Gender Roles In The Workforce

For the longest time, women’s role in society was very narrow and set in stone. Women weren’t given the chance to decide life for their own, and there was a very sharp distinction of gender roles. Women were viewed as inferior, weak, and dependant. They were expected to be responsible for the family and maintainance of the house. But as the 19th century began, so did a drastic change in society. Women started voicing their opinions and seeking change. Trying to break away from this ideology called “cult of domesticity” was a lengthy, burdensome, and demanding struggle.

“Look at us! We’re just like everyone else. We’ve bought into the same ridiculous delusion; this idea that you have to settle down and resign from life.” (April Wheeler, Revolutionary Road). It has become a society norm that women are meant to serve housewives; to cook, clean, garden, and nurture children, even though they are much more capable of other things. The role of women is greatly overseen, as they are not perceived to be of their full potential, rather than as societies idealistic expectation. This is because men and those who are wealthy are unable to look past gender and accept women as of equal significance.

In “The End of Men?,” an article featured in The Atlantic in summer 2010, author Hanna Rosin illustrates the drastic, ascending shifts perceived in modern society. Rosin poises the theory of how men were traditionally seen as the superior gender. The author believes there is a contractionary shift in gender roles and that the new era is “[B]etter suited to women” (Rosin 304). Recent studies show that women are becoming prominent in the workforce, education, and family. Accordingly, she explains how women are miraculously able to balance work while nurturing their children. Rosin believes that this occurs because men are not biologically made to tend children. Additionally, Rosin analyses how men lost “8 million jobs” during the Great Recession (Rosin 306). During that time, women were becoming what made a majority of the workforce. There were increases in women’s presence in what used to be male-dominated fields: school, politics, and business. Rosin questions this drastic shift concerning women and men’s roles in society, stating how they are now equally competing for jobs. Moreover, the way women behave now show their commendable abilities in the workforce and how society is changing as they establish their dominance and authority everyday. Once, women were frowned upon, but nowadays, more people favor having girls than boys. Today’s era is commending women with their admirable work ethic and self-worth. Throughout most of history, men dominated the

Stephanie Coontz started off her article about the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s international best seller, “The Feminine Mystique”, which was written about the women’s movement of the 1960s. What Coontz is trying to explain is that gender equality is not stalled, but “It has hit a wall”. Her title is the opposite of what she is trying to write about in the article. At first she talked about women’s rights back when the book was written. Instead of blaming the beliefs of gender roles from individuals, she points the finger at the economy and the work-family policies as the major problems to gender equality. She explains the gender equality stalled during 1990s and the first few years of the 2000s. She brought into text the usual statics, “the percentage of Americans preferring the male breadwinner/female homemaker family model actually rose to 40 percent from 34 percent. Between 1997 and 2007, the number of full-time working mothers who said they would prefer to work part time increased to 60 percent from 48 percent. In 1997, a quarter of stay-at-home mothers said full-time work would be ideal. By 2007, only 16 percent of stay-at-home mothers wanted to work full time.”(Coontz) She also talked about how 70 percent of men and women want an egalitarian relationship and how the demand of work has intensified.

The roles and characteristics related to males and females vary according to time and culture (Keating 2003). A concept of male breadwinner model gave important impacts on the Australian economic, politics, culture and social field in early twentieth century (Broomhill and Sharp 2005). However, in the past few decades, there has been gradual changes occurred in the Australian gender order (ibid.). Even though men are the dominant gender in the workforce, due to globalization, women gained more opportunity to have jobs in the workforce (Jones 1983). In addition, there are increasing number of women in Australian workforce after World War 2 (Broomhill and Sharp 2005). But still gender inequality has been ongoing debate in the workforce for

In the article “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin offers several examples of women overpowering men. The inequality between men and women has become a critical issue in today’s society. According to Rosin, women are slowly surging ahead in the workforce and family life while men are left behind struggling to meet expectations. Rosin argues that this role reversal is taking place because women are simply better suited for postindustrial society.

These two articles, “The End of Men,” by Hanna Rosin and “Still a Man’s World,” by Philip Cohen, discuss the success of women in the workforce and what that means for what is to come. Hanna Rosin and Philip Cohen bring different viewpoints on the progress we have made and where we are heading in the future.

Women’s rights and life chances will continue to strive in the United States. Women are now completing the same education as males. Women are now running for political offices, including president in 2012 and 2016. Majority of women are working outside of the home as well as completing household work. One interesting chart showed that men are now starting to do household work as well (How do Married Parent’s Use Their Time, 2012). Some men have even accepted the concept of stay at home dads.

