Women's Roles And Gender Roles

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Introduction Before 1920, women didn’t even come close to having the same amount of rights as men. Women were seen as the gender that stays inside the house and takes care of household things such as, children, cleaning, cooking, etc. This stereotypical role set a low standard towards the way women are treated and distinguished. These roles cause people to overlook the way women think and make decisions. Since they are portrayed as weak, they rarely get paid attention to when they are put in a position of power, which is what man’s characteristics fall under. There are many different words that were used to describe women because of this role that they were put into. These words are, weak, emotional, unaggressive, small, etc. When anyone is …show more content…

This all started in the 20th century where women and men didn’t have equal rights. Women were typically stuck in the house taking care of the children and cleaning while the men were out working and providing for the family. When these roles are put on women it shows them as being the weaker of the two. According to Eagly and Karau (2002), women are seen to have “Communal characteristics, which are ascribed more strongly to women, describe primarily a concern with the welfare of other people—for example, affectionate, helpful, kind, sympathetic, interpersonally sensitive, nurturing, and gentle.” (Pg. 574) These characteristics do not seem to qualify with candidacy positions where there needs to be aggressiveness and leadership which is what men’s roles include. The positions in candidacy all require manly type characteristics, so it will be difficult for women to pursue these positions. According to Lawless and Fox (2010), sex continues to play a huge factor in considering candidacy. Women in America think to themselves that since they are women and don’t have the traditional gender roles of men, that it will be unlikely for them to get a solid position in politics. Since these traditional gender roles of women categorize them as being soft, women start having a lack in confidence in themselves to run for candidacy and decide …show more content…

According to Lawless and Fox (n.d.) Only 17% of US senators are women, while the other 83% are men (pg. 1). The amount of men absolutely trumps the amount of women. Not only is that true with US senators, Tolleson and Josephson (2000) state that when it comes to US court of appeals judges, only 19.6% were women and 80.4% were men (pg. 225). This is pure evidence that when women don’t hold that strong threshold of aggressiveness and motivation to pursue that power, they don’t get too far in the political world. Although if it wasn’t for these traditional gender roles starting them off with the lack of strong attributes then this would be a whole different

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