributes such as empathy, sensitivity, organizational skills, sensitive approach to issues, belief in nurturing, focused attentions to details, ability to listen, flexible view on issues such as diversity, and more importantly strong work ethic.

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