One Red Hot Country Mama!

Those are stunning statistics. Re: women working in childcare – I’m not sure how or if that will ever change, since few people are comfortable with men being caregivers. Even the most feminist among us would not want a man caring for their child due to the perceived risk that their child could come to harm more likely in the care of a man (pedophile) rather than a woman.

And I think that’s a job sector that will have the hardest time being seen as financially valuable and seeing incomes, job security and benefits increase. Because men aren’t welcome there, they demean it to “the job of a 15 year old girl”.

But what’s this correlated to? Are women discouraged from pursuing engineering or construction jobs? Are they discouraged from management training, etc.? Do they choose to study pursue other topics? Are hiring managers unfairly choosing men for these roles?

I for one have talked to a lot of women engineers who have said they had no problem becoming an engineer… and that most of their girlfriends had no desire at all to pursue the topic…

So all I’m really getting at is how much of this is discrimination and how much is self-selection… I’d love to know the answer.

I would like know what this is correlated to as well.

We have a year and half old boy at home. He is obsessed with trucks and cars and tractors. He also likes to play very physically – like wrestling and whatnot. We have never encouraged or discouraged any preference for toys. Little girls his age seem to enjoy playing with different toys -like dolls – and in a much more gentle manner.

Although I would like to see more men as child care workers, I don’t think it something that most men want to do.

In terms of management positions such as corporate officers of big companies, there are also some interesting stats about the height of the men in those positions.

*The average CEO was just under 6 feet (the average American man is 5’9″)
*Among the CEOs, 58 percent were 6 feet or over
*In the United States, 14.5 percent of men are 6 feet or over
*Some 30 percent of the CEOs were 6’2″ or taller
*Only 3.9 percent of U.S. men are 6’2″ or taller

???

These are all huge questions, and probably too big to address in the form of a blog comment. From what I have read, it seems like there are behaviors that are just not acceptable for females – such as questioning the status quo, asserting their needs or asking for what they want.

So – these things affect pay scales – reflecting reluctance to negotiate salary, the choice of acceptable “nurturing” type jobs in place of “achieving” type jobs (secretaries vs. CEOs) and advancement (this requires a certain amount of assertiveness which women are tacitly discouraged from).

The interesting part is that people think they do not have biases, but upon seeing male and female actors deliver the same script, people had markedly different reactions.

Now, to answer the question on engineers, I think that it will take some time (maybe a few generations or so) to see if more women enter the field – similar to seeing if men enter the elementary school teacher profession.

On the question of the 1.5 yr-old… maybe boys and girls do have some innate differences – but that doesn’t give an excuse for women to be still making 70% of what men make (in Canada).

On the height of CEOs – I think that that wraps up the whole point of the post. There are still biases out there based on how people look. This means we are still far from a meritocracy!

It’s important to note that many of these discrepancies are caused by social gender roles. Although you claim there must be “a lot of work to be done,” you did not mention that many people are trying their best to end these biases for future generations. If you have young children, spend some time watching some of the Nick Jr. shows and you’ll see absolutely no gender biasing. In these programs, gender has no effect on behavior, social role, etc. It’s important to use a subtle touch when teaching children about these topics. You want them to understand through example that gender is meaningless when it comes to intellectual and physical capability. The best way to do this is to ensure that their playmates include boys and girls at a young age (but not to force it on them). Also, keep them away from mainstream media whose commercials and various programs rely heavily on gender biasing (has anyone seen those degrading Axe commercials?!?!). I don’t believe that we have to right to force these commercials off of television (since that’s censorship), but I believe that it is the parents responsibility to ensure that children are introduced to better role models (preferably the parents themselves and teachers rather than anything found on TV). Well, I’m just adding in my 2 cents.

I am pleasantly surprised by what you say about children’s programming. I wrote about this in a previous post here:

http://stefsigurdson.typepad.com/chaotica/2007/02/beauty_and_the_.html

quoting a comprehensive study of children’s entertainment which found:

• In the 101 studied films, there are three male characters for every one female character.

• Fewer than one out of three (28 percent) of the speaking characters both real and animated) are female.

• Fewer than one in five (17 percent) of the characters in crowd scenes are female.

• More than four out of five (83 percent) of the films’ narrators are male.

That said, you are right – there are people out there who are trying to make a difference, and of course I am not denigrating that. This post was in response to the people who still think that everything is equal now… and that there are no problems.