In “The Unfinished Revolution” by Maria Shriver from TIME magazine, the author discusses about the process of changing of women’s role in the workplace and in their own family since the first Commission on the Status of Women of the U.S. For the first half of the article, the author mentions about her root and the beginning of the new age for the women once soft and submissive to rise up and take the lead in their own free lives. Next for the second half, the author interviews some of the men as she travels across the state, and turns out some of them are feeling stressed out too because they do not know how to react to the sudden change in the system that they used to know. A Seattle man told Maria: “All of us grew up thinking this was a man’s world, that doors were just gonna open to us because we had a Y chromosome”. Despite the change of equality in favor of the women, some fields still remain as roadblocks to the movement like sexual harassment, lack of health care services, childcare policy, and taxes.

Equality, gender roles, and restrictions are important topics that many activists, leaders, and speakers have worked towards in order to provide to the world. The society we have now has been created in part by the determination and perseverance of their actions, speeches, and rallies. The world was a different place about 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and even more than 50 years ago. Associating women with household work and children, and men with difficult jobs and hard work, were can be observed throughout time that were previously set in past centuries. Both women and men have changed in associations, as we can currently observe in today’s society. Gender roles have switched, and new decrees have enabled individuals to have their equality

Gender ideologies reveal the whys behind the “Stalled Revolution”. It is defined as an individual’s ideas about the roles of men and women in society. Gender ideology can be classified into three different groups: traditional, transitional, or egalitarian. An individual with a traditional ideology would believe women should stay at home, the man should be the sole provider, and women should be submissive to their husbands (Hochschild, 2003, p. 15). None of the couples that Hochschild interviewed had traditional roles in reality.

Women and men have had certain roles in society that were understood amongst them to be specified for their particular gender. Males were known to have the leading role as head of the house hold and the bread winner while the woman’s duty was to stay at home and take care of the house and children. While many people years ago deemed this way of life and practice to be the right and ethical thing to do, times have changed and so this kind of treatment towards a woman’s equality must be questioned. Even though times have changed, this mindset of a woman’s ability to be as good as a man has not completely gone away. In today’s society a woman contributes to the economy and her family as equally as that of a man. Therefore, women should share equal rights and opportunities as their gender counterparts.

For my final paper, I want to work with the topics of reproduction, the body, and care. I am planning to focus on the divisions of wealth and gender roles that create economical hierarchies and encourage gendered work. Through the use of examples, I want to further explore how certain labors are valued economically and socially, and how this reflects those who complete reproductive work. I will draw on Marxist Theory to strengthen my argument, as it is centered on the economic cause of gender inequality. Additionally, I will look at the expectations of women, and how these assumed roles are reinforced through the global care chain.

Currently, according to statistics from the Department of Labor of the United States; of the “123 million women age 16 years and over, 58.6 percent or 72 million were labor force participants and in the long run, women are projected to account for 51 percent of the increase in total labor force growth between 2008 and 2018” (U.S. Department of Labor). These numbers will clearly demonstrate to any skeptic that women are leaving behind their old dependence on men and becoming more autonomous and self-determined to succeed; it sounds great, doesn’t it? On the other hand; however, men are losing as women are gaining. The Department of Labor has reported that men have lost about 4.75 million jobs during the current economic recession that started in 2007, while women have only lost 1.66 million. Additionally, “the only parts of the economy still growing—health care, education and government—have traditionally hired mostly women”( Cauchon). Now, as a result, of the statistics that show that females are overcoming males in the workplace; the gender segregation has created some kind of imaginary “glass ceiling” that impedes both sexes from advancing professionally and economically.

The mainstream media is one of the most popular, prominent ways people get their information about social issues, government action, and the general knowledge about what is happening in the world. A topic that has received a quite a large amount of media coverage in history, throughout the years, and currently, is gender inequality. Specifically, the issue of women being stereotyped into traditional “home” roles and not being able to join the work force or, rather, being pressured not to attempt to join. This particular issue has definitely lost much of its ammunition with the breaking of traditional gender roles in the past few decades, the successes of women’s movements and the overall national attitudes. However, not all of the stereotypes have been destroyed, and while women have entered the workforce, they are still being paid less than men for the same work. The lingering inequality of the past and the pay gap are huge issues covered by mainstream media in mostly constructive ways, and it should be receiving much more attention than it has in the past.