A Latino And A Latina Walk Into A University…
By Maitri Pamo, Being Latino
The news broke her heart. Even though my cousin was well on her way to becoming the first person in our family to go to college, my aunt was dismayed that her youngest, my male cousin, had decided not to follow in his sister’s footsteps, but enter the workforce instead.
He was lured, my aunt claimed, by the thought of earning money to provide himself with a sense of self worth. The multiple-year struggle of earning a degree was less attractive to him than the possibility of wage earning in his present. He admitted to me, that having money in his pocket made him feel important and that he liked it when family members would come to him for financial aid.
Undoubtedly, in my family, the dynamic has been that men are viewed, and view themselves, as providers. It has been rare that a male relative will forego the immediacy of a salary for the delayed but often greater reward that comes with advanced educational attainment. For a community that has a comparatively low level of education, such factors are important considerations for Latinos. The gender division among our people is stark with regards to college education.A recent analysis of Simmons data revealed some troubling statistics concerning the differences between Latino women and men in higher learning.
An encouraging number of Latina women, those in the 18-29 age group, has had at least some college education. Forty-one percent of this population has progressed beyond high school as compared to only 28 percent of Latino men. And when considering Latino college students as a whole, Latinas are 50 percent more likely to attend college full-time than their male counterparts. External factors, such as a family’s length of time in the United States and the high school attended, also influence rates of college attendance; yet Latinas seem to be poised to make the decision to work through years of higher learning in a way that many Latino men are not.
It is sobering to consider that despite the current differences in educational attainment, the wage gap between women and men in our community is still present, as it is across all U.S. racial/ethnic groups. As of the last Census, Latinas earned only 91.3 percent compared to the wages earned by Latino men.
Putting aside the financial impact of a college education over the course of a lifetime, let us consider some of the sociological ramifications of the attainment discrepancy.
As more women are exposed to advanced learning, training and the unquantifiable benefits of horizon-expanding experiences, how easily will heterosexual women find commonalities with potential mates? It is also interesting to speculate on how numerous men, with an ingrained notion of being the provider, will react both internally and externally to a dating pool of women who are growing increasingly more economically and socially powerful within the larger U.S. society.
Our success depends on our collective advancement and achievement. Data such as this should serve as an invitation to dialogue and to challenge ourselves. ¡Adelante todos juntos!
This article was first published in Being Latino.
Maitri Pamo holds a degree in Foreign Area Studies from Columbia University and is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. She is a wife and a mother of three young children, an activist, a benevolent misanthrope, a polyglot, and a lover of travel. She has wild plans of obtaining a law degree when her children are older. She is currently practicing emergency medicine and volunteers her services wherever they are needed.
[Photo by Jason Bache]
