No one is too surprised today if a young woman becomes a doctor, lawyer, or executive. But eyebrows are raised just about as much today as in decades past if a couple features a tall woman and short man, or when a woman doesn’t change her last name upon marriage.
The gender revolution, those sweeping changes in women’s opportunities and roles of the 1970s and 1980s, is stalled across most of the Western world. And there are some parts of women’s and men’s roles that hardly changed at all.
What changed dramatically after 1970 is the proportion of women going out to work for pay, and how many of them entered traditionally male professions. Indeed, in the United States today, almost half those getting graduate degrees in law, medicine, and business (MBA) are women.
Yet, there was never much in the way of a counter-flow; few men became stay-at-home dads or entered “female” jobs such as nursing, child care or secretarial work, nor do they do so today. Men had little incentive to do so because it is as true as ever that female-dominated occupations have lower pay than male-dominated jobs requiring the same amount of training.
The social class dimension
The gender revolution affected women differently by their social class. Even though they are more likely to have poor husbands, so their families could really use the money from their employment, women without university degrees are less likely to be employed than their better educated sisters.
This is partly because what they can earn will barely cover their child care costs. The well educated woman can earn more, and get a more interesting job, so her incentives for employment are greater.
Those working class women who did go out to work could have earned more money if, instead of working as maids and child care workers, they had entered predominantly male blue collar trades — as carpenters, drivers, welders, or mechanics.
But while college graduates were storming their way into the “male” professions, few women moved into these blue collar strongholds. Men fought to keep women out.
A job for your gender
Another way for these women to better their status and pay was to get more education and enter a better paying “female” job—say as a nurse or teacher.
So the gender revolution was mostly middle class women working to work in larger numbers and entering “male” professions.
But these changes have stalled out since the 1990s in Australia, the US, and many western nations. It is not a reversal so much as a plateau.
Personal lives
Meanwhile, in the personal sphere, some things changed very little. Young couples are just about as likely as in the 1950s to think men should be taller (just look at how the internet dating sites all ask about height).
Men are supposed to propose marriage and women to change their surnames upon marriage. Despite a sexual revolution, women are judged more harshly than men for having casual sex, and expected to worry more about their appearance and looking young.
Today’s young women understand just as their mothers and grandmothers did the sting of the “double standards” of sex and appearance, even for a balding, overweight suitor.
Many in the west think the women’s movement succeeded and the remaining gender inequalities we see are just natural. I disagree.
But changing the things that were most resistant to change—and reversing the stall would take a big effort by all of us.
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Comments (11)
Todd Owen
Software Developer (logged in via email @neverbox.com)
It is certainly disappointing that interest in achieving true gender equality seems to have all but dried up in the span of a generation.
But the question is, why are the remaining facets of gender difference so resistant to change? Has the feminist movement just lost its way, or is there some political, biological or psychological basis to the contemporary story of masculinity and femininity which is particularly unshakable?
It is indeed the most intimate aspects of our personal lives which hang in the balance, but what exactly is it that we fear losing, and what do we have to gain? Pepper Schwartz addressed this in her book "Peer Marriage" back in 1994, and today the ideal of "love between equals" which she examined seems just as much a rarity as it has always been.
The fact that the women's movement has stalled is an important warning. But I'd like to know why...and what we can do about it.
Rockstar Philosopher
Rockstar Philosopher (logged in via email @gmail.com)
I think there is something in the fact that the time where interest in achieving gender correlates to the time when we stopped talking about masculinity. I grew up in a world where no one ever talked about what it was to be a man, where in the past that role was very specifically designed. I've been told before that this doesn't matter because there are plenty male role models around; but look at them... Sports stars, CEOs, politicians - is this really what we want to consider masculinity? As…
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Rockstar Philosopher
Rockstar Philosopher (logged in via email @gmail.com)
I think one of the issues (look out, here comes some mansplaining :P) is that the focus on "women's rights" underestimates the scope of the problem. It seems to me that first, second and third wave feminism (things that all predate my own existence) were fighting to overthrow the very real sex based inequalities in our world; essentially it was women fighting to be able to be recognised as men. The result is that now a person can only get equality if they adhere to traditional masculinity. This…
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Judith Olney
Ms (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
Personally I don't think it has anything to do with women being allowed to take on the traditionally male roles, such as proposing, being the primary earner, etc. Plenty of women are already the primary earner, look at many female headed, single parent families. In most 2 parent families women also work outside the home, and still do the bulk of the work inside the home. This is where the real inequality comes in.
