Latina women are tired of the mainstream feminist movement. Superficially, this exhaustion seems ridiculous: how can women be tired of a movement that serves to empower women? Latina women are not tired of empowerment; they demand it like every other feminist. Instead, they are tired of the endless battle for a space that actually includes them. They are continuously denied this space by white feminism. That has to change.
White feminism is a push for socioeconomic, political and social equality that excludes colored, queer, lower-class and handicapped women. This definition enables us to understand that white feminism is driven by middle- to upper-class white, heterosexual, cis-gendered women. White feminism excludes discussions by women of color on the relationships between racial inequality and gender inequality. Latinas often reject the feminist label because they cannot find a place in mainstream feminism that allows them to voice the particular concerns and issues they face as a result of their marginalized status. Latina feminists are motivated by very vivid and very real experiences with sexism and racism that, combined, force them into positions of marginalization and inequality. No Latina seeks to divide the feminist movement by arguing the obstacles that white women face are invalid. They argue instead that the obstacles Latina women face are different than those white women face because of the intersection between racial marginalization and structural injustice. To be represented in the mainstream feminist movement by white women is not only ineffective but irrational — Latina women are the best at representing themselves.
Latina women have a triple minority status: they are females of ethnically different origin with generally lower socioeconomic status. Despite a domestic, hypersexual, confident and socially mobile stereotype, Latin women face serious issues related to racial difference. The wage gap is a well-known issue that reveals an ugly impact on Latina women. The wage gap for white women is a clearly unequal 78 cents to every dollar made by a man. The wage gap for Latina women, however, is a drastically lower 54 cents to the dollar. This is a full 23 cent gap between two groups of women whose only difference is race. Graduation rates for Latinas are linked to race as well. The college dropout rate for Latin women ages 16 to 24 is 30 percent compared to 8.2 percent for white women, according to Census Bureau statistics. This racial difference is linked to a lack of cultural capital (i.e., the ideas and knowledge people draw upon as they participate in social life in a particular society), underfunded schools and little representation in gifted education. These barriers limit opportunity for Latin women, causing them to seek lower-wage jobs and degrees in less lucrative fields. Additionally, Latina teen pregnancy is at a rate twice that of white women even though teenage Latina women have sex at similar rates to white women. Teen pregnancy directly and negatively impacts all factors related to upward social mobility. This obvious health issue is related to differences in race, education and immigrant status. When attempting to access methods of birth control, Latinas encounter significant barriers such as lack of health insurance, language barriers, restricted access to transportation or culturally Catholic communities that are against active family planning.
Latina women are understandably alarmed by these and other issues, and they need feminism to combat them. Latina feminists are fighting against their own conservative and misogynistic cultures while simultaneously pushing for legislators to enact meaningful policy change in an American society that marginalizes women and racial minorities. Latina feminism is still largely a grassroots movement for Latina women in poorer communities. The transnational phase of Latina feminism has been assisted through social and digital media in the form of blogs, websites and online groups. Despite these efforts, Latina feminism has been unable to obtain the space it so desperately needs in the mainstream feminist movement.
The demand for inclusion is not an attempt to delegitimize the very real inequities white women face. Latina women are not excluding other women by demanding other women include them in their common movement for socioeconomic, political and social equality. The key to bridging the gap between these and all groups of women is intersectional feminism — the recognition by feminists that women of different races, sexual orientations and socioeconomic statuses experience gender inequality differently. Intersectional feminism offers the greatest benefit: effectiveness. Latina women and white women can combine their concerns, experiences, styles and techniques to more effectively enact meaningful change for women of all races across the globe. That is true feminism: empowerment that does not ignore race, but understands it.
Hannah Borja is a guest writer for The Cavalier Daily and the Minority Rights Coalition’s bi-weekly “Our Issues, Our Voices” column.
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