Rose Guilbault's 'The Untranslatable Word Macho'

Rose Guilbault in "The Untranslatable Word Macho," addresses the separate meanings of the word macho between Hispanic and non-Spanish communities. As a child, the author knew the word "macho" as a desirable personality trait. She believed that her father was the ideal of the word: responsible, hard-working, strong, and honorable. However, she came to realize that modern Americans view of the word is a violent, chauvinistic and aggressive man. Eventually, it became a stereotype of all Latin men as the negative version of macho. Rose Guilbault believes that the change started during the 1960s with Hispanic women in the feminist movement. Women who traditionally viewed men, who by their uncontrollable nature were drinkers, gamblers and sexually

It reflects a belief in an ideal woman such as the Virgin Mary. This ideal woman is gentle, passive, virtuous and self-sacrificing. In the 19th century, there was an belief in the “Cult of True Womanhood.” It was an idea similar to marianismo, where the virtues were piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Religion was considered a natural sphere for women and for the ability as moral centers to influence men. To be a “True Woman” gave a woman the ability to make a better man. Purity, of course, was essential. No good woman ever considered lewdness or sin. Submission was dictated in the Bible and was an essential part of family life. Women wanted a strong man and the man needed to be the head of the family. It carries over into modern households, where the man is the breadwinner and often domestic violence is just the man getting his wife in line. Domesticity was the obvious “women belong in the home” and “real women take care of their children, not their career.” Women were wives and mothers, taking care of their kinfolk and making a beautiful home. Few women were able to live up to this ideal, then and now. However, the traces of it still linger in the media and in social expectations of

Girls are seen as caring, nurturing, quiet, and helpful. They place other’s needs above their own. Girls get ahead by hard work, not by being naturally gifted. Boys are seen as lazy, but girls are seen as not capable. In class, teacher will call on boys more than they call on girls. Boys are seen as better at math and science; while girls are better at reading and art. This bias is still at work even out of the classroom. There are more males employed at computer firms than women. The ratio of male to female workers in STEM fields is 3-1. In college, more women major in the humanities than in the sciences. In education, women are often seen as lesser than; even though 65% of all college degrees are earned by women. Women are still often seen as needing to be more decorative than intellectual, as represented by the Barbie who included the phrase, “Math is hard!” and the shirt that JC Penneys sold that said, “I’m too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me.” While there was a backlash on both items, it points out that there is a great deal of work to do on the educational gender bias to be