Western society currently understands gender in a dualistic sense. Dualistic thinking is the process of viewing a complex issue, such as gender, in a set of two, such as men and women. Dualistic thinking applies to other areas of life as well but despite how prevalent dualistic thinking is it is not a beneficial way of thinking. The dichotomy of the genders is only possible because of gender roles and the extremes to which gender roles have formed. The intensity to which masculinity has become is what Kimmel discusses in "From Anxiety to Anger."
Bravo, Santa Anna and Meric discuss the ways in which women are disadvantaged in the workplace which directly ties back to gender roles, in "An Overview of Women and Work." Crawley, Foley and Shehan
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The way in which the ideal man, in terms of the male gender role, is portrayed is as hyper-masculine. The hyper masculine man is very muscular, violent, powerful, and has good self-control. While the ideal man is hyper masculine not all men feel as though they fit into that category. To counteract this a subgroup of men have formed a slightly different form of masculinity called Metrosexual. Metrosexuality is expressed differently than hyper masculinity but still holds the same core ideas. Modern masculinity "cling[s] ever more tenaciously to old ideals" (Kimmel 218) of masculinity, men being the breadwinners, and men being the leaders of the household . The old ideal of men, this being white men, being the breadwinners and being in control of the family is challenged as women and minorities make social gains and enter previously male exclusive circles of life, especially the workforce. Stresses related to social life and financial situations cause white men to feel insecure about their masculinity. In turn, men cope with this insecurity by viewing women and minorities as 'others, ' and they "just lash out at 'them, ' 'others, ' who now occupy the positions that once belonged to native-born middle-class white men" (Kimmel 220). In viewing women and minorities as 'others ' men create a dichotomy of 'us verses them. ' Hyper-masculinity promotes men to view women as others, which …show more content…
All occupations in the workforce are categorized as jobs for women or jobs for men, but women have another option of not going into the workforce and being a stay at home parent since being a stay at home parent is not considered a job. Women are pushed towards staying home, having children and consequently taking care of those children, while men are expected to be the breadwinners even though "fewer than one in five married families with children fit the stereotype of Dad as breadwinner, Mom full-time at home" (Bravo, Santa Anna, Meric 179). Gender roles have not caught up with the reality of American households, which is that women are working, as they always have been. Female dominated fields are fields such as maids, food preparation, secretaries, and social workers whereas male dominated fields are fields such as business, computer science, and the medical field. There is a hierarchy related to the different fields of work and fields of work that are dominated by men are thought highly of. Every field of work and every job requires hard work, time and effort so "why does society value accountant more than social workers" (Bravo, Santa Anna, Meric 178). The dualistic thinking towards fields of work creates a hierarchy since, as Crawley, Foley and Shehan stated; there are rarely dualisms that are created equally. The hierarchy of these fields of work causes female
Sex Segregation in the Work Place In the article “Sex Segregation at Work: Persistence and Change” by Anastasia Prokos explores ideas around the challenges and reasons of sex segregation in the work place. She argues that even though the United States has made several steps in the right direction throughout our history, there is still “… women and men in the contemporary United States continue to be concentrated in different occupations, jobs, and industries” (Prokos 564). She is presenting this as a social problem that leads to stereotypes, discrimination, and unequal pay.
Over time, the United States has experienced dramatic social and cultural changes. As the culture of the United States has transformed, so have the members of the American society. Film, as with all other forms of cultural expression, oftentimes reflects and provides commentary on the society in which it is produced. David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club examines the effects of postmodernity on masculinity. To examine and explicate these effects, the film presents an unnamed narrator, an everyman, whose alter-ego—in the dissociative sense—is Tyler Durden. Durden represents the narrators—thus every man’s—deep-seated desire to break free from the mind-numbing, emasculating world that is postmodern, post-industrial America.
Before World War 2, there were separate roles for a man and a woman in
Masculinity is described as possession of attributes considered typical of a man. Hegemonic masculinity is a form of masculine character with cultural idealism and emphasis that connects masculinity to competitiveness, toughness, and women subordination. Masculinity hegemonic is the enforcement of male dominion over a society. Masculine ideology dates back to the time of agrarian and the industrial revolution in Europe when survival compelled men to leave their homesteads to work in industries to earn a living for their families while women remained at home to take care of family affairs (Good and Sherrod 210). Women did not work in industries then because industrial labor was considered too physical beyond their capacity. This led to definition of roles which placated the position of men in a society while condemning women as mere subordinates who cannot do without men. The critics of gender stereotypes in America describe the following five hegemonic features of masculinity: frontiersman ship, heterosexuality, occupational achievement, familial patriarchy, and physical force and control (Trujillo 4). The advent of the 20th century led to sweeping changes in American masculinity.
Hegemonic masculinity is a concept that is illuminated by Ten Responses to the Phrase “MAN UP” and “Do it for all your Pubic Hairs!”: Latino Boys, Masculinity, and Puberty, which identifies masculinity as a social construct influencing how one does their gender. Masculinity is a measure of a man’s social dominance and success and therefore is based on exaggerations of gender differences. Therefore, the more a man engages in masculine qualities and less in feminine qualities, the more accepted he will be. These readings build on different aspects of masculinity and work together to generate a more rounded analysis of social influences and pressures endorsing hegemonic masculinity, how it is practiced, and what its associated costs are.
