Module 15

The way that both men and women view gender roles has not drastically changed in the past 100 years or so as much as feminists hope that it would. Most "normal" American families consist of the husband working all day outside of the home. Meanwhile, in many cases the woman is staying at home caring for young children, doing housework, and tending to the upkeep of the house and the family. A lot of the time, if the men do stay home with the children it is still the wife that does the housecleaning when she gets home from work. It is a standard within American society that women should be the ones doing the work for many reasons. First, I think that it is seen as kind of a reward for men for working so hard at their jobs. Many women are thankful that their husbands are out all day making money to support them and feel that they owe it to their family. Also, the woman's mom did the cleaning when she was younger as did the husband's mom. By principle, this is how they were raised and it is hard to change a tradition that has been with you your entire life.

I have not really experienced any sexism within the workplace (at least I wouldn't consider it sexism) but I have definitely noticed some differences between males and females. For example, I worked as a waitress for one summer. Sometimes I would place huge orders and would need to serve huge amounts of food to tables. The cooks would always get one of the guy waiters to carry out the big trays for me and the other female waitresses. However, when guy servers got big orders they never got any help from other male or female servers. This did not offend me at all; I liked the help even though I probably could have carried it myself.

Also, I worked at a food festival a few weeks ago in Chicago. My main job was to help customers and work the cash register, however all of the workers were dong random jobs around the tent. I noticed many times that my supervisor would always ask this guy to do jobs that consisted of things like standing on chairs and using tools. Again, I didn't mind not being asked to do these jobs but it was just interesting how people think that girls can't do things that are considered "a guy's domain".