Opinion: It’s Time to Move on From Traditional Gender Roles - Ava Weinstein

Image source: SLAM Photographer

The stereotypical housewife of the 1950s was a dutiful spouse and mother with elegantly styled hair and manicured nails. She prepared supper for the family every evening and always wore a clean apron. Today, some seventy years later, we still haven’t fully moved on from the idea that that’s what a woman should be. Collectively, we are clinging to traditional gender roles; the concept that there are two boxes: one for men and one for women. Domestic duties fall strictly into the woman’s box, and having a career falls into the man’s.

During World War II, American women entered the workforce en masse, whether by joining the military or taking jobs that servicemen had left behind. Even before then, women were working—and not just in sweatshops or on farms. In 1870, two-thirds of teachers were women, and they could also be found working in iron and steel production, mines, sawmills, etc.

Working women are not new, but even now, according to a Pew Research Center study from 2013, 51% of the public say that children are “better off with [their] mother home,” while only 8% say the same for fathers. 76% say, however, that children are “just as well off if [their] father works.” It’s this kind of gendered thinking that perpetuates harmful double standards, keeps us stuck in the past, and makes it harder for women to assert their rightful place as equal members of society.

There are some who argue that women have biological predispositions to take on what have historically been considered women’s roles, but this is less of actual biology and more a result of the pervasive gender socialization of girls, which occurs from the minute they are born throughout their whole adolescence and young adulthood. Gender roles are social constructs that have been created and shaped by a patriarchal society which holds little regard for women as multi-dimensional, capable, intelligent human beings.

Increasingly, households are evolving from the “nuclear family” to include other family formations, such as households of two men, two women, single parents, or “stay-at-home husbands/fathers,” challenging our idea of what a traditional home and family looks like. These shifts render the old ideas somewhat irrelevant. Family dynamics are unique and ever-changing, and it’s up to each individual family to decide what works best for them. Women do not have an obligation to be stay-at-home moms and housewives.

None of this is to say that it’s wrong for a woman (or a man) to choose to stay home and raise children, but it must be a choice, not a preordained societal duty. There’s intense pressure on women to have children, and when the children are born, to raise them in a certain way. With this pressure comes plenty of self-righteous guilt-tripping. Women are told that they don’t care about their children if they hold full-time jobs; that if they choose not to have a child they are neglecting their obligation to reproduce. The double standard is glaring. No one says the same things to a man.

Women are not vehicles of free reproductive and domestic labor, and we do not exist solely to give birth. Traditional gender roles and views of “a woman’s duty” are outdated, restrictive, and out of place in our modern world. It’s time for us to move on; to form new ideas of gender roles, to accept the possibility that maybe they don’t matter at all—that they are mere constructs; rigid boxes that no one should be made to fit into.

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Works Cited

“Chapter 2: Public Views on Changing Gender Roles.” Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project, Pew Research Center, 31 Dec. 2019, www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/05/29/chapter-2-public-views-on-changing-gender-roles/. From Pew Research Center series: Breadwinner Moms

Kelly, Kelly J. “Perspective | Pushing against Gender Roles, Now That We’re All Home Together.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 7 Apr. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/04/13/pushing-against-gender-roles-now-that-were-all-home-together/.

Parker, Kim. “Chapter 6: Time in Work and Leisure, Patterns by Gender and Family Structure.” Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project, Pew Research Center, 2 Aug. 2022, www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/03/14/chapter-6-time-in-work-and-leisure-patterns-by-gender-and-family-structure/.

“Women in the Workforce.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 July 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_workforce. Section: "History"