Masculinity in itself is very diverse and varies according to each culture and each person. In China, masculinity has traditionally been very different than Western masculinity. Where Western masculinity is known for being very macho and tough, Chinese masculinity has consistently been much more feminine when compared to the Western’s. Chinese masculinity traditionally has always had a very soft aspect to it, however as China continues to change as a nation, it is slowly beginning to alter their normal definition of what it means to ‘be a man’.
Let’s start with a negative example of masculinity that promotes it in all the wrong ways. In the color purple Mister is a great example of what men should not be but seem to be encouraged to do. He makes the money; he is the leader of the house; yet he abuses his wife; he treats her as nothing but a maid; it is sort of like she is subhuman; he is a man so he is obviously better. Once he even beats her for going to check the mail (Spielberg).That is nothing like what the expectation of men should be. Too bad society’s views of men influence the views on woman, and vise versa. Men should be encouraged to be strong by choice, not taught that they must to influence a sense of power over others. They should be encouraged to help provide for a family, not that they must be the only one to provide. Taught that he is equal to a woman, not that she is some sort of subhuman.
Throughout history, time has created and shaped the ideal type of men, while society chooses what it means to be a real man..The ideal real men needed to be strong, provider of his family, decision maker, economically, educationally, physically, and politically dominant (Myers). The difference between the masculinity of the 20th century and the 21st has changed significantly. The ideal men status in 1900’s was rich, educated, powerful, and successful. In today’s perspectives, men needs to be strong, tall, handsome, capable, and unemotional. The contrast of these two centuries are mostly about men’s social status and appearances. Before, it was all about what a man is capable of doing and how powerful he could be compared to today’s ideal,
Parcheta, N., Kaifi, B., & Khanfar, N. (2013). Gender Inequality in the Workforce: A Human Resource Management Quandary. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 4(3), 240-248.
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
I think every man between 20 and 40 needs to read Elizabeth Gilbert's "The Last American Man". Without going into details (like I said, you should read the book), this is a biography/profile of Eustace Conway - a man who is, among other things, capable of and prefers to (or would prefer to) live the kind of frontier lifestyle we have read about: hunting and gathering his food, living in a house he built using his own hands, making his own clothes from the skins of animals he captured, etc. I suspect that for many people the story, at least initially, will arouse the sort of Romantic feelings that tend to come with fantasies of a "simple life" of rugged self-sufficiency. However, even for those who are quite certain that they prefer their modern urban lifestyle (air conditioning, direct deposit, grocery stores, ebay, cable TV, &c.), I think this book raises fundamental questions about what it means to be a man at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
Gender bias has a long history and continues to occur in the workplace today. Research indicates that women remain significantly disadvantaged and mistreated compared to men in the workforce. How do the disparities of hiring, promotion, and salaries affect women in the workplace?
Historically, males and females normally assume different kinds of jobs with varying wages in the workplace. These apparent disparities are widely recognized and experienced across the globe, and the most general justification for these differences is that they are the direct outcomes of discrimination or traditional gender beliefs—that women are the caregivers and men are the earners. However, at the turn of the new century women have revolutionized their roles in the labor market. Specifically in industrialized societies, the social and economic position of women has shifted. Despite of the improving participation of women in the labor force and their ameliorating proficiency and qualifications, the labor force is still not so favorable to women. The opportunities available for women in the market are not as diverse as those presented to men. Still, the construct of gender ideology influences how employers undertake economic decisions, and that is why companies still have jobs labelled as “men’s work” and occupations categorized as “women’s work.” Indeed, the pervasiveness of gender differences in labor markets is undeniably true, specifically with respect to salary gap between men and women, occupational gender segregation of men and women, and the challenge that women face in terms of juggling their time and attention between their career and family life.
The roles women typically play in the family may not always be consistent with success in the occupational arena. Staying home to care for a sick child may conflict with an important meeting (Broman 1991:511). Sometimes there has to be a change of plans when it comes to the family. Most people believe that family comes first no matter what. Men 's engagement in paid work fulfills prescriptions of hegemonic masculinity by facilitating their ability to gain status in the public sphere. A man can judge his worth by the size of a paycheck (Thebaud 2010:335). Most research shows that women are more likely to be effected by the household and men are more likely to be effected by their job. Some people feel that the goal is to reach higher on the occupational
It can be concluded that women are treated in terms of stereotyped impressions of being the lowest class and greater evidence can be found that there are large disparities between the women and the men 's class. It can be seen that women are more likely to play casual roles as they are most likely to take seasonal and part time work so that they can work according to their needs. They are hampered from progressing upward into the organizations as they face problems like lack of health insurance, sexual harassments, lower wage rates, gender biases and attitudes of negative behavior. However, this wouldn’t have hampered the participation of the women in the work force and they continue to increase their efforts which is highly evident in the occupational and job ratios of females in the industry.