Obstacles and Opportunities for Rural Latinas and Political Engagement

BY MÓNICA RAMÍREZ, WAPPP Oval Office Fellow 2015


Growing up in rural Ohio as the daughter and granddaughter of former migrant farmworkers, I had very limited exposure to Latino politicians. Given the national statistics, it cannot be surprising that I do not recall hearing about or meeting any Latino political representatives until I was in my late teens. Latinos in my community were not the ones who were making important policy and political decisions that impacted our families or our communities. We did not have representatives or spokespersons that assumed this role and children, like myself, did not have political role models of our same ethnicity to emulate. Even if we had believed that it was possible to become a political leader, we certainly did not know how to make it happen.

Today, the Latino population throughout the United States has ballooned, with significant growth occurring in rural communities around our nation. Sadly, despite the fact that the numbers are changing, there are still few Latino elected officials who can fight to ensure that there are good laws that address the priorities of Latino families and communities. While sizable in numbers, Latinos are still confronted with immeasurable obstacles when it comes to issues like immigration, education, economic stability and health. These issues are not unique to Latinos but they are matters that are impacting our community in significant ways.

Women also hold a minority of elected positions in the U.S. with a particularly low number of Latinas winning political positions. In fact, according to a report published by LatinasRepresent, a joint initiative of Political Parity and the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, “25,000,000 Latinas live in the United States. Of the 8,236 seats in state and national political office, only 109 are held by Latinas.” Thus, there are not enough women, including Latinas, in positions of power to ensure that women’s rights are preserved and augmented, where needed.

The rapidly changing demographics within the United States require that more Latinas run and win elected positions at every level of government. To date, efforts have been made to reach Latinas living in urban centers within our nation through meetings and trainings hosted by LatinasRepresent and other groups. Similarly, it is important to gain deeper insight into the political reality of Latinas living in small communities in our nation, like the deep South and the Midwest, places that have seen huge growth in the Latino population but whose political power has not risen at commensurate rates.

Over the last couple of months I have had the opportunity to conduct research into the civic engagement of rural Latinas, a curiosity that was born of my own experience as a rural Latina. The purpose of this research has been to garner greater awareness about what women in these communities, from Texas, North Carolina, New Mexico, and other states, view as both opportunities to become civically engaged and to, perhaps, someday seek elected or appointed positions at the local, state or federal level.

The research and the focus groups that I have conducted with rural Latinas have highlighted concerns that women have about throwing their hat in the political ring. Among these, they raised valid concerns about securing the capital required for a campaign, the need for training to seek office and a concern related to the connections required to run a successful race, to name a few. Other women, like Diana Bustamente, a sitting Probate Judge in Doña County, New Mexico, provided important wisdom and insight that may assuage some of the concerns that participants expressed. “I... knew that my most valuable assets were my time, my team and, in the end, my two feet.” Bustamente, a former migrant farmworker and a first time elected official, had very little money to finance her campaign. Rather, she relied on a campaign manager, a team of volunteers, and one-on-one contact with her constituents, which her team gained by canvassing the entire county to seek support. While Bustamente had no prior political experience, she had been civically engaged for many years as a community leader and Executive Director of a local non-profit organization.

This study is important not just because of the Latino population boom or the recent focus on the gender gap in U.S. politics. It is vital because a representative democracy requires that men and women of every community, urban and rural, and people of every gender, ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic background, be afforded the same opportunity to seek and hold political positions. In sum, it requires that our political leaders reflect our values and beliefs, along with a shared understanding of the lived experiences that have informed these ideals.

The forthcoming report will shed light on some of the unique issues, considerations and obstacles that confront rural Latinas, an emerging demographic whose political power remains largely untapped despite its limitless potential. It will also provide a brief glimpse at rural Latina elected officials, like Bustamente, who are blazing a path for the women and girls who will one day follow their lead and their example.


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Mónica Ramírez has been a farmworker and immigrant rights activist for nearly two decades. She is a civil rights attorney, a skilled public speaker and an author. Mónica is also a nationally recognized subject matter expert on workplace sexual violence against farmworker and immigrant women. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Loyola University Chicago, a Juris Doctor from The Ohio State University and a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. Mónica is currently the Director of Gender Equity and Advocacy at the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda in Washington, D.C.

Are Women Punished for Seeking Power?

One of the catch-22s of gender relations these days is that women are hemmed by both realistic power structures that do exist, as well as by perceptions of what ‘should’ exist.

Specifically regarding gender stereotypes, many people expect not only that women are more modest in their presentation and interactions, but that they should be more modest.

So what happens when women violate these stereotypes?

