Women find some equality in land of the free
by Zoë Potkin

A new kind of assimilation is taking place today among immigrant families: the roles of husband and wife are being rearranged, and working women and migrant mothers are experiencing new levels of independence. In immigrant neighborhoods like Washington Heights, fathers push babies in strollers and husbands hang clothes out to dry or walk home with carts of groceries. 

“My father never had that ‘machista,’ you know, but he was old-fashioned Dominican. I think he really thought women were supposed to stay at home and men were the ones supposed to work,” said Lourdes Diaz, 24, a volunteer at Alianza Dominicana, a Dominican human service and community development agency in New York. “But that changed after living here a while because they both had to work to bring money home for me and my brother.”

Nancy Foner, a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, points out in her book, From Ellis Island to JFK, that after working in the U.S., migrant women gain greater independence, personal autonomy, and influence in their families as a result of earning a regular wage for the first time or making a greater contribution to the family economy than in their home country. Foner emphasizes that migrant men in the U.S. depend on their wives to supply an equal portion of income, and as a result, their marriages become more of an equal partnership.

“I think my father started to treat my mother more as an equal after he realized that he wasn’t ever going to be a professor again like he was in the D.R.,” said Diaz.  “It was when he realized that housekeeping at Columbia was as good as it was going to get and that he needed her help that she really became his equal.” 

But it’s not only this sense of equality that is so important to immigrant women; they also gain a feeling of independence from their paychecks. They feel like they can stand alone.

“Of course, making more money, you feel more independent,” said Renee Muñoz, the Immigrant Citizenship Coordinator at The Dominican Women’s Development Center in Washington Heights. “You’re happy when you get a salary increase. If it came time when the man was not in the house [anymore], I would say, ‘Well, I can be by myself.’”

Miriam Mejia, a sociologist and the Deputy Director of Alianza Dominicana, sees the changes Dominican families experience when they come to the U.S. as part of a greater trend characterizing the experience of other immigrant families.

“Definitely when the woman is migrating, the weight on the family and the change is very strong. And if the woman has children and she is going to work now as much as the man, the father has to assume part of the responsibility in the family as mother,” said Mejia. “And that means it definitely affects the dynamics of the family.”

This familial equality or modern “Americanization” has spread not just beyond the Dominican community into other immigrant communities living in New York; it has even made its way back to the Dominican Republic.

Diaz said of her parents, “I guess you could say they’ve become Americanized. Now they share the dishes; yesterday the two of them were doing laundry. My father has even spoken to me about how things are now changing in the Dominican Republic, how women are becoming more independent, and more often you’ll see men doing housework.”