Education and work

Abstract

Women are still disadvantaged in the workplace compared to men: they earn less for the same job and are less likely to achieve higher positions. Besides the gender bias that they face, women also contribute to gender inequality by making different career and family choices than men. What are the causes of these differences?

Difference feminism states that women are simply different from men and therefore want different things; these differences should be celebrated and re-valued. For example, caring for children and family members should be valued as much as a career outside the home. Liberal feminists agree that this may indeed help us overcome certain forms of inequality, but warn us that we should not too readily assume that women really want different things than men. Rather, our culture creates and perpetuates such strong expectations and role models, that our preferences, desires, and aspirations follow suit.

There is a lot of evidence that gender roles are to a large extent socially constructed. Ideas about what women and men are like, tend to vary a lot across space and time and thus cannot be defined without reference to the cultural and historical context. Also, women differ a lot from each other in what they want in life. Furthermore, many women have deviated from society’s expectations which should remind us that there is not one definition of what it is to be a woman.

Gender differences result from nature and nurture. Striving for gender equality, however, does not mean that everyone has to be the same. Rather, it can mean that people are provided with the opportunity to develop in a way that suits them, independently of their sex or gender. This means that we should resist gendered expectations and make no assumptions about men’s and women’s career and family choices.