Women have been "allowed" to work, in fact I would suggest that they are now expected…
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Rockstar Philosopher
Rockstar Philosopher (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Heh, I agree with you 100% :) That's quite close to what I was trying to say (in this comment and the one above). Although, I want to point out that it is important to differentiate between reality (women can be breadwinners) and perception (women should be homemakers); it doesn't matter if women made up 50% of CEOs if the perception was that it was a male job and that these women were like men in suits (an example of what I'm trying to get at is the way Hillary Clinton was treated in the primaries…
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jim morris
(logged in via email @yahoo.com)
Having taken on the role of nurturer (as a single parent) and having successfully raised a daughter (now a doctor) I feel as though I am qualified to say that the war of the sexes has been a success for capitalism but no-one else.
There is nothing in it for me to try to explain to an overpaid professor of sociology why I think she wrong to be so focused on materialism as the sole measurement of 'success'.
Perhaps the 'stall' she mentions is actually the tide changing. The 'progress' has largely been artificial and dependent upon conditions that cannot last. My prediction is that the male/female partnership which had worked so well for so long until discarded by feminists will be difficult to resurrect when they deem it once again to be in their interest.
Caitlin Woods
Student (logged in via email @gmail.com)
The fact that men are still expected to propose and women to change their name's after marriage are just one of the many ways which makes marriage a ritual almost entirely based around inequality. For example there's the white dress symbolising the purity of the bride (where the groom will traditionally wear black) and the father "giving away" the bride. I still think marriage is a beautiful commitment and an occasion to be celebrated, but everything about it shouts inequality and anachronism.
So considering that it is a somewhat old fashioned tradition, of course the proposal and other things that go along with it are going to be somewhat old fashioned too.
Judith Olney
Ms (logged in via email @bigpond.com)
There is a component of class distinction to the question of why the women's movement has appeared to stall, but this is more to do with the difficulty with gaining adult education and training, than any gender inequality. It is something that effects men as much as women, in low paid and unskilled/semi-skilled work.
For example, I don't believe that women, or men, in low paid, and unskilled jobs, necessarily want to remain in those type of jobs their entire lives. I think that people would love…
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Elvis Richardson
(logged in via email @elvisrichardson.com)
I work in the arts industry where the majority 80% of visual art students are female - but look at any professional paid setting for visual artists and it is 80% male.
art by men is worth more than women - when men make art it is about humanity when women make art it is about women. museums, commercial galleries, collectors and investors strongly favour buying the work of male artists and any state or public collection will reflect this.
what happens to the ambitions of all these female art students who find themselves having a non-career as an artist and working in a arts admin job filled with other women who service the careers of male artists!!!
see my blog http://www.countesses.blogspot.com
jim morris
(logged in via email @yahoo.com)
Caitlin, I feel a great deal of sympathy for you because I assume you are an earnest young woman involved in tertiary education. I realise that it is almost impossible but try to free your mind from feminist indoctrination. Western women are the most pampered and privilaged people on the planet. The last thing you want is equality.
Caitlin Woods
Student (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Thank you, but sympathy is not what I was angling for and I think you may have misunderstood me. Also may I just add that your comment was slightly on the ageist side, and although it may not be one of the worst forms of discrimination, it is something this website does not tolerate, so you should try refrain from making any such assumptions in future and respond with reasons and examples to accompany your statements which you have done with most of your other comments on this site. Do not simplify…
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