That was the question that Professor Victoria Briscoll of Yale University posed in her seminar on “Women and Power: Hard to Earn, Difficult to Signal, and Easy to Lose.” She broke her answer into three parts.

First, women often have to manage people’s impressions of their rise to power. Their intention of seeking power and authority appear inconsistent with people’s perceptions that women should be communal and not dominating. So even female politicians like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Patty Murray, who are essentially in the business of power, often downplay the fact that they are there, insisting that they “never expected to run for office.”

Second, once in power, men and women often communicate differently to continue this impression management. According to a great deal of social psychological research, ‘powerful’ people are often given a license to talk more than people with less power, who signal deference. Moreover, women tend to lead in more democratic, non-hierarchical fashions than men. So in spaces like the US Senate floor, men talk to display power, while women tend to talk to establish and maintain relationships and advocate for communal rather than personal causes. This is often in the effort to avoid backlash.



Finally, women’s power is often more fragile and easily lost than that of men. In the case of expressing anger, women are almost always penalized for this, while angry white men are sometimes rewarded for being assertive. But when women can explain their anger away to an external source, women are rewarded.

So clearly there’s a lot of work for society to do. To get there, do women need to keep on adjusting what they do? How can we get societal expectations to change in the long run?

Photo Source

How Does Media Bias Affect People's Perceptions?

In December 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was meeting with the press in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. She had just spoken about the challenges of being female in legal practice, where women are often judged on more critical and superficial standards than are men.

A few minutes later, the moderator asked, with no irony, “so which [clothing] designers do you prefer?” The Secretary responded, “Would you ever ask a man that question?” before moving to the next question.

Media coverage of female politicians---with a focus on appearance, on “women’s issues” like education rather than economics, on communal rather than individual qualities---is clearly different than that of men. This week’s WAPPP Seminar speaker, Exploring Viewer Reactions to Media Coverage of Female Politicians, Joanna Everitt, a Dean at the University of New Brunswick and current WAPPP Visiting Fellow, explored the effects of that coverage on voter perceptions.

She starts with the assumption that, in many cases, media simply reflects cultural biases and stereotypes---rather than actually creating them. One of these is that politics is what men do; for women, playing that ‘power game’ is out of the ordinary.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm (2003–2011) speaking at 2012 DNC.

Professor Everitt and her colleagues broke down even visual cues into those that represent decisiveness and individual power---like up-and-down vertical hand motions---and those that represent communal inclusiveness---like horizontal hand gestures. (I bet you’re moving your hands right now; if not, try it. You’ll see what she means---plus it’s been confirmed by repeated social psychological tests).

The media even more subtly reflects some of these biases in how they present female candidates in short clips. Professor Everitt’s study played short videos of different politicians using ‘agentic’ versus ‘inclusive’ poses in front of 100 human lab rats (students that took part in surveys).

The result? There were no differences in whether the participants liked the candidates overall. But those male politicians that were shown using the up and down hand gesture were seen as more impressive, while those going side to side were less so. Female politicians were seen as more impressive and likable when they didn’t use expansive gestures and were actually less liked when they used the up and down hand gestures.

So what does that say about us as people? Sometimes women and men (of different races) succeed by ‘mastering’ and using some of the benefits of their own stereotypes. But is that good? Should we understand and master what is accepted---in a sort of social jiu-jitsu to get our work done? Or should we fight to effectively change what’s accepted? If so, how?

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Role Models as "Social Vaccines"

Do you have everyday role models? Successful people in your field who look like you and aren’t superhuman?


Though I have become comfortable at male-dominated tables, I always look for fellow women in politics. I don’t just mean Hillary Clinton. She certainly inspires me, but she is a super star! It’s the regular women – the chiefs of staff, the policy advisors, and some Members of Congress – that I can look to and think “yeah, that could be me in a few years.”

Nilanjana (Buju) Dasgupta, Professor of Psychology at UMass Amherst, demonstrates that exposure to such role models can act like a “social vaccine” against negative stereotypes. This kind of vaccination by inspiration is especially important for minority groups in high-achievement fields – think women in politics, business, or science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers.


Professor Dasgupta and her team tested the Social Inoculation Model with numerous quasi-experimental studies in the real world. They focused on women in the STEM field, which is increasingly going to drive the economy. In STEM careers, women are both a numeric minority and a group facing negative stereotypes (perceptions that women are bad with numbers, etc).

In one study, unsuspecting college students signed up for a calculus class – a required gateway course for all STEM majors. There were 7 female and 8 male professors teaching 15 sections. The professors were also unaware of the experiment’s hypotheses. They had similar experience levels and teaching styles. The syllabi and tests were the same and the grading was done blindly by all professors across the sections.

