Limits of Progress to Women in Latin America

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Limits of Progress to Women in Latin America
Women have faced historical gender-based injustices in most parts of the world. These injustices are defined by customary requirements that dictate the role of women in society. For example, household chores are reserved for women in most cultures while men are tasked to provide for their families’ basic needs. Male chauvinism plays a significant role in other cases of gender discrimination. It has made many men believe women cannot hold certain societal positions, including leadership. In Latin America during the 1800s, women faced these challenges. Sadly, societal constructs ensured that women did not make positive steps even after the liberation. The Latin women faced several limitations to their progress, including racial discrimination, societal gender roles that affected females' education and empowerment, and cultural and customary patterns. Racism expands to accommodate romantic relationships between whites and blacks.
Latin American women faced extensive racial discrimination that limited their progress. Racism favors one racial identity and despises the rest in social, political, and economic sectors. In Latin America, anybody who was not white was not treated with dignity. The non-white occupants of Latin America consist of Indians, Blacks, Asians, and Zambos and Mullatoes. The women from these races were housewives and only worked for masters from the white race. They were forced to work as maids; thus, their rights were never considered by their masters. Having women to work as domestic assistants inhibits their progress because they do not mingle with the elite and empowered women. The women in Latin America were confined at the household level, depriving them of the opportunity to grow like women from the white race.
The racial discrimination also impeded men from the Latin American races like blacks and Asians from being in a romantic affair with white women. This amounted to discrimination and limiting the progress of white women in the region. Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda wrote a novel called Sub that was banned in Cuba in 1841. The novel presents a protagonist, a Cuban slave, in love with his white woman master (Chasteen, pp. 162-163). He was helpless and let the woman marry a white man who mistreated him. The racial patterns in the region could not permit the relationship, which would have boosted women's progress by allowing them to make their choices independently.
The same case in Sub points disrespect towards women as another factor that limited their progress in Latin American society. Gomez, the novel's author, flees Cuba because of discrimination and injustices targeting females. She released the novel, which depicted the actual situation in Latin America and was banned. This confirms that men mistreated women in the region, regardless of their race. Sub's protagonist had to watch the woman he loves get married to a man who mistreated her. This shows that women did not have the freedom to decide for themselves, limiting their progress. Such mistreatments made women afraid to make significant steps in their lives, and the few who were brave enough had to ...