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Women have not broken the glass ceiling effectively yet, but we are much closer than we ever have been in my lifetime.
Norma Cardenas saw something she never thought she’d see Wednesday evening: the induction of a majority of women on the McAllen ISD school board.
Cardenas, who served on the board primarily in the 1980s, suspects she’s the oldest living former trustee who’s a woman.
She did not doubt the possibility of a majority board because she felt like women couldn’t do it; Cardenas doubted it because it had never happened, and it never really occurred to her that it would.
It’s a different world, Cardenas said.
“These young women nowadays, they have so much more options, they have so much more opportunities,” she said. “When I graduated from high school, if you even got to go to college, you had a choice: you could have gone to college to be a teacher, you could go to medical school and be a nurse or you could be a legal secretary.
“Those were basically our choices. Look at the women now.”
When Cardenas exited the board in the early 90s, a survey of elected bodies in Hidalgo County conducted by the then-University of Texas Pan American put the number of women politicians who’d made successful bids for seats on city and school bodies at one in five.
That number has moved up since then, though it’s still far short of half. Now women account for a little over a quarter of the elected city and school officials in the county.
Schools in the county, however, are particularly close to parity between male and female trustees: 41% of non-charter school board members here are women.
McAllen joins Monte Alto ISD in having five women trustees. Edinburg CISD also received its first majority woman board in November.
Other large district’s — among them Mission and La Joya — have majority women boards as well.
Edcouch-Elsa ISD is at present the only all-male school board in the county, though those trustees did pick a woman to be their interim superintendent in January.
Nedra Kinerk, president of the nonpartisan civic organization Futuro RGV, said she’s noticed more women running for office.
“Women have not broken the glass ceiling effectively yet, but we are much closer than we ever have been in my lifetime. When I consider that they didn’t want me to go into the doctorate program — at least one person didn’t — because I had four children and I wouldn’t be able to use my doctorate, I realize things have changed over the last few decades,” said Kinerk, who did get and use a doctorate. “And women have realized that you can’t sit home and wait on the men in your life to take care of you.
“You’ve got to take care of yourself, and of what you love.”
THE TRAILBLAZER
The story of women doing just that in Hidalgo County starts at McAllen ISD 71 years ago, with the election of Lucile Hendricks to a place on the board.
Hendricks would later recount how she got prodded into politics. Three carloads of friends showed up at her door one day in the early 50s with a petition calling for her to run. They said if she didn’t file herself they’d do it for her.
Hendricks, who died in 2007, served for nine years on the board and spent the majority of her life subjecting policy and politicians in town to her iron-will, often successfully.
“She was a force to be reckoned with,” her daughter, Judith Hendricks Rodriguez said.
Years after her board service, Hendricks would say the men on the board didn’t particularly like her. It wasn’t because she was a woman, she said. It was because she differed with them on policy.
That was a theme with Hendricks: women were welcome to run, but she insisted they have the business background and acumen to go toe-to-toe with the men. Gender, she thought, really wasn’t a consideration in the hard-bitten world of politics.
“You’ve got to have the character and the qualifications. And you’ve got to expect criticism, and know how to take it,” Hendricks said once.
Still, it was very much a different time. When the community first elected Hendricks in 1952, she was referred to by this paper not as Lucile Hendricks: she was Mrs. Harold Hendricks.
That gentility only extended to a point. Harold, a contractor, died in a car wreck in the 60s. When Lucile, who did the books, said she’d take over the business, the construction community was dumbfounded.
During one bitter board race, opponents spread rumors about Hendricks — a conservative so stout that Lyndon Johnson personally booted her from the Democratic Party when their views diverged — of being a closeted commie, Rodriguez said.
“On the sidewalks, they were making little signs and saying Hendricks was a communist. It was just really a hard fight …” she said. “Of course in the 50s, the worst word you could call anyone was a communist, so I guess that was a good word to call her.”
That was a theme with Hendricks: women were welcome to run, but she insisted they have the business background and acumen to go toe-to-toe with the men. Gender, she thought, really wasn’t a consideration in the hard-bitten world of politics.
Hendricks — also the school board’s first woman president — was at first a hard act for other women to follow. The district went years without another woman on the board, until the 80s, when it reached what was at the time an impressive three female trustees.
It also got some of its first educators. Cardenas, who came to the board with experience as an educator and in real estate, said there was resistance to educators being on the board at the time.
“It took a businessman,” she said. “You have to remember, that was the Othal Brand-era and everybody on the board were business people.”
Cardenas holds a view not unlike Hendricks: she ran on her qualifications and the belief that she’d do a good job, gender was not really a consideration.
Men and women being treated differently was, however, a fact.
“It’s always been a male dominated life out there, especially in business,” she said. “So I think many times women have had to work harder to prove themselves. But, with the school board I think it has been a positive thing to have women on there.”
Cardenas has mixed feelings about some things she sees in school board politics these days. She feels it’s lost some of its gentility.
The change she’s most fascinated by is that having children is no longer a fairly firm requisite for a viable board candidate.
“That has been a big change,” she said. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
‘TRULY SIGNIFICANT’
The board swore-in four new members Wednesday, among them Erica De La Garza-Lopez, Lizzie Kittleman and Lucia Regalado. Having incumbents Debbie Crane Aliseda and Sofia Pena on the board means it’s moved over three woman trustees for the first time in its history.
In keeping with the philosophies of Hendricks and Cardenas, those women ran on their professional qualifications and on their belief in their policy positions.
It’s always been a male dominated life out there, especially in business. So I think many times women have had to work harder to prove themselves. But, with the school board I think it has been a positive thing to have women on there.
Those trustees will see relatively even numbers of men and women on school boards around them, though most of the legislators, commissioners and various elected officials they’ll deal with will be men.
Crane Aliseda, who was elected board president Wednesday, said she suspects she and her peers will have to grin and bear it while men say ham-handedly offensive things
“You have to smile through a lot of silly behavior,” she said. “A lot of things that they say are demeaning, and they don’t even know that they’re demeaning. And so you just have to be graceful about it and just smile.”
Crane Aliseda said she views the most important thing about a majority woman board as being an opportunity to show the district’s students that girls do belong in the realm of politics.
“This is the first majority woman board, and that is truly significant, especially for an institution of education that governs children and pre-K through 12,” she said. “By seeing women in positions of authority, girls are inspired to challenge traditional gender roles. Boys learn the importance of equality and respect. It fosters a generation that values inclusivity and embraces diversity.”
The new majority does not, Crane Aliseda said, mean that sexism is gone or that double standards have been erased. She especially decried the toxicity of politics in the digital age.
“I think the reason people don’t run is because of social media,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of people that want to run for school board, but social media and the cowards out there, it just stops people from throwing their hat in. I think that’s why so many people don’t run — especially women, they don’t want to put their families through that, their children through it.”
Crane Aliseda said she expects the new board to prove that criticisms on the basis of sex are unfounded.
“I think it’s important that we have all these women on the board,” she said. “I don’t think it takes away from the men, but it shows that we’re capable.”
Staff writer Dina Arevalo contributed to this story.
