research paper

How socially-constructed gender role boost imbalance lifestyle for women

In today’s society, gender roles are constructed by the North American mainstream society for every girls and boys to follow. A professor of sociology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia who is also a member of the International Academy of Sex Research and an author of writings about gender, Holly Devor, who demonstrates the idea of socially-constructed gender role to the students. He illustrates the common ideologies about gender roles that “it seems most likely that gender roles are the result of systematic power imbalances based on gender discrimination (Devor)” that male should be the dominant one as female being passive. Therefore, women are ought to rely on men, such as men making money for the family and women being households who stays at home taking care of the kids and cooking. Due to the reason women are expected or they expect themselves to be a good wife and mother while there is no exception for women at work to work less or have more flexibility, women are facing problems. Therefore, many women are struggling in achieving a balanced life style between work and family regardless of their job in today’s society not only in the United States but also in other countries due to socially-constructed gender role.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of Princeton University, who was a former government official worked in the White House for the president of the United States. In her article, she claims that women can rarely obtain balance lifestyle among their personal careers and families due to the inflexibility of work to the readers of the magazine who are mostly adults women and men. She also demonstrates, for example, “for two years, [she] never left the office early enough to go to any stores other than those open 24 hours, which meant that everything from dry cleaning to hair appointments to Christmas shopping had to be done on weekends, amid children’ sporting events, music lessons, family meals, and conference calls”(6) that she can not be both a caring mother or a professional employee. However, she has to scarify one for another because it is too difficult for her to keep up with both family and work. It conducts the situation, in the United States, women can not achieve a balanced lifestyle between work and family regardless of how high positions women are in, they can not get rid of their socially-constructed gender role in order to meet the gender role expectation. In her article, she mentions numbers of data illustrates that “there are more women have degrees in college then men”(xxx). Here comes a question: why are more male workers than female workers in today’s society or in the entire history? The socially-constructed gender role expectation haunts women since the first day they were born that they knows they are ought to become a excellent household rather than a successful women in their field just because of their biological sex.

The situation of women not able to obtain a balance lifestyle between work and family does not only occur in the United States, but also in other country, such as Iran. Padideh Boloorizadeh is a female athlete of field and track in Iran. Tojari Farshad, Zargar Tayebeh are both professors in sport management in islamic azad university, central tehran branch. For people studying or working in psychology field, the study indicates that women is scarfing their job for their family because they can’t have both of them at the same time. As more and more women participating in sport, now there are conflicts occur between family duties and work as coaches in Iran. Female head coaches are now tending to leave their careers because of the conflicts of work and family spill over. Just like Anne-Marine Slaughter’s article, women can not have both career and family. Women are ought to scarify one in order to have another that socially-constructed gender role and expectations pressure women to follow stereotypical way of how to live a life. At the same time, why aren’t there male head coaches leaving their jobs for their family? It is due to the stereotype that men are supposed to work in order to support the family instead of women. Therefore, gender role expectation in Iran boost the imbalanced lifestyle between family and work for women that they have to choose one over the other.

Opposing to socially-constructed gender role is the element boosting women’ imbalance lifestyle, men have trouble achieving a balance between life and work as well which has nothing to do with gender role expectation. Sarah Blithe is an assistant professor and undergraduate adviser in University of Nevada, Reno who is also a gender and organizational communication scholar. She has published a book called Gender Equality and Work-life Balance: Glass Handcuffs and Working Men in the U.S.which describes the work-life practices of men in the United States who has difficulties to achieve a balanced lifestyle between work and family to people who are interested in employment relations and gender roles. The book indicates men is experiencing "the glass handcuffs," which prevents them from leaving work to participate in a good amount of families, homes, and other life events.The inflexibility of schedule is the important element instead of gender role expectation. Therefore, it’s not only women who have long noted the near impossibility of balancing multiple roles.

Gracia Pablo studies at European University Institute in Florence who does researches in Family Sociology and Social Stratification. Another author is Matthijs Kalmijn who received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. He worked at other three universities, such as Princeton University after he graduated. He is currently studying in family sociology and social demography. Because these fields have some huge social and demographic changes in all developed societies in the past decades. This article shows data from surveys in Spain to analyze how work schedules are associated with family, couple, parent-child, and non-family leisure activities under the split-shift schedule. The schedule is to divide a day in to two by the long lunch break. The result of the surveys indicates that women spent much more time in parent-child activities and they were more responsive to the spouse's work hours. At the same time, men were more active than women in non-family leisure, considering both individuals' and their spouses' work schedules. This matches the traditional ideology that women are supposed to focus more on family then men while men do more at work as what Holly Devor indicates in his article. Women are more likely to take care of family in Spain, as the traditional ideology while men is focusing on work and make a living for the family. This proves the socially constructed gender role actually exist, not only in North America. Therefore, socially constructed gender role can be one of the reason why women struggles in having a balanced life between work and family.

Jeffrey H. Greenhaus is a Professor of Management and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Business at the LeBow College of Business at Drexel University. He studies health and workplace flexibility and gender. For the readers who are interested in psychology and relations between work, family and gender, this article leads the topic of work-family balance due to gender to a new level because it illustrates the current status of it and predict the future directions. This is a research article backs up my argument about women in the United States are struggling in achieving balance between work and family.

Work Cited

Blithe, Sarah. Gender Equality and Work-life Balance: Glass Handcuffs and Working Men in the U.S. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Boloorizadeh, Padideh, Farshad Tojari, and Tayebeh Zargar. "Work-family Conflict among Female Head Coaches in Iran." Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 84 (2013): 1403-410. Web.

Devor, Holly. “Becoming members of society: Learning the social meanings of Gender.” Rereading America. Colombo, G. Et al. Boston. St. Martin’s. (2001). 415-423. Print.

Gracia, Pablo, and Matthijs Kalmijn. "Parents' Family Time and Work Schedules: The Split-Shift Schedule in Spain." Fam Relat Journal of Marriage and Family 78.2 (2015): 401-15. Web.

Greenhaus, Jeffrey H., and Saroj Parasuraman. "Research on Work, Family, and Gender:Current Status and Future Directions." Handbook of Gender & Work Handbook of Gender & Work (n.d.): 391-412. Web.

Slaughter, Anne-Marie. "Why Women Still Can't Have It All." Atlantic July-Aug. 2012: 1-42. Web.