Gender Inequality In The United States: A Gender Analysis

The United States of America is a capitalist patriarchy. According to Eitzen, Zinn, and Smith (2014) this is where “male supremacy keeps women in subordinate roles at work and in the home” (p. 216). There is not much evidence to debunk this fact. As it would go, there are many reasons how this came to be and why it persists today. This is not only an issue that affects America, but worldwide. However, as the world continues to improve, America as a country lacks when it comes to fixing the gender problem it faces. This phenomena can be explained through various sociological ideas and theories and is a topic with multiple facets. These ideas will be explained in the paper and what is being done to fix this problem of gender inequality.

From

a Sociological Perspective
Gender as we know it is a social construct.

This means it is a mechanism that society created, so gender is not based on biological factors, but how society deems what the female gender and what the male gender is. While there is a biological basis to gender, it is not necessarily married to sex. As Eitzen et al., explain, there is an immediate casting for gender roles that takes place after determining the sex of a baby (p. 216). After this has been decided how the baby’s place in society is cemented by this decision and will affect them for the rest of their lives. These effects are determined by the gender roles approach which is “traits that individuals acquire during the course of socialization” (p. 216). Then there’s the /gender structure approach which “emphasizes factors that are external to individuals…social actions that reward men and womanly differently” (pg.216). These two approaches explain a lot when it comes to how the patriarchy continues to strive and how sexism is inevitable when these two things come into play. These approaches also parallel the person-blame approach and the system-blame

approach.
As mentioned before, the casting that takes place is done so as soon as a baby is born. However, this isn’t the only time gender is forced upon a child, it is also heavily involved in the kind of toys that girls get in comparison to boys, clothing, an whats expected of them. All of these things lead women and girls to believe they should be meek and mild, not take initiative whereas boys’ toys do the opposite.
Toys for boys tend to encourage exploration, manipulation, invention, construction, competition, and aggression. In contrast, girls’ toys typically rate high with manipulability, creativity, nurturance, and attractiveness. Playing with gendered toys may encourage different skills in girls and boys (as cited in Reznetti and Currant 2003:89-92). From a sociological society is to blame for the fact that females are seen as inferior compared to their male counterparts. It has nothing to do with genetics nor biology, but the expectations and limits place on each gender by society. It just so happens that Females are the ones that take the brunt of the ill consequences this thinking places. Because women are taught to be met and mild and shon through toys and television what types of jobs should be done and expected its no wonder that the “masculine” or higher paying jobs such as CEO’s, mechanics, professors, and such are male dominated. This not only has to do with this type of thought but that the opportunity simply isn’t there for women. It is taught to both genders that these kind of jobs wouldn’t be suitable for women who are expected to be the caretaker, not the breadwinner.

So What Has Been Done?
There have been many government programs to help with this inequality. The 1963 Equal Pay Act tries to abolish the disparity in wages between men and women, however while this act did improve wages when it was signed into law, it still has not completely paid off. The act itself is not strong enough to fight against companies that continue to give women lower wages. When Obama was sworn into office, the first bill he signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act which “overturned the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Inc., 550 U.S. 618 (2007), which severely restricted the time period for filing complaints of employment discrimination concerning compensation.” (“EQUAL PAY ACT OF 1963” 2010.) This is a start to help the women who still suffered in terms of less pay and were unable to use the Equal Pay Act to their advantage. Another one is Affirmative action which forces workplaces and schools to have a certain amount of women and other minorities in their population. This system, however is being sought to be taken away.
In 2010, Australia signed the Paid Parental Leave Act which left the United States one of the few major developed countries that did not give paid leave to pregnant women. In doing so it has helped countless women be able to stay home with their infants and still be able to provide for them without having to go away to work. In the U.S. this not the case and could be one of the factors contributing to the feminism of poverty which as Eitsen et al., put it as the phenomena where adult women are more likely to be in poverty than adult men (p. 238). A simple way to help with this would be to pay women while they were on pregnancy leave, even if they were working a minimum wage. This, along with other programs that the U.S. lacks shows how some countries are helping their women.
System-Blame Approach vs. Person-Blame Approach
Both of these approaches are explain the different ways the gender inequality problem can be seen. The system-blame approach would say that these problems of inequality are due to social conditions while the person-blame approach blames it on the individual.
The only real person-blame approach to this issue that could feasibly be considered a reason when are often in lower paying jobs and have less opportunity is that they are not “built for it”.

Women tend to be smaller than males, but this does not necessarily mean the same jobs cannot be done. It could also be said that women are to blame for the position they are in, that they need to be come more aggressive to be able to compete, but as Linda Peterson and Elaine Enarson (1974) pointed out, “by focusing on the victim, responsibility for ‘the woman problem’ rests not in the social system…but in the socialized sex differences and sex roles” (pg. 8). It is safe to say that with gender inequality it needs to be looked at with a system-blame approach. With the social construct of gender lending to most of the problems, the roles that are forced onto women in society can easily be said to cause the lack of equilibrium in power. Language, interpersonal behavior, and mass media all contribute to male dominance in their own ways be it with portrayal of genders, that men are expected to control most conversations, and how language in itself ignores, trivializes, and sexualizes women (p. 223). For example, the words with which refer to men imply power and success where with women it implies promiscuity and subordination (p. 223). Just these few things explain how gender inequality has persisted even in our forward-thinking

nation.