Women of color, particularly African-American women and Latinas, have long been the mainstay of their communities. Researchers have empirically demonstrated that children’s health outcomes, social standing and educational achievement can all be traced to the mother’s successes and aspirations.
My own family is a case in point.
When growing up my mother always intoned the words “when you go to college,” never “if you go,” although she herself had not attended. My grandmother, an immigrant from Trinidad, had not completed high school, but education was so highly regarded that she (in embarrassment) typically withheld that information from her friends.
Attending an all-girls high school taught me that girls can be athletes and scholars; matriculating at historically Black Howard University showed me that African-Americans could be poets, politicians and physical chemists.
It is somewhat ironic that while women set the stage for family life, raise the children and moderate the climate in the home, most societies have been slow to educate their daughters and instead place restrictions on them, limiting their legal rights and their social roles. As we observe the continued reluctance in some groups to grant rights to women, psychological explanations vary from the suggestion that men fear competing against women to a deep-seated need for an underclass.
Indeed, male dominance mirrors the racially motivated dominance that nation-states have often promulgated throughout the world. Both are manifestations of power and control over those seen as less worthy.
The limitations placed on women are found in academia as well. In years past, schools and universities were dominated by — and even restricted for — boys and men only. Males (White males) were the students, the faculty and the administrators.
