Latinas Leading the Way

*Good news, from the article: “… data from 2013 indicates that women make up 56.51 percent of those enrolled in undergraduate programs, with Hispanic women representing 57.73 percent of all Hispanics in undergraduate programs.” The article says the first steps toward increased Latina college enrollment were taken with the High School walkouts of 1968. VL

By Christopher Cruz, Harvard Political Review

“I never really questioned the fact that I was going to go to college. I didn’t really think there were other options.”

For Gaby Díaz Quiñones ’17, the idea of attending college was always assumed and influenced a great deal by her mother’s completion of a bachelor’s degree, she told the HPR. Díaz Quiñones’s circumstance—being a Latina in college with a mother who also went to college—may not seem out of the ordinary now. However, it is distinctly at odds with the realities facing Latinas several decades ago.

The story of the rise in Latina college enrollment rates is one that encompasses both the struggles of women and Hispanics generally to attend college. Latinas have benefited from American society’s acceptance of women attending college as well as from shifting cultural norms within the Latino community. In more recent times, Hispanic women have also benefited from the dismantling of barriers that have held back all Hispanics. The result has been a significant improvement in college enrollment rates.

Click HERE to read the full story.