Tamera Gugelmeyer is a writer and executive
director of The Sisterhood is Global Institute. |
We The Latinas
by Tamera Gugelmeyer, executive director
of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute
from El Diario/La Prensa
(March 8, 2009)
Click here to read
the Spanish version
Last week NBC Nightly News aired We the People, a week-long
series on Hispanics in America. Latinas comprise roughly
7.5% of the U.S. population, and number over 22 million, yet
the voices of Latinas in the series were almost entirely absent.
We the People focused on Latinos as workers, as consumers,
as voters – and as a growing target market for the Boy Scouts
of America. News coverage like this is crucial to reframing
the way that Hispanics are seen in the U.S. But Latinas,
who are also workers, consumers, voters, and Girl Scouts,
must not be made invisible – at home, in the workplace, or in
the media.
The real and potential political, market, and economic power
of Latinas is staggering. Today, one in fourteen people
in the U.S. is a Latina, and – based on current fertility rates
– there are roughly 700,000 Latinas added to the U.S. population
every year. As part of the fastest growing minority group,
Latinas are estimated to be 15% of the total U.S. population
by 2050.
International Women’s Day is a time to celebrate the power of
Latinas to change their countries and transform our world…
In Argentina in 2008, The Argentine Network of Journalists for
Non-Sexist Communications (PAR), an organization of over 100
journalists, drew up “ten commandments” for non-sexist language
in news coverage and reporting.
A Chilean women’s rights group, Mujeres Publicas, used email
and online social networking sites to protest the Constitutional
Court’s ban on the distribution of emergency contraception in
public health clinics.
In response to a call by the Cuban Women’s Federation, women’s
teams are slowly being added to Baseball, the national sport.
In August 2008, Mexico City’s abortion law allowing unrestricted
abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy was upheld
by an 8-to-3 Supreme Court vote. Mexico City and Cuba are
the only two places in Latin America to allow unrestricted abortions
in the first 12 weeks.
In Nicaragua, women – including Sandinista revolutionary and
MRS leader Dora Maria Tellez – are protesting the authoritarian
policies of Nicaragua’s Sandinista President Ortega, and mobilizing
to reclaim their human rights.
Spanish women’s rights activists have had reason to celebrate
in recent years. Not only was the Zapatero administration
the first with a female cabinet majority (9 of the 17-member
cabinet were women, including two in their 30s), but Parliament
recently approved a gender equality law, and the government signed-on
to UNIFEM’s convention to fight gender violence.
And in the U.S., second only to Mexico in the number of Hispanics,
Latinas continuously reshape what it means to be American – at
universities, in the workplace, and through groups like Chica
Luna Productions, Latinitas, Making
Face, Making Soul, and the National
Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.
The time of the Latina is now.
*Statistics based on those compiled by the Pew Hispanic
Center; many country examples first cited in Ms. Magazine. |
