Why Women Still Can T Have It All Summary

Dorment convinces the audience with statistics and his own personal stories for example, he says, ’60 percent of the bachelors degrees in this country go to women.’ (Dorment 698) He is not saying that women are smarter but in today’s world we usually think of doctors as men and nurses as women. Dorment also says, “unmarried childless women under thirty earn 8 percent more than males.’ (Dorment 698) I believe that this is true women are believed to be weaker ones and tend to rely on men and that there are more jobs out there for men. Women are just supposed to stay at home and do the cleaning and take care of the kids. Society is forcing this on little girls growing up and it needs to stop. Dorment says, ‘institutional sexism and pay discrimination are still ugly realities.’ Why? Why do women make less, why are they forced to be stay at home housekeepers? Society we need to get a grip on making men and women equal instead of putting gender roles on everything, or we will destroy the upcoming generations.

All housework does not necessarily need to be left for women to do but if there could be the division of labor, then a lot of burdens will be lifted off their backs.

In the essay “Why Men Still Can’t Have It All” by Richard Dorment, the topic of equality in the genders is explored. This topic includes various aspects of the lives of men and women, including work in and out of the home. Dorment responds to other opinions and viewpoints and explains why “no one can have it all.” He brings up many convincing arguments that show why the feminist push for equals rights for women is not producing the outcome that people want it to have. I agree with what much of Dorment is saying in this essay, and the following paragraphs will explain Dorment’s argument.

Edelman makes some great points throughout her essay and while I do agree with most of them, I disagree with her stance on gender roles. Edelman says that she wanted to achieve a “shared responsibility” in her household, that way the husband and wife would do the same amount of household duties while keeping their full time jobs. I disagree with her view of this; I believe that if the husband is the one working extended hours during a week, trying to provide for his family, then the wife shouldn’t feel angered or annoyed at having to pick up the extra slack around the house. The wife is generally the one in the household who is known for being the care-taker, the cleaner, the cook, etc. The husband is generally looked at as the provider for the family, the head of the household, the authority figure, and it has always been that way. I understand there are circumstances where the husband can’t find work, or they get let go and

In life we are told to “have it all” by raising a perfect family, getting a beautiful house, and having a high paying job; but is it possible to have it all? How many people can honestly have it all, when so many are just trying to survive? In the articles, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” and “Why Men Still Can’t Have It All,” Anne-Marie Slaughter and Richard Dorment, discuss how women function in the workplace and the different expectant outcomes for each, mainly focusing on the upper class. The primary objective of Slaughter’s passage was to show how women are treated poorly and how they are held to a different standard than their male counterparts. Dorment focused mostly on how neither women nor men should strive to “have it all” because nobody can. Together they consider the subjects of workplace discrimination, housework standards, family involvement, and striving to “have it all.”

On the other hand, when both partners share the breadwinner role men are more likely to increase their core housework tasks in companion to men in the ‘new traditional’ and male-breadwinner families. Consequently, many studies found that gender attitudes are still primary indicators of who does housework, thus women still do two-thirds of housework where men do two-thirds of paid work. It is noticed that there have been significant changes for women over the last 6 decades to participate in the labour force, yet there was hardly any change to the division of core household work between men and women.

Society has told us for the last hundreds of years that the woman’s job around the house as shown in Figure 1 is to cook, clean, and take care of the family. One man, Tom Junod, who

Women are sometimes more nurturing than some men when it comes to taking care of their family members or children. When a woman becomes pregnant they receive a maternity leave which also puts a hold on their income, making it easier for the man of the household to have a higher paying job (Joan Acker, 1989). Another example, when a child of a family gets sick most of the time the woman is the one to leave work early and stay home with the child. Some job sites have paid maternity leave but then many do not. Women have greater recourse to part-time work so they can combine work and family responsibilities (Joan Acker, 1989). During the older days, women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law, married women had no property rights, they were not allowed to vote, married women were not even present in the eyes of the law. From then to now a lot has changed but women still are not

In addition to women becoming a housewife there has been a “direct denunciation”(Doc B Sheg) because they are becoming disrespectful towards their husbands. This is because with them learning about earning their rights they tend to fight for themselves, which just ruins the mindset of how good it is to be a housewife. When the “more fortunate women”(Doc B Sheg) help with the “round of toil”(Doc B Sheg) women they feel as though it will bring them “respect and consideration which form the basis upon, which we more fortunate women build our lives.” (Doc B Sheg) Within this need to become grateful for having such an easy life to the point that they become lazy, all of the other women that need to actually work to make a living can clearly see that it is not as luxurious to have certain rights because then that requires harder

Whether it is the past or the present, there have always been gender roles in society. In most homes, it is the woman’s responsibility to take care of the house. This includes cleaning, meal preparations, raising and taking care of the children as well as the husband. Compared to the men who take care of the more physical activities, such as yard work. It was known throughout many years that it was a woman’s responsibility to stay in the house while the man would go out and look for work to provide money for his family. Although the intensity of gender roles has changed, it still exists.

