Female Migrants Face Culture Shock

Along with the other hardships of traveling back and forth between Mexico and the United States as migrant workers, women experience culture shock each time they cross the border in either direction and suffer the stresses of leading “double lives,” according to a new study conducted by the Latino Health Studies Center at UC Berkeley. They are uprooted and dissatisfied in one or the other country, depending on which culture suits them best.

Eighty women who migrated yearly to the United States to accompany their husbands or to work themselves were interviewed in Mexico about their work and family lives by medical students from the University of Guadalajara.

Most of the women were in their 20s, were married and took their children with them when they crossed the border. On average, they had made more than four trips north, crossing the border with the help of coyotes. About half of the women worked while they were in the United States in service jobs or as farm laborers, but in Mexico their roles as homemakers were more rigid and traditional.

Women who accompanied their husbands but did not work here themselves reported stress and psychosomatic illness while away from their homes in Mexico. They were more isolated and dependent on their husbands here, whereas at home, they said, they felt they had control over their lives. Here they needed their husbands’ help in the women’s spheres such as domestic and social activities. They were relieved to be home and came north only half as often as the women who worked here. Many said they were not anxious to return to the United States with their husbands and they turned to women peers for support in their husbands’ absence.

The women who work here had a different set of conflicts. They experienced frustration and loss of control when they went back to Mexico and settled back into their traditional roles. In the United States, they said, they had more independence and shared more social activities and major decisions with their husbands. They were more eager to return to the United States where they said they shared similar life styles with their husbands and were closer to them.

Researcher Sylvia Guendelman, adjunct assistant professor of maternal and child health at Berkeley’s School of Public Health, said that these problems for Mexican women will probably increase in the next few years as more migrate seasonally to the United States to work or to maintain family stability. A report of the research will be published in the Journal of Women’s Studies.

For the “superwoman” who has everything--too much of everything, in fact--Carol Orsborn, a San Francisco businesswoman (also wife, mother of two, novelist and brown belt in karate, she says) proposes membership in Superwomen’s Anonymous as a Christmas gift.

Superwomen’s Anonymous will “explore such options as downward mobility, guilt-free unpopularity and the art of doing nothing,” she said in the announcement of her new “organization.” There will be no fund-raisers, no monthly meetings and all classes have been postponed indefinitely--”the perfect organization for women who are already doing too much.”

For $12, members receive a quarterly newsletter “guaranteed not to teach you how to manage or cope” and a wall card that says, “Enough Is Enough.”

Orsborn, owner of a public relations firm, does have a message: “ . . . not only can you not have it all, but you do not want it all.

“The point is to determine for yourself what it is you want--not live up to the unrealistic expectations set for us by advertising and in the media.

“Many of us have achieved our goals--successful career and family--and still feel inadequate to the demands. We are vulnerable to band-aid solutions. Advertising sells us hair spray on the promise of pep and beauty after a hard day at work and home. Women’s magazines keep raising the stakes on us with stories about how to teach our children to read earlier and better, cook gourmet meals faster and exercise more.

“It’s time that someone raised the question of whether there is hope for women on a scale where coping is the best we have been told we can strive for.”

Speaking of superwomen, a new study by two UC Santa Barbara sociologists has found that women not only work harder than men at home, they work harder at work.

Using data from a national survey conducted by the University of Michigan, William and Denise Bielby studied 1,515 working men and women and found that women gave more time and attention to physical and mental jobs than men and expended greater effort when it was required.

It could be argued that women perceive their jobs as more demanding because of the toll taken on their energy by work at home (where they do twice as much work as men), Denise Bielby said, but, “If that were the case, we would not expect higher scores from women on the (survey) item regarding the effort put into a job beyond what is required.” If women did actually make the trade-off, doing less at work because of their family obligations, it would be in this area of job efforts above what is required, she said.

Furthermore, she said, the study may have underestimated the efforts women put into their jobs because women tend to underestimate the value of their work.

“Ironically, our results suggest that an astute employer would do better by discriminating against men,” she said. “Given our findings, roughly 65% to 70% of all women allocate more effort to work than do men with comparable attributes and responsibilities.

“For women to work harder than men despite their greater household responsibilities, they must be able to draw on a reserve of energy that is either not available to the typical male or, more realistically, that men choose not to draw upon,” the Bielbys concluded.

The Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women has opened a second 24-hour rape hotline that will specifically serve the central Los Angeles area, an area that the commission said has been underserved for a long time.

The commission’s 13-year-old rape and battering hotline that serves all of Los Angeles County is the oldest and highest volume hotline in the state.

The new line will offer confidential counseling and referrals to legal, medical and professional counseling resources that are accessible to those who live or work in central Los Angeles. Its number is (213) 626-3393.