Gender Roles In Boys And Girls By Alice Munro

Gender roles have been the one of the longest conflicts since the creation of man. Females have been struggling to gain way in the country since the foundation of the United States. For most of our country’s life up until the 1940’s women predominantly were supposed to stay at the house and do all the house work. For a fictional unnamed female child in the short story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, the life of the average woman is not the life she wants to live. She wants to work the hard labor with her father who sells fox pelts but, she is constantly getting “harassed” by her mother to do lady like work. The women’s struggle for rights can be divided up into centuries starting with the 19th and continuing to present day. At the end of the story the girl finally accepts her role as a female because she messes up and her father says, “She’s only a girl.” Men on the other hand, have had always had any opportunity they wanted but, generally their role is the

In more recent history women have fought against only being able to serve in general nursing/doctor and desk jobs to have the same opportunity in military as men have. They are now able to serve in all combat roles through all the branches of military. An article in the New York Times reads, “Women have long said that by not recognizing their real service, the military has unfairly held them back.” (Rosenberg & Phillips). Women are also fighting against accepting unequal pay for the same work that men do. On average women earn eighty cents for every one dollar a man earns. (Siniscalo, Damrell, and Nabity) This is a very big step towards gender equality in the workplace because, when the Equal Pay Act (EPA) was established in 1963 women earned around fifty-nine cents to the males one dollar. Still the females are undermined compared to males but progress is being