Traditional Gender Roles and the Narrowing Gender Gap in Substance Use Among Urban Early Adolescents in Mexico: Implications for Prevention

Purpose: Gender gaps in alcohol, tobacco and other drug use are narrowing rapidly in Mexico, largely due to sharp increases in use by younger women. A common explanation is that traditional gender roles (TGRs) regulating substance use are changing. TGRs in Mexico are associated with the cultural ideal of machismo for males and marianismo for females, which are viewed as tolerating or encouraging male substance use but discouraging it among females. This study investigated the presence of TGRs among early adolescents in Mexico’s largest cities and whether TGRs explained narrowing gender differences in substance use behaviors, attitudes, exposure and resistance.

Methods: Collaborating Mexican-USA university research teams collected questionnaire data from 7^th grade students (n=4,937, M_age=12.0, 49% female) in 17 public schools located in Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara. Outcomes included alcohol, binge drinking, cigarette, marijuana, and polysubstance use; substance use intentions, norms, and expectancies; substance use exposure (peer use, offers) and resistance (refusal skills). A 5-item TGRs scale assessed endorsement of a highly polarized gender division of family labor and power (Cronbach alpha = .76). Analyses in Mplus utilized linear models with robust maximum likelihood estimation and gender interactions to test if TGRs predicted the various substance use outcomes and whether they predicted in different ways for males and females.

Results: As expected, by arguments on the influence of machismo, TGRs significantly predicted poorer outcomes among males and consistently so. Contrary to expectations regarding the influence of marianismo, TGRs did not predict any desirable outcome among females. Unexpectedly, TGRs predicted poorer outcomes for both females and males—and to equivalent degrees—for binge drinking, cigarette use, and substance use expectancies, and they predicted poorer drug resistance skills among females but not among males.

Discussion and Implications: Traditional gender roles in Mexico continue to increase vulnerability for adolescent males, while no longer protecting adolescent females. Results may reflect persisting TGRs in the family realm and conflicting gender role messages for females in Mexico. Although findings cannot be generalized they may have implications for other communities in Mexico, other Latin American countries, and Mexican American communities in the USA. Implications for substance abuse prevention include the need to design interventions that recognize culturally based differences between men and women in substance use attitudes and exposure, to provide decision-making alternatives to those emphasized in some traditional roles, and help youth navigate conflicting gendered behavioral expectations.