I would like to start this post with a question. Please take a moment to think about your answer before you read the rest of this post...
If you were living ten to fifteen years how many males would you see in the makeup industry, how many females would you see in engineering, how many males would you see as "stay at home dads?"
While these are just a few ideas I think that it really shows how far society has come. In the past it was few and far between that someone would step across the very clearly marked gender boundary. However, this concept has not only become accepted in our society but encouraged!
I would like to bring up Covergirl as an example. At the start of 2017, this makeup company introduced their first male model. Despite being highly contrivesal, this was a bold declaration for gender equality. In a typically female industry males are now continuing to pop up. On all forms of social media there are males embracing this new found attention and sharing their ideas. I personally believe that a lot of gender boundaries are being broken due to increases in technology and communication throughout the world (more to come on this).
I bring this example up in order to bring up the broader topic that my project is commenting on. Just as women are moving into engineering, both males and females are taking on new roles. I believe that females now have the confidence to puruse engineering because of an overall acceptance in today's society.
I bring this example up in order to bring up the broader topic that my project is commenting on. Just as women are moving into engineering, both males and females are taking on new roles. I believe that females now have the confidence to puruse engineering because of an overall acceptance in today's society.
It was noted in a book, “Freakonomics” that by allowing women to enter into normally male dominated positions, we took them out of positions they were ‘allowed’ to hold. This meant schools lost highly intelligent teachers so they could become doctors. Which could also mean that sub-par doctors are now filling the roles of teachers. I am not sure if that has any correlation to me.
ReplyDeleteI was a stay at home dad off and on for years and loved the ability to have that lifestyle. The biggest thing that bothered me was the acronym (SAHD). About half of my male friends could not fathom the concept of raising the kids and taking care of the house. The other half were jealous. This allowed me to raise in a manner not common to society. Mountain biking, hiking, scuba diving, and yes, GOLF were just a few of my hobbies that we shared. When I taught them to cook, we would also discuss the financial decision of the meal (cost, on sale, other options) not just the meal. They were not brought up worrying about their outfits, which was not a great move, but thankfully they learned in middle school. So that brings me to a question, if men are slowly sliding into traditional female roles, and females are sliding into traditional male roles, will it completely switch or will it be blended?
Great question! I think that they will continue to blend as they are now. I believe this merely because there are physical limitations on particular jobs in which the opposite gender may not be able to perform at the highest level that is required of them. For instance, your average female may not have the upper body strength to build an entire house and your average male may not have the needed patience to deal with screaming toddlers. Obviously these are exaggerated examples but I think they communicate how there will sadly always be jobs that are more heavily filled with one gender rather than the other. However, with engineering there are no such physical limitations. An engineer's biggest tool is their mind, and there is no major difference between the accomplishments of a female mind versus a male mind.
DeleteHi Liz,
ReplyDeleteYou've been doing a great job so far approaching your topic from all angles. I'm really interested in seeing what you will do next!
Despite how far we've come as a society, do you still think there is still some stigma surrounding females in male-dominated fields?
Hi Asfia. Sadly I do think there are still a lot of sterotypes and stigmas related to females in the field. I think this is because no matter how far we have come with helping females at a younger age, this mentality has not really been shaped into past thought. What I mean by that is that the females and males who went through college maybe 10-20 years ago do not hold the same amount of value on increasing females in the field. It is hard to change old habits but I think the large number of programs that are popping up in all kinds of schools (elementary all the way to college) are helping to raise awareness of how prevalent this issue actually is.
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