Throughout history men are seen as the “strong/tough ones”; the belief is that they should be paid more than women in order to support their families (Loney, 2005). Women often take time off from work to raise their children, which can interfere with their career path. Also, married women with children are more likely to leave their jobs, rather than women who are single and/or without
A UC Berkley study of California’s childcare support system found that early care and education systems have much to do with the ongoing wage gap. Found through research done by the Roosevelt institute, the study states, “Better pay and benefits are correlated with a continuous work history. When workers’ careers are disrupted because of child care failure — care that is unreliable, unaffordable, or just unavailable — and these workers are usually women. Periods of non-employment lead to lower wages because of loss of seniority, and sometimes being less likely to receive further training or mentoring due to questions of commitment.” (Kimmel 2006, p.79)When not working for long periods of time some significant “skill deprecation” may occur and thus lowering the wage. Investment in early child education that is affordable to all classes would, in the end work to everyone’s advantage.
The war gave them the chance to work in a greater variety of jobs but most of these new jobs were lost at the end of the war. Fewer married women of all classes worked. In some cases, like teaching, they had to give up their jobs once they got married. But more working-class married women worked than women from other classes. In some parts of the country and in some occupations, such as the Lancashire textile mills, they were expected to carry on working after they married.
Traditional gender roles and the workplace From the beginning of time, traditional gender roles have existed all around the world and they vary between cultures. But what is a traditional role? Traditional roles are behaviors, attitudes and values that society sets as appropriate or inappropriate for men and women and are transmitted from generation to generation (Wikipedia). Many of these roles are maintained over the years, but others are modified and adapted to current environment. In most of the countries around the world years ago women had to stay at home, take care of kids and do the home chores (women were not allowed to work); while men were supposed to be working and earning money for the family, but this thinking have changed through the years.
During their research they found out that in 72% of cases men actually did housework other than the washing up every week. Young & Willmott see this as a positive move and described it as a “march of progress.” By this they mean that men in the past had been lagging behind women in terms of domestic labour and gender roles but now have caught up and are more or less equal or symmetrical. Feminists have severely criticised the work of Young &Willmott, one feminist in particular Ann Oakley claims that, “housework is exclusively allocated to women.” She describes housework as, “unpaid, isolated and makes women economically dependent on men.” Hobson takes this a step further by saying “housework is repetitive compulsive and endless often with no physical separation between work & Leisure for the housewife.” Oakley claimed that full time housewives spent an average of 77 hours per week on housework. Oakley argued that although 72% of men do housework was impressive this was only based on the question “do you help at least once a week with the cleaning for example making the bed or ironing? The problem is a male who ironed a jumper once a week would be included in this 72% even though they are hardly making a contribution to the housework at all.
Sondra Douglas English Honors Gifted- 4th Mrs. Hotlets March 4, 2014 Gender Inequality in the Workplace Gender inequality is the unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals based on gender. Over the last 50 years, the involvement of women and fairness has been a problem. Economically, women, particularly poor women and African American women did not fare well during this time period. Inequality grew as wages remained depressed and tax cuts to the wealthy failed to “trickle down” to the bottom of the economic ladder where nearly half of the female labor force was concentrated (Justin Karr pg. 41).
Women and men appear to be selectively investing unpaid work time in the tasks that construct family life while spending less time in routine tasks, suggesting that the symbolic meaning of unpaid work may be shifting. At the same time, access to free time has emerged as an arena of time inequality. Economic, demographic and normative shifts all point in the direction of more similar time allocation patterns for men and women today as compared to 40 years ago. The widespread entry of women into market work since the 1960s has challenged the presumption that women’s primary adult role is that of caretaker for the home and family (Shelton and John 1996). Concurrently, the erosion of wages for men over the past 25 years has challenged the ability of men to be the sole family breadwinner (Levy 1995).
Even though today more women have joined the workforce and often do the same jobs as men, women get paid less. Women who get paid less in the workplace, despite doing the same job as a man, experience what is called the “pay gap”. The pay gap, also known as the “gender wage gap”, is the earning difference between a woman and man. Men earn an extra $1,356 a month or $650,000 a year between the ages of 25 and 65 (Henslin, 2010, p. 316). Now if the male is also a college graduate the pay gap will increase to $2,482 a month and total of $1,192,000 during their whole career (Henslin, 2010, p. 316).
It is assumed that in modern industrial societies, family life is no longer patriarchal. As the demographic trends of divorce and widowhood lead to matrifocal families, Post-modernists believe that as matrifocal families are becoming a norm in modern industrial societies. The status of men as the breadwinner and decision-maker of the family is becoming less dominant due to this dual role being taken on by single mothers. Women have also begun to live longer and often become widows as men have a lower life expectancy rate, leading to the creation of beanpole families. Furthermore, Breen and Cooke (2004) suggest the variation in the gendered division of domestic labour by identifying three types of women and three types of men.Post-modernists reject the idea that family life in modern industrial societies is still patriarchal as there are generalisations and over-exaggerations made at the extent of men's power over women in society.
They point out that: empowering women is also an indispensable tool for advancing development and reducing poverty. Equal pay for equal work is one of the areas where gender equality is rarely seen; all too often women are paid less than men for doing the same work. This is one of the reasons that the majority of the world’s poor are women: around 70 per cent of the people who live in extreme poverty, on less than one dollar a day, are girls and women. Suffrage, the right to vote, is another area of gender equality that still does not extend to all the women in the world. Saudi Arabia does not give women the right to vote; in the USA right wing commentators say that women should never have been given the right to vote.