Gender Inequality Essay

Gender inqualities often stem from social structures that have instiutionalized conceptions of gender differences. Gender inequality has been around for centuries. In many family homes, their lives evolve around gender roles. The responibilties in the family are allocated to their sex (gender). There are certain tasks which are usually allocated to males and females. Some see this division as biologolical differences between the sexes and others see it happening in cultural backgrounds. There are sociological theories that have tended to see gender roles as natural and inevitable. Talcott Parsons, suggested that within the modern nuclear family it was essential that one parent, (the father) performed the instrumental role of the leader and provider whilst the mother performed the expressive role of giving psychological support and taking responsibilty for socialising children. This made sense because women give birth to and nurse their children. It’s a typical sterotype, that is engrained in both men and women. Gender is seen closely related to the roles and behaviour assigned to women and men based on their sexual differences. As children we learn and adapt to specific gender roles, and as we grow they become more evident and more important to our role in a society. There is more married women that work outside of the home and some men spend more time at home with their families. Martial roles have become increasingly similar. Historians of the family have made it show how gender roles in the family are socially constructed. The roles pllayed by men and women in any history poont may seem natural and inevitable. When you look back to the past, you see how much its changed according to the reguirements of society and the needs of families at particular times. During the latter of the 20th century the views began to change but still stained ideologies from the past they still exist ath the brink of the 21st century. 82% of women (wives and girlfriends) still do the housework according to a new study in Britain, but when it comes to housework, we are back in the 50s. For the females of today we can pretty much do anything we like, join the army, be a prime misiter, run a company or be a stay at home mum. As the new century, today, we see a greatly altered family landscape in which dual-income and single parents families outnumber the ascendant two-parent, one-earner in the household. There is more single parent families nowadays. So they would be taking on the roles as the breadwinner and home maker. But its not just women doing this, there is a lot of men as single parents and broken families that have to take on these roles. So a lot has changed over the years. And there is more and more working parents. Gender role and inquality is not just geared towards women but also men. As much as women face inqualities, ther are many aspects about the world that’s is unfair towards men. The question remains, â€Å"will men and women ever be found equal? † My answer, no. Men and women are simply too different to be considered be treated the same. Yes, I do believe that men and women should be paid the same, and given equal and all opportunity, but as far as the biological sense goes men and women have two completely different biological makeup. It is scientifically true that women are more nurturing whereas men are found to be much more competitive and aggressive. That is not to say that those traits can not be mixed upon the two genders, but there is still too much that keeps gender separate. In some culturals, gender inequality will never change for most. The women are to stay at home, raise the family and do the household chores. In some of theses culturals domestic violence accurs and the women keep quiet about it because they cant leave because its discrimmination to their society and most culutrals don’t allow women to get a divorce. Many developing countries including India have displayed gender inequalit in education, employment and health. It is common to find girls and women suffering from high mortality rates. India has witnessed gender inquality from its early history due to its socio-ecnomic and religious practices that resulted in a wide gap between the position of men and women in the society. Gender inquality has an adverse impact on development goals and reduces ecnomic groth. It hampers the overall well being, because blocking women from participation in social polical and ecnomic activties can adversely affect th whole society. Discrimination also plays out with networking and in preferential treatment within the economic market. Men typically occupy positions of power within the job economy. Due to taste or preference for other men because they share similar characteristics, men in these positions of power are more likely to hire or promote other men, thus discriminating against women. Discrimination against men in the workplace is rarer but does occur, particularly in health care professions. Only an estimated 0. 4% of midwives in the UK are male and according to cbs only 1% of all trainee nurses and only 2% of Secretaries are male. Women have increasingly been finding their place in a male driven environment whether it be in the office, politics, or in the cut throat world business and CEO’s, women have become more and more powerful in a man’s world. Needless to say, women have not reached the level of power that a man would have, but seeing as where woman stood forty years ago it is a step in the right direction. Over the years, gender role has clearly played a big part in the way that women are treated, whether it be being confined to the kitchen, or rendered to emotional to run for office, it seems as though society has built two completely different species of human to live amongst each other. It may sound drastic, but if men and women were to be more similar, there would be more chance for equal treatment. As unfortunate as it is, it seems as though society is at a stand still on where to go with gender inequality, and if there is no way to convince an entire generation to change they way they treat each other, then it might as well stay that way. Unfortunately society is way too stubborn to be able to change its ways about said subject. All that being said, we have come a great deal over the years, and maybe one day we can point that everyone can agree on.