Before, women were considered housewives who were in charge of taking care of children and cleaning the house while their husbands worked jobs to sustain their families. As years passed, many things have changed throughout society, including the responsibilities of both men and women. Today, women work and provide for their own family as much as men do. Throughout the years, many roles have changed, but one issue remains which is that most men do not consider house cleaning as a mandatory task. Gross believes that men lack the emotional and physical drive to do a “woman’s job”. Although today more men are contributing to their home chores, there are still many men who leave this to their wives or any woman in general. Men cook and watch for their children, but they do not bother with house cleaning. Most men feel like a clean house is not needed to have a healthy, safe environment for the family, which Gross does not agree with.

Mohanty also stated how, in India, women’s “definition as housewives make possible the definition of men as 'breadwinners'” (13). We see that in Nasarpur, India the woman’s role in society is somewhat restricted. Her restricted role of being a housewife increased the man’s status in that society as the sole provider and the hardest worker. Although this concept of men’s and women’s roles in society is not totally true in America, I still think it occurs in our society. I feel that most men accept women working outside the home in America because it has become a norm over the years, but I do not think all men are comfortable with the idea of women working outside the home. The fact that women are no longer just simply housewives makes some men feel as if they are being robbed of part of their masculinity, which is tied to being a sole provider for a family. Women have proven during the past few decades that they can be housewives and manage to handle an outside job as well. I think this proves that women are strong dependable laborers. A good worker is one who can handle multiple tasks such as managing a household and having an outside job.

Robert Dorment’s summary from his article talked about that women always complained about men did wrong but men who worked so hard for their family and work-life balance. Richard used that word “castigate” for men that means women scold men, but they did not realize men worked so hard. Other quote about the castigation of men, “…person whose husband, by her own admission, sacrificed much in his own academic career to do other heavy lifting with their children, all so she could pursue her dream job and then complain about it, bitterly, in the pages of a national magazine” (Dorment 708). Anne-Marie Slaughter explained that women who get promotion from other positions that they realized they do not have spent time with their family and some women who leave their jobs because of their family reasons. The quote said, “It is unthinkable that an official would actually step down to spend time with his or her family that this must be a cover for something else” (Slaughter 682). Third article called Women, work and work/life balance: Research roundup talked about the wage inequality and unequal responsibilities between men and women. Women have more family responsibilities than men do because some women are staying at home while taking care of their kids. Last article, Work-Life Balance – An integrated Approach: The case for joint and several responsibility talked about the

Many believe that gender roles are the only way for a family to prosper in a society where men provide for the family financially and women keep the house in order. The idea that a family must “have enough money to sustain a certain standard of living before they can decide that one member must stay home to raise the children”(Source C) is factual to a certain extent. There are many more ways to provide for a family and both men and women do not necessarily have to abide with societal roles. Women can succeed outside the house and men can contribute more within the house. However, the main thing that hurts women is they experience “pay gap, occupational segregation, denial of promotions to leadership, glass ceiling in different professions, increased casualization of women workers” and “lower levels of equation and work opportunities”(Source A). Society has created this barrier where women have to battle these disadvantages to escape conforming to gender

Conventionally, females played a very insignificant role in the paid work force of a society as many times they were expected to be home taking care of their family. Their roles at home can often include grocery shopping, meeting all the needs of her children and husband. As time moved on, our society became more accepted of sharing housework between the couples, but even so, the traditionally more feminine housework such as cooking, caring for sick children, and shopping for the entire family are mostly done by the females of the house. It is argued in a research journal Work and Occupations (Witkowski & Leicht, 1995) that in an average North American family, females take on roughly three-quarters of the housework. Even though we are in a democratic society, parenting roles in the household are assigned based on gender rather than in a democratic fashion (Winslow-Bowe, 2009). Because of the many responsibilities and obligations that are associated with the female gender, their career paths are eventually affected for the worse. According to Statistics Canada (2001), for every dollar a man earns, a single woman earns 93 cents and a married woman earns 69 cents. These statistics