Twice during the semester the researchers measured students’ attitudes toward math, their self-confidence with math (what grade they thought they would get), and their personal identification with the professor. They found that the female students taught by male professors were less likely to self-identify with math than did their female peers in the sections taught by female professors. Female students were also found to have negative attitudes toward math in sections taught by men, but not by women.

Women in male-taught sections were less self-confident about their mathematical ability – they estimated a lower final grade than did women in the sections taught by women. It is striking that with their final grades the female students in this study significantly outperformed men, regardless of their professor’s gender.

These women obviously had the aptitude for math, but they doubted their own competence...unless their professor was female.


Professor Dasgupta conducted a number of other studies to test various aspects of her theory, trying to understand the mechanisms by which the “social vaccine” worked. She also looked at effects of peers, exposure to experts through media and the effects of the teacher’s gender on students of younger ages.

Drawing on her experiments and the body of related literature, Professor Dasgupta makes a compelling case that for underrepresented groups in high-achievement fields ability alone is not sufficient to succeed. Exposure to relatable role models can mean the difference between staying in and dropping out.

That is why being able to look around and think “sure, I can do what she does” is so important for me and other professional women outnumbered in their fields. And it is even more important for the young girls considering a career in STEM, politics or business.


Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.

The Conversation Continues

In the last month, a couple of important things happened in the world of gender news:

1. U.S. Department of Defense removed the ban on women serving in combat roles.
2. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - arguably the most powerful woman in American politics - ended her tenure at the State Department, highlighting gender equality as "the unfinished business of the 21st century."
3. WAPPP Wire ran its first guest blogger series, inviting men to write about gender. 

Ok, one of these things is not quite as high-profile as the others, so if you missed #3, please take a look at the statistics in "Why Diversity Matters in Medicine" and read the story of a brave woman named Pashtana in "Providing a Voice to Afghan Women". I would like to thank Robert and Dan for taking the time to engage in this conversation. I hope that by adding their voices to the discussion, they reached a new audience of American men, like Pashtana did with Afghan women.

To continue the conversations on gender issues affecting all of us, I hope more HKS men will attend the weekly WAPPP Seminars held on Thursdays at 11:40am in the WAPPP Cason Seminar Room. This semester's line-up will range from the Olympics to the boardroom to "questionable behavior." Intrigued? Come this Thursday, February 7 (there is lunch too!).

And if you (man or woman) have an idea to contribute to this blog, please contact me at anya_malkov@hks13.harvard.edu, and let’s keep talking about gender!


Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.

Winning Without the War on Women

The euphoric post-election story goes something like this – women rocked the vote, both as voters and as candidates. There are now 20 women in the U.S. Senate – a historic number. Our very own Massachusetts elected its first woman to the Senate. New Hampshire became the first state to have an all-female Congressional delegation and a female governor.

As we celebrate this historic moment, however, we should not fool ourselves into thinking that women are on some kind of irreversible trajectory to reaching political parity. The current advances are a product of targeted efforts by political parties. Unless female politicians and aspiring candidates want to remain dependent on the salience of ‘rape’ and ‘abortions’ in the next election cycle, they must use this moment to push beyond the so-called “women’s issues.”

It is tempting to say that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee recruited record numbers of female candidates simply because its chair, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), is a women’s champion. She is, of course, but she is also an astute political operator, as is her counterpart at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), who recruited a record number of female candidates for the House. Political parties are not altruistic actors.

Parties can play a major role in bringing about gender parity, but the goal of party establishments is to win a majority. Parties do not recruit a certain type of candidate because it would build a more representative Congress. Parties recruit candidates who can win. It is not difficult to surmise that in the context of a “Republican war on women,” the best Democratic candidates would be women.   

The success of Democratic recruitment efforts is evident. Of the 20 women in the Senate, 16 are Democrats and 4 are Republicans. The House, with 58 Democratic and 20 Republican women, beats previous records, and white men are no longer the majority of the House Democratic Caucus. Clearly, when parties decide to recruit and elect women, they are able to do so.   

So what happens in the next election when there is no more “war on women”? The political establishment will search for candidates who can win on whatever issue dominates the discourse. If women want to be in the game, then they have to use the current wave to assert their leadership and demonstrate the value of a female perspective on all issues.

Yes, it is unfair – men as a group are never required to prove their fitness to govern – but if any group of women could change the game, it is the newly elected class. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), has big banks shaking in their boots. Wall Street lobbyists are working overtime to prevent her from getting on the Senate banking committee, and she has not even been sworn in yet. Enemies foreign and domestic should be likewise terrified of Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL). Both have served in combat with distinction, and Duckworth has the prosthetic legs and the Purple Star to show for it.

