Movement Towards Gender Equality

The movement towards gender equality has slowed down significantly. Many times there are major roadblocks that often times goes unseen. Women are now half of the educated labor force population and earn the majority of advanced degrees. Women have begun to do well in universities. Considering how well they are doing and how the are progressing up the work ladder they have been running into biases problems that tend to derail them. The higher a women is in a ladder the harder it gets for them to achieve that success that they long for.

Which brings us to our study is gender equality progressing forward in the home life as it is progressing in the workplace? It is our hope to find that gender equality progress in the home is positively related to gender equality in the workplace. In the study we did we used scales, which allows us to represent complex variables with scores that provide greater potential for variance than would a single item. Likert scales present respondents with statements followed by response choices for respondents to indicate whether they “strongly agree”, “agree”, “strongly disagree”, “disagree”.

With five response categories scores of 1 to 5 might be assigned taking the direction of the items into account. Each respondent would then be assigned an overall score that represents the summation of the scores he or she received for response to the indicial items (Rubin, A. & Babbie, E.,2018). In a study done by Chesley N., she goes about studying how a women’s career actually flourishes because her husband has taken the role of being a stay at home father. The study suggests that by the father being at home it has increased the involvement in childcare that in other ways has reduce gender difference in parenting and it has translated into becoming a great support for the wives employment and has promoted changes in the women’s work behavior that reduces inequalities that traditionally stem from gendered division in work and family responsibilities (Chesley, N., 2011).

It is not uncommon for a women’s career to not take off until children are more independent and even then it can still be a struggle for a women to achieve her maximum potential since we are often pulled in many different directions. Dahm. Patricia C. et al. researched this hot topic and they questioned how the relationship between work to family conflict, time allocation across work activities and the outcome of work satisfaction, well being and the salary in context of self regulation and self discrepancy theories. They found that there was significant discrepancies between the actual and preferred time allocations to work activities negatively affecting work satisfaction, psychological well being and physical well being. Women were more likely than men to report self-discrepant time allocation as their work to family conflict increases (Dahm, P.C. et al.). Recently within the last century there has been a radical shift in the roles and expectations of women in society with that being a said a study done in 2005 investigates the views of 14 to 16 year olds in the year 2000 on work and family roles, they explored their general views on gender roles and their own personal aspirations for the future. The young people believed it was equally important for males and females to get good qualifications at school to have a good career and that when the time came childcare should be a joint responsibility. They also believed that males and females could do any job they wanted to do. The views of these individuals were tempered by the inequality they saw around them in workplaces and even in their own families. While the attitude of the next generation may have changed they are still choosing gender typical subjects at school and aspiring different types of occupation. The investigation concluded that although there has been great progress in changing the attitude towards gender equality there is still a long way to go before equal opportunities are actually achieved (Tinklen T. & Croxford L. et al, 2005).

Balancing a career with the demands of family life is an issue that many woman struggle with on a daily basis. While married men usually spend an average of 16.6 hours each week on domestic work and childcare, married women who have a full time job spend and average of 24.5 hours the equivalent of a part time job. Although men often times work longer employment hours than women recent research suggests that women who are employed fulltime have less free time than their male counter parts; they spend an additional 11 hours working each week when considering time spent in both paid and domestic labor (Fetterolf J. & Rudman L., 2014). In a few cross-national studies done they distinguish between different aspects of gender egalitarianism and compare them systematically. This study examined cross-national differences in attitudes towards mothers participation in the labor market and towards gender equality within the household, using a multilevel analysis of individual data from 33 nations. The results concluded there was a greater support for employed mothers but a significant lower level of approval of gender equality at home among residents of countries that offered women more education and economic opportunities (Yu, W., & Lee, P.,2013). It is often times women and men at the upper end of the social class continuum expressing greater desire to share paid and unpaid labor equally, where as less educated couples with less skilled occupations and less money tend to voice more enthusiasm for specialized gender roles. But the behavior of many couples does not exactly align with their attitudes which as a result leads them to live unexpectedly egalitarian or noneglaritarian lives. In the study done by Margaret L. Usdansky she argues that this gender equality paradox is explained by social structures related to the organization of work and family that act as potent counterforces to attitudes (Usdansky M., 2011).

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