Empower young Hispanic women to be tomorrow’s leaders

I recently took part on a panel on “Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Why it Matters in Miami Today.” The program was hosted by the United Nations Association of the USA-Miami Chapter. It’s an important topic. Women and girls’ empowerment is essential to expand economic growth and promote social development. Therefore, it is a core United Nations Sustainable Development Goal.

I wanted to bring attention to a question I haven’t been able to answer: How can we contribute with our stories to the collective effort of forging a trail toward post-secondary education for Hispanic women?

Here are some facts, based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics, Journal of College Student Development and Journal of College Student Retention:

▪ Most first-generation university students are black and Hispanic. Fifty-nine percent of students whose parents had no college experience enrolled in some type of post-secondary education after high school vs. 93 percent if the parent had attained a bachelor’s degree. Students who have parents who attended college are more likely to attend themselves.

▪ Of Hispanic females, 16 percent have parents with a bachelor’s degree, which explains, in part, why in 2010 only 8.8 percent of all women with bachelor’s degrees were Hispanic.

▪ Fewer Hispanic women earning a bachelor’s degree leads to a smaller pool of educated Hispanic women who qualify for high-paying jobs. In 2010, 64 percent of Hispanic children (about half female) under the age of 18 lived in poverty.

▪ The influence of poverty is reflected in 77 percent of Hispanic college students, who cited financial reasons as the No. 1 factor for leaving college.

▪ Hispanic women make up one in five women in the United States. However, as of 2010 there were only about 8,000 Hispanic women with doctoral degrees, compared to about 100,000 white women.

Such trends indicate that preparing Hispanic women in college for graduation and higher-paying jobs will have a long-term effect on future generations because they will grow up in a stronger college-going culture. Empowering Latinas to persist in college will lead to personal, familial, and societal benefits. At the personal level, they will attain jobs that pay well. The family benefits by making women better supporters, and conveys a college-going culture for future generations.

At the societal level, earning the college degree will lead to an increase in Hispanic women in positions at colleges and universities who can be role models for future Hispanic female students. Encouraging Latinas up to the doctoral degree specifically, stands to have a snowball effect on Hispanic students who will now have more opportunity for student-faculty interaction with professors with whom they can relate, a significant predictor of student success.

Today’s low percentage of Hispanic women with doctoral degrees means that there is an astounding lack of role models for Hispanic female college students. This is important because student-faculty interaction is a significant positive influence on minority students’ retention and graduation. Research has found that contact with minority faculty is the strongest aspect of social integration positively affecting GPAs for minority students.

My hope is to motivate other Hispanic women through my personal story. I studied electrical engineering and was often the only woman in my classes. My first job after college was at a power company managing the reliability of the power system grid. I started my doctorate in electrical engineering when my two kids were only six months and 2 years old. I earned tenure and full professorship through persistence and grit —and with little sleep. I have been on a journey through several positions in academic leadership from center director, vice provost, vice president, and now provost.

I have been mentored by many amazing men and women, and I have been given a hand to hold on this journey. It’s now my responsibility to hold the hands of those coming after me. To rephrase a popular Spanish saying, I suggest: Hoy por mi, mañana por ti — an investment in Latinas today will have societal returns tomorrow.

Irma Becerra, Ph.D., is provost and chief academic officer at St. Thomas University.

This story was originally published October 24, 2017 at 6:58 PM with the headline "Empower young Hispanic women to be tomorrow’s leaders."