These are just a few examples. Let’s hope that the women in Congress can show their parties, their constituents and the country that they are not to be confined to a narrow set of issues. Until this happens, progress toward parity will remain slow, uneven and reactionary.

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For more information:

Center for American Women and Politics, Election Watch Fact Sheet

Time, "Four Ways Women Won the 2012 Election"

Forbes, "Did America Just Elect its First Woman President?"

Washington Post, "Women Make Historic Gains in the US Senate"

The Telegraph, "US Election: Here come the girls as women make historic gains"

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Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.

Year of the Woman 2.0?

In less than 48 hours, on the morning of November 7, 2012, Elizabeth Warren might become the first Massachusetts woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate, bringing women one step closer to closing the stubborn gender gap in America’s national legislature. Warren is in good company – 18 women are running for the Senate, and 166 for the House of Representatives. These are record numbers of candidates and it will be the Year of the Woman 2.0 if enough of them succeed.

The factors that shaped 1992 to become the original Year of the Woman are present again in 2012. It is the first election after redistricting, coinciding with a presidential election, and a heightened awareness of gender and related issues. The awareness this time can be attributed to events like the infamous all-male panel at a Congressional hearing on contraception and the ‘legitimate rape’ comments of Missouri Senatorial candidate Todd Akin. Incidents like these propel gender to the surface of public consciousness, albeit not in a constructive manner.  

A constructive discussion would focus on the point that more than 50 percent of the population should not rely on only 17 percent of Congress for representation. Even with record numbers of female candidates this year, we are looking at a goal of reaching just 20 percent in the House of Representatives. Only the most ambitious advocates, like Political Parity, are aspiring to more - aiming to double the number of women at the highest levels of government by 2022.

In the meantime, the 2012 Project has focused on getting the House of Representatives to that 20 percent mark this year. This non-partisan organization has worked to encourage women to consider candidacy and then connected them to campaign training programs like Emerge America or WAPPP’s From Harvard Square to the Oval Office and to relevant state and national networks.

Through its latest campaign, the 2012 Project is hoping to net 87 female Representatives of the 166 candidates. Their estimate is that 56 women incumbents are certain to win, 3 are likely to win and 10 new women candidates are almost certain to win. This leaves 27 competitive races, of which women would need to win 18.

Such a scenario seems possible, in which case November 7, 2012 will bring the Year of the Woman 2.0 and allow the US to move up from 80^th place in the Inter-Parliamentary Union ranking, breezing just past Tajikistan and Bangladesh. 

Obama and America's Political Future...and Women!

Theda Skocpol is a rock star of the political science world. Her lecture on “Obama and America’s Political Future” drew a crowd to the WAPPP Cason Seminar room. I have never seen so many men at a WAPPP lunch before. Something tells me it’s because the topic was not gender this time...And yet, here are the top five women-related highlights from the conversation:

5. Women are a politically relevant demographic. In case you were wondering why both presidential campaigns are aggressively pursuing women, it is because women vote in higher numbers than men do. They trend Democratic. When they vote, they tend to be more aware of how policies may affect their families. 

4. The Tea Party is teeming with women – older white women, given the demographics of this movement. Professor Skocpol, who co-authored the first in-depth book on the Tea Party, said that the women were the lifeblood of the local chapters. They organized the meetings, brought the snacks and shouldered most of the work of the grassroots movement, but they stopped there. “Just like in every other movement” Professor Skocpol reflected “the women did not advance to the top or become candidates.”

3. Women in Election 2012: Issues and Voters is currently highlighted on the Scholars Strategy Network website. The SSN, which Professor Skocpol directs, brings together America’s leading scholars to address important public policy problems in language that anyone can understand. 

2. Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senate challenger from Massachusetts, might benefit from the high number of educated female voters in the state. However, Professor Skocpol said Massachusetts is a historically difficult place for a woman to win. To illustrate the surprising ways that sexism manifests here, she described recent behavior of incumbent Senator Brown’s staffers at a Warren rally as “reminiscent of teenage boys trying to annoy their teacher.”  

1. “Hillary Clinton is going to run for President. And win.” Answering the question “Do you think Hillary Clinton might consider running?”

I should mention that in the best tradition of effective lecturing, Professor Skocpol also took us through the challenges the Obama administration has faced, dissected the failures of the administration to address some of those challenges, and explained the Tea Party practice of “kick-ass politics.”  She covered much more ground than I could possibly fit here, and even left us with some things to ponder for 2016.