is childcare a women’s task?….like this…??
In the lecture, we read the text of Mika LaVaque-Manty, “Being a Woman and Other Disabilities.” The Playing Fields of Eton: Equality and Excellence in Modern Meritocracy. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 2009. N. pag. Print.
Then we learned institutional barriers that keep women and people with disabilities away from sports. There are also value barriers that prevent women from participating in masculine or manlike role. When I learned those barriers and came up with arbitrary gender norm, the word “male dominant society” came to my mind; a value barrier prevents women from becoming presidents or leaders in the society.
Yes, indeed, people have thought about an equal society for a long time, and we can see a progress and get closer to ideal, an equal society.
As a fact, women are
50.8 % of the US population, 60% of undergraduate degree, 52% of professional level job
HOWEVER, women still don’t reach leadership positions. Women are
14.6 % of executive officers, 8.1% of top earners, 4.6% of Fortune 500 CEOs
In the financial services industry, women make up
54.2 % of the labor force
HOWEVER
12.4 % of executive officers, NONE are CEOs
This clearly shows that even though more women have career, college degree and higher positions in the society, few women are CEOs or executive officers. There is still a value barrier “housework is women’s, not public work is men’s”.
So what should we do in order to create a truly equal society?
Ms. Sheryl Sandberg, at Facebook London, April 2013
I want to introduce messages that Ms. Sheryl Sandberg gave in her TED talk 2010, “Why we have too few women leaders”. She is a chief operating officer of Facebook now, after she worked in Google. She tells us that it is women that should change their attitudes and behaviors; they need to put them forward so as to lead teams, institutions, and the society.
First, women need to “sit at the table”, and should not pull them back. Ms. Sandberg gives an example that for a meeting, she asked two women to sit at the table but they didn’t, instead they sat on the side of the room.
I think she means here that having courage is essential for women to join the male dominant community, meeting and conference. Women should not miss chances and be rather bold. Grab opportunities, don’t let them away, don’t wait passively- this is her point I think.
Second, Ms. Sandberg tells a message that women should “make your partner is a real partner”. If women keep working after having a child, typically, they need to do both housework and business. That means women have “double day”- work inside home and work outside home, despite men’s one work.
In my view, this “double day” is caused by stereotype, “women should stay home, men should earn money outside”. If we keep this idea and then women start working outside, what would happen? You can see women struggle with two completely different types of work and freak out by strong responsibility. Thus, men should engage in housekeeping and childcare. And women should make it sure that their partners can accept those work and carry them out.
Ms. Sandberg, at Ted talk 2010
Finally, she says ”don’t leave before you leave”. Ms. Sandberg states that when women think about having a child, they start pulling them back, even though they are not pregnant yet. They begin thinking about so earlier making room for the babies. Then they do not participate in new projects, for example. Ms. Sandberg wants women to stay at the work place till the exact day they need to take a break for a child.
For me, it makes sense because women are likely to make a plan about marriage, children and family earlier than men. They feel strong responsible for building “good” family, partly because the gender norm “women should be domestic”. I think that’s why they think about it early. However, they need to stay in work place to succeed in work, and come back to the work place to get leadership positions.
If women can take actions as aforementioned, they will be able to have more opportunities to gain higher status in the society, and we can get close to a true equal society. This is not easy. It takes long time. But we need to take actions.
You can know about Ms. Sandberg more by reading an article of New Yorker, “A Woman’s Place”.
And you can watch her Ted Talk here.
Touchdown Theory 
I find this blog very interesting and relevant to society today. Being a woman, I want what is best for myself and for all other women that I care about. However, I do believe that the word feminism has been twisted to mean “man-hater”, which is not the case at all. I do not understand how wanting what’s best for myself and the women around me is synonymous with hating men, but somehow society has twisted our understating to mean that. Any time feminism was brought up in high school and even in college, there was always that one guy who was so uncomfortable with the subject. But, why? We all have women in our life, despite our sex, who we care about. It just makes sense to want what will make them prosperous and happy. The first step in accepting women as equals is to recognize that men and women can both be feminists, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. While I think the word ‘feminism’ itself has gotten a bad reputation over the years, changing society’s perception of women starts right here; both young men and women are guilty of perceiving women as sex objects and therefore, not taken seriously. However, by both sexes recognizing the problem, we as a society can become more successful and equal.
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I thought this was a provocative blog post that brought up some key points about the inequalities between men and women. I agree with Katemrod who posted above when she talks about how feminism is seen as “man-hating”. This is a terrible reputation for feminists and hopefully we, as women, can change the way people view the feminist movement. Although the blog is interesting, it lacks the authors’ opinion or stance of the subject. It was a very short blog post that I feel could have been made better by expanding on the points listed. I would have liked to see more connection to the class or other parts of sports and the university. Overall, I liked the points and statistics that you brought up and just wished I could have gotten to hear your opinion and more of the “what now” part of the blog.
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This is a very interesting blog because the topic is related to women in one way or other. The social expectations of the gender role is so much instilled in our society that even thinking about not playing the role as expected, makes a person guilty. However, its very difficult to bring a change in the ideology that has been taught to humans since childhood. As a mother I have a first hand experience of facing this guiltiness everyday when I leave the house. Even though my kids are mature enough to take care for themselves, I feel guilty that I am not there for them when they come back from school. So in a way my own attitude is making it difficult for me to achieve my goals. I agree with Ms. Sandburg, that women needs to change their attitude and behavior.
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