Leslie Bonante

McLaughlin

English 12

18 March 2021

The Problem With Gender Stereotypes

Although the women’s liberation movement occured over sixty years ago, gender

inequality still remains an issue in modern society. It affects all genders and results in

discrimination in the workplace, in households, and in everyday life. Society must work towards

removing gender stereotypes and gender roles because they feed discrimination.

Traditional gender roles have always played a major part in gender discrimination. From

a young age, people associate certain activities/careers with certain genders. For example,

women are stereotyped as caring and gentle, so they often choose compassionate careers like

nursing or teaching. This prevents people from pursuing a career that they are passionate about

because of the gender stereotype associated with it. It also prevents women and gender

diverse people from pursuing high profile jobs, which only contributes more to the stereotype of

men being in higher power. According to the article “Global issues: Gender Equality and

Women’s Empowerment”, At all levels, including at home and in the public arena, women are

widely under-represented as decision makers.” Women are normally expected to carry out

most household chores and to take care of children, while men are expected to do hard labor

and be the main income earner.

Gender inequality stars form a young age. Children are taught and expected to fit into

stereotypes based on their genders. Mosy activities and sports are classified by which gendre

owuld be expected to take oart in them, which in the end just makes kids not wants to join

certain thing because of a fear of discrimination. Girls are less likely to take part in school

sports and advanced math subjects, which results in less women going into math and science
fields. Families also tend to put their son’s education first, According to : Global Issues: Gender

inequality and Women’s Empowerment”, “Low income families are more likely to prioritize

education means for their sons rather than their daughters.” This obviously handicaps a girl’s

chance of success.

Gender inequality is a very prominent issue in the workplace. Women only make

roughly 80% of what a man makes for the same job and the same amount of work. The pay

gap tends to increase when women marry and or have children. Women are not expected to

have high profile, better paying jobs and are widely under-represented in those types of careers.

According to author Cecilia Ridgeway, “Women are less likely to hold managerial or supervisory

positions and when they do, their positions carry less authority.” Although representation of

woken in high paying jobs has increased in the past few decades, women are treated with less

respect in these jobs and are not taken as seriously as men. According to the article “Economic

Inequality by Gender”, “globally, only about 19% of firms have a female manager… within the top

1%, women account for around 20% and there is surprisingly little variation avfress countries.”

(Ortiz Opsina and Roser) This shows that men usually hold the authority positions in the

workforce. Furthermore, women are represented more in low paying jobs than high par\ying

jobs, proving that women are expected to workin low profile jobs and earn less money.

Transgender and gender diverse people have very hgihg uneployment rates.

Regression analyses indicate that being out as a nonbinary transgender person has different

effects on nonbinary transgender people based on sex assigned at birth, with those assigned

male at birth tending to be discrimintated against in hiring but those assigned female at birth

more likely to experience differential treatment once hired. (Davidson)

However, authors Cerrato and Cifre write in their article “Gender Inequality in household

chores and work family conflict”, “Gender roles are essential for understanding the work-home

interface. They are shared beliefs that apply to individuals on the basis of their socially identified

sex which are the basic of the division of labor in most societies.” The problem with this is that
people should not feel obligated to carry out certain tasks based on their gender. Gender

stereotypes make people believe from a very early age that fulfilling these roles is necessary

and normal.

I believe that as a society we must strive towards ending gender stereotypes and

discrimintation and gain equality in the workforce, in households, and in everyday life.